Coruscation

Commenters propose a succession from Oakland to form the city of "Piedmontclairidge" consisting of Piedmont, Montclair, and Rockridge. We suggest a Liz Krueger style campaign.

Staff from the City Attorney's office then reiterated that the Committee was not being asked to adopt ordinances the homeless advocates were objecting to as unconstitutional, but rather to allow an option of a reduced charge for existing ordinances, and emphasized the broad community support for the program. Jean Quan asked a bunch of clarifying questions, in response to which we learned, again, that adopting the item in question would not introduce a new ordinance, nor would it necessarily change the level of citation for violating the ordinance, but would simply give the prosecutors discretion to charge these crimes either as a misdemeanor (which they are currently) or now as an infraction, as they deem appropriate.

Up to this point, the discussion was fine. Sure, we heard the same thing over and over again, and sometimes after a long day, that can get pretty tiring. But in general, I don't mind. I much prefer that the Council be extremely clear on what they're voting on than they just push things through in a hurry.

Then, the whole thing just collapsed. Jean Quan, totally randomly, started talking about the County's alcohol detention center. She's bothered that the Oakland police don't take more people there, and doesn't see how approving this would do anything to get more Oakland residents into the center. You know, I don't see how the Committee approving the ordinance is going to do anything to make the sidewalks downtown less treacherous to my heels, but I didn't feel the need to march down to City Hall and protest it because of that.

She received a very polite response explaining that first, someone passed out in the street from alcohol needs to go to a hospital, not a detention center, and that two, the center is for people who want to go there willingly for treatment, and it's not something you can force people to do.

Jean Quan then asked if the proposal had been presented to Project Reconnect, and got yet another response from the attorney's office explaining that the proposal was not about homelessness at all. Quan responded that in order for the misdemeanor prosecutions to be successful, we need cooperation of homeless advocacy organizations to create restorative justice programs for them. She suggested delaying the item for a month, and said they should, in the meantime, meet with a coalition of homeless advocates to give their input about how to craft a restorative justice program for homeless people who can't pay their tickets.

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Obama's demeanor illustrates the difference between Hawaii and New York.

As he traveled across the United States mainland during the presidential race, campaigning on a promise of a different kind of politics, Mr. Obama was repeatedly asked by voters and reporters whether he had the stomach to win the contest. His standard answer? He learned how -- and when -- to use his sharp elbows from navigating the thorny terrain of Chicago politics.

U.S. / POLITICS
Obama's Zen State, Well, It's Hawaiian
By JEFF ZELENY
Published: December 25, 2008
As Barack Obama vacations in Hawaii, his friends say his mood embodies the Aloha Spirit.

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With financial markets in crisis and unemployment rising by the hour, many co-op boards are looking very skeptically at buyers who have large stock portfolios or who earn much of their income in year-end bonuses that may not materialize.

To counter that and to satisfy the concerns of co-op boards, these buyers are finding that they must either increase their down payment to 50 percent of the sale price or more, or put six months' to two years' worth of maintenance into an escrow account.

Some boards have also made it clear that they prefer buyers with fixed-rate mortgages over those with adjustable-rate mortgages; buyers with interest-only mortgages need not apply. These are not the sorts of requirements that appear in the bylaws or the house rules, but in this market, word gets out quickly after a board rejection.

"If you get a board turndown, you can ask how to improve the application," said Richard Grossman, the executive director of downtown sales for Halstead Property. "I've seen some approvals lately where the board tried to work with the buyer, either by asking for money in escrow for maintenance or for additional down payment to increase the equity in the apartment."
Robert J. Rosa, an executive vice president at Century 21 NYC, said that's exactly what happened in a recent deal. He represented a father buying an alcove studio for his daughter on East 21st Street. The father, an investment banker, planned to take out an interest-only mortgage even though he had about $10 million in liquid assets and could easily have paid cash for the studio.

REAL ESTATE
Co-op Boards Get Tough and Tougher
By VIVIAN S. TOY
Published: December 21, 2008
Sales are weak, but co-op boards aren't loosening up. They are pulling up the drawbridge. Buyers with large stock portfolios are now frowned upon. As for year-end bonus buyers: Forget it.

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Imagine you are stranded on a desert island. For fresh water, there are three natural springs, but it is possible one or more have been poisoned. To minimize your risk, what is your optimal strategy for drinking from the springs? You might:

• select one of the three springs at random and drink exclusively from it
• select two of the springs at random and drink exclusively from them, or
• drink from all three springs.

