Articles
Google Stock Meltdown
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 3:44pmLooks like not even Google can defy gravity. Today, the search engine giant's stock lost more than 10 percent of its value, dropping below $400 a share for the first time in two years, when the company's stock was still on the upswing. Bloomberg News reports that Google has lost 40 percent of its value since the year began and is likely to continue its tailspin until early 2009.
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Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 3:26pm
Throughout the past three weeks, the chattering class wondered what would happen if we didn’t bail Wall Street out. Today, we got our first glimpse.
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Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 2:15pm
The new Warren Buffett biography, The Snowball, comes out today. Of course, we learn the hows and whats of Buffett’s investing philosophy and decision-making. But Buffett gave investment analyst and first-time biographer Alice Schroeder full access, which she used to unearth every detail. We get more of the man under the threadbare sweater than ever before, and Buffett shines through in eccentric and mostly charming glory. Here are the juicy bits:
Fascinations:
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By Avinash Dixit and Barry NalebuffPosted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 2:12pm
Auctions are a wonderful tool. They are often the best way to sell a hard-to-value item, whether it be a vintage Pez dispenser on eBay or spectra for cell-phone licenses, as in the FCC's multibillion-dollar auction. The problem is that auctions work much better for selling stuff than buying it. It is hard to see how the government can use an auction effectively to buy distressed debt.
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Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 1:31pm
The U.S. House rejected a $700 billion financial-rescue plan intended to restore confidence in the nation's banking system, dealing a blow to government efforts to contain a lending crisis.
The House rejected by a vote of 228 to 205 the measure to authorize the biggest government intervention in the markets since the Great Depression.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 458.3 points, or 4.1 percent, at 2:20 p.m. New York time.
Starbucks Splits With Ad Agency
By Dan MitchellPosted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 1:18pmLast week, Advertising Age reported the unusual move by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy to drop Starbucks as a client. The story quoted founder Dan Wieden's platitudes about how such moves "just make sense" from time to time. Today, AdAge reports that it knows the "real reason" behind the decision: "Starbucks' micromanagement, waffling and shift to a jump-ball approach for future ad assignments."
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By Daniel GrossPosted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 9:30am
Having difficulty coping with financial stress? Forget Bernanke and Paulson. Think Rogers & Hammerstein. Bailout Hits Divided House
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew YeomansPosted Monday, September 29, 2008 - 4:43amThe biggest bailout of the U.S. banking industry in history pushed forward over the weekend, with Congressional leaders and the White House finally agreeing on a plan Sunday to allocate up to $700 billion for the purchase of distressed home mortgages and other toxic securities, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Financial Times report. Now comes the difficult part.
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By Mark GimeinPosted Friday, September 26, 2008 - 5:32pm
The car's broken down on the side of the road, 100 miles from Nowheresville. From the distance a creaky old caddy approaches, slows down, pulls up. The window rolls down. "Need a lift?" the driver asks. "I'll give ya one if I can have your wallets."
Google's "Third Founder"
Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 - 3:30pmJeez, everybody wants to get into the act. In the late 1990s, Hubert Chang was an NYU computer science grad student when, he claims, he wrote Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani to ask if he knew of anyone who could collaborate with him on a neat idea he had to search the Internet more effectively. Motwani allegedly introduced him to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and a few months later, presto! PageRank, the algorithm that made Google the powerhouse it is, was born.
