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Merrill: Your Questions Answered

A very loyal reader writes: Why did O’Neal defenestrate while Cayne at Bear and Prince at Citi have managed to hang on to their jobs? Is a takeover of Merrill realistic, considering the handicaps of the few firms big enough … Continue reading

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How Egregious was Countrywide’s Option ARM Lending?

The WSJ asked UBS to prepare an analysis of bonds backed by Countrywide option ARMs, and has a big story about the results today. It’s not entirely clear what information was available to UBS that wasn’t available to the WSJ, … Continue reading

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Apple: Great, in the US

If the Mac brand is going to keep on growing at its present pace, it’s going to have to go global.
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Wall Street vs Blogs, Analyst Edition

Bernstein Research media analyst Michael Nathanson is worried about "a new paradigm in how financial markets get information and how that information impacts our markets". He’s been putting out all this research about NewsCorp and MySpace, you see – but … Continue reading

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The Economics ChatterMeter

I could play with this for hours: Aaron Schiff has developed the Economics ChatterMeter, to see how much chatter there is in the blogosphere about matters economic. Interestingly, right now everything seems to be at or near an all-time low, … Continue reading

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The Limits of Empiricism, Revisited

Deirdre McCloskey is in fine fighting form, at least by the standards of statisticians: Good fit is not the same thing as importance. In fact, usually it has nothing to do with importance. I think she’s absolutely right. People who … Continue reading

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Bed Net Datapoint of the Day

From Vivian Hoffmann of Cornell University, via Tom Foster: This paper reports results from a field experiment in Uganda. Whether a mosquito net was purchased or received for free affected who within the household used the net. Free nets were … Continue reading

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Speculating over Chuck Prince’s Ouster

Duff McDonald stilettoes Chuck Prince in this week’s New York, just in time for Citi’s dreadful earnings. McDonald says that Prince’s CEOship has been "a nightmare" since shortly after he got the top job, largely because he "regularly violated a … Continue reading

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Give Anti-Malarial Bed Nets Away for Free

The NYT covers the bed-net debate today, if debate it can reasonably be called. The article itself is good; the main problem is the headline, which says that "Distribution of Nets Splits Malaria Fighters". Er, no, it doesn’t. Once upon … Continue reading

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Blogonomics: RSS Feeds

Have I mentioned that I take requests? Today Sandy leaves a comment for me, asking me to explain the economics of RSS feeds; I’m happy to oblige. The comment keys off my description of FT.com’s decision to truncate its RSS … Continue reading

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How Giving to Charity Will Help You Get Rich Quick

On Monday, I met Jim Whitton, a director of The Hunger Project, in a midtown cafe. The Hunger Project (THP) is a well-run non-profit which works efficiently and tirelessly towards sustainable poverty reduction in the developing world. With Whitton was … Continue reading

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Angus Maddison’s New Book

I have very few books in my office, which is quite small, but in pride of place on my reference shelf stands Angus Maddison’s masterful reference work "The World Economy". No one has spent more time or effort trying to … Continue reading

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Goldman’s Stunning Earnings

Hank Paulson surely has a hint of a smile on his face this morning. Even as he earnestly tries to protect Main Street from suffering too much as a result of the Wall Street crunch, in the back of his … Continue reading

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The Sunny Side of Morgan Stanley’s Earnings

Morgan Stanley’s stock price might be down today in the wake of disappointing earnings, but I don’t think that these results really counteract the relatively good news from Lehman brothers yesterday, and I still have that weirdly good feeling I … Continue reading

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Managers Have No Professional Ethics

After my interesting lunch with Rakesh Khurana (which has also been blogged by Justin Fox), I asked him by email whether business ethics have really declined over the past 30 years, or whether they’re merely perceived to have declined. Next … Continue reading

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People who use Google are Valuable

Megan McArdle doesn’t have a lot of faith in those of us who Google. People who arrive at a website from Google, she says, are "low quality" in terms of their value to advertisers: As far as advertisers are concerned, … Continue reading

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Australia: Ahead of the Regulatory Curve

Which country is most ahead of the regulatory curve these days? A couple of
recent developments suggest that it might be Australia.
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What is Ben Stein Smoking? (Part 3)

One of the great things about being on holiday in Europe is that there’s no chance of running across a Ben Stein column by mistake.
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Getting Behind Today’s Employment Report

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: Those who have been following the job creation story weren’t surprised at the weak BLS employment (the so-called “non-farm payroll”) report today, or by the fact that it revised the results for the last … Continue reading

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Nostalgia for Glass Steagall

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: Boy, is sentiment changing. The latest indicator: an article in MarketWatch bemoaning the demise of Glass Steagall, the law enacted in 1933 that separated commercial banking from investment banking. The article by Thomas Kostigen … Continue reading

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It’s Official: Most Hedge Fund Strategies Lost Money in August

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism submits: The UK’s Times Online, citing Hedge Fund Research (HFR), reports that hedge fund strategies of all sorts took a beating in August: Of the 20 daily hedge fund indices tracked by HFR, only one … Continue reading

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Brad DeLong Argues That Central Banks Should Cut Interest Rates

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: It’s always dangerous for mere mortals to take issue with Serious Economists, but let’s start with Professor of Economics at U.C Berkeley Brad DeLong’s thesis (hat tip Mark Thoma): The fact that there is … Continue reading

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Hedge Funds: Good Activists?

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: Hedge funds, even at their peak of popularity, were regarded with considerable suspicion. They have taken a shellacking in the last few months as subprime tainted funds have folded or reported poor results, and … Continue reading

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Extreme Measures I: Bill Gross at Pimco

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism submits: We’ve noticed a new theme among economics writers: Extreme Measures. Commentators have suddenly looked into the abyss, either of the depth of the US subprime/housing problem or the progressing credit crunch that has already … Continue reading

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Harvard Gets It Right Again

HMC had a truly phenomenal fiscal 2007.
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