Your best strategy is to drink from just one spring. Yet, according to a certain financial theory, the optimal strategy is the diversified approach of drinking from all three springs.

RiskChat

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In Beijing, it didn't matter what the Dow was, of course, since the Chinese government's decision to make itself the world's leading patron of architecture was dependent on other things, including cheap labor. In time for the 2008 Olympics, the world saw the fruits of China's decision to put aside nationalism, hire the greatest architects from around the world, and let them do the kind of things they could never afford to do at home. That brought us two of the greatest buildings of the year, Herzog and de Meuron's extraordinary Olympic Stadium, the stunning steel latticework structure widely known as the Bird's Nest; and Norman Foster's Beijing Airport, a project that was not only bigger than any other airport in the world, but more beautiful, more logically laid out, and more quickly built. And the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture--a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism--turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism.

-- Paul Goldberger, the New Yorker's architecture critic.

New Yorker via Kottke.

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New York is city of excitement and dream-making. Nice American Agency introduce this girl to many nice and sexy American men of wholesome goodness with upper east side doorman buildings. One day, the girl goes to drink with George, a business man of hedgefunds who is getting in on bottom floors and is also liking of back doors. She is so nervous before date, she does the bronze of herself twice in tanning booth. Ha ha! Is not matter, George likes very much what he sees and offers her highest of compliments, she is like the Barbie Doll that is come to life!

Precis.

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Lessig argues for publicly funded election campaigns.

Without suspicion of lobbyists and campaign contributions motivating legislators,
the public would suspect stupidity, not corruption, as the causal mechanism in law.

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Mathew Yglesias gets some attention this week.

What makes Matt worth noting ?

He's mildly ingratiating, sometimes merely diplomatic; and he shows the education and writing ability to articulate the practical consensus of his readers.

On the downside, he moves is blog every six months, to the American Prospect, Tapped, Atlantic, to ThinkProgress; maybe he should just park it on Xanga.

More on the triumph of concensus articulation over expertise, via Eric Falkenstein:
Why leaders arent smart;
Michael Lewis misses again
where intellects get their intuition
Paul Krugman's humor reveals.

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According to Henny Sender of the Financial Times, the disgraced Bernard Madoff "did not charge his investors fees but was paid through commissions on his trades instead." In this way, Mr. Madoff's incentive compensation was aligned with the number of trades he generated and had little to do with his returns.

In contrast, most fund managers are typically compensated with a fixed management fee and a variable incentive fee. The management fee is a set proportion (typically 0.5% to 2% per year) of a fund's assets under management and is paid regardless of the manager's performance. The incentive fee, on the other hand, depends squarely on the manager's ability to generate positive returns. Specifically, the incentive fee is computed as a percentage (anywhere from 0% to 50%) of gains above a certain threshold known as a hurdle rate. The hurdle rate is typically set at a level (0% to 3% per month) above the last highest cumulative return value delivered by the manager. The last highest cumulative return value of the fund is known as the high watermark level. Most of the income of a successful fund manager is derived from his incentive fee.

Several academic studies have analyzed the relationship between fund fees and future fund performance. The results show that while the management fee has no relation to future fund performance, the incentive fee does. Furthermore, most studies suggest that the higher the investment fee, the higher fund's return is likely to be in the future.

Opinion: Did Madoff's Fee Structure Predict His Demise?

By Irene Aldridge, ABLE Alpha Trading Ltd.
Friday, December 19, 2008 11:50:12 PM ET

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What does a fund of funds do ?

Fairfield Greenwich Group promised its investors that money could not be moved from its accounts with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities without two signatures. It said that it would independently calculate the value of the funds it invested at Mr. Madoff's firm at least once a week. It promised to reconcile statements from individual trades with Mr. Madoff's custodial records.

As it raised money all over the world, Fairfield also made detailed pledges about how it would monitor and track Mr. Madoff's investments, the documents show. Now, investors and regulators are sure to ask whether Fairfield made good on those promises -- or whether it was a facilitator of the Madoff scandal as well as a victim.

Similar questions may arise for the dozens of banks and hedge funds around the world that reaped extraordinary fees for steering investments to Mr. Madoff over the last decade. None of them, however, earned more from their Madoff business than Fairfield did during the firms' 20-year relationship.

BUSINESS
Firm Built on Madoff Ties Faces Tough Questions
By ALEX BERENSON and ERIC KONIGSBERG
Published: December 22, 2008
Fairfield Greenwich Group took over $500 million in fees from money it placed with Bernard L. Madoff's fund.

