Author Archives: Felix

The Hedge Fund Money-Go-Round

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Bill Ackman explains how hedge funds work, specifically with regard to investors in Pershing Square IV, his fund dedicated (disastrously) to going long Target: Some of these investors, who are for the most part other hedge funds (that comprised approximately … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds | 1 Comment

Kindle 2: Still Expensive

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Megan McArdle loves her Kindle, but says that Amazon doesn’t want to have "a glut" of Kindles if the new Kindle 2 fails to sell as well as the original. My feeling is that having too many Kindles in stock … Continue reading →

Posted in Media, technology | 1 Comment

Why We Need Federal Insurance Regulation Now

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Rolfe Winkler has a great post on Allstate’s finances today, which underscores two things: the urgency of massive regulatory overhaul in the financial sector, and the necessity of including insurance companies under the unified financial-services regulatory umbrella. Unless and until … Continue reading →

Posted in insurance, regulation | 2 Comments

How the Ad Recession Could Improve the Web

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

There’s an interesting quote buried near the end of the NYT’s article on the NYT: Across the Internet, “we have a glut of unsold inventory every single day,” said Kelly Twohig, the digital activation director at Starcom, which buys media … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 2 Comments

Recessionwire, in Theory and Practice

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Congratulations to my former Portfolio.com colleagues Laura Rich and Sara Clemence for getting the great-looking Recessionwire up and running — and for snagging some very valuable NYT real estate, as well. This is my favorite bit from the NYT article: … Continue reading →

Posted in Media, pay | 1 Comment

Against New Good Banks

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Paul Romer’s op-ed on starting up new good banks rather than trying to rescue existing institutions has gotten quite a lot of play in the blogosphere, maybe because of his famous last name; he shouldn’t be confused, however, with David … Continue reading →

Posted in banking | 1 Comment

Why is the ECB Being so Gradualist?

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Felix

Jim Surowiecki asks a good question today: if you know that you’re going to cut interest rates — and Jean-Claude Trichet has made it abundantly clear that he intends to cut interest rates in March — why not do so … Continue reading →

Posted in fiscal and monetary policy | 1 Comment

Ben Stein Watch: February 8, 2009

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Felix

What year does Ben Stein think that he’s in? On the one hand, he talks about "President Obama" in his latest column, so he must have some inkling that it’s 2009. But his overall message is very mid-2007: there’s a … Continue reading →

Posted in ben stein watch | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Friday Edition

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

U.S. Sovereign CDS Rockets to 82 bp: And it’s still very unclear who’s buying this protection. Deutsche Bank Fallen Trader Left Behind $1.8 Billion Hole: As suspected, it was on the CDS basis trade. Harvard Endowment to Cut 25% of … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

Treasury’s $78 Billion TARP Giveaway

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

The Congressional Oversight Panel is certainly doing its job of double-checking TARP expenditures and Treasury statements. Here’s a bit of its latest report, which accuses Treasury of overpaying for assets to the tune of $78 billion: Valuation of the transactions … Continue reading →

Posted in bailouts | 1 Comment

Why Does Bookstaber Hate Blogs?

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

Rick Bookstaber appeared on a panel with a couple of FT Alphaville bloggers last night; "whether they become viewed as journalists," he rather cattily writes, "time will tell". Bookstaber essentially says that blogs are "the cognitive equivalent of a string … Continue reading →

Posted in blogonomics | 1 Comment

Cacophonous CNBC

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

Marion Maneker gets an astonishing admission from Jonathan Wald, the man in charge of news at CNBC who’s now leaving the station: "Conflict is king in cable television," Wald says. "You want more than one guest at a time. You … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Hedge Fund Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

For most of 2007, Target stock was trading in the low 60s. If you’d bought $2 billion of stock at those levels, you’d have about $1 billion today, since the share price now is in the low 30s. That’s the … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds, stocks | 1 Comment

A Housing Thought Experiment

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

I’ve been thinking a bit about the idea of housing as an asset class, and I wondered if it was possible to somehow separate the shelter aspect of housing from the financial-asset aspect in order to work out just how … Continue reading →

Posted in housing | 1 Comment

Paying for News

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

Walter Isaacson has a big article extolling micropayments as the future of the publishing industry — despite the fact that, as he admits, the technology simply doesn’t yet exist to make them easy enough to be workable. What’s more, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

No Soup for Madoff

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

There’s something very compelling about Tyler’s interactive maps of Madoff victims’ addresses. One spot in particular jumped out at me: what on earth was a Madoff victim doing on Delancey Street? It turns out, tragically, that Ratner’s deli — the … Continue reading →

Posted in fraud | 1 Comment

Lobbying Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

The Center for Responsive Politics does some adding up, and concludes that the 300 TARP recipients between them spent a total of $77 million last year on lobbying, on top of $37 million in federal campaign contributions, for a total … Continue reading →

Posted in banking, Politics | 1 Comment

Chart of the Day: Spiking Unemployment

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Felix

Jake at EconomPic Data has the chart: narrow unemployment is now at 7.6%, while the broader measure of underemployment is a whopping 13.9%. Clearly this kind of spike is scarily extreme, and equally clearly it’s not showing any signs of … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, employment | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Wells Fargo’s Equity Pumped Up by Squishy Asset: "Exclude the servicing rights and Wells’s price-to-tangible-book ratio soars to about 4.3 times", compared to 1.2 for JPMorgan. AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image: Talk about tone-deafness. First the silly blogfight, … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

Good News: Brandeis Backpedals

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz has given interviews with both the Boston Globe and the Brandeis student newspaper, the Hoot, in which he starts backpedalling madly on the subject of closing the Rose Art Museum. (As Richard Lacayo notes, the very … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 1 Comment

New York City Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

The Center for an Urban Future has released a startling report on the fate of New York’s middle classes — even as the population of the city continues to grow, its middle class is shrinking, and when it comes to … Continue reading →

Posted in cities | 2 Comments

The Blog Stigma

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Today marks a small step in the acceptance of blogs as legitimate news sources: Mayor Bloomberg took two questions from Gothamist’s Jen Chung during a press conference about a mysterious maple syrup smell. But more than four years after Gothamist … Continue reading →

Posted in blogonomics, Media | 1 Comment

Sachs’s Nationalization Idea

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Jeff Sachs has a slightly peculiar idea for nationalizing banks, which he calls "contingent nationalisation". As best I can work out, it involves the government buying up toxic assets at par, and then selling them off over the course of … Continue reading →

Posted in bailouts, banking | 2 Comments

Summers vs Volcker

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

I didn’t like the idea of appointing Larry Summers to be Treasury secretary, largely because he’s bad at politics. And given his jealous and petty spat with Paul Volcker now that he’s running the National Economic Council, the decision to … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

Why Live Nation Shouldn’t Merge With Ticketmaster

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

I got an interesting email last night from Michael Hershfield, the CEO of ticket site LiveStub, about the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation tie-up. If this deal goes ahead, then it seems we might be moving, without even realizing it, to a … Continue reading →

Posted in M&A | 1 Comment