From a four-year-old profile of string theorist Michio Kaku that is now for some reason the hottest story at guardian.co.uk:
“String theory predicts the universe is like a soap bubble that is expanding and dying,” he says. Billions of years from now stars will blink out; the night sky will be dark and the oceans will freeze over. But we
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I went down to Princeton this morning to speak to the Class of ’44, which counts frequent Curious Capitalist commenter dadfox among its members. The class is back for its 65th reunion, and it’s back in force, with hundreds of spouses and widows and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren along for the ride. It is a remarkable …
Are corporate America and China headed toward a painful breakup? That’s what this week’s column is about.
I went to a strange event at Bloomberg world headquarters this evening. First came drinks and hors d’oeuvres. (I sort of cut in front of Wendi Murdoch in the drinks line, but she didn’t get hostile or anything.) Then came a panel discussion featuring Joe Stiglitz, Meredith Whitney, Jack Welch, Oliver Sarkozy (Carlyle Group financial …
Here’s a chat I did with Peter Schiff in conjunction with last week’s column.
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Schiff’s younger brother and PR guy Andrew reports that since my column, which laments non-mainstream Peter’s disappearance from the mainstream airwaves, he’s started getting bookings again. It looks like he’s even …
Felix Salmon asked me and the FT’s Alan Beattie, because we’ve both just written “heavyweight new books of economic history” (Beattie’s is False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World. I just now read the first four pages, and they’re great), a few questions:
Can studying history prevent us from repeating past mistakes, or
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Time Warner to Spin Off AOL, CNet News, May 28, 2009
AOL+TWX=??? Do the math, and you might wonder if this company’s long-term annual return to investors can beat a Treasury bond’s, Carol J. Loomis, Fortune, Feb. 7, 2000
GM Said to Plan for June 1 Bankruptcy, Sale of Assets, Bloomberg, May 28, 2009
The Tragedy of General Motors: The …
S&P’s warning on the U.K. government’s credit rating, plus yesterday’s bad day for U.S. Treasuries, has got ten me (and other people) thinking about where we might be headed here in the U.S. The worst case scenario is that of Iceland, where the currency collapses, all the banks fail, and the populace is suddenly 65% poorer relative to …
Steve Coll writes from Stuttgart that he’s seen what deglobalization looks like—Daimler signs with the Chrysler whited out. Then he reminisces:
Ah, Chrysler. I remember when Daimler took it over, in 1999. Its new German C.E.O., Juregen Schrempp, visited the Washington Post to explain himself. He was tall, confident, and evangelical. He
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I know, this hasn’t been much of a blog lately. Well, it was last week, because Barbara was on the case. But now she’s on vacation and I haven’t been delivering the goods. My excuse No. 1 is that preparing to launch a book publicity campaign turns out to be incredibly time-consuming work. This probably isn’t a very convincing excuse, …
NYU economist (and 2003 Nobelist) Rob Engle has a piece in today’s FT about the area of his expertise, volatility:
An understanding that the fundamental cause of volatility is new information will help assess when it might return to normal. Basically, asset prices change when there is new information, used by analysts and investors, to
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The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index jumped far faster than anybody expected in May. Markets rejoiced, there was dancing in the streets, etc. etc.
But here’s a little reality check from Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics:
if the new level is maintained the Conference Board index is consistent with real spending
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