Links: 2009-06-09
- Supreme Court Delays Sale of Chrysler to Fiat – DealBook
- Blame Reagan for our financial mess? – Bill Fleckenstein
“The actual offending cancerous legislation that kicked off the move toward extra reckless lending did involve then-Rep. Fernand St. Germain, a Rhode Island Democrat. But the problem legislation was the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of March 31, 1980.”
- Barclays in $15b asset sale talks
“Barclays is in talks to sell Barclays Global Investors (BGI), the British bank said on Monday, with US fund manager BlackRock the frontrunner to land the asset manager, according to people familiar with the matter.”
- Peter L. Bernstein, Explainer of Stock Risks, Dies – DealBook
Bernstein was a great and his book “Against the Gods” was a classic. But what about the Efficient Market Hypothesis? Total nonsense of course. Nonetheless, he will be missed.
- Australia is in a technical recession after all
“Australia’s GDP did go backwards in the March quarter. Not by much, just 0.1 per cent, but it did go backwards, as it did in the December quarter. The Australian Bureau of Statistics says so.”
- RIM under pressure from rivals – National Post
“Clouds are gathering over Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry Storm and its other consumer-oriented handsets as the battle over next-generation smartphones heats up this summer.”
- Microsoft is hell-bent on killing the Netbook – The Next Web
“Microsoft hates the name ‘Netbook’. They’d prefer we all use the term “Low cost small notebook PC“. Yes, that’s just as catchy and marketable isn’t it? It’s almost as if they want them to sound less desirable.”
- Decide Which Email Program to Use For Sending Mails – Digital Inspiration
“things can get a bit chaotic if you have more than one email account but you can very easily bring some order to your email life with the help of Affixa – a Windows-only utility that makes Gmail (and Yahoo! Mail) a part of your desktop.”
- Porsche and Qatar Reported Closer to Deal – DealBook
- Why your brain just can’t remember that word – life – New Scientist
“In tip-of-the-tongue experiences, for instance, words suddenly and perplexingly go missing only to reappear seconds or minutes later. Another brain quirk – déjà vu – confirms the fallibility of memory. Now two new studies have shed light on both phenomena.”
- Paul Krugman: Gordon the Unlucky – Economist’s View
“If I were a member of the Obama administration’s economic team — a team whose top members were as enthusiastic about the wonders of modern finance as their British counterparts — I’d be looking across the Atlantic and muttering, “There but for the disgrace of Bush v. Gore go I.””
- David Takes On Goliath and Loses: The Ferguson – Krugman Exchange – Edward Hugh
This is a Niall Ferguson slam which basically says Ferguson is out of his depth in economic theory given the fact he is a historian and not an economist. Definitely a n interesting piece. My favourite line is “I might find myself worrying that I was being more of a Xenophon than a Thucidydes, since while both were reputedly excellent generals, the latter stuck to what he was good at (writing history) while the former offered us a version of philosophy in his life of Socrates which frankly made the man look more of a port and stilton bufoon than anything else.” That’s a hifalutin way of saying Ferguson is making a buffoon of himself because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.
- China: Stimulus – at what cost? – Michael Pettis
A good look at how the huge stimulus is leading to reckless lending in China. It is not altogether evident that this lending will be against productive assets going forward. What this means for future Chinese growth is still unclear, but at a minimum expect bad debt to rise.
- More on maximum negative convexity – Tracy Alloway, FT Alphaville
I hope to have more to say about the recent rise and treasury rats and MBS hedging, especially via Fannie or Freddie. John Hempton showed me a thing or two that was enlightening.
- Ireland downgraded – again – FT Alphaville
And you probably saw that Anglo Irish got a downgrade as well. Again, the banking crisis in Ireland is as severe as in any Western well-developed economy. Ireland is the closest thing to Latvia in the Eurozone.
- Annoying Bank Propaganda – James Kwak
This is a good look at how banks are NOT lending but trying to present fake statistical evidence that they are.
- State rejects Arcandor aid claim
It’s looking like bankruptcy and massive job losses at Karstadt and related entities are going to be the result.
- Latvia’s dramatic fall from grace
“More worryingly for some analysts is psychological contagion – where investors look at countries which have common characteristics and wonder if they have similar problems. This means that if other countries with currency pegs – countries such as Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria – may come under pressure to abandon them.”
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