Links: 2009-05-03

  • Interfluidity :: Continuous bankruptcy

    Suggesting an in-arrears convertible cumulative preferred equity. Cumulative means that if the issuing firm has skipped some dividend payments, the firm is said to be "in arrears", and must pay preferred investors all past skipped dividends before it can make any payout to common shareholders.

  • Research Recap – Moody’s says Chrysler Bankruptcy Could Pressure Auto ABS

    Likely to result in lower new and used car prices, putting greater pressure on securities backed by auto loans.

  • How Lehman Got Its Real Estate Fix – NYTimes.com

    A sobering account of how financial engineering won out over fundamentals like land values, construction cost or rents.

  • TweetDeck Has a Fierce Rival in Seesmic Desktop

    Aside from the Twitter.com website, the desktop app TweetDeck is the undisputed king of Twitter apps, with 14.51% of users posting this way according to TwitStat. That compares to 24.54% on Twitter itself. Seesmic Desktop (Seesmic Desktop reviews), which only 2.16% of users choose to post with, is iterating faster and may have taken the lead on some key features.

  • Austrian Business Cycle Theory at John Quiggin

    "Trying to tie Austrian Business Cycle Theory to Austrian prejudices against government intervention has been a recipe for intellectual and policy disaster and theoretical stagnation." This sums up my divergence from others during this depression. Too ideological, not pragmatic. Hat tip Mark Thoma

  • Is RSS Reading Dead? – Mashable

    But is RSS the best way to read news and blogs? An article in Slate Magazine this week piqued our interest. In the piece, Farhad Manjoo discusses how he gave up Google Reader for consuming news and hasn’t regretted it; reading news became a boring chore for him, just like reading email, and browsing the web was a more enjoyable way to discover news.

  • Buffett Dismisses Stress Tests, Praises Wells Fargo – Bloomberg.com

    “I think I know their future, frankly, better than somebody that comes in to take a look,” Buffett today said of the bank stocks that Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire owns. Regulators “may be using more of a checklist-type approach.”

  • Lehman boosts Barclays – Times Online

    BARCLAYS will publish first-quarter profits this week that will demonstrate why its share price has soared nearly sixfold since the beginning of the year.

  • Buffett Sees ‘Unending Losses’ for Many Newspapers – MarketBeat – WSJ

    “For most newspapers in the United states, we would not buy them at any price,” he said in response to a question about whether he would consider investing in newspapers. “They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.” Berkshire also has a substantial investment in the Washington Post Co. He said the company has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold onto it, but its newspaper business is in trouble.

  • Buffett and Munger: Stay Away From Complex Math, Theories – MarketBeat – WSJ

    Mr. Buffett on complex calculations used to value purchases: “If you need to use a computer or a calculator to make the calculation, you shouldn’t buy it.”

  • S&P downgrades seven Dubai business to near junk rating – Telegraph

    Standard & Poor’s has issued a shock warning that a clutch of companies linked to the Dubai government may be see their credit rating reduced to near junk status, making it much harder for the Gulf state to raise capital on international markets.

  • Italy’s GDP May Decline 4.2 Percent, Ministry Says (Update1) – Bloomberg.com

    The expected decline is 2.2 percentage points less than a previous estimate in February, according to a document on the Finance Ministry’s Web site. Economic growth is expected to resume in the second quarter of next year and could rise 0.7 percent in the 2010-2011 period, the document said.

  • Beating the science cheats – opinion – 02 May 2009 – New Scientist

    he case of "Medical Madoff. "FOR 13 years, Scott Reuben was at the top of his profession. An anaesthesiologist at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, he was an influential figure in the treatment of post-operative pain. But in March, Reuben was exposed as a fraud. An internal audit found that he had faked 21 of his studies. As a result of his misconduct, thousands of patients may have been treated with drugs that did nothing to aid their recovery."

  • Why tweeters should beware of worms – tech – 02 May 2009 – New Scientist

    TWITTER, the microblogging service, has major holes in its security, a London conference will be warned this week.

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