Meta
Categories
- accounting
- Announcements
- architecture
- art
- auctions
- bailouts
- banking
- bankruptcy
- ben stein watch
- blogonomics
- bonds and loans
- charts
- china
- cities
- climate change
- commercial property
- commodities
- consumers
- consumption
- corporatespeak
- credit ratings
- crime
- Culture
- Davos 2008
- Davos 2009
- defenestrations
- demographics
- derivatives
- design
- development
- drugs
- Econoblog
- economics
- education
- emerging markets
- employment
- energy
- entitlements
- eschatology
- euro
- facial hair
- fashion
- Film
- Finance
- fiscal and monetary policy
- food
- foreign exchange
- fraud
- gambling
- geopolitics
- governance
- healthcare
- hedge funds
- holidays
- housing
- humor
- Humour
- iceland
- IMF
- immigration
- infrastructure
- insurance
- intellectual property
- investing
- journalism
- labor
- language
- law
- leadership
- leaks
- M&A
- Media
- milken 2008
- Not economics
- pay
- personal finance
- philanthropy
- pirates
- Politics
- Portfolio
- prediction markets
- private banking
- private equity
- privatization
- productivity
- publishing
- race
- rants
- regulation
- remainders
- research
- Restaurants
- Rhian in Antarctica
- risk
- satire
- science
- shareholder activism
- sovereign debt
- sports
- statistics
- stocks
- taxes
- technocrats
- technology
- trade
- travel
- Uncategorized
- water
- wealth
- world bank
Archives
- March 2023
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- December 2012
- August 2012
- June 2012
- March 2012
- April 2011
- August 2010
- June 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
- May 2003
- April 2003
- March 2003
- February 2003
- January 2003
- December 2002
- November 2002
- October 2002
- September 2002
- August 2002
- July 2002
- June 2002
- May 2002
- March 2002
- February 2002
- January 2002
- December 2001
- November 2001
- October 2001
- September 2001
- August 2001
- July 2001
- June 2001
- May 2001
- April 2001
- March 2001
- February 2001
- January 2001
- December 2000
- September 2000
- July 2000
- March 2000
- July 1999
Author Archives: Felix
Paying Down the Mortgage vs Investing in the Market
Should I keep my mortgage balance high in order to invest in stocks and bonds?
Continue reading
Posted in housing, personal finance
Comments Off on Paying Down the Mortgage vs Investing in the Market
Why do the Chinese Want a Blackstone Stake?
China is investing $3 billion in Blackstone. Why?
Continue reading
Adventures in Personal Finance, Part 2: The Rich Couple
Sometimes the middle classes have a hell of a lot more financial horse-sense
than the rich, even if the financial press doesn’t like to spin it that way.
Continue reading
Posted in housing, personal finance
Comments Off on Adventures in Personal Finance, Part 2: The Rich Couple
Adventures in Personal Finance, Part 1: The Middle-Class Family
Sometimes the middle classes have a hell of a lot more financial horse-sense than the rich, even if the financial press doesn’t like to spin it that way.
Continue reading
Posted in personal finance
Comments Off on Adventures in Personal Finance, Part 1: The Middle-Class Family
Jerry Falwell is Dead
This is why God invented Christopher Hitchens. (Via)
Posted in Not economics
6 Comments
Debt Datapoint of the Day, EMBI+ Edition
JP Morgan’s EMBI+ index
of emerging-market bond spreads hit
an all-time high yesterday, yielding just 144 basis points over Treasury
bonds.
Continue reading
Posted in bonds and loans
Comments Off on Debt Datapoint of the Day, EMBI+ Edition
Derivatives and CLOs: The Scaremongering Continues
Greg
Ip and Gillian
Tett both have pieces today on that old friend of ours, systemic risks to
the financial system.
Continue reading
Posted in derivatives
Comments Off on Derivatives and CLOs: The Scaremongering Continues
Tech Bubble Redux
The one silver lining for Microsoft, when Google bought DoubleClick for $3
billion a month ago, was that Google was suffering from the winner’s
curse, and paid way too much for the internet advertising company. Naturally,
then, it took Redmond’s best and brightest only a few short weeks to manage
to spend
$6 billion on their own internet advertising company, aQuantive.
Continue reading
Posted in stocks, technology
Comments Off on Tech Bubble Redux
World Bank Stitch-Up to Continue
Just about any process for choosing the World Bank’s president would be better than what we have now, which is no process at all.
