I’m watching a video of a speech that Blackstone boss Steve Schwarzman gave at the Japan Society in New York a few weeks back (private equity is my topic of the week), and suddenly there he is attempting to answer Barbara’s question of why it’s apparently okay to stiff the bondholders at a car company but not at a bank:
It’s one thing
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One of the big constituencies involved in negotiating GM’s fate is, of course, GM bondholders. Last I read, GM was looking for its bondholders to turn in at least two-thirds of their debt in exchange for equity and new debt. Ford, that anomalously self-sufficient American car company, is reducing its debtload, too—buying back or …
A reader writes, in response to my Upside of Anger column on taxing Wall Street bonuses:
You appear to have a positive outlook regarding the government using the tax system to punish entities they don’t agree with. And you dare use the term “CAPITALIST” in your byline?? How hypocritical can one get?? Here is my take on the punishing
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Evan Thomas’s Newsweek cover story on Paul Krugman is timely, and—as with everything Thomas does—elegantly executed. I especially liked this passage:
If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy. You hope he’s wrong, and you sense he’s being a little harsh (especially about Geithner), but
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So Rick Wagoner is out at General Motors, at the request of the Obama administration. I’ve never known quite to make of the guy—most of GM’s many troubles aren’t his doing at all, but he had eight years to resolve them and came nowhere close to succeeding. I went to Alex Taylor’s November 25 Fortune cover story on GM to see what more I …
I’ve been watching Tim Geithner on Meet the Press (I recorded it). He was also on This Week, and I’ve been looking at the transcript of that, but I don’t think I can bear to watch it. Really, how can people sit through these shows? David Gregory asks Geithner a question, Geithner gives some prefab answer that doesn’t really address the …
We all know the problem with the American financial system. It’s that a few institutions have become too big and interconnected to fail. And so, instead of letting creative destruction work its magic and purge the rottenness out of our financial sector, we’re engaged in a sloppy, counterproductive, hugely expensive effort to keep these …
Since I’m a big fan of charts showing asset-backed security issuance, I was quite excited when Justin pointed out this set of graphics. Especially since they indicate that the rest of the world has, for the most part, escaped the more serious ABS fall-off we’ve had in the States. Check it out:
The folks at this web site used the data …
This is Marion Maneker channeling Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
We cannot have both debt leverage and a hyper-efficient system—the volatility is just too great. What Taleb explains—which no one else does—is that efficiency is already a form of leverage. A highly efficient system removes slack and magnifies small changes. Think of the
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Here’s some hugely important new that I am afraid I failed to report in a timely fashion: I was riding on the subway yesterday morning and Project Runway‘s Tim Gunn was standing next to me. I didn’t really have anything to say to him (I guess I could have asked if he thought my jacket worked with my shirt, but that didn’t seem …
I heard about Nick Kristof’s column on prediction yesterday, but I didn’t actually read it. (Because, you know, reading takes up valuable time.) But Mrs. Curious Capitalist points me to this important excerpt:
[I]t turns out that while foxes don’t give great sound-bites, they are far more likely to get things right.
What? You don’t …
As part of my ongoing effort to give publicity to interest in companies selling people things contingent on those people remaining employed, I’d like to call your attention to this Seattle Times story about a condo developer that will pay your mortgage for six months if you lose your job. Probably has something to do with the fact that …
