Economy Blog

Last week, while randomly channel surfing, I stumbled across a fantastic PBS documentary in the American Masters series, titled M…
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When the Culinary Institute of America needed to raise money to pay for a new building they turned to a Goldman Sachs banker for advice. He told them to issue auction rate securities. That piece of advice cost them nearly half a million dollars when the market seized up and the interest rate of the securities shot up to 14 percent, Bloomberg reports.

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$$$ I am a former model who has “traded” in the glamorous but brainless world of modeling for the #1 Brokerage House in the world. [craigslist]

$$$ Handicapping the ‘WSJ’ Editor Search [Portfolio]

$$$ B…
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Like Thucydides, Mises wrote, Anderson unfortunately did not live to see his book published. After his premature death, much lamented by all his friends and admirers, the D. Van Nostrand Company published it, with a preface by Henry Hazlitt, under the title Economics and The Public Welfare: Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946 . It contains more than this title indicates. F…
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Like Thucydides, Mises wrote, Anderson unfortunately did not live to see his book published. After his premature death, much lamented by all his friends and admirers, the D. Van Nostrand Company published it, with a preface by Henry Hazlitt, under the title Economics and The Public Welfare: Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946 . It contains more than this title indicates. FULL ARTICLE …
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Oil prices have soared in 2008 – just as they did in 2007 and 2006. But unlike those years, oil-related companies have not followed.
Not all of them, of course. Some, particularly those engaged in drilling for oil, have certainly done well as the world clamors for more sources of supply for crude….
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It’s no secret that CNBC sweetie Erin Burnett like taking trips to “exotic locales.” This time around her trip is in India, where cricket is simply huge. So huge, in fact, that sporty Erin couldn’t resist getting suited up and taking a few whacks at the ball herself.

She’s also doing things like g…
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It’s no secret that CNBC sweetie Erin Burnett like taking trips to “exotic locales.” This time around her trip is in India, where cricket is simply huge. So huge, in fact, that sporty Erin couldn’t resist getting suited up and taking a few whacks at the ball …
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Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) had high praise for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, saying the central bank chief has been a responsive advocate for consumers during the recent credit turmoil.

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Considering DealBreaker is actually a front for someone’s not exactly legal hedge fund that invests in boy band memorabilia (we raised our capital by blackmailing select readers into giving us money), I’m not quite sure how missed this:

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Top Ten Most Searched Stocks on TheStreet.com

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Annelena Lobb has this report on how rising corn costs continue to affect Mexico.
As the price of food staples continues to rise around the world, some in Mexico are worrying about another flare-up of the tortilla wars.

Corn prices, which impact the price of tortillas, have been rising….
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While IP may not stimulate true innovation and creativity, Hayek suggests that copyright might. In The Intellectuals and Socialism, he writes: In the sense in which we are using the term, the intellectuals are in fact a fairly new phenomenon of history. Though nobody will regret that education has ceased to be a privilege of the propertied classes, the fact that the propertied classes are no longer the best educated and the fact that the large number of people who owe their position solely to the their general education do not possess that experience of the working of the economic system which the administration of property gives, are important for understanding the role of the intellectual. Professor Schumpeter, who has devoted an illuminating chapter of his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy to some aspects of our problem, has not unfairly stressed that it is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs and the consequent absence of first hand knowledge of them which distinguishes the typical intellectual from other people who also wield the power of the spoken and written word. It would lead too far, however, to examine here further the development of this class and the curious claim which has recently been advanced by one of its theorists that it was the only one whose views were not decidedly influenced by its own economic interests. One of the important points that would have to be examined in such a discussion would be how far the growth of this class has been artificially stimulated by the law of copyright.Yet another strike against copyright! (Thanks to BK Marcus)…
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(May 16, 2008 01:32 PM, by Arnold Kling) From an interesting Wall Street Journal item: Bubbles emerge at times when investors profoundly disagree about the significance of a……
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One of the main reasons Yahoo is celebrated, to the extent that it is (and celebrated is way too strong a word here), is because it leads this part of the solar system in web traffic. Or at least it did. Because, according to April comScore (oh how I wish that company had coherent capitalization) Google now leads yahoo in total visitors. The painful figures follow. Remind me, again, why there are people supporting the current management team? …
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Excellent post by Mike Masnick on Techdirt: It’s an ongoing theme around here, but ideas are everywhere. The real trick to making something great often has extremely little to do with the idea, and much more to do with the execution. That’s where the real innovation occurs — in taking an idea and trying to figure out how to make it useful. It’s that p…
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Federal Reserve officials have been chatting more about what to do about bubbles, but some are arguing that the central bank should look more closely at its own role in creating bubbles through both supervisory and monetary policy.
Policymakers have basically reaffirmed the orthodox view that as far as monetary policy goes, they shouldn’t use interest rates to restrain asset prices. But they are giving more weight to the view, which they have always given some credence, that prudential supervisory policies could have some role to play.
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They Just Don’t Get Freddie Mac!

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I love when you get two contradictory headlines about the same piece of news. Case in point, here is my friend Barry on the latest housing starts data, following by a WSJ headline on the same nugget: …
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Today didn’t look like the normal 52-week low brigade. Usually there is a massive implosion of some sort that took a stock under. Most of these were just more selling trends on news that has already been out. Here are today’s featured lows: GenCorp Inc. (NYSE: GY) wasn’t under its 52-week low in the last hour today, but hit $8.23 vs. an $8.28 prior. Aerospace & Defense and Real Estate. Bad combo. Globalstar (NASDAQ: GSAT) got back above its prior $3.08 low over the last 52-weeks, but this one just seems to keep getting worse. Lionbridge Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: LIOX)…
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