|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Metadata
| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
Al-Reuters is red-faced after bloggers busted them for running an obviously doctored photo of bombed-out Beirut. Of course, the Reuters editors' culpability in this is negligence rather than outright mendacity. The prime culprit: the Arab stringer that supplied the photo. But at what point does Reuters' reliance on these stringers become knowing connivance with propagandists? This is not by a long shot the first time an Arab stringer has slipped doctored or invented material into a western wire service, or even into Al-Reuters, for that matter. Staged insurgent car bombs and firefights in Iraq, the al-Dura imposture in the West Bank: at what point do the wire services admit that giving an Arab a camera to photograph Middle East news and expecting to get honest results is like handing your wallet to a 10-year old gypsy and expecting to get it back at all.
[Ben H.: 8/6/06 10:04] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Adventures in Euphemism
We sovereign bond traders don't get to see countries actually default much anymore, so when it finally does happen you can't blame us for getting excited. I'm not even sure Belize counts as a real country, but I'll take what I can get. The former British Honduras in rather un-British fashion this week approached its creditors with a piteous tale of financial embarrassment and a plea for relief. Walter Wriston famously said that "countries don't go bankrupt." Very true. No bankruptcy regime exists for sovereigns, one consequence of which is that when a country stops paying its debt, it can describe such event in colorfully euphemistic ways. Belize has broken new ground, though, in calling its situation a "debt rearrangement."
In order to slightly broaden the scope of Belize's humiliation, I tipped these guys.
[Ben H.: 8/4/06 14:08] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Lip-readers trained by watching hours upon end of Mr. Ed managed to descry tjat the horse called the jockey "the son of a midget."
[Ben H.: 8/3/06 16:00] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Tabloids Rule
The Herald: "I Hope He Dies" -- the Red Sox' cuban-American Mike Lowell on Castro:
I don’t care if he dies,” Lowell said. “There are so many people who have died because of him and there’s been so much wrongdoing and so many human rights violations that I hope he does die. That sounds bad, but it’s the truth.
[Ben A.: 8/2/06 19:22] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Can Pringles Be Dinner? What About Breakfast?
I tend to read a couple of books simultaneously. But this weekend, did I continue to read (the very good) American Pastoral, recommended by Ben H? Did I continue to read the (doubtless enlightening) The State, promoted by hero of culture Will Wilkinson? No. I went to a used bookstore, bought, and greedily consumed a horrendously awful space opera whose awfulness was proclaimed by its very title. Now I feel vaguely nauseated.
[Ben A.: 7/31/06 21:31] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
It's a Great Trade...
...if we can call a salary dump a trade. Abreu and Lidle for one top tier prospect is theft. Abreu may be on the downside, but he remains a highly productive player. The stretch drive will be tough for Boston.
[Ben A.: 7/31/06 19:16] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Yanks Pull Off A Good Trade
Ben A., what do you think about the latest Yankees trade? I spend most of my baseball-devoted Bandarlog posts to carping at Cashman's moves, but this one makes sense. Of course, it helps when you are trading with a team which, like the Phillies, is holding a fire sale. It's kind of like in trading EM, when you get your hands on a juicy security cheap, the attendent feeling of triumph is attenuated if the seller is a Japanese Bank. Anyone can take candy from a baby.
The Yankees have a clear need for a corner outfielder. The lack has not been felt so much due to the unexpectedly good performance of Melky Cabrera; a performance as unlikely to last over the long term as it is surprising. Abreu comes with a high cash price tag, but one that won't last past next year. And the prospects the Yankees gave up did not include any that should be considered bankable star material.
[Ben H.: 7/31/06 12:45] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Florence King: Heroine of Culture
You know who the real winner in the Ann Coulter controversy is, don’t you? The Geico insurance company. Whenever their ad comes on after I’ve been watching Coulter do her howling Boudicca number, their little gecko lizard seems so plangent and defenseless that I want to hold him close and protect him.
link.
