Author Archives: Felix

Extra Credit, Wednesday Edition

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Remarks by the President on Executive Compensation: Note that he uses the term "top executives" twice. This quite clearly does not apply to most bankers. SEC Replies: Madoff Hearings Part II Liveblogged: The death throes of the SEC begin. Risk … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

How Brandeis Has Changed the Museum World Forever

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Felix

Donn Zaretsky responds to my post below, which says that museums should have control over their collections: Why must the museum have full control over whether or not a given work is sold? Why can’t the university overrule the museum? … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Deaccessioning Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

One of the most scandalous aspects of l’affair Brandeis/Rose is the fact that the Rose doesn’t need any money, and is essentially being raped by its parent. Donors to the Rose Art Museum probably never stopped to wonder whether their … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Earnings Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Floyd Norris reports today that the S&P 500, in aggregate, is about to report its first quarter ever of negative earnings. Howard Silverblatt, S.&P.’s index maven, reports that with almost three-quarters of the companies in the index having reported fourth-quarter … Continue reading →

Posted in stocks | 1 Comment

Where’s Markopolos’s Blog?

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Ray Pellecchia is right: if Harry Markopolos had taken all of his evidence about Bernie Madoff and put it on a blog, instead of submitting it to the SEC, there’s a good chance that would have been the end of … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Banker Pay: Salmon vs Barnett

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

I just had this IM exchange with Megan Barnett: Felix Salmon: Hi Megan, I see you’re attacking the cap on bankers’ pay, while I think it’s a good idea. Megan Barnett: Yes, it’s true. We finally disagree on something. Felix … Continue reading →

Posted in pay | 1 Comment

Ticketmaster-Live Nation: Mission Improbable

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

One congressman is already calling for an antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster — and that’s before any merger with Live Nation is even announced. If the Obama administration wants to demonstrate clearly to corporate America that the laissez-faire attitude of its … Continue reading →

Posted in M&A | 2 Comments

Markopolos vs the SEC

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

I’ve spent most of the morning reading Harry Markopolos’s testimony to the House committee on financial services: if you have some time, I’d highly recommend you do likewise. Markopolos isn’t shy about hyperbole: he talks at one point of his … Continue reading →

Posted in fraud | 1 Comment

Bill Keller Examines the NYT Business Model

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

Bill Keller’s musings about online subscriptions are causing something of a storm in the blogosphere, and even making the MSM. But I’d highly recommend you read the long version of Keller’s comments, rather than the soundbite version. Keller spends 2,164 … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Why Capping Pay is Likely to Work

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Felix

The NYT wheels out an executive-compensation expert today, to predictably pour cold water on the Obama administration’s plans to cap top executives’ pay at half a million bucks a year: “That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in pay | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Tuesday Edition

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

On the Failure of Macroeconomists: They ignore fiscal policy, and are therefore looking quite irrelevant right about now. That luxury item may be ‘Made in China’: Even if it doesn’t say so on the label. Webcomics Business Model: Great stuff. … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 3 Comments

Nonprofit Newspapers: Worth a Try

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Jonathan Weber is not a fan of the nonprofit newspaper. Why not? I think it’s a vague sense that being nonprofit is un-American, a bit like bank nationalization: That newspapers should be run as nonprofit organizations strikes me as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

When Newspapers Rewrite Their Online Articles

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Many thanks to Ashley Huston in the Dow Jones PR department for chasing down answers to the questions I posed last week when I asked whether the WSJ was rewriting old articles. In the case of the article about John … Continue reading →

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

More Counterfeit Drug Scaremongering

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Are you worried about counterfeit drugs? According to the American Council on Science and Health, you certainly should be: Counterfeit drugs, including fake, substandard, adulterated or falsely labeled (“misbranded”) medicines, have become a real and growing threat to global health… … Continue reading →

Posted in intellectual property, statistics | 1 Comment

The Broken Hedge-Fund Model

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the standard hedge fund incentive model breaks when a fund plunges in value. If the value of a hedge fund is rising, then 2-and-20 works as intended: the fund manager gets paid more the more … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds | 1 Comment

Is Foreclosure the Solution?

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

Ramsey Su has a novel fix for America’s housing woes: No fix at all! Instead, he says that a wave of foreclosures is the best option. For homeowners, says Su, going through foreclosure is a great way to solve both … Continue reading →

Posted in housing | 1 Comment

10 Questions to Ask Your Fund-of-Funds Manager

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Felix

If you were a client of Access International Advisors, which lost a lot of money with Bernie Madoff, then you would have been told that they "conducted thorough due diligence when selecting outsider fund managers". Which might have been reassuring, … Continue reading →

Posted in hedge funds, investing | 1 Comment

Extra Credit, Monday Edition

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Coconuts and Bank Prices: What $100 billion buys you, these days. The Economy According To Mint: Aggregated financial data. But without year-over-year comparisons, it’s of limited usefulness. Rahm’s Doctrine And Breaking Up The Banks: This is our one big opportunity … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment

How to Fix America’s Housing

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Ed Glaeser’s massive, 3,000-word TNR review of the new book by Robert Ellickson is a thought-provoking must-read for anybody interested in the dynamics of the housing boom and bust, and the policies which should be followed now. I’m not going … Continue reading →

Posted in housing | 1 Comment

The University of Vermont Uninvites Ben Stein

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

The good news is that Ben Stein is not going to be the University of Vermont’s commencement speaker after all: the choice of Stein caused such an uproar that he withdrew. The bad news is that the uproar seems to … Continue reading →

Posted in ben stein watch | 1 Comment

Frenkel Scuttles Away From AIG

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

In AIG’s last annual report, there’s a list of 31 "directors and executive officers of AIG" (it’s page 69 of the PDF, page 15 of the 10-K). On the list is vice-chairman Jacob Frenkel: we are told that he has … Continue reading →

Posted in insurance | 2 Comments

Auto Financing Datapoint of the Day

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Alex Kellogg reports: AutoNation Inc., the largest chain of auto dealers in the U.S., in December secured only 22 auto loans for car buyers from Chrysler Financial and nine from GMAC, down from 823 and 1,527 a year earlier, respectively. … Continue reading →

Posted in bonds and loans | 1 Comment

How David Rubenstein is Like Eliot Spitzer

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Why would you invest money with the Carlyle Group? Is it because of their "disciplined approach" to investing? Their "conservative and disciplined investment philosophy"? Their "conservative investment philosophy and disciplined investment process"? Well, Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein has some news … Continue reading →

Posted in private equity | 1 Comment

Art as a Financial Asset Class

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

This is one of the most depressing abstracts I’ve seen in a while: This paper analyzes the performance and risk-return characteristics of three major emerging art markets: Russia, China, and India… The Russian art market exhibits positive correlations with most … Continue reading →

Posted in art | 2 Comments

Extra Credit, Monday Morning Edition

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Felix

Why stimulus spending should go to public art Bailouts for Bunglers: Paul Krugman on why the government should nationalize. Hazardous Materials? Jim Surowiecki on overblown moral-hazard concerns. OpenTable files for IPO, finally: And it might actually make sense, even in … Continue reading →

Posted in remainders | 1 Comment