Economy Blog

In the latest in their ongoing debate, Harry Kat questions Lars Jaeger’s reliance on modern finance - a field he calls “utterly disappointing”….
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Earlier today Cisco’s John Chambers delivered one of his usual up-with-us sweet nothings, saying that he is increasingly comfortable with Cisco’s long-term growth rate. That’s nice. Too bad that we’re paying 18x earnings for 11% year-over-year growth.
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People who are worried about skyrocketing corn prices should relax, even if we’ve added a massive new source of demand for the crop in recent years by using it as a fuel source. Corn is still way off its inflation-adjusted high set more than 12 years ago.
After all, Wall Street made that argument about c…
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On tonight’s MAD MONEY on CNBC, Jim Cramer was talking about the decline and fall of the value of cash compared to being invested, and in particular how to avoid the value of the declining dollar. His answer here is chasing high yield stocks because you yield less and less in cash right now. He thinks this is even more the case with only 15% income tax on dividends. His first stock noted was Consolidated Edison Inc. (NYSE: ED) with its 5.7% yield and steady and solid business in power supply. This jumped almost 1% after he noted it in…
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Herb Greenberg poses the conundrum, which I’ve translated into table form.

Date
Price
p/e ratio

IPO: August 2004
$100
52.3

July 2006
$386
65.3

March 2008
…
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I think it will consume our attention for the rest of this year.
We’re not in the ninth inning by any means, we’re maybe two-thirds through, a half to two-thirds.
Any crisis that’s been resolved feels like a lesser crisis than any one that’s unresolved.
C…
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Fresh decade highs for Malaysian ringgit and Singapore dollar.…
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Breakingviews, one of the least web-savvy websites in the world, ran a column by Jeff Segal on Monday about blog valuations. And given that breakingviews tries to disable copying and for all intents and purposes bans hyperlinks, it’s probably not surprising that the column is almost hilariously off-base. Segal’s big idea is that blogs aren’t likely to be acquisition targets; I’m pretty sure that in fact they a…
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Mint.com raised another $12 million . Makes sense. They have 160,000 customers which is pretty damn good.
I am watching this space closely as Fred Wilson has an investment (Union Square Ventures) in Wesabe.com , a Mint.com competitor. I am friends with Peter and the guys at G…
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$$$ Hexapus; Inflation in the Underwater Tranches [LoSC]

$$$ Meet Accused Molester Jeffrey Epstein’s Latest ‘Jane Doe’ [Radar]

$$$ Smith & Nephew PLC (SNN) [WallStrip]

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Charles Kirk takes a look at the late-day action Tuesday, wondering whether it was a “retest” of the January lows or not — he believes it was not. “This action is somewhat useful and provides additional evidence that the main fear out there remains that people don’t want to be left behind another rip roaring rally,” he w…
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The Federal Reserve’s latest beige book, gauging economic conditions across the Fed’s 12 districts, paints a continued bleak picture of housing markets. The report said sales and demand are low, inventories are high and prices are falling. The one upside: Manhattan.
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Late word is that Delta (NYSE: DAL) and Northwest (NYSE: NWA) pilots have re-started talks about seniority in a combined airline. Failure of negotiations helped kill earlier merger talks between the airlines. According to Bloomberg, “The sessions were the first between the airlines’ work groups since negotiators failed to agree two weeks ago on how to combine the seniority rankings of 12,000 pilots.” The news may actually be bad for NWA and DAL shareholders. It is not clear that merging two airlines benefits shareholders. Fuel costs stay at present level. Labor costs often go up as groups including pilots look…
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Harbinger Capital manager Philip Falcone just bought the Upper East Side apartment previously owned by print porn publisher Bob Guccione. The spread, located on East 67th street, includes 22,000 square feet, a solarium, an indoor pool, a theater, a “dance” room, servants’ quarters and an auto-fellatio deck. Though Guccione had hoped to sell the place for $59 million, it sat on the market for nearly six years due to what Corcoran VP Leighton Candler called “an odd energy…Whenever people brought in children, they were ready to leave,” which would explain Jeff Epstein’s visceral reaction upon stepping foot in the place several years ago as a potential buyer (he lept backwards as though the marble floor was made of lava and girls over 18), and comment, “not if you were giving it away.” Falcone ended up paying $49 million in cash, out-pimping (and royally pissing off) Dan Loeb, who only shelled out $45 for h…
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Harbinger Capital manager Philip Falcone just bought the Upper East Side apartment previously owned by print porn publisher Bob Guccione. The spread, located on East 67the street, includes 22,000 square feet, a solarium, an indoor pool, a theater, a “dance” room, servants’ quarters and an auto-fellatio deck. Though Guccione had hoped to sell the place for $59 million, it sat on the market for nearly six years due to what Corcoran VP Leighton Candler called “an odd energy…Whenever people brought in children, they were ready to leave,” which would explain Jeff Epstein’s visceral reaction upon stepping foot in the place several years ago as a potential buyer and comment, “not if you were giving it away.” Falcone ended up paying $49 million in cash, out-pimping Dan Loeb, who only shelled out $45 for his new pussy palace.
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addslashes(The Real Story Wrap, Mar. 5

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One of my good friends from grad school - Morten - who lives in Oslo Norway is visiting Scottsdale for the month. We always catch up and play golf. I have a strong Norwegian group of friends from ASU as Oslo has a popular student exchange program. Could just be the weather difference .
The Norwegians are a very open, fun group of people that travel and live abroad quite a bit.
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The Buy List had a very good day today. We gained 1.05% compared with 0.52% for the S&P 500. Over the last four days, the S&P 500 is off 2.48% while we’re only down 1.02%.

For the year, our Buy List is down 8.81% compared with a loss of 9.17% for the S&P 500. …
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So that’s it, huh?
Ambac Financial Group let the dogs out, announcing plans to raise $1 billion in common stock and about $500 million in equity units, and, uh, well, that was about it.
The market clearly was expecting more — Ambac shares were up 5.9% prior to getting halted at 1:31 p.m. ET, …
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Shakedown artist Jesse Jackson is back at it. As Visa’s prepares its $17 billion initial public offering, s expected to be the largest ever in the United States, Jackson is bending ears and twisting arms in an attempt to cut minority-owned investment banks in for a greater share of the underwriting fees. He’s even threatening to have his allies on Capitol Hill launch a Congressional investigation if he isn’t shown the money. And he’s got a specific number in mind: he wants his favored banks to get 10% of the deal, according to DealBook’s report.
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