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Nov. 12th, 2009 @ 02:49 pm
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- Obama agonistes.
- Columbus, OH shows signs of turning.
- American obstacle to Copenhagen climate change treaty. Stephens says don't expect much.
- 50 people who decide the fate of the world's economy.
- PBooth is persuasive as to how excessive govt regulation fucked things up.
- China, India locking horns.
- Skapinker on executives turned politicians.
- China's energy imperialism meets some limits.
- Brittan says if there is no C or I, there can only be G.
- Smartphone review - the Droid. |
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Nov. 11th, 2009 @ 02:12 pm
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- British theatre in rude good health, but for how long?
- The world's most surreal landscapes. Been to the Painted Desert meself.
- Old Q&A with David "Smike" Dawson who as Gethin Price has won unstinting praise for his work in Griffiths' Comedians.
- The top 100 movies of the decade. Haven't seen many at all.
- More nuanced analysis of the East German economy, high tech and depopulation.
- Banks rush to pay back TARP.
- Long profile of Dick Armey in the NYT Mag. He was head of the econ dept at UNT once upon a time!
- 100 things restaurant staff should never do. First of two parts.
- The credit crunch rolls on and on. This time in US commercial real estate.
- Who was Sander Thoenes?
- Iron ore wars. |
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Nov. 10th, 2009 @ 05:40 pm
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- Anne Applebaum quotes Wordsworth to commemorate the fall of the Wall.
- Abu Dhabi reimagined.
- Galleon brought down by a Bangladeshi couple among others.
- Ambanis still fighting.
- Russia Germany best buddies!
- Jerry Morris dead at 99. Levi-Strauss dead at 100.
- Wolf's thoughts on the anniversary of the Fall. Interesting piece of contrarianism from Wolfgang Hummel in the WSJ.
- Ken Feinberg, Obama's pay tsar.
- Sad interview with Dame Maggie Smith dealing with crisis and solitude. |
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Nov. 4th, 2009 @ 10:45 am
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- Volcker retreats from Glass-Steagall.
- Wolf at his influential best analyzes private and public savings behaviour in the last five years.
- Dollar declinism on the rise.
- For the future of IT, as for so many other things, look east.
- In search of a functioning tax credit system to encourage businesses to hire.
- Obama dithering on Afghanistan, but two academics point a way out and snub McChrystal.
- John Kay in supreme form - this defence of the market system for its role in driving innovation is a candidate for article of the month.
- How Santander rose to the top of the banking world. |
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Nov. 2nd, 2009 @ 03:18 pm
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- The kid who interrogated Goering.
- Muchau says keep the fiscal stimuli but apply monetary tightening now.
- Ron McKinnon says raise interest rates now - he gives three reasons, only one easy to follow!
- QPeel denounces the Tories on Europe.
- This book title sells itself - Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.
- Why working till 70 opens up awesome prospects for all of us. Thanks, Lucy!
- Maconie on Middle England, Brief Encounter and Yes, I remember Adlestrop.
- Frank in Rich form - the GOP eats itself.
- Tony Jackson says bankers' bluff? Call it!
- Peter Tasker says the outlook for the Chinese credit bubble is truly grim.
- Brady Dougan, CEO of Cresit Suisse. They've had a 'good' recession.
- Crook argues that US regulators are shooting at the wrong target.
- F1's long march to the east. |
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Oct. 30th, 2009 @ 10:03 am
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- Summer of LUV!
- The Ismaili Muslim author and investment honcho Liaquat Ahamed has won this year's FT Business Book Award with his Lords of Finance.
- Brittan says goodbye to the pre-crisis trend line.
- The regulation soup is pretty murky.
- The US recession is over as of yesterday, but people are still fukced.
- Stephens asks, is long-term decline inevitable for Britain and Europe?
- Lexington reviews Obama's first year in office.
- Booming property lead to unorthodox policy measures in Asia.
- Feldstein says the renminbi must rise.
- Racism in South Korea.
- The Big Interview - none other than James BERARDINELLI!! Also one of Mickey Kuhn, child star. |
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Oct. 29th, 2009 @ 03:56 pm
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- Say No to Prez Tony.
- Tim & Barney go to war against Wall St.
- Gapper praises Neelie Kroes for her splittist stance.
- China trying to elbow America out of East Asia.
- Keynes' new biographer praises Ben Bernanke.
- Asia Pacific is practically booming again!
