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More thoughts on business "crimes"
Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins has yet another excellent column this week entitled When Bad Luck is a Crime (or, stated another way, the new crime of violating the obligation to throw in the towel). Among other points, Jenkins...
Would you buy a car from Congress?
The W$J's Holman Jenkins continues what should be Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary on the problems of the U.S. auto industry: None of [Congress' complicity in the auto industry's problem] was mentioned at four days of congressional bailout hearings, because Detroit...
Public financing of a private boondoggle
The WSJ's Holman Jenkins splashes some cold water on the suggestion that General Motors' Volt automobile will have much of a positive impact either environmentally or on GM's bottom line: At best, the Volt will be an affluent family's...
Ripples of the Delta-Northwest deal
The merger agreement between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines (they were meant for each other) announced yesterday not only would create the world’s largest carrier if approved, but it has renewed talk (see this W$J article, too) in...
What is Reyes being sentenced for again?
Following on this post from last week that pointed out the illusory nature of the financial damages attributed to former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes' backdating of stock options, the W$J's Holman Jenkins -- who has been the most lucid mainstream...
Fiddling while the tofu burns
It all started with this Holman Jenkins/WSJ column in which he blasted the Federal Trade Commission's vacuous campaign against the proposed Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger. That prompted this WSJ letter-to-the-editor from Arnie Celnicker, a former attorney for the FTC and...
But what about the Apple Rule?
So, one of the two Wall Street Journal Pulitzer Prizes this year is for the WSJ's reporting on the backdating of options scandal that has snared hundreds of companies and executives over the past year. Frankly, I've been more impressed...
Does Zell understand what he is getting into?
I'm a bit tardy in catching up on Sam Zell's deal for the Chicago Tribune, which Clear Thinkers favorites the WSJ's Holman Jenkins ($) and Larry Ribstein have already analyzed with their usual sharp insight. As Jenkins and Professor Ribstein...
Five big health care issues
EconLog's Arnold Kling, who is doing some of the best thinking these days on reforming America's dysfunctional health care finance system, identifies in this TCS Daily op-ed the five big questions in health care: 1. What will we do about...
Rabinowitz on the mob in the Duke lacrosse team case
I've written frequently about how a mob mentality took hold in a case familiar to Houstonians and led to a grave injustice for a large number of businesspersons, particularly two men and their families (examples here, here and here). The...
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...
The resentencing of Jamie Olis
US District Judge Sim Lake announced yesterday that Jamie Olis will be resentenced on Friday at 2 p.m., almost a year after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Lake's previous 24+ year sentence. As we await another chapter...
What's really behind the Andrew Young-Wal-Mart flap
This NY Times article reports on the flap over the recent remarks of Andrew Young, the colleague of Martin Luther King who went on to become the first black congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction and one of Atlanta's most prominent...
Kerkorian's deal for GM
Kirk Kerkorian's proposed deal to save General Motors came up just before the holiday weekend, so analysis of the proposal has been sparse to date (previous posts on GM's Enronesque experience are here). Last Friday, Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. -- the...
Europe's hyprocisy regarding Microsoft
WSJ ($) columnist and Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins (prior posts here) is on a roll today in his Business World column as he addresses the hypocrisy of Europe pursuing its anti-trust case against Microsoft while simultaneously indulging such transparent...
GM's Enronesque slide continues
Geez, talk about a bad day at the office. Embattled General Motors (prior posts here) conceded in its delayed regulatory filings filed yesterday that it had found "material weaknesses" or "significant deficiencies" in the company's accounting controls, and that the...
Two interesting interviews
Economist Milton Friedman (previous posts here, here and here) and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch are the subject of a couple of recent interviews and, as usual, both of them have interesting observations to pass along. First, Friedman: "The...
Thinking about GM
These posts over the past year have chronicled General Motors' Enronesque slide toward what is increasingly appearing to be an inevitable reorganization case under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. That probable fate was reinforced this past week when...
Perfected idiocy
Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins's W$J/Business World column today provides a wonderful analysis of how domestic political demagoguery over Big Oil profits works to enhance fascist control of oil and gas supplies internationally. In so doing, Jenkins tosses the following...
Overpaying to save gasoline
The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins' provocative column from a couple of weeks ago on the economics of the Toyota Prius hybrid automobile prompted a considerable amount of criticism from Prius owners, all of whom seem to be quite pleased...
Toyota has a hybrid deal for you
The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins has this clever column ($) today in the form of a fictional letter from Toyota to owners of its popular hybrid vehicle, the Prius. The main point of Jenkins' column is that hybrid technology...
Guaranteeing expensive natural disasters
In his Wall Street Journal ($) Business World column today, Holman Jenkins picks up on a theme of several previous posts (here, here, here and here) that point out that governmental policies that distort risk analysis virtually guarantees that natural...
More on the sad state of the airline industry
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins addresses the sad state of the airline industry in his Business World column today, and hammers home a point that this previous post made about the ownership stake in the reorganized United Airlines...
Gambling with your money, their lives
The title of this post is from Holman Jenkins' insightful Wall Street Journal ($) column today in which he decries the role of federally-subsidized flood insurance in promoting the risk-taking that helped turn New Orleans into a disaster waiting to...