[Ben A.: 7/28/06 08:14] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Nothing like being a homeowner to learn you some handymanning skills. People tell you that when you become a homeowner, you can't just "pick up the phone" when something goes wrong with your place that way you would as a renter. Quite untrue. You can simply pick up the phone. The difference is that the bill comes to you. That tends to focus one's energy on fixing problems before calling in the professionals.
[Ben H.: 7/27/06 21:20] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Handiness on the Rise
Every so often, I will be speaking with my Dad and he will let drop in passing that yesterday he thought the heater ‘sounded wrong,’ or plastered something, or fixed a broken doorknob. Like this is the most natural thing to do in the world. This gene skipped me. I don't know what heaters are supposed to sound like (loud?). When a doorknob goes wrong in my life I stare at it in mute frustration and think about moving. This is a shameful deficiency, and now that I own a place, seems unspeakably feeble. Thus, we have embarked on a limited program of personal betterment: Two weekends ago we re-grouted our shower; last weekend, I stained a wardrobe. So far, nothing is on fire, and no one has been poisoned. Baby steps.
[Ben A.: 7/27/06 08:23] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Chicago Is An Emerging Market
It has oftened been remarked that retailing and distribution in most emerging markets is quite fragmented and inefficient. One reason advanced for this tendency is the high levels of informality in the retailing and distribution sector. Small operators run their business in "grey", hiring their workers off the books, evading turn-over or value-added taxes, etc. Big companies simply present too inviting a target to regulators and tax authorities to get away with this. Whatever economies of scale they could reap are largely negated by the costs imposed by operating "in the white", namely taxes set to artificially high rates due to rampant evasion, unrealistic minimum wages, and other labor market rigidities.
The city of Chicago has long enjoyed emerging-markets levels of corruption. Apparently, it aspires to emerging-markets quality retailing. The city council has passed a bill which selectively imposes a high minimum wage on "big box stores". It will create -- as a matter of law rather than the breaking of it -- the same conditions which obtain in lawless EM countries: one set of rules for big companies and another for small companies. The net effect is an enormous subsidy for inefficient small retailer, who pay their (unproductive) workers poorly, rather than any meaningful upward pressure on wages.
[Ben H.: 7/27/06 06:42] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
The Taste of The French Cultural Elite
I liked The Taste of Others too. And I agree with Ben A that its handling of the bourgeois couple reveals a lot about the attitudes of right-thinking French folks toward the bourgeoisie. You could say that movie's message is "Hey, factory owners are people too, and we should be indulgent toward them when they make their first clumsy steps towards an appreciation of culture." But the factory owner's wife is such a total ditz that, as Ben A says, you also get the message that many of them may be unredeemable after all.
The reason this particular case interests me is that it fits into the thesis of the book I'm writing (I've sent a draft out to some native francophones, so yes, it is moving forward), which tries to lay out the whole dynamic, or rather stasis, of France's socio-economic stagnation. It's a fact that French culture disdains businessmen. In movies they tend to be depicted as buffoons or bogeymen. So Jaoui's movie is an interesting departure from the conventional French wisdom. But an even more radical departure, and an even better movie, is Comme une Image, which was released in the US as "Look at me". It's another Jaoui movie, and Jean-Pierre Bacri (her husband, I think, or the closest French equivalent since only reactionaries actually get married there) is again the male lead. Only this time he's playing a bishop of the French cultural elite; having suggested that bourgeois folks might not be so bad, they're now suggesting that the literati might not be so great. That they might be outright jerks, actually. I think I may have posted about this movie before but I'll risk repeating that it's one of the only contempory instances of French culture critiquing itself incisively. Check it out if you haven't seen it.
[Doug: 7/22/06 21:42] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Taste of Others
I liked the movie; for me the interesting inversion was that a bona fide "artistic" writer/director like Joui would make a businessman her protagonist.
As I recall, Fleming made this valuable observation apropos of how J.K. Galbraith used the word "comfort".
[Ben H.: 7/21/06 06:11] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Lack of Mercy is a Tell
Most people do not use the word “affluence” as an epithet. John Kenneth Galbraith did, and this tells you everything you need to know about him. Donald Fleming observed* that this inversion of evaluative terms is a frequent habit of moralists and is almost invariably revealing. When you understand why, for Machiavelli, “virtue” often means cutting people in half and leaving their bodies in the public square, you have learned much of what he has to teach.
