There’s a moment in the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (it’s also in the book, on page 242) where the company’s head of HR is asked at a December 1999 employee meeting, “Should we invest all of our 401(k) in Enron stock?”
“Absolutely! Don’t you guys agree?” she says, looking over at Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, who are …
My latest column is up online, and in the issue of Time with the penguin on the cover. It begins:
There are those who fret that current troubles in real estate will lead to an economic slowdown, maybe a recession. Then there’s Peter Schiff. “Our standard of living is going to decline,” the Connecticut stockbroker confidently declares.
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The author of the world’s absolutely, positively greatest private equity blog, Going Private, has discovered that a lot of people in the “McMedia” (that is, not just me) thought there was something ironic about Stephen Schwarzman, longtime critic of public equity markets, deciding to take Blackstone Group public. Here’s her contrary …
I was mostly kidding when I said that a döner kebab van in Leesburg, Va., represented deep truths about globalization. But then I got this comment, from one Michael Pöppelmann:
I am an exchange student from Germany and currently in the United States. Doener is my most favorite food. Sometimes I even dream about eating it, just because it
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Now I’m never going to be known as a Fed watcher (and I’m very glad of that), but I happen to have Ben Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee on the TV at the moment, and I here’s my on-the-spot interpretation of what he’s saying:
Unless things get really, seriously horrific on the housing front, the Fed isn’t going to …
Mrs. Curious Capitalist and I were driving through Leesburg, Va., Saturday in search of cookies when we came across this curious sight: A Turkish döner kebab van, apparently by way of Germany, doing business in exurban Virginia.
Anyway, Mrs. CC took this lovely photo of said van, and I was sure I could come up with something Tom …
From the nice people at ClickZ Stats:
The number of active Internet home users dipped by 0.13 percent in February in the 10 countries tracked by Nielsen/NetRatings.
Spain (-3.31 percent); the U.S. (-1.50 percent); and Germany (-0.96 percent) accounted for the dip in the number of active home users. The number of users was down 426,498
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I’m writing my next weekly column today, which given the way I work means I’m spending a lot of time procrastinating. So I’m reading the sports blog Deadspin, and come across a reference to the amazing finish of the Division II men’s basketball championship game between Winona State and Barton (Barton came from seven points behind with …
My latest column, about subprime lending, is up online and in the issue of Time with the Cliffs Notes versions of the Bible on the cover. Here’s how it begins:
In early March, Boston College management professor Alicia Munnell gave a lecture at Yale on pension policy. “I was there, talking about retirement things,” Munnell recalls, “and
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From Dealbreaker, apropos of Kinsley’s great Blackstone column:
Writing about Wall Street for Time Magazine is a bit like writing about Williamsburg nightlife for the New York Times. Most of your readers have no idea what you’re talking about, so you can get away with almost anything. It probably gets a bit frustrating to know that
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Sales of existing homes were up sharply in February. But don’t expect that to keep up. “All those involved in the real estate market would like to say this is proof the real estate market has turned around,” says Bill Hampel. “I think it’s an aberration.”
I was on the phone with Hampel, the chief economist of the Credit Union National …
Michael Kinsley weighs in on the Blackstone IPO in the new issue of Time, and he does it very entertainingly. It’s basically a much-improved redo of a Slate column he wrote in November that I took to task in this here blog.
This time I don’t really see anything to take Kinsley to task over. I’ll leave that to the perpetually aggrieved …
