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Author Archives: Felix
How to Improve Mortgage Disclosures
Memo to Elizabeth
Warren: Maybe we don’t need a strong new federal regulator, so much as we
just need better disclosure. Kenneth
Harney has found an FTC study with some startling findings:
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Posted in housing, regulation
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Larry Summers: The Pundit Without Policies
Summers falls short of promulgating economic policies which might reduce inequality.
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Posted in fiscal and monetary policy, technocrats
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Bear Stearns: Takeover Speculation Returns
Color me unconvinced for the time being: if Bear has remained independent this long, I doubt a dodgy hedge fund or two will constitute its undoing.
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Energy Markets: Insufficiently Regulated
Why regulate markets?
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Murdoch Closer to Acquiring Dow Jones
It looks very likely that we’ll see for ourselves just how hands-on Murdoch will be as an owner of the WSJ.
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Sunday Links Sparkle Like Diamonds
News and views from around the web.
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Posted in remainders
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The Bear Bailout: A Plea for Transparency
Now that the public gets its financial information from an incredibly wide range of sources, it’s becoming less and less useful for banks and other financial entities to talk only to a small number of media sources.
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Posted in banking, bonds and loans, hedge funds, Media
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Elizabeth Warren on Financial Sector Regulation
A conversation with Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren.
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Posted in personal finance
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The JPM Ground Zero Tower: Beer Belly, or Modern Herm?
The skyscraper JP
Morgan is proposing to build at Ground Zero is hideous.
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Posted in architecture
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When CEOs Don’t Meet Their Own Speechwriters
According to an anonymous
speechwriter, CEOs can be inaccessible even to those
who are paid to write their very thoughts.
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Posted in leadership
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Hedge Funds’ Insider Trading in Convertible Bonds
How do hedge funds get their outsize returns? And why do so many hedge funds
list "convertible arbitrage" as one of their main sources of profits?
Could the answer to both questions be "insider dealing"?
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Posted in Portfolio
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The Populist Case Against Private Equity
Marc Andreessen posted a cute blog entry yesterday listing
14 questions any prospective investor in a private-equity fund should ask
of its managers.
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Posted in private equity
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Why Blackstone Won’t Skyrocket Today
The main reason that the offering is oversubscribed is, well, that it’s oversubscribed.
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Posted in private equity, stocks
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How the Subprime ABX.HE Index Works
What it all adds up to is something which is not necessarily representative
of anything much at all. But it’s the best we’ve got, so it’s what people use.
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Posted in bonds and loans, housing
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Bear Stearns: The Satire Begins
That Euromoney award to Bear Stearns for Best
Risk Management? It’s real.
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Posted in banking
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Blackstone: The First of Many Private Equity IPOs
Take $170 million from taking Blackstone public, another $200 million or so from KKR, and a few hundred million more from Apollo and TPG and Carlyle and everybody else who’s looking to IPO – and soon you’re talking real money.
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Posted in banking, private equity, stocks
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Hedge Funds: It Is Who You Know, After All
Former CNBC anchor Ron
Insana is set to make millions of dollars not on the grounds of any
particular strategic insights, but just because
of who he knows.
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The Economist on Carbon Taxes vs Cap-and-Trade
The Economist, surprisingly, and disappointingly, has come out in
favor of carbon taxes over a cap-and-trade regime.
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Do Covenants Provide Real Creditor Protection?
Could it be that creditor protections are not ever and always a good idea, from the point of view of lenders?
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Posted in bonds and loans
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Will the Prime Brokers Lose Money on the Bear Stearns Funds?
There’s a very scary tidbit hidden at the bottom of the NYT
coverage of the Bear Stearns mortgage mess today:
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Posted in banking, bonds and loans, hedge funds
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Comparing Economies
New Amsterdam (a/k/a New York) is
indeed more similar to Old Amsterdam than it is to Amsterdam,
Missouri (median household income: $29,821) or Amsterdam,
Ohio (median household income: $24,583).
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Dow Jones Takes One Step Towards a Sale
Who knew? Apparently the board of Dow Jones is good for something after all:
the WSJ’s Sarah
Ellison is reporting that they’re going to take over the negotiations with
Rupert Murdoch.
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Posted in Media
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The Philanthropic and Societal Value of Corporations
The social value of Windows is surely not proportional to Microsoft’s monopolistic profits.
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Posted in development
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The 100-mpg Car
Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has already awarded $1 million
in grants in the field of plug-in
electric cars, and it’s now dangling
a $10 million carrot, saying it wants to help develop a car which gets 100
miles to the gallon.
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Posted in climate change, technology
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Bear Funds Being Liquidated: Who Wants to Buy?
It will take a brave and aggressive investor to enter this market today. On the other hand, there are lots of brave and aggressive investors out there.
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Posted in bonds and loans, hedge funds
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