For fiction, the trick works less well, but I think I may have a substitute. One simply identifies the character towards whom the author shows no mercy whatsoever. This will not work for certain genres. Indeed, one way to separate drama from melodrama is that this mercilessness is rare.** Yet when careful authors slip, the lapses are wonderfully illuminating. Last night, I watchedThe Taste of Others. Agnes Joui, the director, writer, and bona fide superbabe, avoids caricature scrupulously. Yet in one case she can’t help herself, and absolutely tears to pieces Angelique, the self-absorbed interior decorator who will never listen to her clients. Appropriately enough, Angelique is the character least capable of understanding other people’s tastes, or even of conceiving that other people might have different tastes. This makes her, for Joui, completely unredeemable.
* I believe, Ben H, it was you who passed this on to me.
** For example, what separates 40 Year Old Virgin from The Wedding Crashers? Answer: 40 Year Old Virgin has no equivalent to Sack Lodge, a character raised up solely for the purpose of focusing hatred (He might as well be the leader of the Alpha Betas from Revenge of the Nerds). Compare likewise Anchorman and Old School.
[Ben A.: 7/20/06 23:31] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Mutually Assured Destruction: The FDI Version
Congress is debating legislation to make more onerous the approval process for foreign direct investment in the U.S.. That our country should now want to throw up any sort of roadblock to FDI, what with our giant current account deficit needing funding, smacks of almost Latin American levels of self-defeating short-sightedness.
Congress's sudden panic about foreign investment arose from the controversy over Dubai Ports World's potential control of a few U.S. port concessions via its takeover of P&O and, before that, the scuppered bid of Chinese oil giant CNOOC for Unocal. That domestic "strategic assets" might end up in the hands of unfriendly government-controlled companies created a certain amount of worry (real or disingenuous) on the part of security-minded politicians (never mind that UAE is not really an unfriendly goverment). A similar set of concerns surrounded rumors that RUssia's Gazprom might try to bid for UK gas distributor Centrica. What if those dastardly Russkies shut off the gas to Number 10 Downing Street!!
Now, it is possible that U.S. politicians understand the folly of their ostensible fears and merely see an opportunity to create a gate of which they will be the gatekeeper; or rather a toll-booth of which they will be toll-collector, through which every deep-pocketed foreign investor must pass before he can buy a business in the U.S. But in case a few among them may honestly quail before the thought of CNOOC controlling oil properties in the U.S., it should be pointed out that this line of analysis gets things almost exactly backwards.
As any investor in emerging markets knows, when you invest in immovable hard assets in a foreign jurisdiction, you're not gaining a strategic advantage against the host government. Not at all. Rather, you are delivering up a defenseless hostage! This of course does not apply to the situation where a PLA-controlled enterprise acquires a U.S. defense contractor and thereby gets access to all manner of secrets*. But in most cases -- cases like Centrica -- the first lesson of emerging markets investing is: physical control is everything. Gazprom tries to get Centrica to turn off the taps? The British police will have the British workforce turn them back on.
U.S. and U.K. companies have for a long time been trying to buy upstream oil and gas assets in Russia. It's a tricky business. BP back in the late '90s got screwed out of its holdings in Sidanco and found itself without recourse. Now, to the extent Gazprom owned Centrica, BP would not be without recourse. If the Kremlin lets BP get messed with, well maybe Number 10 screws with Centrica. In fact, it seems to me that at least one government really gets this joke. Italy's ENI (the partly state-owned gas company) has been shopping around for Russian assets and has actually mooted the idea that Gazprom might take a stake in ENI's Italian distribution business. Yes, in the land of the Mafia, they understand the concept of exchange of hostages...
*although in point of fact, if we trust the classification system, the PLA could own that contractor but the U.S. employees with security clearances would not be able to share sensitive info with the company's owner.
