Author Archives: Felix

IPO Datapoints of the Day

Michelle Leder notes that eight different
companies
filed
to go public
in just one day yesterday, including giants Och-Ziff Capital
and Netsuite.
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Ralph Cioffi’s Failed Liquidity Arbitrage

Veryan Allen has a neat riposte to anybody who claims that
the meltdown at Bear Stearns’ credit funds shows how dangerous hedge funds can
be: the Bear Stearns funds weren’t
hedge funds
!
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Posted in bonds and loans, hedge funds | Comments Off on Ralph Cioffi’s Failed Liquidity Arbitrage

Why Boards Shouldn’t Be Stuffed With CEOs

Adam Piore has an interesting look
at corporate boards
today. Two factoids jumped out at me:
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Why Bear Stearns Won’t Be Sold

The Bear Stearns rumors are back. "Bear
Stearns Could Become Takeover Target
," we’re breathlessly told, although
if you read all the way to the final four words of the article, you do find
out at the end that, for now at least, "Bear isn’t for sale."
Glad that’s cleared up.
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The Wal-Mart MoneyCard: A Rip-Off

Ron
Galloway
reckons that Wal-Mart’s new
debit card
"is simply a deposit account by another name" and that
Wal-Mart has thereby managed to become a bank via the back door, as it were.
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When Mortgage Derivatives Get Included in CDOs

Antony Currie of Breaking Views, who’s been following the
mortgage mess very closely, emails me with some color about the degree to which
derivatives – credit default swaps, or CDSs – are a part of the
CDOs that everybody seems to be so worried about these days.
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Posted in bonds and loans, derivatives, housing | Comments Off on When Mortgage Derivatives Get Included in CDOs

Speculating on the IMF Succession

The favorite at the moment would seem to be Mervyn King, of the Bank of England – a strong central banker and someone I can’t see generating any real opposition.
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Posted in IMF, technocrats | Comments Off on Speculating on the IMF Succession

More on CDOs and Derivatives

There are a lot of CDOs which have a lot of exposure to the CDS market. There are also a lot of CDOs which have a lot of exposure to the subprime market. I just don’t think they’re the same CDOs.
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Posted in bonds and loans, derivatives | Comments Off on More on CDOs and Derivatives

How the Bell Canada Deal Got Done

It seems that the
biggest buyout in history
came as a result of an auction run idiosyncratically
by the target company, in conditions of no little secrecy and mystery.
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Posted in M&A | Comments Off on How the Bell Canada Deal Got Done

The Moral Case Against Murdoch

Commenter dissent has a heartfelt
and powerful rebuttal
to my sanguine view of Rupert Murdoch
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Posted in Media, publishing | Comments Off on The Moral Case Against Murdoch

CDOs: Factchecking Krugman

Paul Krugman has a reasonably good overview
of the mess in the CDO market
today (free version here).
But he goes much too far when he tries to impress upon us how big the problem
is.
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Posted in bonds and loans | Comments Off on CDOs: Factchecking Krugman

Subprime Mess: It’s Not Derivatives’ Fault

Let’s not start blaming illiquid derivatives for Bear Stearns’ problems. Right now, illiquid derivatives are the least of anybody’s problems.
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iPhone

I got one, thanks largely to a wonderful birthday cheque from my grandmother. And it really is a thing of beauty. And I’m not going to repeat what everybody else has said. But I will say that the email functionality … Continue reading

Posted in Not economics | 2 Comments

Why Murdoch Can Make Money On His Dow Jones Investment

It’s a bit embarrassing, but true, that the 76-year-old Murdoch has a longer time horizon than a public company which will almost certainly exist in some form for many generations yet.
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Bloomberg Plays Gotcha with S&P

Bloomberg’s Mark Pittman isn’t hedging his bets in a story
headlined "S&P,
Moody’s Mask $200 Billion of Subprime Bond Risk
":
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Diary of a Defenestration

June 27: "Bear
Stearns’ Asset Management Chief Takes Charge in Fund Crisis
"
is the headline as Rich Marin rides to the rescue of his company’s
embattled hedge funds.
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Posted in banking, defenestrations | Comments Off on Diary of a Defenestration

Why Margin Calls Need Not Destroy the CDO Market

The
Epicurean Dealmaker
explains why I’m a bit too sanguine about the prospects
for the CDO market: it all comes down to margin calls.
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What Jimmy Cayne Eats For Breakfast

Red wine for breakfast.
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Bear’s Funds’ Problems: Not All That Big

The more we learn about what happened at Bear Stearns, the more overblown all the worries seem to have been.
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iPhone to Support Wifi Calling

Apple and AT&T are OK with wi-fi based calling, which will be a godsend to people who travel or call a lot internationally.
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Exblogmunication

I was “exblogmunicated” by Instapundit Glenn Reynolds in 2006, when he linked to me without linking to me. Now he’s done it again, but if anything even more egregiously. If I’m on some kind of blacklist, I want to know!

Posted in Not economics | Comments Off on Exblogmunication

Harvard-Yale Competition

Do Harvard and Yale compete for the best students? Greg Mankiw
certainly thinks
so
:
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Alternatives to Globalization

There are major downsides to globalization, but it increasingly seems as though fighting it is worse than futile: it’s actually counterproductive.
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Posted in economics, Politics | Comments Off on Alternatives to Globalization

Blank-Check Companies: Good Value?

Megan
Barnett
wonders what a conservative value investor is doing in high-risk
investments with no real assets:
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Posted in stocks | Comments Off on Blank-Check Companies: Good Value?

IMF’s Rodrigo de Rato Unexpectedly Resigns

This one came out of left field. As if there wasn’t enough turnover at the
top of the World Bank, now the head of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo
de Rato
, has announced that he, too, is going to resign his job: his
last day will be in October, after the annual meeting concludes on October 21.
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