Great Moments in Politics, California Edition

A fiscal emergency has been declared, but hey, Mr Villines, don't let that stop you from sounding like a drunken ideologue: Republican lawmakers, who last week blocked a Democratic proposal to cut billions of dollars from schools, healthcare and...

Dec 02 2008

To Walk Away or Not?

I got an email this morning from a reader who will, for obvious reasons, remain anonymous: Let me give you a brief history and see if you have some advice from me. I am a physician who bought an...

Jul 17 2008

When's a Gene Test Not a Gene Test?

Genetic-testing company Navigenics has responded to the state of California's cease-and-desist letter with a novel defense: It doesn't actually test patients' genomes, it just analyzes 'em. In a letter sent to the Health Department obtained by Wired.com, the company...

Jun 25 2008

DNA Testers Scramble to Meet Deadline

Genetic testing companies will throw their first punch today in a regulatory face-off with California that threatens some the nascent industry's biggest players, Navigenics and 23andMe. In identical cease-and-desist letters sent June 9 to thirteen companies, the state's health...

Jun 23 2008

TED Flash: TED2009 Is Open for Registration

TED has opened the registration page for its 2009 conference at its new home in Long Beach, California. Full TED Conference 2008 coverage...

Feb 15 2008

Who Pays for California's 3-Strikes Sentencing Rule? Arizona and Nevada.

On the unintended consequences of the Golden State's mandatory sentencing law.

Feb 08 2008

The Future of the Monolines

Andrew Clavell has a really good blog entry on the monolines today, even as MBIA somehow managed to sell $700 million in new equity in the public markets, over and above the $300 million it sold to Warburg Pincus....

Feb 08 2008

Markets in Everything, Jingle Mail Edition

Are you stressed out about your mortgage payments? Do you have little or no equity in your home? Is your home sinking under the waves of the real estate crash? What if you could live payment free for up...

Jan 29 2008

Today in the Art World...

More details on the Smithsonian's problems. This may be the only art fair in existence today that's suffering from "dwindling attendance." The federal investigation into allegedly stolen artifacts in California museums extends to a trustee of the Art Institute of...

Jan 29 2008

Note to Self: Don't Get Greedy With Call Options

Causing a huge spike in a company's options trading in the days before a big announcement pumps up the stock price isn't recommended as a way to slip under the radar of federal securities regulators. But that's what Saiyed Atiq...

Jan 22 2008

Extra Credit, Thursday Edition

Banking pay just won't go away: Andrew Clavell defends the banks. "Mortgage borrowers and mortgage-asset investors were both long housing assets, the former with a call option on the upside, the latter by shorting puts on the downside for...

Jan 17 2008

Design Gurus Look West

When Figure Painting asked James Zemaitis, head of 20th-century design at Sotheby's, what he was grateful to have seen transpire in his particular corner of the market this year, he said that he was happy to see furniture made by...

Dec 14 2007

What Do High Gas Prices Mean for Food Purchases?

Since alternatives to driving are hard to come by in many parts of the country, it's no surprise that when gas prices doubled in California between 2001 and 2005, spending on gas by consumers also doubled, according to a new...

Nov 27 2007

Electricity: Deregulation Sends Prices Soaring

David Cay Johnston's headline says it all: "Competitively Priced Electricity Costs More, Studies Show". When states deregulate their electricity sectors, the price of electricity goes up, not down – and the attempts of pro-deregulation advocates to spin the data otherwise...

Nov 06 2007

Technology and the California Fires

An ounce of good may be coming out of the California fires. For the first time, an array of instantaneous, mobile, Web 2.0 technology is being used by people and institutions to deal with a disaster as it happens. This...

Oct 25 2007

Screens, Not Sounds, Are the Problem While Driving

California is close to creating a law that bans drivers under 18 from using cell phones -- even with hands-free ear devices -- and PDAs and laptops. Now, it's pretty hard to argue against a ban on using a laptop...

Aug 30 2007

Updating Backdating

One lawyer. Two companies. Add backdated stock option grants. Mix in federal securities regulators, and whip up a bunch of fraud charges. Those include fraud charges against lawyer Lisa C. Berry, 49, of Los Gatos, California, whom the Securities...

Aug 29 2007

Wall Street, Then and Now

Gordon Gekko puts his order in for shares from the forthcoming I.P.O. of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The private equity firm's founder, Henry Kravis, joins Michael Douglas at the screening of King of California in East Hampton, N.Y....

Aug 23 2007

Good News for Drunk Celebrities in California

No wonder the California State Assembly is always running late. Their wasting time drafting daft bills, like the one they recently passed (74-0) which aims to stop police from selling information about celebrities who get arrested. Mel Gibson's drunk driving...

May 24 2007

Cap-and-Trade: Can it Work for Water Rights?

If a cap-and-trade system works for sulfur and for carbon, it should be able to work for water, too.

Apr 25 2007

Home Foreclosures Skyrocket

The number of U.S. homes entering foreclosure in the first three months of 2007 doubled from the same period last year, adding just one more item to the long list of omens plaguing the mortgage market. Lenders filed for foreclosure...

Apr 16 2007

Can Municipalities Wrap Themselves?

The Prince of Wall Street has an intriguing idea: why can't municipalities set up their own monoline? Why do we not see the big issuers of municipal bonds i.e. the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the...

Mar 03 2008

TED Flash: Conference Sold Out ... Next Year

Interested in attending the TED Conference? You'll need to wait for 2010. The 2009 conference sold out hours after tickets went on sale, Tom Rielly of TED said. The 2008 conference starts next week in Monterey, California. It sold out...

Feb 22 2008

Pirates on Space Mountain

What better place to celebrate the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures' Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End than at Disneyland? Disney C.E.O. Bob Iger gets chummy with actor Orlando Bloom in Anaheim, California, on May 19, 2007. Photograph...

May 21 2007

No One Moved the Cheese

Reports of Wisconsin's fall from cheese leadership have been greatly exaggerated. For nearly a decade, California producers have been on a tear, coming closer and closer to toppling the Midwest dairy giant. But now it appears that Wisconsinites can breathe...

May 22 2008

And California It Is

It wasn't the best case scenario in tonight's path to the presidency, but it was pretty close. Congratulations Barack Obama....

Nov 04 2008

The End of Mortgage Brokers, Part 2

I got some very interesting responses to my blog entry yesterday on mortgage brokers, in which I basically said that they were parasites on their way out who wouldn't be missed. Ken Houghton reckons that there must be some...

Jan 17 2008

Extra Credit, Friday Edition

A battle Bush's EPA can't win: California is extremely likely to win its appeal of the EPA's carbon-emissions decision. Citi Lays Off 30 C.D.O. Bankers The Bond Insurance Barge Scam: "For years the investment banks' internal credit and risk...

Dec 21 2007

Goldfingers Crossed

"Accursed thirst for gold! what dost thou not compel mortals to do?" -- The Aeneid At a time when foreclosures in California can, through the complex process of securitization, set off credit panics on the other side of the globe,...

Sep 24 2007

Can We Remember the Pain of Bubbles Past?

In a recent EconTalk podcast, host Russ Roberts and Yale's Robert Shiller got into a good discussion over the origins of the subprime crisis, which Shiller largely attributes to bubble psychology. But Roberts offered an interesting test: Shiller: It's this...

Dec 08 2008