Hot Links for Weekend Reading… How did Chariman Mao deal with unwanted “Green Shoots” amongst capitalist-leaning peasants in the Chinese countryside? (Mises.org) Bernie Madoff can still afford a prison consultant, so that’s a green shoot for sure! (LOLFed) David Merkel puts up the 1000th post on his excellent Aleph Blog…start reading him if you haven’t…
The Man Who Crashed the World in Vanity Fair
As we’ve discussed before, AIG‘s little hidden hedge fund, Financial Products Group, not only took down the world’s largest insurance company, it had a huge hand in the global meltdown last fall. While some of AIG’s counter-parties came out pretty unscathed (Goldman Sachs), the rest of the financial complex surely did not. While there were…
Breakfast Links: Rollerbabies!
[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2919954&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26] Stuff I’m Reading this Morning… First off, couldn’t resist posting the above video…rollerskating babies and old school hip hop, not the worst way to start your day. Not only does Smithfield Foods sell a ton of pork, it turns out that it’s ex-CEO turned million-bucks-per-year-consultant is quite a pig in his own right. …
Mirror Mirror on the Wall…
Which retailer sucks most of all? EconomPic puts it in picture form for the month of June 2009. Warning: This graph is violently depressing and is intended for mature audiences only! I suppose the answer would be Abercrombie and Fitch…20 someodd percent teenage unemployment, go figure! Be sure to visit EconomPic for more delicious chart candy.
Red Flags in the Sky
“He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces” – Samuel Johnson If Bernie Madoff was the Harlem Globetrotters of stock fraud (undefeated for decades), then Ross Mandell and his Sky Capital crew are the Washington Generals. Mandell has been in trouble with regulators and officials on and off…
Breakfast Links: Hot Dogs, Chinese Cars & Cali Wine
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…
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…