- Ex-Finnish PM says it's time to consolidate the Union.
- Max Hastings says the west's option in Afghan/Pak range from Bad to Worse.
- WUSTL's David Levine wrote a reply to Krugman's controversial piece a few weeks ago. Bloggingsheads.tv debate between DL and Alex Rosenberg of Duke.
- The Obamas' marriage.
- Vince Cable denounces the casino.
- The LRB turns 30. Here's an interview with the driving force behind it, Mary-Kay Wilmers.
- Stan McChrystal's long war.
- The wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. A New Yorker epic expose. |
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Oct. 28th, 2009 @ 01:09 pm
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- Wolf admits: Pure inflation targeting and a belief in efficient markets proved wrong. These beliefs must be abandoned.
- Some hack at Columbia Business School tries to attack Obama's pay policy.
- An amazing company called Touch Bionics.
- Luke J tellsyou how to deal with personal setbacks in the recession.
- John Kay warns - deal with the too big to fail fuckup now, or be prepared for a lot worse in the future.
- Plender on capital structures. More intellectual bullshyt coming out of b-schools.
- The inventor James Dyson!
- All change in the publishing industry.
- Gordon's finest hour.
- The FT analyses how Obama dragged the healthcare problem to its current near-solution.
- Cameron and Osborne await their moment in the sun. |
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Oct. 23rd, 2009 @ 01:46 pm
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- Dude unnamed is worried about markets that are go-go again.
- Turkey says to Europe - Fuck me? No, fuck YOU! Good for them.
- el-Erian in good form tries to look into the crystal ball for banking reform and the real economy.
- Wolf doesn't buy King's proposal. He says: First, create a set of laws and institutions that make it possible to bankrupt any and all institutions, even in a crisis. Second, make financial institutions safer, with much higher capital requirements, against all activities. Third, prevent off-balance-sheet activities. Fourth, impose dynamic provisioning. Fifth, require huge cushions of contingent capital. Finally, cease to favour debt-finance, throughout the economy.
- Down and out in Iceland.
- The future of banking in Asia - HSBC and SCB will be part of it.
- Blair, sabotaged.
- Munchau, typically blunt, on bursting bubbles.
- Skapinker unsympathetic to unions.
- Tony Jackson on demographics and pensions. Holland wins out - again.
- Our loose-cannon governor and the government-in-waiting.
- Soros is opening an anti-market fundamentalism institution.
- Repeating Munchau, David Roche says that we are in a bond and equity bubble. |
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Oct. 22nd, 2009 @ 04:11 pm
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- The battle gets hotter and hotter. A clarion call from Wolf. If the bastards want bonuses, let's have some bloody rules. A very important piece in a very important paper at a very very important time.
- Bankers' bonuses - fix it now or never.
- The Ambani saga - latest rumblings in India's own version of Jarndyce & Jarndyce.
- Punchy little editorial on Brazil's tax policy for hot money. Textbook example of how it should be done. Brazil continues to impress.
- Gapper says let Goldman fail.
- Borosage says change course now or the future is finished. Learsy rails and rails against the banks.
- King and the Treasury are at war.
- Chinese growth - all a bubble? Some chap called Qin Xiao argues for a change of course.
- ROFL funny - Vatican's hostile takeover bid of Canterbury.
- Jurek on Rush's bid to buy a football team. Very good again! I don't know how the FT managed to stack up such a consistently classy lineup of oped writers, cos as far as I'm concerned not even the NYT comes anywhere close to this.
- Guthrie also in top form: In 2007, Sir Howard Davies of the London School of Economics complained in an FT article at the lack of novels featuring business people. He should have been more careful what he wished for. His call, thanks to the credit crisis and ensuing recession, will now be answered by a slew of novels in which crazed financiers dance in hob-nailed boots on the prostrate proles. |
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All my grandparents are now gone. Innalillahi.. |
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Oct. 20th, 2009 @ 03:16 pm
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- China's top-secret greasy pole.
- Agri reform comes to India.
- Euro as a global currency? Not so fast.
- More Brazil. They're almost in the big leagues now.
- While tiny nations are suffering a bit more, explains Rachman.
- What will China do with its forex reserves? Promote global development maybe? |
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Oct. 19th, 2009 @ 05:07 pm
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- Russia's energy bluff will soon be called.
- Chillax? Don't do it.
- More Ostrom.
- Crook has hopes for Obamacare.
- Fidelity Bolton says go emerging.