Continue reading
Posted in world bank
Comments Off on World Bank Stitch-Up to Continue
Wolfowitz Finally Wakes up to Reality, Resigns
Talk about a lame duck. Paul Wolfowitz will resign
as president of the World Bank on June 30, a month and a half from now, during
which time he will earn $50,000, tax-free, and do substantively zero useful
work. Then again, it’s not a lot of time to find a replacement. Ngozi,
of course, has an easily-leavable job at the Brookings Institute, and she’s
in Washington already. It would be silly to look at anyone else, if you ask
me.
Continue reading
Posted in defenestrations, world bank
1 Comment
Why Venezuela Won’t be the Next Zimbabwe
Venezuela is not Zimbabwe. Yes, Hugo Chavez is making very bad economic decisions — but then again, his elitist predecessors were hardly much better. And very bad economic decisions don’t in and of themselves lead to Zimbabwe-style disaster. For that, you need a power-mad lunatic like Robert Mugabe. And while Chavez might be distasteful to many Americans, a Mugabe he is not.
Continue reading
Posted in economics
Comments Off on Why Venezuela Won’t be the Next Zimbabwe
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for World Bank President!
I doubt that Bush has the vision to nominate Ngozi. But it would be a wonderful day if he did.
Continue reading
Posted in world bank
Comments Off on Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for World Bank President!
Fantastic News on Immigration
The immigration
agreement which has been hammered out between the Senate and the White House
is some of the best news I’ve heard in ages, and I’m keeping lots of fingers
and toes crossed that somehow it makes its way into law.
Continue reading
Posted in immigration
Comments Off on Fantastic News on Immigration
Explaining the Dentist Puzzle
Why do some dentists get paid three times as much as others?
Continue reading
Posted in economics
Comments Off on Explaining the Dentist Puzzle
Bernanke on Housing: No Sign of a Rate Cut
Bloomberg says that “Bernanke didn’t discuss monetary policy in his remarks,” but the speech reads very much to me as though he’s saying that the Fed is not going to cut interest rates in response to housing-market weakness.
Continue reading
Posted in fiscal and monetary policy, housing
Comments Off on Bernanke on Housing: No Sign of a Rate Cut
Contemporary Art: Strength, or Frothiness?
If you look at the art stars of the last bubble – Schnabel, Fischl, Longo
– most of them are still nowhere to be seen, as far as the auction houses
are concerned. Basquiat, of course, is the exception. With the present crop,
working out who’s the Fischl and who’s the Basquiat is the real multimillion-dollar
question.
Continue reading
Posted in art
Comments Off on Contemporary Art: Strength, or Frothiness?
When Politicians Go Private
Giuliani’s brace of seven-figure salaries makes the $479,000 paid
to John Edwards by Fortress Investment Group seem positively
modest.
Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Comments Off on When Politicians Go Private
Is Chrysler worth -$30 billion?
The Wall Street Journal, it seems, can read my mind. No sooner do I ask
why Chrysler is going to be borrowing as much as $65 billion in new debt, than
Serena
Ng and Jason Singer do their best at answering.
Continue reading
Posted in M&A
4 Comments
When a $7 Billion Deal is a $70 Billion Deal
Does anybody have a clue what kind of numbers are involved in the Chrysler-Cerberus
deal?
Continue reading
Posted in M&A
Comments Off on When a $7 Billion Deal is a $70 Billion Deal
Why Economic Advisers Advise
It’s only natural that for anybody who’s never going to be elected president themselves, the next best thing would be to have real policy influence over the president – which is something you might be able to get by hitching your star to a campaign early on.
Continue reading
Posted in technocrats
Comments Off on Why Economic Advisers Advise
News Doesn’t Matter, Dell Edition
Did Andrew Cuomo just increase Dell’s value by $2.8 billion?
Continue reading
Posted in stocks
Comments Off on News Doesn’t Matter, Dell Edition
Using Credit Cards Abroad
One of the more annoying of the world’s bank charges is the fee that banks charge you when you make a purchase on your credit card overseas.
Continue reading
Posted in personal finance
Comments Off on Using Credit Cards Abroad
Goldman Sachs and Lord Browne
Goldman is deservedly drawing some heat for its cowardly decision to fire Lord Browne.
Continue reading
Posted in defenestrations
Comments Off on Goldman Sachs and Lord Browne
White House Still Well Behind the Wolfowitz Curve
The attempts
by the Bush administration to do right by Paul Wolfowitz are
touching, if laughably inadequate.
Continue reading
Posted in world bank
Comments Off on White House Still Well Behind the Wolfowitz Curve
Lampert’s Options at Citigroup
What is Eddie Lampert intending to do with his $800 million
(or 0.3%) stake
in Citigroup?
Continue reading
Posted in hedge funds, stocks
Comments Off on Lampert’s Options at Citigroup