Who Makes the IPod Or Globalization 101

Economist's View: Hal Varian: Who makes the iPod?

How to Price Art

The bigger the better? Or is it dogs?

Blackstone

It still has a lot further to go. It should be trading at no more than 12x.

Simple Explanation of the Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Blowup

In song.

Intellegence, Management and Government

The Becker-Posner Blog: Intelligence and Leadership--Posner
talks about the limited " versatility of combined general-specific human capital that a lateral entrant brings to a high level government job of a managerial or advisory rather than technical character." In other words smart people might just be bad managers for three reasons: 1) intelligent people often neglect other traits of good management and rely only on intelligence, 2) logical reasoning does not always provide the best way to solve political problems, 3) smart people often don't listen to staff who are not as smart as they are but might know more about a specific problem.

Is Chinese Art a Bubble

FT.com / Wealth / The art market - Chinese painting’s long march
Not enough of the good stuff.

Raw Fish

NYT Book Review highlights the history of sushi and two books:
The Zen of Fish and The Sushi Economy.

Graphical display of Information

This is an interesting speech in regards both to its content (development) and presentation. Hans Rosling on stats and third world myths. Here is the site to play with the data yourself.

Long Short Equtiy secrets revealed

Many are really long only funds that lose money on shorts. As shorting is so difficult, a number of managers are shorting etfs.

Gas Prices Explained

Why it costs $70 to fill up.

Monsters?

On wall street agency trading desks.

Capital Ideas Evolving

I wish that I had read and understood the original Capital Ideas by Peter Berstein. Here is a shorted review of the new book.