The news is scaring the sleep outta me. Unemployment numbers are soaring (here from the Wall Street Journal) :
…while the unemployment rate is at a five-year high at 6.1%, a broader measure of weakness that includes people who have stopped looking for work or whose hours have been cut to part-time is 11% — the highest in 15 years.
In …
All of you visiting Time.com blogland last Friday may have wondered: WTF happened? I’m quoting our fearless Time.com leader Josh here, but I’ll translate: What in fosh-farned farnation happened?
For an explanation, see Josh’s post below. Suffice it to say that our former blog platform went all kerflooey and it took the best and …
Yeah, so all the Time blogs were out for a day or so. And now we’re all moving to WordPress from Movable Type and the blog will have new address (http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/) and all commenters will have to reregister. Not sure what happens with the RSS feed. I’ll find that out on Monday. It’s all a pain, I know. Although I …
Faithful TIME.com blog-readers may have noticed something odd today: the blogs kind of disappeared. Long story short, we’ve had major server problems, and as a result we’ve had to re-launch all of our blogs on WordPress. The upside is a faster, better, more stable platform. The downside is we’ll need a few days to get our archives back …
Faithful TIME.com blog-readers may have noticed something odd today: the blogs kind of disappeared. Long story short, we’ve had major server problems, and as a result we’ve had to re-launch all of our blogs on WordPress. The upside is a faster, better, more stable platform. The downside is we’ll need a few days to get our archives back …
I’ve got an article up on TIME.com about “secular bear markets” and Graham and Buffett and stuff. It will hold no surprises for those versed in value-investor lore. But, in a sad commentary on our times, I’m told that many readers of the Internets are not versed in value-investor lore.
The basic message is that while this is a dangerous …
Commenter Linda S, who has an exasperating habit of asking questions that I don’t really know the answers to, asks regarding credit default swaps:
I … have read articles that suggest that these swaps not only give people an incentive to drive a company into bankruptcy but that it provides a huge incentive to make sure the company is
…
When I worked at Fortune I used to go down to Washington to talk to Alan Greenspan about once a year. I wasn’t really trying to report on what the Fed was up to, so the conversations could range all over the place. I remember one very clearly in which Greenspan stated his opinions on the utility of regulation.
His view was that there …
Today’s trivia fun fact comes from George Hofheimer of the Filene Research Institute. I was talking to him for this story about how credit unions have been faring amid the economic tumult, when I asked if his outfit was affiliated with the Credit Union National Association, a trade group. They’re both on Mineral Point Road in Madison, I …
A reader writes:
I’ve asked brokers, finance wizards and total strangers to explain what the stock market does. Yes, I understand that when a business issues new shares, it gets capitalized. And when a business folds, shareholders get the (ha ha) liquidation dividend. I also acknowledge that there needs to be some sort of vehicle for
…
…the toilet seats at Google are no longer heated.
That’s from the entrepreneurial guru Guy Kawasaki on his blog, How to Change the World, in this post titled “Top Ten Ways to Tell If Things Are Really Bad.” Which inspired me to look around for other bloggers’ indicators. You know the economy’s bad when…
…the toothfairy stiffs …
The calm and and less-painful-than-expected conclusion of the big auction of Lehman Brothers’ credit default swaps has led to some talk that maybe the role of CDSes (CDSs? CDS?) in bringing on our current financial near-debacle has been wildly overblown.
Making the case perhaps even more strongly is Ben Stein’s Yahoo column from last …
