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Matching entries from Houston's Clear Thinkers
Sound thoughts to start the week
Felix Salmon: It may or may not be true that we would have avoided much of this crisis had credit default swaps never been invented. I suspect it's not true, and that the CDS market, in allowing people to short...
The power of myths
A common topic on this blog has been the power of anti-business myths within American society. Take Enron, for example. We all know how the myth played out. Enron, which was one of the largest publicly-owned companies in the U.S.,...
Ben Stein's nightmare multiplies
This post from last week noted how Felix Salmon had become NY Times business columnist Ben Stein's worst nightmare, sort of how Larry Ribstein had been to Steins' fellow columnist, Gretchen Morgenson. Now, Stein's nightmare is multiplying exponentially. On the...
Ben Stein's worst nightmare
First, Larry Ribstein became NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson's worst nightmare by exposing the vacuous nature of her columns. Now, Felix Salmon has become part-time NY Times business columnist Ben Stein's worst nightmare (see also here) in much the...
Do as the NY Times says, but not as it does?
Larry Ribstein notes the sweet irony of the New York Times management not being quite, as the Times business columnists might say, adequately responsive to its own shareholders. I'm sure that Gretchen and Ben will be right on top of...
Making subprime sense
The New York Times continues to do a reasonably thorough job of reporting on the downturn in the subprime mortgage business and its impact on the recent crunch in the credit markets (see here and here), although it's not at...
Gretchen Morgenson's recurring nightmare
Larry Ribstein used to be NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson's worst nightmare, but the nightmares receded a bit when Professor Ribstein tired of exposing the vacuous nature of her weekly columns after a year or so. Nevertheless, Morgenson's nightmare...
This is a meltdown?
What was that about a meltdown in the subprime mortgage market? This Bloomberg article reports that Fremont General has agreed to sell $2.9 billion of subprime mortgages at a net loss of $100 million. That deal comes on top of...
What was that crisis again, Ms. Morgenson?
Gretchen Morgenson may be a credit snob, but U of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee isn't: . . . When Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, gave his opening statement last week at the hearings lambasting the rise of “risky...
The Credit Snobs redefine "loan shark"
Circling back to the topic of subprime mortgages, Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok cleverly notes that credit snobs such as the NY Times' Gretchen Morgenson and the Houston Chronicle's Loren Steffy have redefined the definition of loan shark: Old definition: A...
A beneficial choice
The New York Times (see here and here) is not the only major metropolitan newspaper that employs a business columnist who doesn't appreciate the benefits of a robust market in mortgage financing. Channeling the Times' Gretchen Morgenson, the Chronicle's Loren...
Morgenson's mortgage myths
Over the past weekend, the New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson continued her "sky is falling" bit with the regard to the subprime mortgage market (see prior post here). Larry Ribstein, who used to disassemble Morgenson's columns on a...
Ben Stein's blinders
This earlier post noted that the NY Times financial columnist Ben Stein has some rather odd notions about private equity buyouts. Amidst criticizing rich folks for spending their money in a different way than Stein would if he had their...
What's that point again, Ms. Morgenson?
The NY Times' Gretchen Morgenson's column ($) this past Sunday is entitled "Will Other Mortgage Dominoes Fall?", in which Morgenson explores the current downturn in the subprime mortgage market. As a result of the increasing default rate in subprime mortgages,...
Executive compensation is actually too low?
Larry Ribstein has been waging a lonely fight (examples here and here) against the politicians and media pundits who think that executives make too much money because . . well, . let's see, . . because some of them make...
An NY Times snit fuels Gretchen Morgenson's nightmare
It's not every day that a newspaper editor's defense of one of the newspaper's star columnists ends up fueling the cause to expose the vacuity of the columnist's work. As noted earlier here and here, Clear Thinkers favorite Larry Ribstein...
Demagoging Amaranth
Following on this earlier cue, NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson contends in this column (Times Select, registration required) that Amaranth Advisors, LLP's loss of $6 billion or so last week on the natural gas trading market is conclusive proof...
Muddling the understanding of insider trading
The NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson -- who regularly writes with a curious anti-business agenda -- weighs in again in the Sunday Times with this frontpage article about trading in anticipation of merger announcements that begins with this proclamation:...
Perpetuating the Enron Myth
As noted in this prior post on the death of former Enron chairman Ken Lay, the myth of Enron is now so fully embraced within American society that otherwise intelligent people reject any notion of ambiguity in addressing facts and...
Sending bad messages
It's hard to imagine that the federal government could have sent worse signals to foreign investors in US markets and businesses than the ones that it sent over the past week. First, there was the latest news about the NatWest...
The securities fraud myth
Richard Booth is the Marbury Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. In this fine Washington Post op-ed (hat tip Ted Frank), Professor Booth explains that the US securities fraud litigation framework is fundamentally flawed...
Understanding the next business scandal
Covering local business scandals and all, there has not been much time to address certain regulators and media members' attempts to make the apparent widespread practice of backdating stock options (see this WSJ ($) chart of companies that engaged in...
Morgenson's nightmare continues
As noted in this previous post, University of Illinois law professor and prominent blawger Larry Ribstein has become NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson's worst nightmare -- a sharp mind on business issues exposing the vacuous nature of her columns....
Gretchen Morgenson's worst nightmare
For years, NY Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson was able to publish her columns about the morality plays of greedy and conniving American businesspersons without critical analysis, save for an occasional letter to the editor. But the blogosphere has changed...
Railing against the capitalist roaders
Most of the time, The New York Times does a reasonably good job of covering business matters, but there are still days when the paper resembles the People's Daily of New York. Yesterday was one of those days. First, Times...
But what about this issue?
The NY Times Gretchen Morgenson provides this lucid analysis of the deal that prompted American International Group's board to call upon Maurice "Hank" Greenberg to step down as AIG's CEO after a generation of phenomenal wealth building for AIG shareholders....
How much longer does Carly have?
Following on prior posts here and here, the NY Times' Gretchen Morgenson examines the latest carnage at Hewlett-Packard, Inc over the continued inability of the company to generate any economic benefit from spending almost $20 billion in buying Compaq almost...
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