September 26, 2012
Article source: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/09/26/multimedia/100000001808067/timescast-tech-september-26-2012.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: European Debt, Bank Fees and Beats Headphones
November 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
New governments have been installed in Italy and Greece and Greek debt restructuring is under way, but European credit markets remain shaky.
One cause may be the questions that are being raised about the status of credit default swaps that were bought as insurance in the event of a Greek default, Gretchen Morgenson says on the new Weekend Business podcast.
In her column in Sunday Business, she says that not all the holders of Greek bonds have agreed to take a “voluntary” discount, or haircut, on the debt. Some of them bought credit default swaps that, they believed, provided insurance in the event of a Greek default. If that insurance provides solid protection, then it may not be in their interest to agree to a reduction in the value of their bonds. But the usefulness of the credit default swaps isn’t entirely clear in this situation, adding another layer of difficulty to resolving the Greek crisis.
In a separate discussion, Richard Thaler, the behavioral economist, says that while business executives realize that they shouldn’t allow their companies to become the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows, many of them don’t seem to know how to act on that principle. A case in point, he says, is the recent controversy over Bank of America’s decision to impose a fee for use of its debt cards — a fee that was later scrapped. In the Economic View column in Sunday Business, he writes that customers tend to be outraged when businesses appear to be “gouging” them. And people may get that impression when businesses begin to charge for services that had previously been free.
In another conversation on the podcast, David Gillen and Andrew Martin talk about the pricey Beats headphones being purveyed by Dr. Dre, the hip-hop artist, in a new business venture.
You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Gretchen Morgenson on European debt (27:05); news headlines (18:05); Beats headphones (14:32); Richard Thaler (7:25); the week ahead (1:49).
You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=555c4387e6f82b5111eb48565133c0e6
Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: Insider Trading, Job Creation and Fighting Cancer
October 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A federal judge in Manhattan this week imposed the longest insider-trading sentence ever in the United States.
In a conversation on the new Weekend Business podcast, Peter Lattman, who covered the sentencing of the hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam in the case, says the government argues that it will have a powerful deterrent effect.
Mr. Lattman said that it contrasts, however, with a comparative lack of prosecutions, convictions and long sentences for executives whose firms may share responsibility for the financial crisis that began in 2007.
In a separate conversation, Robert Shiller, the Yale economics professor, discusses the argument he makes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business that the government should put people to work in large-scale infrastructure projects. The proposal was included in President Obama’s American Jobs Act, which was blocked at least in its full form by the Senate last week.
Natasha Singer talks to David Gillen in the podcast about her Sunday Business cover article on the “pinking of America” — the rise of a marketing powerhouse in the fight against breast cancer.
And Steve Lohr discusses the importance of default choices on the Internet and in other parts of contemporary life. As he says in the Unboxed column in Sunday Business, much of the Internet is wide open, but the design of Web sites and the order of Web searches helps to determine what consumers actually see and select.
In the news portion of the podcast, I discuss the Nobel prize in economics, which has been labeled a “Non-Keynesian Nobel.” In my Strategies column in Sunday Business, Professor Christopher Sims of Princeton, one of the new Nobel laureates, makes it clear that he actually places his research within the Keynesian tradition.
You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: the insider trading case (30:23); news headlines (23:50); fighting breast cancer (21:23); Robert Shiller (11:55); designing for the Web (7:36); the week ahead (1:48).
You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5edd4dd14727cb754f520cb4319889c8
Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: Steve Jobs, Unemployment and Patriotic Spending
October 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The death of Steve Jobs has set off a global outpouring of tributes rarely seen for a business figure. What made him so special?
John Markoff and Steve Lohr, two veteran reporters, covered him for many years, and both knew him well. In the new Weekend Business podcast, they describe him as singularly passionate and focused, a leader who demanded dedication from those around him and would not tolerate mediocrity. He thought of himself as a “technology leader,” says Mr. Markoff, who wrote Mr. Jobs’s obituary for The Times. While Mr. Jobs was not a computer programmer or a designer in the formal sense, he was superb in guiding others and in imagining and shaping projects, Mr. Lohr says, elaborating on arguments he makes in a column in Sunday Business.
The unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent in September, according to the Labor Department report on Friday, with too few jobs produced to budge that rate, as Motoko Rich says in a separate conversation in the podcast. The Economic Cycle Research Institute is forecasting a new recession, the focus of my Strategies column in Sunday Business, but Ms. Rich says that the latest jobs report suggests that while the economy is weak, it’s not contracting at the moment.
Richard Thaler, the University of Chicago economist, says fear and anxiety have caused many corporations and individuals to hold back on spending. He advocates “self-interested patriotism,” that is, carefully planned spending on labor-intensive projects by businesses and people who can afford to do so. Mr. Thaler elaborates on this approach in the Economic View column in Sunday Business.
And David Gillen and David Segal discuss the filming of food commercials, the subject of Mr. Segal’s cover article in Sunday Business.
You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Steve Lohr and John Markoff on Steve Jobs (31:12); news headlines and Motoko Rich on unemployment (20:57); David Segal on food commercials (14:57); Richard Thaler (6:54); the week ahead (1:20).
You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c1cbd5177ad5059fca81ea5820168cad
Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: The Economy, Manufacturing and Commercialized College Life
September 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The economy has been slowing and unemployment in the United States is stuck at 9.1 percent. President Obama has come up with a program that he says will help.
In a speech on Thursday, he offered a $447 billion package of tax cuts and spending programs that received a lukewarm reception from Republicans in Congress. The total of fiscal stimulus items was bigger than expected, but it’s not clear how much of it will be enacted, Floyd Norris says in the new Weekend Business podcast.
The Federal Reserve is contemplating action of its own, deriving inspiration from an old song by Chubby Checker. Among the options being considered to stimulate the economy is a variation on a 1961 Fed program known as Operation Twist. As I write in the Strategies column in Sunday Business, and as we discuss in the podcast, the Fed might twist the composition of its own bond portfolio to lower longer-term interest rates. New research suggests that such an effort might be effective, though its impact could be dwarfed by other influences on financial markets.
In a separate conversation in the podcast, Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economics professor, analyzes the economy’s problems and suggests a long-term solution: stoking the “animal spirits” of business to increase investment spending. This is the focus of his Economic View column in Sunday Business.
And Louis Uchitelle discusses the role of government in manufacturing, the subject of his cover article in Sunday Business. The manufacturing sector is in relative decline in the United States, he says, and isn’t likely to recover without more government help.
The increasing commercialization of college life is the focus of a Sunday Business cover article by Natasha Singer. In a conversation with David Gillen, she says brand marketing on campus has grown in scope and intensity. Along with traditional college colors, student T-shirts have sometimes been emblazoned with corporate logos.
You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris and Operation Twist (33:31); news summary (25:03); Natasha Singer (22:58); Louis Uchitelle (14:59); Greg Mankiw (7:07); the week ahead (1:43).
As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this post.
You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=20c199fdd0c64ac598532d921bc1ba3a
Economix: Podcast: I.M.F., the Mortgage Crisis and the Dollar
May 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Since it was founded in 1945, the International Monetary Fund has often played an important role in global finance. But it has rarely received as much news coverage as it has recently.
The recent burst of attention, of course, wasn’t the intention of the organization’s leadership. It came as a result of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has resigned as I.M.F. managing director after being charged with sexually assaulting a maid at a Manhattan hotel. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a prominent political figure in France, had helped to arrange the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and with debt problems flaring up again in Europe, his problems have complicated matters.
But in a conversation in the Weekend Business podcast, Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent for The Times, says the I.M.F.’s deep executive ranks should be capable of keeping the organization operating smoothly for a while, until a permanent replacement has been named. In the meantime, John Lipsky, an American who had been Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s top deputy, is serving as acting managing director.
In a separate discussion on the podcast, David Gillen and Gretchen Morgenson discuss the subprime mortgage crisis, the subject of Ms. Morgenson’s new book, “Reckless Endangerment,” an adaptation of which appears on the cover of Sunday Business.
And I chat with Christina Romer, the Berkeley economist and former Obama administration adviser, who writes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business about what government officials would say if they could speak openly about the dollar. The official line is that the dollar is the purview of the Treasury, and that the government favors a strong dollar. The truth is that the dollar is subject to market forces, and that sometimes it is helpful if the dollar weakens.
You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris (28:46); news summary (19:36); Gretchen Morgenson (18:02); Christina Romer (9:38); the week ahead (1:51).
As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this posting.
You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=48d5509747440cdd7a44ec8fd0c14205