September 2009
55 posts
WatchMr Fox!
The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who as I say, couldn’t afford them.
—Sarah Palin on how big government forced lending and ordered the loosening of lending standards.
escape velocity →
Case Shiller - Down 13.3%
This marks approximately six months of improved readings in these statistics, beginning in early 2009.
—S&P Case Shiller announcement
These figures continue to support an indication of stabilization in national real estate values, but we do need to be cautious in coming months to assess whether the housing market will weather the expiration of the Federal First-Time Buyer’s Tax Credit...
NY Fed on NY / NJ →
If they invest in 21st-century technologies and we invest in 20th-century technologies, they’ll win. If we both invest in 21st-century technologies, challenging each other, we all win.
—David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of energy for policy, from Thomas Friedmans op-ed piece: NYT
“There isn’t really good evidence, frankly, that companies focused purely...”
– Marc Krellenstein, CTO of Northern Light, quoted in BW, December 2000
Poets House New House →
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles
—Whitman
I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through it and see the world
—Stanley Kunitz
Poets need a refuge — they need a hideout, a clubhouse
—Bill Murray, who gave the lead gift
Retro Zine-style →
Life on Google →
Does this not include Fred Wilson? →
“Whatever “expert” opinion means in this context, it does not mean an...”
– Cass Sunstein, regarding a case-study on doctors’ opinions as a reflection of expert biases; Statistics, Not Experts, December 2000. He goes on to say:
What we are suggesting here is that because individual experts are distinctly prone to error, it would be far better to begin the process with...
All media are active metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms.
—Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media
The city’s water system was put in place by William Mulholland, the self-taught engineer who built the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the revolutionary, gravity-flow system of pipes and channels that carries water from mountains and valleys more than 200 miles away.
Doesn’t this detail in some way explain this statement?
The number of breaks - 36 during the first three weeks of September -...
More Zombies?
Google organized our memory. Real-time search organizes our consciousness.
—Edo Segal
Zombies, need I say more?
If interested, please send a resume along with a headshot, and demo reel (if possible).
The web is full of pophets…I’m not a prophet, I’m an editor
—David Remnick at a CUNY discussion
Innovation is Persuasion
innovation isn’t something that innovators do — innovation is what customers adopt. And a supply-side definition of innovation guarantees the kind of self deception that you’ve described, because it is the market that determines whether something is innovative or not, and whether something is adopted or not.
And then there is an important critical next step. Just because an...
Yes Men - We're screwed →
Housing has been the sector of the economy with the largest multiplier effect. Whether buying new homes or existing homes, people tend to fill them up with things: new furniture, new appliances, new window coverings.
—David Berson, former chief economist at Fannie Mae, current chief economist of PMI Group
I’m right in there with the rest of the cheerleaders, but there are no historical...
China and a few other central banks have grumbled about the dollar but they don’t have many other alternatives so they keep buying.
—Michael Atkin, head of sovereign research at Putnam Investments in Boston, $12b in fixed-income assets
The end of the world appears to have been postponed.
The trouble is, we really have no road maps. The only model is the Great Depression itself. [That] was ended by a very large spending program known as World War II and we don’t really want to repeat that.
—Paul Krugman in Helsinki
And that is my case, too. The world is positioned for disappointment. But, in economic and financial matters, the world rarely gets what it expects. Pigou had humanity’s number. The “error of pessimism” is born the size of a full-grown man—the size of the average adult economist, for example.
—James Grant in the WSJ, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer
The George Will Art Conspiracy
George Will rightly takes Yosi Sergant, the NEA, and an August 10th conference call to task for politicizing the NEA. It perhaps signals an exhaustion with the Bush Administration’s attempts to do the same throughout the judicial system and provides an example to be avoided. Will, however, hitches to his complaint one unlikely carriage - a plea for no state funding of art.
Will’s...
We need to find ways to bring down that trading friction cost, we need to make sure we’re not being taken advantage of. Hopefully our counterparties, our dealers, will make less money from us and our clients are going to make more return…There’s no question, you have seen huge profitability in some of these institutions. The widest bid-ask spreads are in fixed income — the more...
China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.
In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love...
Two handed approach to pay-walls →
Spacewar - Video Games in 1972 →
You cannot measure influence, but you can feel influence. And I think he has it.
—Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago, on Martin Wolf in the New Republic
The New Republic - Quotes on China
The U.S. had all the answers once upon a time. But China’s not the apprentice anymore.
—Senior Obama administration official
Americans make mistakes when they think that politics don’t exist in China, that these guys don’t have to pay attention to what the Chinese people are saying. Their room to maneuver is constrained by public opinion.
—Treasury official
WatchAlain de Botton
Housing construction costs turn up →
"This coin has got so much charisma.” →
Anything that’s safe is incredibly inexpensive. That’s where a lot of the value is now.
—Kevin Rendino, who oversees $10 billion at BlackRock in Plainsboro
the hand is the cutting edge of the mind
-Jacob Bronowski, Ascent of Man
I will not read your f*cking script →
Pollan on Big Food →
There are a lot of people with real estate, and they can’t afford it. They can’t make the payments, and they can’t sell the house.
—Joseph Baldi, a Chicago attorney. Baldi is scheduled to speak to the American Bankruptcy Institute on Chapter 11 in October
Real estate is an incredible thing on the downside. Equities can only go to zero. Property can go well below zero.
—Jason...
I’d say their equity has been wiped out
—Craig Leupold, president of Green Street Advisors, on the $1.9b BlackRock / Tishman Speyer position in Stuyvesant Town
Legal Social (expert) networks
Legal OnRamp
Martindale-Hubbell Connected
This is not standard regulatory capture.
—Simon Johnson, June 2009
A skull that rewrites the history of man →
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
—Paul Krugman: NYT Magazine
"We never give up trying to cure a dying horse"
The People’s Bank of China should try to reduce intervention on the exchange rate as much as possible. Eventually, the yuan should be demanded as a reserve currency, and we are far away from this stage.
—Yu Yongding in an interview on August 6th
When are analyst recommendation changes... →
