A while back I posted about something called “goodwill” — an accounting term which means very little but, by accounting standard practice, shows up on corporate financial statements. If you can’t tell by my tone of voice, I don’t put a lot of stock in the concept of "goodwill". Much to my dismay, I discover [...]
With the recent challenges to Google’s purchase of Doubleclick, Microsoft’s endless courtship of Yahoo, and the filing of more papers in the upcoming Intel/AMD case, the question of "why should the government break up monopolies?" becomes much more relevant. This is a question that very few people ask, even though it is oftentimes taken for [...]
Gas prices are going up. Believe me, my wallet is well aware of this as I not only live in the Bay Area, but my weekly commute is over 200 miles. And if I’m feeling the pinch, people around the country probably are as well. Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of steam [...]
Fact 1: We are facing tough economic times. Fact 2: When people are facing tough economic times they look for other sources of income. Fact 3: Police tips are a source of additional income. Conclusion: We are probably seeing an increase in police tips right now. The New York Times has a fascinating article about [...]
I’ve posted before about my skepticism towards financial statements in general. This problem is compounded when dealing with financial reports from financial services companies, making them about as useful as toilet paper in times of financial turmoil (except that toilet paper is softer — which makes these financial reports even less useful than toilet paper [...]
By now, most people have heard about the crisis which befell Wall Street firm Bear Stearns, which suffered from what was essentially a bank run as a result of doubts about its ability to weather the credit crisis. The result was a dramatic loss of shareholder value — Bear Stearns’s stock price plummeted from around [...]
I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the article, but it has a lot of good points and a killer opening (Hat tip: L. Xu): Putting together everything we’ve learned over the past 10 days about high finance in Manhattan, one thing is clear: If Eliot Spitzer had saved all the money he apparently paid [...]
How can you quantify the “social impact” of a single individual? For instance, how much of an impact does Britney Spears have on “society”? (And, yes, those and other quotes that you see in this post are meant to convey vast depths of sarcasm). An economist could argue that Britney’s worth to society would be [...]
I noted before that the best and most objective means to consider if President Bush’s troop surge is to look at how the market is viewing Iraqi war bonds. If Iraqi government bond prices go up, it means the market (which is motivated by something higher than ideological sentiment and politics — money) believes that [...]
How much do the uninsured cost the American healthcare system? This is a question with great practical relevance, as without a clear understanding of the health needs of the uninsured and the cost of providing care for those needs, it’s impossible to make a policy which successfully addresses the issues facing them. Now, I personally [...]