The UK emergency budget, which will impose a £2billion tax on banks, both domestic and foreign bank operations domiciled there, along with the upcoming G20 meetings, is pushing a contentious issue to the fore: how and how much to tax banks. There are two motivations at work. First, with most advanced economies keen to narrow […]
Read more...We’ll know in due course, now that an investigation is underway, why the equity markets in the US went into complete freefall for about twenty minutes, with the Dow dropping 998 points. Per Bloomberg: Larry Leibowitz, chief operating officer of NYSE Euronext, said trades sent to electronic networks fueled the drop. While the first half […]
Read more...Former SAC Capital Employee Details Forced Oral Sex, Hormone Use, Sodomy, And Cross Dressing Clusterstock. All they could do in mainstream movies was the pretty tame The Secretary; real life is always more lurid. Now plenty of folks on Wall Street have demanding and unusual tastes, but expecting your employee to satisfy them is very […]
Read more...John Hempton illustrates the operation of an underdiscussed cognitive bias, social validation, which social psychologist Robert Cialdini described as one of the six primary influence techniques in his classic Influence: The Art of Persuasion. And it can be deadly, as Hempton warns: Saturday afternoon and I had volunteer lifesaving duty. My (broken) collarbone is knitted […]
Read more...Those who recall the early Clinton years may see some parallels to today, albeit in a watered-down form now. Clinton came into office, as political scientist/economist Tom Ferguson put it, “chanting one word as a mantra: ‘change.” He then appointed: an economic team that looked like Wall Street, a foreign policy team that resembled Jimmy […]
Read more...Readers responded with great enthusiasm the last time I hoisted a big chunk of material from Australian economist Steve Keen’s blog (see “Bernanke an Expert on the Great Depression?” )I was therefore quite gratified when he wrote asking me to cross post his latest piece. Keen is a fiercely independent thinker, and has other qualities […]
Read more...We haven’t written much about the environment since the credit markets got to be so much fun, but in the early days of the blog we did give it more attention than we do now, so this post isn’t as off topic as it might seem. With all the tooth-gnashing about oil, food, and greenhouse […]
Read more...Many readers over the weekend commented on National Australia Bank’s stunning writedown of A$830 in “super senior” CDOs, which resulting in a valuation of ten cents on the dollar, and speculated that this move had implications for US banks. Then Merrill announces a surprise writedown, out of sync with its reporting cycle. Could the two […]
Read more...Australia’s News.com.au reports that a local Melbourne PhD student has developed an algorithm that will increase the data throughput speeds on good old fashioned copper wires 200 fold. John Papandriopoulos claims that his approach can produce Internet speeds up to 250 Mbps. By contrast the top speed offered by Verizon’s fiber optic service FIOS is […]
Read more...We’ve mentioned before that higher atmospheric CO2 levels make the oceans more acidic. And that in turn is very nasty for shellfish, coral reefs, and the foundation of the ocean food supply, plankton. As this article in Science Daily reports, the consequences may be even more serious than those of global warming: The world’s oceans […]
Read more...In case you haven’t been following this story, the Tasmanian Devil population has been ravaged by a contagious tumor. As a BBC report earlier this year explained: Devil facial tumor disease (DFTDA) was first documented by a wildlife photographer in 1996. The animals have powerful jaws able to crunch through the bones of much larger […]
Read more...The reputation of drug companies has taken a beating in recent years. Their prices have risen much faster than inflation (except for last year, when generics had some impact), makes them almost universally suspect. The industry’s claim that its fat margins are warranted by its investment in research doesn’t bear much inspection. 45% of drug […]
Read more...A front page Wall Street Journal story today discusses how clotheslines have become a new battle front in America. The environmentally minded are using them in increasing numbers (clothes driers account for 6% of residential energy use). This is yet another illustration of how status consciousness and years of cheap energy intersect to produce peculiar […]
Read more...Eeeew…..I much prefer the US solution of neuter and release. From the BBC: Australians have come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the outback – eat them. The felines are the descendants of domestic pets and kill millions of small native animals each year. A recent Alice Springs contest […]
Read more...Among their many good qualities, Australians have little respect for authority and can be refreshingly blunt. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is trying to get internet service providers to crack down on illegal downloaders by sending them warning notices and if they continue, disconnect them. Amusingly, the industry […]
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