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Looking at upper-middle-class homes, Lareau describes a parenting style that many of us ridicule but do not renounce. This involves enrolling kids in large numbers of adult-supervised activities and driving them from place to place. Parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. They make concerted efforts to provide learning experiences.

Home life involves a lot of talk and verbal jousting. Parents tend to reason with their children, not give them orders. They present "choices" and then subtly influence the decisions their kids make. Kids feel free to pass judgment on adults, express themselves and even tell their siblings they hate them when they're angry.

The pace is exhausting. Fights about homework can be titanic. But children raised in this way know how to navigate the world of organized institutions. They know how to talk casually with adults, how to use words to shape how people view them, how to perform before audiences and look people in the eye to make a good first impression.

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential -- a child's sphere, not an adult's.

Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. "Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones," she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood. There was much less talk in the working-class homes. Parents were more likely to issue brusque orders, not give explanations. Children, like their parents, were easily intimidated by and pushed around by verbally dexterous teachers and doctors. Middle-class kids felt entitled to individual treatment when entering the wider world, but working-class kids felt constrained and tongue-tied.

David Brooks

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

March 9, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Both Sides of Inequality
By DAVID BROOKS

For the past two decades, Annette Lareau has embedded herself in American families. She and her researchers have sat on living room floors as families went about their business, ridden in back seats as families drove hither and yon.

Lareau's work is well known among sociologists, but neglected by the popular media. And that's a shame because through her close observations and careful writings -- in books like "Unequal Childhoods" -- Lareau has been able to capture the texture of inequality in America. She's described how radically child-rearing techniques in upper-middle-class homes differ from those in working-class and poor homes, and what this means for the prospects of the kids inside.

The thing you learn from her work is that it's wrong to say good parents raise successful kids and bad parents raise unsuccessful ones. The story is more complicated than that.

Looking at upper-middle-class homes, Lareau describes a parenting style that many of us ridicule but do not renounce. This involves enrolling kids in large numbers of adult-supervised activities and driving them from place to place. Parents are deeply involved in all aspects of their children's lives. They make concerted efforts to provide learning experiences.

Home life involves a lot of talk and verbal jousting. Parents tend to reason with their children, not give them orders. They present "choices" and then subtly influence the decisions their kids make. Kids feel free to pass judgment on adults, express themselves and even tell their siblings they hate them when they're angry.

The pace is exhausting. Fights about homework can be titanic. But children raised in this way know how to navigate the world of organized institutions. They know how to talk casually with adults, how to use words to shape how people view them, how to perform before audiences and look people in the eye to make a good first impression.

Working-class child-rearing is different, Lareau writes. In these homes, there tends to be a much starker boundary between the adult world and the children's world. Parents think that the cares of adulthood will come soon enough and that children should be left alone to organize their own playtime. When a girl asks her mother to help her build a dollhouse out of boxes, the mother says no, "casually and without guilt," because playtime is deemed to be inconsequential -- a child's sphere, not an adult's.

Lareau says working-class children seem more relaxed and vibrant, and have more intimate contact with their extended families. "Whining, which was pervasive in middle-class homes, was rare in working-class and poor ones," she writes.

But these children were not as well prepared for the world of organizations and adulthood. There was much less talk in the working-class homes. Parents were more likely to issue brusque orders, not give explanations. Children, like their parents, were easily intimidated by and pushed around by verbally dexterous teachers and doctors. Middle-class kids felt entitled to individual treatment when entering the wider world, but working-class kids felt constrained and tongue-tied.

The children Lareau describes in her book were playful 10-year-olds. Now they're in their early 20's, and their destinies are as you'd have predicted. The perhaps overprogrammed middle-class kids got into good colleges and are heading for careers as doctors and other professionals. The working-class kids are not doing well. The little girl who built dollhouses had a severe drug problem from ages 12 to 17. She had a child outside wedlock, a baby she gave away because she was afraid she would hurt the child. She now cleans houses with her mother.

Lareau told me that when she was doing the book, the working-class kids seemed younger; they got more excited by things like going out for pizza. Now the working-class kids seem older; they've seen and suffered more.

But the point is that the working-class parents were not bad parents. In a perhaps more old-fashioned manner, they were attentive. They taught right from wrong. In some ways they raised their kids in a healthier atmosphere. (When presented with the schedules of the more affluent families, they thought such a life would just make kids sad.)

But they did not prepare their kids for a world in which verbal skills and the ability to thrive in organizations are so important. To help the worse-off parents, we should raise the earned-income tax credit to lessen their economic stress. But the core issue is that today's rich don't exploit the poor; they just outcompete them.