[Ben H.: 7/20/06 20:02] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Vote Lottery
I am opposed to pure games of chance. We could make it a lot more fun and theologically justifiable if we inject an element of skill. To be eligible to win the lottery, a voter should have to vote for the winning candidate. Perhaps even better, the voter should have to vote for the losing candidate. Think about the game-theoretic implications of that! We could make elections more unpredictable, which would, at the very least and among other things, probably itself induce greater turn-out!
[Ben H.: 7/18/06 18:03] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Congratulations!
To my sister Clare who was married on Saturday, by Lake Leelenau in northwest Michigan. The wedding was great notwithstanding the heat wave.
[Doug: 7/18/06 18:02] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Cost of Betrayal
The Harvard faculty claimed Larry Summers' scalp and now they are getting billed for it. Harvard has lost several large donations since the Corporation hung Larry out to dry. According to the WSJ, the cancelled gifts amount to no less than two-thirds of Harvard's total 2005 donation haul. Might the faculty now be having some second thoughts -- at least the profs who don't already have endowed chairs?
[Ben H.: 7/13/06 13:23] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Why People Get Frustrated With Courts
Under what analysis can it be within the government's power to require ID to purchase Sudafed but not within the government's power to require ID to vote?
[Ben H.: 7/13/06 10:18] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Soccer Problem
The signal-to-noise ratio in soccer scores (as soccer is played at this level) is much too low
This is obviously correct, and the problem is only exacerbated by the essentially random nature of the tie-breaking procedure. Bill James, in his wonderful essay "The Perfect Machine," notes how many times professional basketball has made rule changes to improve play. For example, when basketball coaches realized that the way to beat a superior tema was to minimize the number of possessions, the league instututed the shot-clock to avoid play-deadening tactics. When teams started crowding the basket, the league instituted the 3-point shot. Baseball, in James' telling, labors under a delusion that all flaws in the game are self-correcting, and this myth of the perfect machine deters action even as play, and the pace of play, shifts dramatically. There were few three hour games or three-pitcher innings in 1940.
Soccer seems to this casual observer very much on the baseball side of the spectrum. When, I wonder, was the last major play-influencing FIFA rule change, and is anyone besides American cranks like me (who don't, and shouldn't, count) agitating for alteration in the rules?
[Ben A.: 7/12/06 00:56] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
World Cup Thoughts
I don't know why Zidane snapped but I did have two answers to a friend who asked my reaction to the World Cup final, namely: (1) the signal-to-noise ratio in soccer scores (as soccer is played at this level) is much too low, i.e. random events and questionable calls can easily result in the worse team winning, which I think happened in the final; (2) the country of France as a whole was spared a deus-ex-machina resolution of its malaise, a superficial and ephemeral resolution, which would only have put off even longer the moment when they decide to get their shit together.
[Doug: 7/11/06 21:01] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Rumors Of His Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated...
... in the past, but that doesn't mean we can't hold onto some hope that this time the whispers in the market of Castro's death are true.
[Ben H.: 7/11/06 14:25] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Big Dig: the best quality construction the money left over after grafters have had their fill can buy. Thanks, Tip O'Neill!
Come to think of it, Congress hasn't had such a dire effect on a female motorist since Ted Kennedy took the wheel on Martha's Vineyard all those years ago. (Reader BvC suggests that it should be renamed Ted Kennedy tunnel, given the lady-killing propensities of each).
[Ben H.: 7/11/06 07:09] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Exit, Voice, Loyalty
To my shame, I've never read this book, but I know that the possibility of consumer Exit seems to inspire loyalty-inducing supplier behavior. To wit, I once called Verizon because they stuck me with a $7/minute tab on an international call. This was, I guess, the stated rate in my plan but as it was orders of magnitude higher than market, I complained. Their response, in brief was, "why did you call before figuring the rate, I would never do such a thing." The answer I gave was: "because I didn't think you would take the occassion to violate me, goodbye." I just switched to voice-over-IP. These guys know they can lose me in a minute, and consequently, employ carribean call center dudes of unsurpassed gentility and helpfullness. Rock on, market liberalism.
[Ben A.: 7/10/06 00:32] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Separation of Powers vs Shared DNA, Part II
The Polish political scenario I outlineback here it appears will at last materialize. The Polish PM tendered his resignation, opening the way for the Jaroslaw Kaczynski to take over the job, while his twin brother Lech holds the presidency.
