Michael Giberson As observed at Freakonomics, my home town of Falls Church, Virginia is (at present) leading Amazon.com’s contest to be the “The Harry-est Town in America.” Freakonomics puts it concisely: Whichever town pre-orders the most copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will receive a $5,000 Amazon gift certificate, to be directed by …
Michael Giberson I’ve just finished Ken Steiglitz’s book, Snipers, Shills, and Sharks: eBay and Human Behavior. Don’t let the subtitle throw you – the book is neither narrowly limited to eBay nor broadly focused on human behavior. Instead, the book is the best-writted introduction to auction theory I’ve seen. Steiglitz is a Princeton University computer …
Michael Giberson Last December I posted a few comments on a study by John Kwoka that examined the methods of 12 studies on electric power restructuring and found them lacking. Among other things, I said, “Kwoka’s study, funded by the American Public Power Association, did not review the recently completed [study by Scott Harvey, Bruce …
Another Round of “Are We Better Off Because of Power Industry Restructuring?” Read More »
Michael Giberson When it comes to providing for generation resource adequacy in U.S. regional power markets, FERC has generally walked a pretty fine line. On the one hand, FERC has tended to acknowledge the primary role that historically has been played by state law and policy. On the other hand, when regional power markets have …
Michael Giberson Some financial analysts have concluded that maybe the XM-Sirius merger is not such a good idea, or at least not the outright winner that the companies themselves suggest. As the WSJ’s Deal Journal says: “Regulators may not present the only hurdle faced by Sirius and XM in their efforts to forge a successful …
The Good Doctor on the Evils of the Impending Satellite Radio Monopoly Read More »
Michael Giberson If you, like J. Bradford DeLong, are wondering “what the hell they are doing that is worth that kind of money,” then Bookstaber’s book can help. One point of Bookstaber’s argument is to illustrate the problems with the term “hedge fund.” While “hedging” has a particular meaning, and “fund”, too, is well defined, …
Michael Giberson Thoughtful, useful, inadequate and wrong-headed. That’s my reaction upon completing Richard Bookstaber’s book, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation. As I mentioned last week (in The Perils of Financial Innovation, or Not), Bookstaber was among the MIT-trained economists lured from academia to Wall Street …
Bookstaber on the Perils of Financial Innovation Read More »
Michael Giberson Former Apple CFO Fred D. Anderson reached a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the backdating of stock options, including an agreement to pay $3.5 million to settle civil charges. As many of the newspapers stories report, backdating options is not necessarily illegal, but must be properly disclosed and accounted …
Michael Giberson According to the New York Times, Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine is coming out today with its annual list of the the top 25 hedge fund earners. Cue the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth: “There is some question as to what the hell they are doing that is worth” that kind of money, …
Michael Giberson In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jim Fuquay tries to answer the question that may be on the mind of power traders in Texas and elsewhere: When is electricity trading illegal? “They exercise market power. They just come right out and tell you,” [energy market consultant Steven] Stoft said of his experience working for …
Texas Newspapers Asks, “When is Electricity Trading Illegal?” Read More »
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