- Mort Zuckerman has a truly terrifying outlook on American jobs. You could cow naughty kids with this story.
- On modern art.
- Munchau is counting down to the implosion of the next bubble - and beyond.
- After Cable comes Bootle with his book.
- Obama goes to China. But he's fucked up the peace process. I think Netanyahu exposed him for a softie.
- Sachs tells Obama to get a move on on infrastructure investment.
- John Kay decries rent-seekers in finance.
- Mishkin is peddling pure horse-shit, trying to separate "benign" bubbles from malign ones.
- Orange and T-Mobile are merging. |
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Oct. 16th, 2009 @ 10:29 am
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- Stephens finally raises the white flag of surrender. There will be no financial reform. Ever.
- Brittan says don't worry about imbalances.
- de Larosiere on capital requirements.
- FT weeps but more in despair than anything else. Still no pay reform.
- Pakistan, the country that ate itself.
- The American Dream, part 1 - the man who worked in 50 states.
- The American Dream, part 2 - the 97-year-old homeless woman.
- It takes a revolution - to give up the greenback. More, much more on recent currency movements.
- After Petraeus, we have McChrystal. |
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Oct. 15th, 2009 @ 10:31 am
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- Say hello to mezzo-economics!
- Say goodbye to old-school monetary policy.
- Dance of death.
- Some people never learn. Alan Greenspan, still stupid.
- Gapper asks how do you solve a problem like Goldman?
- Statism on the rise in China. They are also pressing on with their global takeover.
- The man who coined the phrase itself praises emerging markets.
- Bruce Wasserstein is dead. Here's what he did. |
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Oct. 14th, 2009 @ 03:19 pm
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- Trillin says that what destroyed Wall Street was bringing in the smart guys.
- Matt Wolf reviews Spacey's Inherit the Wind wot we saw last week.
- Samsung in Perpetual Crisis mode. Only the paranoid survive. I've lived this dictum for the last year.
- John Kay on regulatory capture.
- Martin Wolf in full flight. Why the dollar shouldn't continue as everyone's reserve currency.
- Roach asks - who's China kidding?
- Cuts cuts cuts!
- The investment industry - rotten through and through.
- Plender on the US-China power shift. |
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- FT lauds Ostrom and Williamson. Their "methodological pluralism" means they didn't use an excess of math.
- Reactions from Steve Levitt, Paul Krugman, Professor Bainbridge, Stephen Walt, Barry Ritholtz, Brad DeLong, Crooked Timber, John Nye, Michael Spence, Volokh Conspiracy, Salon and Daily Kos. Marginal Revolution is all over it as well, here's them for future reference.
- If you want to read some of Lin Ostrom's papers, click here.
- And revisiting an older Nobel, here's a sad indictment: Grameen: Just Another Bubble. More fallen idols - Salon on the Chicago School, here and here. In the interests of fairness, this is UChicago's own take on the dipping fortunes of its economics team.
- Hot new economists, many of them at Berkeley. The AEI's in-house magazine has a great feature called Young Economists. One of them is Raj Chetty, who got a PhD from Harvard at 23, and another is Emmanuel Saez who won this year's John Bates Clark medal. The Clark medal meantime has gone annual! and here's David Warsh's attempt at a few retrospective awards. Top of that list is a chap called John List who did his PhD at - wait for it - Wyoming. (WTF?!) Leonhardt of the NYT who's a good source of econ-minded writeups did a piece on List's work.
- Finally let's not forget the Economist's list of top young economists which they updated last year. They were: Shapiro, Fryer, Duflo, Finkelstein, Chetty, Werning, Gabaix, Melitz. Their 1998 list was: Kremer, Glaeser, Mulligan, Levitt, Hoxby, also Ellison, Pesendorfer, Rabin and Laibson. And their 1988 list was: Summers, Sachs, Shleifer, Krugman, Mankiw, Grossman, Alesina and Tirole. |
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Oct. 12th, 2009 @ 05:51 pm
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- Duelling banjos, bickering economists.
- Harford on the econ Nobel. Which has been awarded to two relative unknowns - Ostrom and Williamson.
- Crook on Obama's Nobel.
- RIP, Don Fisher, the man who gave us The Gap.
- Office taboos.
- One nation of Pavlov's dogs.
- Rachman worries about Obama: The notion that Mr Obama is a weak leader is now spreading in ways that are dangerous to his presidency.
- Blankfein has recommendations for the future.
