What I’m Reading this Morning… Barry Ritholtz gives us the weekly rundown on gold. (TBP) Freakonomics shows us the website that let’s you Track Your Taxes, hope you like war… (Freakonomics) The closing of a Nathan’s hot dog franchise after 40 years serving Georgetown, sucks. (Mises.org) Supply and Demand seems to be alive and…
July 2009
Eric Jackson on The Best Corporate Boards
If you don’t know Eric Jackson, he’s an activist shareholder through his fund Ironfire Capital and he also writes a terrific blog called Breakout Performance. When a knowledgeable activist talks governance and the quality of corporate boards, I try to listen and learn something. Jackson came upon something interesting during the course of his research…
Fox Biz: Macke Rumor Completely False
Sorry to anyone who had their hopes up, but according to a Fox Business rep, Jeff Macke will not be appearing on the network and there are no plans in the works for this at this time. The Car People, incidentally, had no comment…
Taibbi v Goldman Redux
“Goldman Sachs…is like a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine Matt Taibbi is the reporter who has just exploded into the public consciousness with his brutal Goldman Sachs Controls the Universe piece in, of all places, Rolling Stone…
Breakfast Links: Facebook, GM, E*Trade and Oil Speculators
General Motors (GM) is now forced to play diplomat as the shots are no longer called from Detroit, but from China and Russia. (Bloomberg) Oooooh! Maybe we will one day get serious about disallowing speculators from screwing with oil and gas prices! (NYT) Tough times for angel investors, even if you were a backer of…
The Two Horsemen of the ETF Apocalypse: UMM and DMM
Allow me to introduce you to an investment product so disgracefully ridiculous that one could only assume it was launched on a dare. Very quietly, on June 30th 2009, some firm called MacroMarkets LLC (co-founded by the otherwise well-regarded Robert Shiller) launched two ETFs that purport to be able to give investors 300% of the return or it’s inverse of the…
Melt It Like Beckham: Major Changes for the Indian Gold Market
Very quietly, two developments occurred in India over the last week that could have major implications for the gold market. Both of these developments could portend drastic changes in gold demand from a key market, just as the inflationistas believe they are at the threshold of a paradigm shift in the precious metal’s pricing. First…
Quants Get Lonely, Too…
Quants Get Lonely, Too… from the Craigslist Sydney Personals: In the Sydney area? Single? Geeky? Visit this personal ad and maybe make a connection: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/syd/1187388648.html
We Are All Michael Jackson?
Whoa Nelly! Bob Herbert just wrote quite a stretch of an op-ed during the course of which he connects enough dots to make the point that we as a nation are essentially the irresponsible, immature Michael Jackson writ large. This one’s a massive stretch and, as it appears in the New York Times, unsurprisingly uses…
When the Banks Bailed Out America
As a result of the 2008-2009 credit crisis, the United States government has committed over $700 billion to bail out the banks in order to stem the tide of systemic meltdown. As the populace rages about these rescues and how the banks themselves have chosen to use these funds, it is important to remember that…