Holman Jenkins on the corporate case of the decade
Don't miss Wall Street Journal ($) columnist Holman Jenkins' analysis of the decision in the Disney case, which includes the following broadside at Disney CEO Michael Eisner: Mr. Ovitz may be as disagreeable a personality as some press accounts insist....
Criminalizing risk taking
Two columns in today's Wall Street Journal address one of the too little-discussed effects of this post-Enron era's criminalization of business -- that is, the chilling of beneficial risk-taking. In his weekly WSJ ($) column, Alan Murray examines the motives...
Enron-AIG-Berkshire: Regulating earnings management
Don't miss Wall Street Journal ($) columnist Holman Jenkins' Business World piece today. In analyzing the Lord of Regulation's assault on American International Group, Inc. and its long history of being rewarded by the market for its adroit management of...
Have we got a deal for you
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins, Jr. notes in his Business World column today on the big mergers announced over the past week (P&G-Gillette, SBC-AT&T, and MetLife-Travelers) that management is coming up with ever more creative pitches to use...
The Putin Puzzle
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins, Jr. finally weighs in on the Russian government's heavy-handed takeover of OAO Yukos, and he correctly notes that the Yukos case signifies the end of any hope that Russian president Vladimir Putin will...
An annuity for auditors
Don't miss Holman Jenkins, Jr.'s Business World column this week in the Wall Street Journal ($) in which he reviews the rather remarkable effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which was Congress' knee-jerk public relations reaction to the WorldCom and Enron...
Hiding the true cost of health care
In his latest WSJ ($) Business World column, Holman Jenkins, Jr. again addresses America's broken health care finance system. Mr. Jenkins is an unusually gifted writer on business issues, and his prior columns in this area (here, here and here)...
The hypocrisy of the Feds suing Big Tobacco
In his WSJ ($) Business World column this week, Holman Jenkins, Jr. addresses the Justice Department's latest lawsuit against the big tobacco companies, and notes that the public relations benefit of such lawsuits far outweighs any meaningful public benefit: Were...
Analyzing airline woes
The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins, Jr.'s Business World ($) column today addresses the mess that is the American airline industry, and notes that this is not a problem that has just arisen recently: Today's crisis is not materially different...
The prospects for real Social Security reform
In his weekly Business World column today, the Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins, Jr. lays out the case that a second Bush Administration may be the one time that realistic reform of Social Security could actually take place: People...
Contrasting views on the Google IPO
I have been meaning to comment on the contrasting views that James Surowiecki of Marginal Revolution and Holman Jenkins, Jr of the Wall Street Journal ($) have regarding the recent Google IPO. However, Professor Ribstein beat me to the punch...
Is Ken Lay a criminal?
William Anderson is an economics professor at Frostburg State University and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. Here is an earlier post in which Professor Anderson challenged the reasoning behind an indictment earlier this year of several former executives...
The Market for Insuring Terrorism
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins' Business World column today reviews the market for insuring against terrorist attacks, and what Mr. Jenkins finds is quite revealing: The insurance industry's job is to quantify risk, and more and more evidence...
The psychology of leading
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins weighs in today with this column regarding the ideas regarding the psychology of leading of Stanley Renshon, who is a psychologist and political scientist at the City University of New York Graduate Center....
Two trials, two CEO's
The Wall Street Journal's ($) Holman Jenkins' weekly column today addresses the different troubles facing former Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay and Pfizer's CEO Hank McKinnell. First, Mr. Jenkins examines the indictment against Mr. Lay and observes that it...
United revises bid for federal financing
As noted in this earlier post, the federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board announced last week that it had rejected Chicago-based United Airlines' application for a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, which was the foundation of United's reorganization plan to emerge...
Holman Jenkins on Reagan's legacy to business
Holman Jenkins, Jr.'s Wall Street Journal ($) Business World column today is a nice tribute to the late President Reagan's legacy toward the business community. Here is a tidbit: The late president came into his political maturity as a traveling...
Holman Jenkins on the charade of "energy independence"
This Wall Street Journal ($) Holman Jenkins, Jr. piece lays the wood to John Kerry's "energy independence" blather that he has been using recently in various campaign speeches and working papers. The entire column is a brilliant expose of the...
Spitzer v. Grasso
This Holman Jenkins, Jr. WSJ ($) Business World column examines New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer's latest propoganda campaign . er, I mean, lawsuit in which he seeks to recover a substantial portion of the rather large $200 million in...
Holman Jenkins on the Google IPO
Holman Jenkins' WSJ ($) Business World column today examines of the blather that the owners of Google are trotting out to the public to promote their upcoming intial public offering. The entire column places the context of the Google IPO...
America's health care finance mentality
Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal ($) has some interesting observations about America's health care finance mentality today in his weekly Business World column. The subject of the column is the rather inane political issue involved in the importation...
Holman Jenkins on the sad case of Jamie Olis
As noted on this blog before, Holman Jenkins is one of America's most insightful commentators on business issues. In his Wall Street Journal ($) column today, Mr. Jenkins addresses the injustice that occurred recently in the 24 year sentence given...
Holman Jenkins on Health Care Finance
Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal and is the author of the weekly Business World column. He is one of America's most insightful thinkers and commentators on the political implications...
Analyzing the proposed marriage of Tinkerbell and Howard Stern
For my money, Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal (subscription requried) is one of the most insightful commentators on business and related political matters on the scene today. In today's column, Mr. Jenkins analyzes Comcast's bid for Disney. The...
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