In honor of this strange and momentous occurence, my colleague PV and I put together a commemorative poster.
[Ben H.: 7/9/06 13:45] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
N. Korea Missiles: If I Were White House Spokesman
"We hope that, in the wake of the humiliating failure of their long-range missile, the North Korean government will not torture to death the engineers who built it, nor their families, but will instead execute them in a rapid and humane fashion."
[Doug: 7/5/06 10:25] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
A Movie You Should See, Though It Is Free of Heavy-Lifting Set Pieces...
...is Patrick Creadon's documentary Wordplay. The "star", so to speak, is puzzlemaster Will Shortz. The documentary follows a set of extreme crossword enthusiasts through the annual crossword championship tournament, founded by Shortz as a young man in the late 1970s, which takes place every year at the Stamford Marriott. It also features interviews with a number of famous people who consider themselves crossword devotees talking about what doing crosswords means to them. I know... doesn't sound thrilling, but it's a good show...
[Ben H.: 7/4/06 12:08] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
America: Love It And Leave It
That's my agenda for this July 4th. Off to Istanbul this afternoon...
[Ben H.: 7/4/06 11:49] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Stuporman
Thanks, Ben, for assuring me that I am not missing anything. Now, I have never derived much enjoyment for super-hero stories, whether on film or in comic book (oh, pardon moi, graphic novels). For some reason, though, I've always felt a particularly strong aversion to Superman. I can't put my finger on why. It has always struck me as striving for earnestness, but running out of steam somewhere short of the border of goofyland. Or maybe it's just that my early exposure to the story came from the Christopher Reeve movie. It strained credulity in needless ways. I'll take flying, x-ray vision, stopping trains, but here's where it ends: Lois Lane. I mean... you're the most powerful being on Earth... and you're chasing Margot Kidder??
[Ben H.: 7/3/06 20:31] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Back
I spent the past week in Arcadia, and not in the literary sense of being sexually confused at Oxford. Like every single National Park I've ever been too, it's beautiful and makes one happy and proud to be American.
Truth, Justice, and All That Stuff
Emerging wisdom: we are lucky that Bryan Singer didn't direct X-men 3. The new Superman movie is a tedious, ill-plotted blob. And you know what? The repeated set-piece of Superman lifting heavy stuff just does not inspire awe and wonder.
[Ben A.: 7/3/06 17:01] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Viral meme on Bloomberg
I've certainly told you guys that I have caused a few incidents in the past with provocative headers on my Bloomberg screen. In most of these cases, I have expected the controversy. Today, the response came as a bit of a surprise. This afternoon's World Cup match pitted Argentina against Germany. The blog has from time to time given evidence of my loathing for the Argies. I decided to tweak them with a header about the game. See below:
As I went about my daily communications with counterparties, I got back a few messages of appreciation on the header. At first, these came exclusively from people I had messaged myself, but then a few started coming from other guys I know on the same desks. One prank-loving London desk decide to try to twit me right back. They had an German-descended Argentine on the desk send me a note saying that as an Argentine Jew from an East German family, he was shocked and disappointed in the header. That got me for a second or two, until I remembered that while he is a German-Argentine, he is of the quite obviously Aryan variety.
And for a few minutes after that, I heard nothing more. But then suddenly, I found myself buried by a torrent of Bloomberg messages from people I don't know from Adam commenting on my header. Most were English; they ate it up, and in some cases added some choice words about the last two countries England punished in war. A few others came from Germans, notwithstanding that my header was really aimed at the Argies. Almost too neatly, these particulary Germans embodied the stereotypes they professed to object to: first off, humorlessness and secondly, a somewhat unfriendly attitude toward the Jews. Quoth one correspondent: "I suppose if it was a sporting event featuring a team from NYC and a team from Israel, and someone were to make a crass anti-semitic joke about it, you'd find that funny, too?" (My reply: "Of course I would. I am tasteless all around. But frankly, i find your scenario rather implausible. When was the last time they held a World Cup for dreidel-spinning or usury?") In the middle of all this, I actually got a couple of phone calls from Bloomberg-enabled strangers, one of whom warned me that "your little joke is flying around London's trading desks and you might want to consider taking it down before you get in trouble." It seems that at a certain point, it got on the radar screen of some of the interdealer brokers, who function in the spreading of Bloomberg ephemera much like prostitutes function in the speading of venereal diseases. By the time I decided to take it down, really just so i could just get some work done, I had received well over 100 messages from strangers.
