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Lawyers of the World Unite! You Have Nothing to Save but Your Jobs!

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism submits: A Bloomberg story reports that large corporate law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis and Jones Day are facing not merely pressure, but explicit client demands, to send junior level work overseas. This is … Continue reading

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Changing Motivations for Home Ownership

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism submits: Courtesy Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed comes this chart that shows over time how renters’ reasons for taking the plunge into home ownership have changed. While this is a UK rather than US sample, … Continue reading

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Chart of the Day: West African Trucking Obstacles

Charles Kenny points me to a study
of the obstacles to trucking on West African roads, which includes this wonderful
chart.
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Mark-to-Market vs Mark-to-Model in the Insurance Industry

When insurance companies have been in their business for decades or longer, while the open market in such things is very young, does it really make sense for insurance companies to use market valuations rather than their in-house models?
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When Volatility Strikes

We’re not on the brink of Armageddon.
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Why CEOs Don’t Resign

Let me try to answer Matt Cooper’s question:
How come Warren Spector has been fired from Bear Stearns, but
Jimmy Cayne is still there?
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Nardelli, Act 3

It’s both surprising and unsurprising that Nardelli has now popped up as
the
new CEO of Chrysler
.
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To Get Good Research, Phone the Analyst, Don’t Read his Reports

Yet
another reason
to treat published sell-side analysis with a monster pinch
of salt.
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Overcoming Bias in Crowdsourcing

Aaron Naparstek reports
that "WNYC’s Brian Lehrer wants to know how many
SUV’s there are on your block."
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Harry Kat: Changing His Tune?

Earlier this month, John Cassidy profiled
Harry Kat, hedge fund replictor. It certainly seemed that Kat’s
business was to replicate the returns that hedge funds generate, if not on a
month-to-month basis then certainly over the medium term.
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Whether Computers Can Help Poor and Middle-Income Countries

Computers can do many things, but can they make poor countries richer? One
of the leading researchers when it comes to the impact of information and communication
technology (ICT) on development is the World Bank’s Charles Kenny
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Economists vs Political Scientists on the Web

Ezra Klein wants
to know
why economists are overrepresented in the blogosphere, while political
scientists are nowhere to be found.
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How To Make $300 Million Without Really Trying

Here’s an idea. (1) Spend $7.5 million on the business.com domain name. (2) ?. (3) Profit!
The crazy thing is, it seems to have worked.
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The 100-mpg Car

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has already awarded $1 million
in grants in the field of plug-in
electric cars
, and it’s now dangling
a $10 million carrot
, saying it wants to help develop a car which gets 100
miles to the gallon.
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Bear’s Benighted Bearish Bear-Market Bet

How did Bear Stearns lose money betting that a falling market would drop?
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Answers About Bear Stearns’ Mortgage Exposures

Banks such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers have made a lot of money in recent years from the mortgage sector in general and the subprime part of it in particular. For the foreseeable future, they’re going to have to look elsewhere for those profits.
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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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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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Jeff Sachs’s Reality Distortion Field

I’m beginning to think that Steve Jobs’s famous Reality
Distortion Field
has a rival: that of Jeffrey Sachs.
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Globalization Didn’t Bring Down US Prices After All

If inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” then, as Ball puts it, “the accounting theory of inflation is always and everywhere a fallacy.”
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Wolfowitz Damned by Bank Board

There seems no way now that this whole thing isn’t going to become very ugly. The worst possible outcome, really, for the World Bank – unless it somehow results in a new president from a developing nation.
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Investment Professionals Stumped by “Portable Alpha”

A survey of
investment professionals
at the 2006 National Strategic Investment Dialogue
came up with some depressing results: only 60% of them could define what "leverage"
is, and less than half could define "portable alpha".
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Charting for Business Geeks

Mathematica’s charting abilities.
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Hedge Fund Leverage Falling

The UK’s FSA says that hedge-fund leverage is falling. But its survey doesn’t — can’t — tell the whole story.
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Rereading Swiss Profits in Dollar Terms

Weak results in Swiss francs look better in US dollars.
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