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 …
The global rise of the döner-industrial complex
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 …
See, told you the Internet was just a fad
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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Daycare Is a) Good, b) Bad, c) Necessary
My mornings are a blur of diapers and sippy cups and tupperware tins of strawberries and meatballs packed in a ladybug backpack. In other words, I’m readying my kid for her day at daycare. So it was with approximately 7% focus that I saw this headline in my local paper:
“Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care”
Great. Just great. …
Yeah, CBS really showed that YouTube who’s boss
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 …
Mortgages for the people
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
…
Yeah, that about sums it up
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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In Defense of Office A**holes
My brother George is a popular guy. In high school, he was the jock with the pretty girlfriend who could also hang with the dorks. In college, he was the life of the rowdiest (and filthiest) frat house. This natural likability extended, naturally, to the workplace. Despite atrocious grades (the second lowest in the history of Villanova, …
Home prices: Not going up for five years
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 …
The connection between Blackstone’s IPO and your retirement
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 …
One Reader Juggles Work and Life With the “Four Ps”
Reader Anne Witkavitch writes in a comment to a previous posting about the valuable commodity that is time:
As one who is juggling family, career, and graduate school pursuing my dream to write and publish, I hear the same comment over and over again: “I don’t know how you do it.”
I cringe each time I hear this phrase. Although
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What do you think Steve Schwarzman will buy with his $350,000 in pocket change?
In its preliminary IPO prospectus, private equity firm Blackstone Group said it will henceforth pay billionaire bossman Stephen Schwarzman a salary of just $350,000 a year (don’t worry, he’ll have a few other sources of income).
Anyway, in my post yesterday I described this as “just the money he uses to tip coat-check …