The Returns to Financial Engineering

Willem Buiter writes here about a highly-profitable strategy undertaken by Amherst Holdings.

Morse: the Trinity link

Those of you familiar with Sergeant Lewis’ character in the Inspector Morse series may find it appropriate that actor Kevin Whately in fact comes from impeccably academic stock.

Anglo-Irish Bank: “Spending cash we do not have to save a bank we do not need”

Brian Lucey explains in this Irish Times article: you can read it here.

An Emerging Consensus on NAMA Overpayment?

One of the interesting aspects of the evolving public discussion about NAMA is that economists from the stockbroking community have become increasingly explicit about the fact that NAMA will overpay for its assets.  The latest example was the column in today’s Sunday Tribune by Oliver Gilvarry of Dolmen Stockbrokers.  He suggests that NAMA’s approach to pricing will be as follows:

The haircuts will be determined by what the banks can take without requiring large injections of capital.

Similar predictions have been made in other recent reports by Davys, JP Morgan and others.

Raise the Last Glass

The PBS series Wide Angle recently made an interesting film on the failure of Waterford Crystal: