Having failed to read Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders the moment it went up online last week (horrors!), I only just learned–thanks to Frank Ahrens in the Washington Post (link via Romenesko)–that Buffett had some interesting things to say about the state of American metropolitan daily newspapers. They …

Of all the nations on this earth, the Netherlands is one where you’d figure public transit would prevail. The country is incredibly densely populated, you can get pretty much everywhere by train or tram or bus, and car ownership is a highly taxed hassle.

And yet, here’s what it says in an article (warning: it’s in Dutch!) in Saturday’s …

This just in from Reuters:

The global flight from risk knocked precious metals again on Friday, with gold falling below $650 an ounce for the first time in three weeks as shaky global stock markets prompted investors to reduce positions in commodities.
Investors often buy gold as a safe bet when financial markets look unstable, but

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The major league Klein-on-Klein discussion on blogging that I inadvertently instigated continues apace.

Anyway, it’s not my discussion anymore, but I’ve got two final things to say:

1) Both those Klein guys were born to blog.

2) I remember pretty clearly that, in Who Will Tell People (I can’t give an exact quote because my copy is at …

This is great! My (mostly) joking riff on the Mainstream Blogosphere caught the attention of certified Mainstream Blogger Ezra Klein. Then our own MSBer-in-the-making Joe Klein, sitting at home around midnight, “major league vodka” in hand, wrote a post about the other Klein’s post about my post.

Ezra’s point was that he had some …

My latest column is up online (it’s in the paper magazine that comes out tomorrow). Here’s how it begins:

A share of stock-or a bond, a house, a stand of timber or any other asset-is worth the following: the future income one hopes to receive from it minus a haircut for the risk that things won’t turn out as expected.
This definition

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While working on my previous post about taxes, I came across an article I wrote just after the 2004 election about President Bush and fiscal policy. On the whole it stands up reasonably well, hinting as it does that the chances of Bush really doing something in his second term about the country’s long-run budget challenges (a.k.a. Social …

In his Generation Risk blog over at CNNMoney.com, Money magazine’s Pat Regnier (a former Time writer, by the way) warns of the “Great Tax Hike” to come:

Besides the current budget deficit, future lawmakers are going have to wrestle with the mounting costs of Social Security and Medicare. And whatever “peace dividend” we may have enjoyed

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Why did the market recover its bearings today? I’m thinking it’s because so many traders were happily playing the Euromoney Champions League of Investment Banking 2007. When I got the e-mail from the London-based financial magazine this morning announcing the new game, I figured it was some sort of investment bank fantasy league, along …