- Bolton of Fidelity has a 7-point plan.
- Munchau is happy about the dollar's fall.
- Crook appeals for less anger and more sanity in America.
- Easterly on global healthcare spending priorities. |
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- Crisis abating. What next for the G20?
- Putin vs Medvedev!
- Whither the EU?
- End the Fed?!!
- Europe not doing too badly at this stage of the crisis.
- A risky revival.
- The dragon stirs.
- Dominique Strauss-Kahn is having a good crisis at the IMF.
Two important analysis pieces that will be worth checking in a year or two's time
- Efficient markets hypothesis is dead. What will replace it?
- Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. It looks like the West has once again missed an opportunity to draw out the poison of finance from its bloodstream. We'll pay for this and not very far in the future either. It's shameful and disgusting and very very disheartening. Should have been a communist all those years ago.
All this can only end in one way - in the corruption and terminal decline of the West. Let it die then.
On Herta Mueller's literature Nobel: so Roth will have to wait yet again.
On Obama's Nobel win: are those Norwegians fucking stupid or what? He's got a thankless job as it is. These fuckers are making it ten times harder for him, domestically. |
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Last night, went to the Bush to see Jack Thorne's hit play about the 1997 election - '2nd May 1997'. Sold out naturally. I'm hanging about in the tiny lobby for returns, when suddenly an old man of middling height in a brown jacket, brown trousers and brown shoes (and somewhat browning face - liver spots) walks in. A light goes on in my head instantly - GEORGE SOROS! This is George fucking Soros! He's got that little plaster on the nose which I saw on TV just a couple of days ago. Office cafeteria TV, Bloomberg channel, he was talking to Raghu Rajan at some fin conf.
( Read more... ) |
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Sep. 29th, 2009 @ 02:12 pm
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- The drowning PM. Stephens says debate!
- Bonino and Erian say we have learnt NOTHING from the crisis.
- Analysis - the return of animal spirits to the market?
- Kenya's Mau forest.3
- Luke Johnson praises manufacturing.
- Sachs on the end of the hegemon.
- Larry Siedentop worries about the illegitimacy of Brussels.
- I only understood half of this Wolf piece. How do we get out of this mess?
- Analyses of Berlusconi, Kasparov and Zardari.
- Goold. Rupert Goold. |
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Sep. 28th, 2009 @ 04:24 pm
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- Profile of Id Zik.
- Shiller defends financial innovation.
- Jurek remembers Kristol. Also discusses the rabid right.
- China rising, but not so fast.
- Stench of decay at the Labour conference.
- Munchau on imbalances.
- Rowson packs in maximum metaphors in this cartoon of Brown.
- China ramming into Africa - the FT portal.
- Analysis - the weekend that changed the world.
- Analysis - Labour and Tories both pussy-footing around the unavoidable issue of spending cuts.
- Jurek remembers Safire. |
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These are strange days for me. There is a new round of layoffs coming up, a sudden move that wasn't expected by the rank and file. Names will be revealed soon.
I come to work in a state of suspended animation, hung between being and un-being, employment and unemployment, paycheck and poverty. This is the closest I've ever been to feeling like a zombie. Like the condemned feel on death-row, like the living dead.
We are busier than ever of course, the forecasting round is in full swing. But the axe may fall even so, where and when is beyond our knowledge, beyond guesswork and speculation. All I can do is keep breathing, in and out, one step, then the next step, then the next step.
Two years spent in the eye of the biggest economic storm the world has seen in seven decades. And somehow I'm still here, still reading, still learning, still getting paid for it. I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me, and I dare not believe it even now.
*
Muhammad Zubair's first death anniversary was yesterday. In life, he was a mentor and a friend to all of us. In death he has become our patron saint, the guru who left us behind but who is there with us nevertheless. His daughter, who is turning out to be a supremely gifted writer, wrote a piece on how she's dealing with her father's death, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. That a girl of 20 should be able to turn out an essay so accomplished is almost beyond my grasp. When I was 20, I had not a fraction of a fraction of the expressive power that this girl has.
Happiness is a state of mind. Another essay she wrote two years ago when her dad was ill. The sound of solace.
*
What else is happening? Went to the Stratford Royal last night, Mike Packer's got a new play in development. It's about the credit crunch and a strong, steady piece it was too. Story of a father and his two greedy, feckless sons. It was a script reading, I haven't been to too many of those.