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For example, four-in-ten Americans with incomes below $20,000 say they are middle class, as do a third of those with incomes above $150,000. And about the same percentages of blacks (50%), Hispanics (54%) and whites (53%) self-identify as middle class, even though members of minority groups who say they are middle class have far less income and wealth than do whites who say they are middle class.

Some 53% of adults in America say they are middle class. On key measures of well-being -- income, wealth, health, optimism about the future -- they tend to fall between those who identify with classes above and below them. But within this self-defined middle class, there are notable economic and demographic differences. For example, four-in-ten Americans with incomes below $20,000 say they are middle class, as do a third of those with incomes above $150,000. And about the same percentages of blacks (50%), Hispanics (54%) and whites (53%) self-identify as middle class, even though members of minority groups who say they are middle class have far less income and wealth than do whites who say they are middle class.

Pew, Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life (2009 April)

Reason

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University of Illinois law professor Larry Ribstein has been a pioneer in the study of how private partnerships have been used as alternatives to solving sticky problems of corporate management.

Much of his work has centered on the problem of aligning managers' and owners' interests. He notes that the private partnership model popular in the private equity world might be very useful for Goldman here.

It seems far more likely that Goldman would borrow a page from private equity firms, going private with debt financing that requires registration under securities laws and carries with it stringent reporting requirements. Sarbanes-Oxley is often presented as the bane of corporate executives but for Lehman, its accounting demands could play the vital role of assuring counter-parties that Goldman was safe to do business with even without the oversight of public shareholders.

[ Clusterstock]

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If you were doing business with Morgan Stanley, your ability to short the stock was a hedge. Say there had been a short-sale ban, or an uptick rule making it hard to short What else might you have done? Well, you might have severed your relationship with Morgan Stanley even faster, accelerating the run on the bank. Or you might have bid up CDS to even more dizzying heights. Or you might have stopped writing Morgan Stanley CDS, prompting others to de-risk in some other fashion.

-- James Surowiecki

[Via Bess Levin and the New Yorker]

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Were the Channels and Subscribe features insufficient ?

Google struck back yesterday, launching two new important YouTube features. The first is YouTube's new high-definition option, which switches to wide screen and features much higher resolution than the usual fare. Since most videos are not HD-formatted, YouTube has set up an "HD Videos Area," where users can search for the highest-quality films the site has to offer. Low-resolution video has been one of the issues keeping advertisers from throwing money at the site, and this may help turn things around.

YouTube's second initiative tackles the site's maddening lack of navigability. Even though companies like CBS and MGM have signed deals to post feature-length shows on YouTube, no one can find them, thanks to the peculiar architecture of the Web site. Now, YouTube has started collecting movies, music, and news on three separate landing pages. The news page will offer video broadcasts of breaking news, and the music and movies pages will showcase the most popular songs and feature-length films, broken down by category. Users will still find themselves lost in YouTube's architecture most of the time, but at least it's a start.

-- Feeling Lucky

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Ultra ETFs deliver a 2 delta. There is a negligible amount of gamma, theta, and vega, a small amount of rho, and some exposure to dividend risk and borrowing costs.

-- ET comment on the option greeks of ETFs.

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Vodcars reports:

So where does that leave us? With the Ford GTs, the FXXs, the Pagani Zondas, the Carrera GTs, and of course, with the true historic classics like the E-Type Jag. These are the real exotics, and guess what--they had better be driven hard. Anyone who has ever met me knows that when it comes to cars, I have lost a few nuts and bolts in my head. I love to drive, even if it's in an aging Nissan 240, a car that somehow got me from NY-SF in 39 hours last month. Cars are meant to be driven. They should have rock-chips and bugs splattered across their front hoods. Seeing an exotic in this fashion gives me pride; it shows that the car is living up to its name and the owner knows how to treat her (Or him if it's named the Bismarck). So obviously, these cars will tend to break more, even crash more.

crash exotics

This is where I have problems with the recent Wall Street Journal article. It gives exotic car owners a bad rap. Obviously, cars are going to crash sometimes; all cars. It's just interesting how we most often hear about the accident's involving high-ends or exotics. It seems every summer we hear stories of 18 year old kids driving down the LIE in their AMG Mercs' which 'mysteriously' lose control and kill everyone on-board. This is a prime example of how money doesn't buy driving talent. I always like to think that if someone has the means to buy an exotic, they have some sense as to how to care for it and how to manage the power/responsibility. There will always be those guys and gals out there who don't work their way up to the top, but rather break it big with a stupid idea or hot single. They get loads of cash, go out and buy the car that will raise their D-list status, then drive it like it's stolen. They usually end up dead in a tree or serving time in an L.A. County prison.