A few hours after I thought it was all over, our tech guy came over and let me know that our Bloomberg rep called to alert him to the fact that the company had received "complaints" about the header. In typical obtuse P.C. style, they claimed that people might think I was actually a fan of Nazism and that my header was an unironic cheer of support for the movement. Brilliant.
[Ben H.: 6/30/06 16:04] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
More French Media Leadership News
Dao was named CEO by the board of Le Monde Interactif yesterday; her skill at managing technical enterprises will undoubtedly make her a huge success in this role. Since this is France, though, her first act will be to go on vacation.
[Doug: 6/30/06 04:28] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Reaper Near Miss
Alas, Mugabe is alive, well, and ranting. It's possible that the rumor of his death was a garbled reaction to the decease of his information minister, at whose funeral Mugabe appeared today.
[Ben H.: 6/29/06 17:40] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Lacking a Life, I Hereby Replace Myself With Dilbert
Dilbert: Wally, would you like to join my TTP project?
Wally: What does TTP stand for?
Dilbert: The TTP Project.
[Doug: 6/28/06 10:17] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Shareholders in French Companies
France is interesting because it's only three-quarters-embraced capitalism, and the contours of this partial embrace are never defined. So you never know if in fact the owners of the company will be allowed to do what they want with it, or whether the government will invent some law or diktat to do something else with it. Another current example of this is the third most important general-interest daily paper in France, after Le Monde and Le Figaro, namely the leftist Libération. The company is losing money even faster than your average French newspaper (about $1 million a month) and is undergoing a crisis described briefly in English here. Some idiot Rothschild epigone invested $20 million or so in it, some years ago, and now is surprised and unhappy that it's essentially bankrupt. The owners (basically this Rothschild) demanded layoffs a couple months ago; the predictable outcome was a strike, which lasted four days and ended with a compromise of early retirement packages. But the money is still disappearing and so now he's firing the editor in chief. The journalists whined about this in a front-page editorial that says, in essence, that shareholders should have zero influence on the running of the company. Jusy give us your money and go away.
Libération, incidentally, is a crap newspaper. Perfect for a crap country, I'm tempted to add, but France doesn't meet the technical requirements of this term as outlined by Ben H, at least not yet. Un pays à la con in any case.
[Doug: 6/26/06 07:03] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
European Business Shocker
Arcelor falls to Mighty Mittal! It finally occurred to Guy Dolle that Arcelor belongs to its shareholders and not to its management. A novel idea. Mr. Mordashov stands all dressed up, waiting at the altar while the groom is off on his honeymoon with someone else. The question now for him is whether Mr. Putin is the best man...
[Ben H.: 6/25/06 13:53] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
DC Circuit Shocker
Court of Appeals yesterday struck down the SEC's hedge fund registration rules. Few people expected such a result, but let's give credit where credit is due. Activist Phil Goldstein -- a fellow my firm has talked to in the past about his well-publicized campaigns to force underperforming closed-end funds to open up or liquidate -- comes off as a bit of crank, but in this case he deserves credit for insisting, against the spirit of modern American law, that government administrative authority is constrained by the plain meaning of the authorizing statute.
The ruling, though, will probably not portend major changes for the hedge-fund industry. Many large funds were able to conform the rules for exemption from registration and enjoyed enough credibility with their investors that the decision to avoid registration did not unsettle the clients. The SEC's policy favored large and established funds, which could either forego registration or easily afford the high fixed costs of meeting the SEC's standards, at the expense of smaller firms. So from a self-interested perspective, I suppose maybe I should curse the court's decision. Yet my sense of fairness and aesthetic appreciation of efficiency argues the other way. Pre-existing securities laws already punish fraud, insider trading and the like. Registration merely imposed a useless and expensive jacket of red tape on funds, without affording investors or the market any meaningful protection. The SEC hurriedly instituted the registration rules after Eliot Spitzer scooped the Commission on the story of hedge funds "ripping off" mutual fund investors via market-timing schemes. Embarrasment doesn't always midwife healthy policies.
