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Author Archives: Felix
Subprime in Germany
Who or what is an IKB? I know there are lots of obscure European banks, but
IKB is obscure even by German standards. And somehow – really, no one
seems to have the foggiest notion how – IKB’s Rheinland Funding vehicle
seems to have contrived to amass an eye-popping €17 billion ($23 billion)
in US
subprime exposure.
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Posted in banking, bonds and loans, hedge funds, housing
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Why Chuck Prince Should Embrace His Unexciting Side
No one, with the possible exception of Sandy Weill, has ever
been particularly impressed with Chuck Prince. But Citigroup’s
CEO has always seemed at least to be a feet-on-the-ground kind of guy, a safe
pair of hands for when the bank is going through regulatory storms.
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Posted in banking
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Why Bear Stearns Might Be Sold
Thanks to Helen Thomas for reminding
me that I reckon a Bear Stearns takeover ain’t going to happen – or
at least that I thought
that a month ago. But since the FT is revisiting
the issue, it’s worth taking another look.
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Posted in banking
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The Lighter Side of Subprime
Subprime: it’s not just about ball-bearing
manufacturers. It’s the
menthol cigarette of loans.
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Posted in remainders
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BanXcard: Better Than Wal-Mart, Worse Than Credit Unions
I have mixed feelings about the BanXcard,
a new product which is indubitably better than the MoneyCard.
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Posted in banking, personal finance
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Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Lower Half Problem
Japanese newspapers call it a "lower half problem". Bill
Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, JFK
– there’s no shortage of prominent politicians who have it. And according
to Libération journalist Jean Quatremer, the next managing
director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is no exception.
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Posted in IMF
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Why Fed Funds Futures Might Not Reflect Fed Expectations
To
get an idea of where the market thinks that the Fed is going to be in six or
nine months, all you need to do is look at the Fed funds futures contract. Right?
Maybe
not.
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Posted in derivatives, fiscal and monetary policy
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Mexico Immigration Datapoints of the Day
Two intriguing
datapoints from YouNotSneaky today.
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Posted in labor
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Why The Low Capital Gains Tax?
Former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder doesn’t
get it, and neither, frankly, do I.
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Posted in taxes
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Sowood: Long Debt, Short Equity
Marc Andreessen made a lot of money last week, when he sold
his company for $1.6 billion. But has he been losing a lot of money, too?
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Posted in hedge funds
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Wall Street, Fearless, Rates Blackstone a “Buy”
By
an astonishing coincidence, the six banks with a "buy" rating
are the six of the seven who were also underwriters on the IPO.
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Posted in stocks
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Time to Buy ETFs and Head to the Beach
A diverse
global ETF portfolio can be put together with an overall expense ratio of
less than 0.15%
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Posted in personal finance
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How Securitization Arbitrages Bond-Market Inefficiencies
The bond market, dominated as it is by risk-averse bond investors, is simply not a perfectly efficient market.
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Posted in bonds and loans
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Why WSJ.com Should Be Free
Saul Hansell wonders
whether Rupert Murdoch should really make WSJ.com free from
the first day he owns it.
Of course he should.
Posted in Media, publishing, technology
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How Non-Recourse Mortgages Can Drive Default Rates Up
In some states, mortgages can be non-recourse.
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Nicholas Negroponte, WSJ Guardian
The (other, London, Murdoch) Times tells us who’s
going to sit on the all-important committee charged with safeguarding the
editorial integrity of the WSJ.
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Posted in Media
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Rupert Murdoch Gets a Mandate, and a Trophy
Amidst the acres of commentary on the Murdoch-Dow Jones acquisition this morning, there’s precious little in the way of news or original analysis. The WSJ is, as it has been all along, ahead of the game, and reports the most … Continue reading
Posted in Media, publishing
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Hoping Apple Allows iPhone Wifi Without Cellular Service
John Guidon, the CEO of Row 44, is a big Apple fan, he tells
me, and would love to be talking to Cupertino about the iPhone problem.
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Posted in technology
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Subprime: The Cause Of All Market Moves
It’s all subprime’s fault.
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Posted in housing
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Bruce Wagner Explicates the Hedonic Treadmill
It can be hard to define the hedonic
treadmill in easy-to-understand terms.
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Posted in economics
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Don’t Trust the CDS Market to Gauge Brokers’ Creditworthiness
For reasons I don’t fully understand, credit default swaps seem to have a tendency
to gap out much further than spreads on the underlying bonds.
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Posted in bonds and loans
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Rupert Murdoch, Victorious
It’s
finally happened: News Corp has enough Bancroft votes that it’s going to
go ahead with its acquisition of Dow Jones.
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Posted in Media, publishing
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Democrats Capitulate on Hedge-Fund Tax
This morning’s WSJ fronts
some Democrats’ second thoughts about taxing hedge-fund managers’ income as,
well, income.
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Posted in taxes
4 Comments
When GMU Economists Spar
The wonderful thing about having half a department blogging is that sometimes these discussions spill over onto the web, for all to enjoy.
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Posted in economics
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Economics Anonymous
Economists blogging I can
easily understand; economists blogging anonymously is harder.
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Posted in economics
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