The Daily Dish (Free subscription) | 9 hours ago
Felix Salmon analyzes McCain's promise to balance the budget: Pledging to balance the budget in one term is easy and cost-free: it's the kind of promise which is so improbable that no one's going to hold you to it when...
DealBreaker (Free subscription) | 10 hours ago
Andrew Ross Sorkin's call for a regulatory crack down on those spreading rumors was probably a big hit in the corner offices of Wall Street firms. But it's getting a much frostier reception from some of his fellow scribes. Earlier we pointed out that Portfolio's Felix Salmon gave him a bit of a thrashing in his Market Mover's column. Now we also find that he's getting knocked around by the Deal's...
Grasping Reality with Both Hands (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon writes: > The Economic Policy of John McCain: The more substantive news, in my view, is the list of 300 economists who claim to "enthusiastically support John McCain's economic plan". Would most of them sign their name to the economic plan of any Republican nominee, no matter how vague it was? Possibly. But there are undoubtedly some very heavy hitters on there, including five Nobel laureates...
SeekingAlpha Media Stocks (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon submits: Jon Fine had a long chat with WSJ editor Robert Thomson, and got some interesting statements out of him: Also coming: extensive customizing tools for readers to find, through search, much more Dow Jones content. (In Thomson's groan-worthy formulation, "In the contemporary age of content, the customizer is always right.")... He also says "we're not there" in terms of figuring...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon submits: Andrew Ross Sorkin today tackles the issue of market rumors. He's with Jamie Dimon, and doesn't like them: As Schulte Roth said in its note to clients, which include SAC Capital Management and Jana Partners, two big hedge funds, "spreading false rumors in order to induce others to trade in a company's securities constitutes market manipulation." James Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan,...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon submits: There's a lot of talk in the blogosphere about John McCain's pledge to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term in office. The NYT has two articles, by Michael Cooper and Robert Pear , about whether such a thing is possible. Brad DeLong is scathing, of course, saying that " the only proper response is derision and laughter," and adding for good measure that McCain...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon submits: Tom Krisher has a good overview of the travails at General Motors, where the stock is trading at a 50-year low, battered by speculation that the company might end up declaring bankruptcy. Bankruptcy actually seems like a very good idea to me, since it might well be the only way for the company to implement the kind of radical reorganization which is necessary for any possibility...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | yesterday
Felix Salmon submits: Gari has a question about the new disclosure rules surrounding credit default swaps. Basically, up until now they've been treated, for disclosure purposes, like derivatives, under FAS 133; as of November 15, they'll be treated like guarantees, which come with a lot more detail, under FIN 45. And Gretchen Morgenson, for one, welcomes the increased transparency. But Gari notes...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | 07/07/2008
Felix Salmon submits: InBev has gone hostile , to no one's great surprise, seeking to replace Anheuser-Busch's (BUD) current board with a new slate of nominees including Adolphus A. Busch IV, who is not to be confused with the current CEO, August A. Busch IV. This development was an entirely predictable consequence of A-B refusing to enter any kind of talks or negotiations with InBev (INBVF.PK), while...
SeekingAlpha Media Stocks (Free subscription) | 07/07/2008
Felix Salmon submits: Nat Ives talks to WSJ publisher Les Hinton, who explains the paper's move into general news. Is it driven by Rupert Murdoch's desire to compete head-on with the the NY Times (NYT)? Quite possibly, yes. But Hinton's on-the-record justification also makes sense: "I've read the Journal for 30 years -- more," Mr. Hinton said. "When a big story happened, you'd immediately feel the...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | 07/07/2008
Felix Salmon submits: Ryan Chittum asks if we want to know what caused the global credit crisis, and suggests that if we do, we should " start here " [ pdf file ], with a 22-page report about subprime lender IndyMac (IMB) from the Center for Responsible Lending and former WSJ reporter Mike Hudson. The report certainly manages to be both shocking and depressing at the same time. But by this point it's...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | 07/07/2008
Felix Salmon submits: Complete Story ยป
The DCeiver (Free subscription) | 07/03/2008
I have to admit, my eyes got big when I read that Choire wrote this : At the beginning of the year, the pay rate per pageview on Gawker was $7.50, according to Portfolio's Felix Salmon ; it went to $6.50 for the next quarter and it is now $5. (Other sites vary, based on overall traffic and ad rate.) It's the only place in this article that makes this mistake. The actual rate is per thousand page views,...
The Curious Capitalist (Free subscription) | 07/03/2008
Steve Schwarzman's argument (as filtered by Andrew Sorkin) that the world would be a better place if banks didn't have to report the current market values of all that toxic junk in their portfolios has become the wonky business blogger topic of the week, inspiring posts from Felix Salmon , Barry Ritholtz , Roger Ehrenberg , Yves Smith , Tom Selling , James Mackintosh , and, well, who am I forgetting?...
Seeking Alpha (Free subscription) | 07/03/2008
Felix Salmon submits: Congratulations to wsj.com for posting impressive growth in both page views and unique visitors over the past year. Don't pay too much attention to the numbers quoted: they're "based on the company's internal traffic numbers," and therefore not much use in apples-to-apples comparisons. But the rate of change is probably reasonably reliable, and it's high. Does this mean that...