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Carsdirect buying experience:

On Monday I placed an online order with CarsDirect for a Honda Pilot. Dealer Invoice was $32,507 (that's what the dealer pays), and MSRP was $36,040 (the recommended price). Anything above the invoice price is profit for the dealer. The CarsDirect price was $33,306. That leaves $800 in profit for the dealer and CarsDirect to split. Seems fair to me. An hour after I placed the order I had a ten minute conversation with a CarsDirect rep named John. I confirmed I wanted the car, discussed the pros and cons of buying a black vehicle with him, and he promised to call back when he found the car. Twenty minutes later he called back and said he found the car with the options and colors I wanted. He asked when I wanted it and if I wanted it delivered. I said "tomorrow, and yes please deliver it to my house". Total time spent: about 30 minutes.

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Good rant about car ads

The other side of the equation? VW's "Un-Pimp Mein Auto" spots. Swedish actor Stormare is obviously playing off his Uli Kunkel/Karl Hungus character from Lebowski, and while it should be funny to see Stormare goofing on Deutschland, VW poking fun at itself and to watch ludicrous tuner cars get lunched in ridiculous ways, it's too fratty and over-the-top. The wink; the nod; they are too broad. Instead of just being clever, they shout, "Let's show you how clever we really are in a bro-down kind of way. Seth Stevenson has an excellent deconstruction of Crispin Porter + Bogusky's recent ads over at Slate.

mixed metaIV.

It's really hard for me to enjoy the sound of the engine with all that yacking;
I'd rather not carry the extra weight.

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Sean Avery is a jerk, a locker room cancer, and he loves attention. In short, I expect to see him suiting up for Toronto.

-- John Fischer of In Lou We Trust.

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Bespoke notes the launch and raid growth of 3x ETF.

Many have argued that these ETFs are contributing to the volatility of the market due to their leverage. While the huge swings in these things are tempting, the losses can pile up fast with just one bad trade. For the last several months, we have learned how excess leverage has threatened the entire system. After all of this, what kind of message does it send to start creating securities that allow anyone, regardless of their investment experience, to leverage up three times with the simple click of a mouse? Before the introduction of these ETFs, the only way for an individual to increase leverage was through margin borrowing or option trading. Both of these require the brokerage to clearly highlight the potential risks and the investor to acknowledge them. Yet with these ETFs, some investors are potentially leveraging up without knowing the risks involved.

Examples:
Financial: FAS bull, FAZ bear
Russell 1000: BGU bull, BGZ bear

First there was 2x, now 3x, do I hear a 5x.

Also via seeking alpha and Yahoo.

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Now Connecticut offenders -- arrested for allegedly driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol can gaze upward for succor to the friendly peepers of Lady D.U.I. She is the 29-year-old lawyer Teresa DiNardi, and she smiles down from giant billboards on the state's most car-clotted arteries, Routes 91, 95 and 84. She proffers court and motor vehicle representation "starting @ $1,000." Her phone number blazes red: 888-LADYDUI. And in letters the size of six-packs, she warns: Because Hope Is Not a Strategy.

More in DWI or DUI.

TOWN GREEN
'Lady D.U.I.' Comes to Her Own Defense
By GERRI HIRSHEY
Published: January 4, 2009
A lawyer's prominent billboards offering representation in drunken driving cases have prompted criticism.

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Coruscation archives. Read them all.

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felixsalmon, Portfolio writer ( since moved to Reuters).

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we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We'll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we'll set a simple rule - use it or lose it. If a state doesn't act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they'll lose the money.

-- Obama's Key Parts of the Jobs Plan, 2008 December 6

Would spending on planning, consultants, policy, publicity, media relations, public relations folks create more middle class jobs, before the actual construction began ?

Interestingly, there's nary any talk of building prisons to releive overcrowding.

On airport expansion, Coruscation presents the sorry case of SFO's parallel runway for frequent flyiers.

SFO shelved the runway project in June after $75 million worth of
studies. Airport Director John Martin cited a lack of political will
in pushing the controversial project and the shakiness of the
airport's finances.

64% of County residents support runway expansion, poll reports
Tuesday, December 16, 2003, in the San Mateo County Times

The airport spent money on services that had little to do with
studying the environmental impacts of expanding the airfield, and
items such as public relations and lobbying were sometimes hidden in
contracts for engineering or environmental work, according to the
audit.

