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Author Archives: Felix
Closing Private-Equity Tax Loopholes
There’s really no reason why hedge fund managers and private-equity billionaires deserve the kind of tax treatment that they’re basking in at the moment.
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Posted in fiscal and monetary policy, hedge funds, private equity
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Taxing Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton is actually a money-making machine.
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Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Should Banks be Worried About Equity Bridges?
Equity bridges are certainly a sign of the frothiness of the market. But I don’t think they’re particularly risky in and of themselves.
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Posted in private equity
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A Bull-Market Song
China’s many stock market miracles will last forever.
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Posted in stocks
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More Signs the Art Market is Peaking
Contemporary art is not a good investment.
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Posted in art
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Questions About Bear and Goldman’s Mortgage Exposures
Do banks only make money on mortgages by being long the market?
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Posted in banking, bonds and loans, housing
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Carbon Taxes in the Skies
Taxing every annual holiday flight, bar the first.
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Posted in climate change
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Bill Gross, Prose Stylist
Apparently "the wait is excruciating, and in some cases painful".
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Posted in bonds and loans
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Andreessen and Dyson on Facebook
Occasionally the blogosphere comes up with the kind of analysis that any highly-paid analyst would be incredbily proud of. In the past couple of days, we’ve seen both Marc Andreessen and Esther Dyson publish their takes on Facebook freely on the web, without any kind of corporate firewall or conflict of interest. If you’re interested in the direction that the web is going, both of these are must-read pieces.
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Posted in technology
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JP Morgan Snubs Silverstein in Move Back Downtown
It’s interesting that Silverstein was willing to let JP Morgan fall through his fingers: there aren’t that many banks who want to move their headquarters to a new building in downtown New York, and he’s going to need to find three.
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Posted in banking
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How Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani Won the Cold War
Did Reagan win the Cold War? Or, more broadly, did US policies in the 1980s
result in the collapse of the Soviet Union? A wonderful
analysis by Yegor Gaidar, who was there when it happened,
suggests that the answer is no.
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Posted in geopolitics
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London Thrives in the Face of Insider Trading
It is incumbent on the FSA not to let insider trading get too blatant. On the other hand, it’s quite easy to overstate the negative effects that insider trading can have.
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Posted in stocks
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John Paulson Continues His Quixotic Fight Against Bear Stearns
The Bear
Stearns vs John Paulson saga shows no sign of going away any time soon
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Posted in hedge funds, housing
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Lant Pritchett’s Big Idea
Advocating a huge increase in international labor mobility.
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Posted in development, immigration
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A Closer Look at Cov-Lite Loans
Catherine
Craig has a great, in-depth look today at the "cov-lite" phenomenon
whereby loans are increasingly being syndicated without the restrictive covenants
of yesteryear.
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Posted in bonds and loans
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Art Market Bubble Watch
I’m always very hesitant to call a bubble, but I’m doing that now, with respect to Richard Prince’s latest works.
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Posted in art
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Why Europe is Right on Climate Change
Kay’s proposed solution is… well, Kay doesn’t have a proposed solution. Instead, he asks for “modesty of aspiration and acknowledgement that many uncertainties cannot be resolved”. In other words, absolutely nothing. We can – we must – do better than that.
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Posted in climate change
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Fed: Still Credible
The market increasingly sees a rate hike as possible, but it’s a long way from seeing a rate hike as necessary. The Fed is still ahead of the curve here, which means that its credibility, at least for the time being, is not at issue.
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Posted in fiscal and monetary policy
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Outsize Returns From Investing in Microfinance
Early investors in Compartamos got 100% returns on their investment, compounded over eight years.
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Posted in banking, development
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Monetizing the Obesity Theme
Merrill Lynch has a research
report up on its website on how best to invest in "the emerging obesity
epidemic".
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Posted in healthcare, stocks
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US Population Density Datapoint of the Day
"If every American were given a house on a quarter acre, so that every
family of four had a full acre, that distribution would not use up half the
land in Texas."
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Posted in cities
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How to Write About Companies
A WSJ article has 10 different numbers in the space of two paragraphs totalling 119 words.
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Posted in Media
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Regulating Subprime Mortgages
The Economist’s Free Exchange blog today attacks
Elizabeth Warren, who would
like to regulate the subprime mortgage market. Given the name of the blog,
it’s quite easy to predict where it comes down on such matters. But in fact
the issue is not quite as black-and-white as either the Economist or Dr Warren
might like to think.
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Posted in housing
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Cash Offers vs Stock Offers
Even people who prefer cash, it
turns out, are still more likely than not to hold onto shares if that’s
what they’re given
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Posted in M&A
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Quebec Taxes Carbon
Quebec’s carbon tax isn’t really Pigovian, because it isn’t large enough to noticeably reduce carbon emissions. But it’s a good start, since it’s always easier to increase a “sin tax” than it is to implement one initially.
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Posted in climate change
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