Later on, I managed to meet the man himself. This is Mike Packer who wrote what is still the funniest play I have ever seen in 4 years of theatre-going - The Dysfunctionals at the Bush back in 2007. Mike turned out to be very pleasant and gracious in person, and he gave me the happy news that Dysfunctionals is transferring to the West End next year and a movie is coming out as well! I'd die to see Pearce Quigley doing his clueless-aging-rock-star act again. It was priceless.
*
My Canon SLR has come through thanks to Annu, so perhaps my photography can now take off seriously. My Acer netbook has come through thanks to Zeeshan, so maybe my writing can take off as well. Mamun will bring news from Dhaka, and we'll see where we go from there. |
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Sep. 24th, 2009 @ 06:13 pm
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Sep. 22nd, 2009 @ 02:23 pm
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- Spending cuts ahead, won't be pretty.
- The Lib Dems' moment? Doubt it.
- FT profiles of Dan Brown and Kraft boss Irene Rosenfeld.
- The future of nuclear power.
- Obama's foreign policy choices - all shitty!
- Wolf says to China - consume! rebalance! - it's a cry oft-repeated these days.
- I like Crispin Odey's prose stylings while Simon Schama is somewhat full of shyt.
- Germany's aristocratic Obama.
- The seven deadly sins of academia. Some of these essays are quite funny.
- Chace mourns the decline of the English department.
- The disadvantages of an elite education. |
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Sep. 20th, 2009 @ 01:08 am
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- Archie's marrying Veronica??? WTF!
- Mridul and Jyoti on microcredit.
- This is Bolaño.
- Eid tomorrow. Eid Mubarak. |
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Sep. 17th, 2009 @ 12:07 pm
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- How China fucks with its people - the Kafkaesque file system.
- Why Obama needs to be more like the late, great LBJ.
- Those cheap-as-chips jeans that you bought on the high street? You can forget it now. A long, happy decade of falling clothes prices is about to come to an end.
- William White strains his forestry metaphors but makes some good points about the ever-stronger stimuli that we are needing to apply to the economy in each new recession.
- Asian banks smiling through the crunch.
- Everyone is launching their crackpot pet theories in the FT. Here's Kouchner with his tax on finance for development idea. Well-meaning, heart in the right place and all that - but how likely really to see the light of day?
- Jon Guthrie who lives in Bournville, George Cadbury's idyll for industrial workers, prays that Kraft's bid for the chocolatier will fail.
- Posen of the MPC witters on about exit strategies. |
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Sep. 16th, 2009 @ 02:38 pm
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- Stiglitz on the Lehman collapse and regulatory failure.
- The big Foreign Policy portal on oil.
- The ongoing bitter fight in economics is surveyed in the Economic Principals and Freakonomics blogs.
- Skapinker thinks the pay debate might be different this time.
- Wolf on the lessons of Lehman.
- Plender of Quintain (whose stocks are sweet) has a piece on China and America's highly risky economic embrace.
- Two giants (of a much-diminished profession) have essays out - Blinder on the Fed's independence and Blanchard on the need for rebalancing.
- Finally, a tremendous new feature I've just discovered - Reading Lists from Foreign Affairs magazine!!! Think Amazon's Listmania, only 50 times smarter. |
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Sep. 15th, 2009 @ 01:20 pm
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- The debate over public spending is intensifying.
- Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd, two people who figured in my distant adolescence, are dead.
- This is reason for unalloyed joy. The Stiglitz-Sen commission have come up with their proposals for alternative measures to GDP.
- Sarkozy going to great, er, lengths to boost his stature.
- Barbara Tuchman is heavily namechecked in this recent history of economic folly. Fall of Lehmann = accepting the Trojan horse??
- A true giant has died. Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution, giver of food to the world's heaving millions, is gone at 95.
- Jerry Cohen's fantastic socialist utopia.
- Google, scarier than ever. Plus a new word - velleity.
- Rachman doubts China's rise.
- Munchau doesn't think much of the Lisbon treaty. |
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Sep. 11th, 2009 @ 03:17 pm
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- Hello, Dolly! at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre last night was magical. First time there for me, a bit chilly, but I just know this is going to be a regular summer thing for me.
- Whatever happened to the mutual banks?
- Augar and McFall say crush the banks.
- Wolf is very gloomy about the prospects of real financial reform.
- Stephens muses on the 20th anniversary of German reunion.
- Some chap called Greetham from Fidelity is a serious bull. Raging bull even. |
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