US house prices have collapsed, making mortgage loan portfolios somewhere between impossible to value and valueless. As a result, the investment banks have been devastated. Lehman Brothers has just gone bust, and Merrill Lynch has just been sold at a knockdown price. Bear Stearns went under, and UBS took a massive write-down on its investment … Continue reading In praise of loan securitisation
Banditry
Buy this book. If you understand why you need to buy this book, then buy this book. If you don't understand why you need to buy this book then - for the love of all that's worth a damn - buy this book. Just don't listen to the author talk, because he's got an unfortunately … Continue reading Sir Ben of Goldacre
Bad Scientist Ben Goldacre has dug out a trial which shows the most awesome thing ever: the more exercise you believe you're doing, irrespective of how much you actually do, the healthier you are.
I've joined the illustrious list of left-ish-ists at Liberal Conspiracy. Hurrah! Appropriately enough, my first piece there is bashing the unions...
[phone rings] BJ: Wot ho, Bozza here. BC: Hello. I'm Bob Crow, and I'm evil. I'm going to lead the Tube maintenance workers out on strike (a 5% pay rise just isn't enough, you see) and paralyse the city. BC: [evil laugh] BJ: Oh. That's dashed inconvenient. Is there, erm, anything we can do to … Continue reading Tube strike conspiracy theory
If you wish to spend your afternoon making intrigued-but-appalled whimpering noises, this is the link for you (SFW). Especially this one.
Nando's is great, in general. Fact. Separately, I've been to the Vortex in Stoke Newington, and it's one of the worst venues I've ever had the misfortune to frequent. Fact. It was a quality piece of British [1] service, indeed: they told our party we could eat there, then told us we couldn't, then told … Continue reading On chain restaurants, and their opponents
Chris Dillow makes sense: "If people are prepared to lend to government at less than 1% real interest, let’s bleed them dry, because cheap money won’t last forever; infrastructure spending should be undertaken now, whilst it's cheap." The construction collapse will have the same effect on labour costs, which we can offset by removing the … Continue reading The last word on why the deficit doesn’t matter
As usual, Alex Harrowell makes sense.
So, that new search engine Cuil? It's completely rubbish. Let's take an obvious example: here. If you're searching for "john band", is it more likely that you want a chap named John Band, or is it more likely that you want the Elton John Band but can't remember its lead singer's first name? Clue: Cuil … Continue reading Cuil isn’t