Jean-Marc's infotainment stream » The Financial Page

« Expand/Collapse

The Financial Page

March 08, 2010
6:00
Private equity's egregious tax loophole.
» ‎ The Financial Page

It’s the time of year when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of deductions and write-offs. One select group of Americans, though, has a more pressing tax-season task on its mind: preserving a lucrative loophole in the I.R.S. code. The provision allows . . .
February 08, 2010
6:00
James Surowiecki: The perils of economic populism.
» ‎ The Financial Page

It’s been the political equivalent of an intervention: in recent weeks, Democrats have been bombarded with advice about how they should reinvent their economic agenda. The electorate, we hear, wants Barack Obama to be more of an economic populist but less of an ambitious reformer. He has to . . .
January 18, 2010
6:00
James Surowiecki: Why cable companies bundle their channels.
» ‎ The Financial Page

It seems like an annual rite: to usher in the new year, cable providers and networks squabble over programming fees. This time around, the tussles involved Time Warner Cable and Fox, and Cablevision and Scripps, which owns the Food Network and HGTV. These fights, unlike most corporate standoffs, are waged . . .
December 28, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Why the health care bill is worth passing.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Reforming America’s health-insurance system was never going to be an easy task, given people’s natural aversion to change (not to mention Republicans’ aversion to doing anything that might help Barack Obama). But what’s made the task even more difficult is that American . . .
December 13, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Crisis in the Tiger Woods business.
» ‎ The Financial Page

A recent issue of Forbes features a full-page ad for the consulting firm Accenture with Tiger Woods striding through tall grass. The tagline reads, “The road to high performance isn’t always paved.” To which the obvious rejoinder these days is “Sometimes it runs straight . . .
November 30, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: The Frugal Republic
» ‎ The Financial Page

8220;China makes, the world takes.” For decades, that has been the motto of the Chinese economy, which is built on providing an endless supply of goods for the rest of the world to buy. But these days there’s a palpable sense that this needs to change . . .
November 16, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: The Debt Economy
» ‎ The Financial Page

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that all financial crises are the result of “debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale.” The recent financial crisis was no exception, with everyone—homeowners, private-equity investors, our biggest banks—taking on enormous amounts of . . .
November 02, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Priced to Go
» ‎ The Financial Page

In the spring of 1992, the airline industry was in dismal shape, debilitated by the recently ended recession and an overreliance on discounting. So American Airlines announced a new “value pricing” plan, which entailed cutting fares while replacing complex discounts with a simple, four-tier price system. It . . .
October 26, 2009
5:00
James Surowiecki: Why Banks Stay Big
» ‎ The Financial Page

Before the financial crisis, the banking industry was too concentrated and clubby. And now? It’s even more so. In the midst of the crisis, the country’s four biggest banks—Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo—actually got bigger. Thanks primarily to . . .
October 12, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Exit Through Lobby
» ‎ The Financial Page

Resigning in protest is not in the American grain. Robert McNamara stuck around as Secretary of Defense even after he decided that the Vietnam War was a disaster; Colin Powell did the same during the Bush Administration’s push for war with Iraq; and in the lead-up to . . .
October 05, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Will consumer spending really stay down?
» ‎ The Financial Page

For all the uncertainty about the current state of the economy, everyone is sure of one thing: this recession has permanently remade American consumers, turning them from spendthrifts into tightwads. From cover stories on “The New Frugality” to stories about cheapness as a new status symbol and pundits . . .
September 21, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Ratings Downgrade
» ‎ The Financial Page

When Barack Obama went to Wall Street last week to make the case for meaningful financial regulation, he took well-deserved shots at some of the villains of the financial crisis: greedy bankers, reckless investors, and captive regulators. But to that list he could have added credit-rating agencies like . . .
September 07, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Recovery and the fear of inflation.
» ‎ The Financial Page

The economy is still limping, job losses are still rising, and consumers are still reluctant to open their wallets. So it’s the perfect time to worry about . . . inflation? Apparently so, because, of late, the cries of inflation hawks have grown increasingly loud. Pointing to huge deficit spending, and . . .
August 24, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Status-Quo Anxiety
» ‎ The Financial Page

There are times when Americans’ attitude toward health-care reform seems a bit like St. Augustine’s take on chastity: Give it to us, Lord, but not yet. In theory, the public overwhelmingly supports reform—earlier this year, polls showed big majorities in favor of fundamental change . . .
August 03, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Not Home Yet
» ‎ The Financial Page

Last week, when the Obama Administration sat down in Washington with the country’s biggest mortgage servicers, it was sending a clear message: it’s time for banks to be more aggressive in modifying the mortgages of troubled borrowers. But the meeting was also a tacit admission that, while the government has . . .
July 20, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Fifty Ways To Kill Recovery
» ‎ The Financial Page

If you came up with a list of obstacles to economic recovery in this country, it would include all the usual suspects--our still weak banking system, falling house prices, overindebted consumers, cautious companies. But here are fifty culprits you might not have thought of: the states. Federalism, often described . . .
June 29, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Caveat Mortgagor
» ‎ The Financial Page