Audit criticizes S.F. Airport on runway plan
Lavish spending on consultants cited in report to supervisors
Thursday, May 22, 2003, in the San Jose Mercury News

The consultants have included Attorney Karen Skelton, a former deputy
in the Clinton-Gore administration; Brown's campaign strategist Barry
Wyatt; and Jon Rubin, Brown's appointee to the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission. SFO hired Rubin's firm, Bay Relations.

Supervisors gut SFO runway expansion study
$5 million yanked, put into reserve
Tuesday, June 25, 2002, in the San Francisco Chronicle

Specifically, the airport director suspended environmental studies
looking into the viability of a proposal to extend the airport's
runways into San Francisco Bay -- a review that already has taken
four years, cost $75 million and is 80% complete.
...
Executives also have had to contend with a recent audit of the
airport's books that alleged airport officials mismanaged $75
million spent to study the runway extension plan.

Rose, who relied in part on a random sample of invoices, found that
consultants billed the bureau for unusually high airfare, lodging,
equipment and telephone costs. These included round-trip airfares to
Washington for $4,252, a $799 dinner at the Bacchanal restaurant in
South San Francisco and a $4,686 phone bill for an airport
contractor for one month. Consultants also billed the bureau an
average of $16,646 each for three Dell computer workstations with no
explanation for the high cost, Rose said.

Future Cloudy for San Francisco Airport
Declining passenger traffic and a setback in a project to extend its
runways leave executives with more questions than answers.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003, in the Los Angeles Times

... and with support staff

Brown had initially appointed Maher to lead the Department of Parking
and Traffic, but he proved to be so controversial that Brown himself
criticized the short-term parking czar. Instead, Maher went to the
airport, where he has managed to stay almost entirely out of sight
and has seen his pay increase to the point where he's making almost
$30,000 more a year than he did when he first arrived.

Lee's fringe benefits include a Ford Crown Victoria, according to
city records, which has cost taxpayers $1,600 alone in service costs
over the last nine months. And Lee apparently did promote the
airport late last year during a taxpayer-financed $22,000 nine-day
trip to China with two mayoral staffers,

Where is Bill Maher, Wednesday, April 19, 2006, by the San Francisco Bay Guardian

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Valued as a spinoff, but not operated as a spinoff ?

As financial innovations go, tracking stocks have been a bust for a decade and a half. Consider this: From 1984 to 1999, underwriters brought an average of more than 50 equity carve-outs to the Street each year. During that same time period, investment bankers launched a grand total of 23 trackers. That's it.

In a perfect world, things would have stayed that way. In our world, tracking stocks are suddenly popular. This is particularly true at old-economy companies, where managers now seem intent on setting up their new-economy operations as separately valued -- but not truly separate -- businesses. Credit Suisse First Boston, for one, has CSFBdirect for its online brokerage. Sprint has Sprint PCS, which is tied to its wireless business.

Posted in Investing and finance.

The Emperor's New Shares
Tracking stocks are all the rage these days. One management consultant wonders why.
Al Ehrbar - eCFO
April 15, 2000

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CNBC just did a BREAKING NEWS banner with Wagoner's quote:
"We wish economic conditions were better, but they're not".

-- Joe Weisenthal @ 9:32

...

Joe Weisenthal@9:54: Some guy on CNBC just said "The government will fold" and I thought he meant collapse. But he just meant fold, and give in to big auto.

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Tanta of Calculated Risk, dead at 47.
A scathing yet joyous nerd.

Best of: On automated underwriting systems (AUS), underwriting cheat sheets, dogs.

First, there's the old "let's retrain a bunch of subprime loan officers to be prime GSE loan officers." You civilians might think this should be fairly easy, but the fact is that training a lot of these people to be prime loan officers basically means training them to be loan officers. If they had any basic depth of understanding of the business they're in, they could move to prime origination by just reading that other rate sheet. The reality is that they've been doing no-doc no-down no-sweat stuff for so long--some of them have never done anything but--that they're sitting around with the PlayStation waiting for someone to tell them how a 30-year fixed rate loan with a down payment and verified income actually works. Which is to say, their bosses are sitting around in the busier conference rooms trying to figure out if it's possibly worth the time and money to turn these people into mortgage experts instead of corner-cutting order-takers.

Boy are you going to be surprised someday when my obituary picture turns up in the paper.
Tanta | 04.03.08 - 11:34 am |

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