Good riddance and thanks, Phil Goldstein.
[Ben H.: 6/24/06 10:48] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Not that I don't appreciate the artistry of Thierry Henry or the enthusiasm of the Televisa commentator who describe it for Mexican TV, but I think your rendition of their cry, Doug, has fubared the site!
[Ben H.: 6/23/06 18:12] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Neighborhood or Back Lot
Hollywood has invaded my neighborhood yet again. A few months back, I read that the community board here demanded a moritorium on filming, after 4 or 5 major productions took over the streets in quick succession. It seems to have expired. Spiderman 3 rolled into Cobble Hill, occupying both Court and Smith Street for the length of several blocks. The dumpy Cobble Hill Theater I found tranformed into the Stuyvesant Cinemas and a large crowd had gathered to gawk and the peculiar listless inactivity of the movie shoot.
[Ben H.: 6/22/06 21:08] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Don't Fear the Reaper
What is the appropriate emotion when a world-historical evil-doer kicks the bucket (or in the case of Al-Zarqawi, has his bucket kicked)? I confess that my immediate response is not typically somber or refelctive. And I recall that Ben H's whoops of joy over the exit of Sheik Yassin from this material plane prompted rebukes from more decent-hearted people. I was explictly not one such; I was glad (really, glad) to see him go. So too when Uday and Qusay got gunned down.
If I were a good person, or more truly lived my faith, I would think instead how terrible it is that a person could allow himself to become such a monster. How he could die, unamended, unreformed, and unredeemed. But that's not how I feel, that's for sure.
[Ben A.: 6/21/06 21:50] |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Score One for the Reaper (Maybe)
One of our local counterparties called to tell us that there are strong rumors in Zim that Robert Mugabe has died. Let's hope so!
[Ben H.: 6/21/06 10:42] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Score One For France
At lunch the other day there was a family of impeccably groomed bourgeois French people at the next table, with four kids; for those of you who have been wondering what the French answer to "Gavin" is, like I had been, it's "Calixte". The analogy is not perfect though: the great advantage of the French haute bourgeoisie over the American is that Calixte is almost spookily well-behaved.
[Doug: 6/20/06 17:31] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
The Eye Of A Self-Blinded Beholder
Great anecdote from a WSJ opinion piece this morning. I doubt it will surprise any of our readers, but it is too perfect to pass up:
Once in a while a news story so speaks for itself that it threatens to put commentators out of a job.
In this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts, "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. Its creator, David Hensel, must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibit of contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that in transit his sculpture had gotten separated from its base. Judging the two components as different submissions, the Royal Academy had rejected his artwork proper -- a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite -- and selected the plinth. "It says something about the state of visual arts today," said Mr. Hensel. He didn't say what. He didn't need to.
Moreover, the Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, "thought to have merit."
[Ben H.: 6/20/06 07:14] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Back From HK
They say that jet lag gets worse as you age. I must be getting old. I pulled what amounted to a week-long all-nighter. I planned to work from 11am to 2am-ish each day out there, but for some reason I kept waking up at 5am and finding myself unable to get back to sleep. However, my aviation narcolepsy proved more powerful than insomnia and I caught up on the 16 hour flight back home.
[Ben H.: 6/17/06 17:32] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Bandarlog Geography Quiz
Can you deduce just from the guests' eyewear what country we just attended a wedding in?
P.S. Congratulations to Zoe and Christian
[Doug: 6/13/06 12:14] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Glass Ceiling Alert
At our office in Hong Kong, in one of the flashiest new skyscrapers in Central, there are two bathroom doors in the main hallway of our floor:
Male And Executive Toilets
Female and Disables Toilets
Now, what do you suppose a wheelchair-bound female executive should do?
[Ben H.: 6/13/06 05:05] |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
Earlier |