In 1937, the Massengill Company began selling a health product called Elixir Sulfanilamide, which contained one of the antibiotic sulfa drugs. Unfortunately, it also contained diethylene glycol, a solvent that happens to be deadly to humans. In a matter of months, the elixir killed more than a hundred consumers. The . . .
June 15, 2009
6:00
Will gas prices pump up inflation?
» ‎ The Financial Page

How fast the world turns. Only a few months ago, as consumer spending evaporated and commodity prices collapsed, investors and policymakers were haunted by the spectre of deflation. Today, with the economy showing some signs of bottoming and commodity prices back on the rise, the worry du jour has suddenly . . .
June 01, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Argentina's great coin shortage.
» ‎ The Financial Page

As you walk into the Retiro train station in downtown Buenos Aires these days, you pass a long line of people snaking their way from the station’s entrance to a single window. At first glance, this is unsurprising: what’s more common than a queue in a train station? But there . . .
May 25, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Board Stiff
» ‎ The Financial Page

When Citigroup and Bank of America held their annual meetings last month, shareholders were in an understandably surly mood. Even as the companies’ C.E.O.s apologized for past failures and vowed to do better, shareholders blasted the executives for their incompetence, and talked about the need for dramatic change. Yet, after . . .
May 04, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: How banks got big.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Amid the blizzard of economic data that the government puts out every week, last Tuesday’s report analyzing G.D.P. industry by industry got little notice. But it contained one very interesting piece of data: in 2008, for the first time in sixteen years, the finance and insurance industry shrank. Since 1980 . . .
April 20, 2009
6:00
Lauren Collins: A book honoring mom wit.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Hey, Mom, What’s going on? You know how my friends and I always get a kick out of the e-mails and texts that our moms send us? Like, after the big Hillary debate, when you wrote, “2 quote Bill, she’s a scumbag!” or the time Mrs. Williams thought that . . .
April 13, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: How should companies behave in recessions?
» ‎ The Financial Page

In the late nineteen-twenties, two companies--Kellogg and Post--dominated the market for packaged cereal. It was still a relatively new market: ready-to-eat cereal had been around for decades, but Americans didn’t see it as a real alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat until the twenties . . .
March 30, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: The aims of the Geithner plan.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Not long ago, many of America’s biggest banks made terrible bets on overpriced real estate and suffered huge losses. While the banks insisted that they were fundamentally healthy, economists and politicians declared many of them to be insolvent. Government regulators, though, allowed the banks to stay in business. The banks . . .
March 23, 2009
5:00
James Surowiecki: Europe's stimulus aversion.
» ‎ The Financial Page

In American politics, “Europe” is usually a code word for “big government.” So in the midst of a global recession, with the U.S. and China shelling out trillions in fiscal stimulus, you might expect that European governments would be spending furiously, too. Far from it. While the U.S. is devoting . . .
March 09, 2009
5:00
James Surowiecki: Credit cards in crisis.
» ‎ The Financial Page

In tough times, businesses will do nearly anything to get new customers--look at the big markdowns at retailers and the cheap financing at auto dealerships. But there is an exception to the rule: these days, credit-card companies are trying to get rid of customers. They’re shutting down accounts . . .
February 23, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: Wages, productivity, and the unemployment crisis.
» ‎ The Financial Page

This is the Age of the Incredible Shrinking Everything. Home prices, the stock market, G.D.P., corporate profits, employment: they’re all a fraction of what they once were. Yet amid this carnage there is one thing that, surprisingly, has continued to grow: the paycheck of the average worker. Companies are slashing . . .
February 02, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: The myth of moral hazard.
» ‎ The Financial Page

In the course of the ongoing financial crisis, we’ve been ceaselessly reminded of the dangers of moral hazard--the idea that if people are insulated from the negative effects of their gambles they are more likely to act rashly. When Bear Stearns was bailed out, last spring, the move was . . .
January 19, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: The logic of Obama's rebate.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Cutting taxes is usually a surefire political winner. Yet Barack Obama’s plan to include more than a hundred billion dollars in individual tax rebates in his stimulus package has earned him criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. Critics in his own party think the rebate, which Obama wants . . .
January 05, 2009
6:00
James Surowiecki: When fraudsters go bust.
» ‎ The Financial Page

Along with slashed payrolls, rising foreclosures, and plummeting stock prices, 2008 brought another unwelcome development: a surge in bank robberies, which were up more than fifty per cent in New York. This wasn’t shocking: we typically expect property crimes to rise in hard economic times. There is, though, one crime . . .
December 15, 2008
6:00
James Surowiecki: The newspaper industry's uncertain future.
» ‎ The Financial Page

When the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from . . .
December 01, 2008
6:00
James Surowiecki: Enter, Pursued by a Bear
» ‎ The Financial Page

When news broke that Timothy Geithner was Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of the Treasury, the stock market jumped more than six per cent in the space of an hour. Obviously, this was a good thing, but there was also something weird about the spectacle of the Street’s once fearless . . .

← The Economist: News analysis and views VoxEU.org: Recent Articles →

Jean-Marc's infotainment stream » The Financial Page

Feeds

The Financial Page