Over at Crossing Wall Street, they’ve charted returns on long-term corporate bonds with returns on stocks. They find that the two are quite similar: What I find interesting is that the spread between the returns of stocks and bonds really isn’t that much. I think would surprise many investors that boring bonds have held their [...]
Speaking of monetary policy and seigniorage, we all know that when the government decides to print money, it reduces the real value of money. But what if the value of the money that it prints is worth more than the money itself? If you can’t wrap your minds around that, you should – because it’s [...]
In a headline (“Banks take blame for credit crisis”) that could almost come from the Onion, I saw this in the Financial Times: The Institute of International Finance, representing more than 375 of the world’s largest financial companies, acknowledged “major points of weaknesses in business practices”, including bankers’ pay and the management of risk. But [...]
If you’re not up to reproducing (or, in the case of same-sex couples, if you can’t): Fear not. You can – for the low, low price of $25,000 – buy a child that was born from a surrogate mother through a clinic in India that will take care of all your birthing needs. And this [...]
After today’s depressing news we need some cheering up. From last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart, here’s Aasif Mandvi breaking down oil prices for the uninitiated, after the news that oil prices were at an all-time high. PS: They’ve dropped a little since then, but only because of the payroll figures news. addthis_url [...]
It’s no secret that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries have a much larger representation in the Forbes world’s billionaires rankings. What’s more interesting is the origination of the Indian billionaires’ wealth (four of the top eight billionaires were Indian). Says the WSJ‘s Robert Frank: Clearly, Indian wealth has a different flavor than American [...]
The Indian Press coverage of the Nano is borderline sycophancy, and wholly inaccurate. The headline was ‘Tata’s Nano: High-end version to hit Europe’: At the unveiling, Mr Tata said that the top-end variant on display could find its way to Europe one day, though there’s nothing planned for now. “The Nano will address global markets [...]
Friday’s New York Times has a nice graph that describes movies in terms of their box office receipts and longevity. The height is a measure of weekly box office receipts, and the width is in time. So the movie which people continued to watch even after the first few weeks, will exist on the chart [...]