January 28, 2009
Nassim Taleb and Daniel Kahneman shared an hour onstage during a panel at the DLD conference yesterday in Germany. A must watch, even with the "shh-ing" and initial absenteeism of one, ahem, of the panelists....
This is something I have alluded to a number of times here, the idea of a first-world debt restructuring, so it's interesting to have Niall Ferguson weigh in: So I guess the unanswerable question is, what could you do to...
In seeing how active the market is for Zimbabwe dollars on Ebay, I got to thinking: Maybe a new way to print currency at a profit is to get hyperinflation going, create some crazy bills, and then sell them (at...
IMF as delusional as ever with its latest revision to 2009/2010 GDP forecasts (IMF) Corporate jets under the cosh (The Economist) Big banks vs America (Institutional Risk Analytics) Everything You Wanted to Know about Credit Default Swaps--but Were Never...
I'm tired of behavioral finance. Too much of it has become a sort of socio-psychological financial freakshow, the past decade's version of chaos theory. That part of behavioral finance can go away now. Let's be specific and empirical. For all...
The only FOMC line that matters is this one: The Committee continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time. That's newmoved in this release, and it is...
From a Moscow Times article today: That may help explain the prime minister's affinity for the 1948 movie adaptation of Charles Dickens's novel "Oliver Twist," which Putin said was the most recent movie he watched. "Serious cinema," he said....
Some random but eye-opening data on cutbacks out there, this time from Norwegian resource/energy/industrial conglomerate Norsk Hydro (where I worked during a long-ago summer internship): * Norsk Hydro Cuts 09 Capex, Excluding Qatalum, By 30% * Norsk Hydro:...
Capital flows to developing world at risk (FT) What to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? (Woodward/Hall) Inflation(ists) vs. Deflation(ists) (Cassandra) House Panel Approves Cram Downs (Calculated Risk) A Stimulus With Merit, but Some Misses, Too (NYT) PermaBear...
