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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

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Economix Blog: Weekend Business Podcast: On the Fed, Christine Lagarde and China

September 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Federal Reserve started Operation Twist, but the stock market was unimpressed.

Although the markets stabilized on Friday, global stock prices fell sharply after the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it would shift its bond portfolio toward longer-term maturities, in a reprise of a 1960s maneuver known as Operation Twist. In a conversation on the new Weekend Business podcast, Floyd Norris says that the Fed’s initiative was overshadowed by concern over the Greek debt crisis and its threat to banks in Europe and elsewhere around the world.

The International Monetary Fund has been playing a prominent role in the crisis, with Christine Lagarde, the agency’s new director, openly urging European governments to be much bolder. David Gillen talks to Liz Alderman in Paris about the former French finance minister’s surprisingly independent stand in her first weeks as I.M.F. chief.

The rapid growth of China’s economy has been one of the major developments of the last few decades. David Barboza, a reporter based in Shanghai, says that while China is likely to continue growing at a rate that many other countries would envy, the chances of a major setback appear to be growing as well.

And in a separate conversation in the podcast, Christina Romer, the Berkeley economist and former Obama economic adviser, says that the president’s current jobs plan is sound, though she says it should, perhaps, be even more ambitious.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris on the Fed (36:43); news summary (28:22); Liz Alderman on Christine Lagarde (24:56); David Barboza on China (17:41); Christina Romer on the jobs plan (9:11); the week ahead (1:42).

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=3f8ede8ec135fffb533e56998bb332f4

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Economix: Podcast: Double-Dip Fears and Grab-and-Go Food

August 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

August is off to a rocky start.

Despite an agreement to raise the debt ceiling just hours before the government’s borrowing authority was set to run out, investors quickly switched their focus to the European debt crisis and weak prospects for the United States economy and pummeled stocks.

In the Weekend Business podcast, Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent for The Times, discusses the possibility of a double-dip recession for the United States and the troubles plaguing Europe. In addition, he suggests that the unemployment report for July, which showed a better-than-expected gain of 117,000 jobs, could be overstating seasonal adjustments.

One place where workers seem pretty happy is Pret A Manger, the British fast-food chain. Its annual work force turnover rate is about 60 percent — low for the fast-food industry, where the rate is normally 300 to 400 percent. As David Gillen discusses with Stephanie Clifford, the chain is slowly expanding in New York and other American cities with its own brand of grab-and-go food and, more significant, a fresh approach to service. At Pret, the goal is to serve customers within 60 seconds, and with maximum currency.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris (15:51); news headlines (10:52); Pret A Manger (8:28); the week ahead (0:58).

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=3a001047df1966ccd1e8221195ac5e3a

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Economix: Podcast: G.D.P., European Stocks, Bernanke and Bing

July 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

If you were hoping for some economic good news to close out July, forget it. Not only did the Commerce Department offer up a gloomy assessment of the second-quarter gross domestic product, it also said the recession of 2007-9 was deeper and the recovery slower than we thought.

As Catherine Rampell reports, the G.D.P. —  that closely watched measurement of economic output —  grew at an annual rate of only 1.3 percent in the second quarter. That’s barely breathing. In fact, the economy over all is smaller now than when the recession began in 2007, she says. 

In the Weekend Business podcast, Ms. Rampell offers up one tiny bright spot: automobile sales were not as bad as expected.

Meanwhile, the Fundamentally columnist for Sunday Business, Paul Lim, urges investors not to run away from stocks in European companies, despite economic uncertainty there. In a podcast interview with Phyllis Korkki, he argues that European companies have fared slightly better over all than their American counterparts.

Steve Lohr talks with the Sunday Business editor, David Gillen, about his article in this week’s section on Microsoft’s high hopes for the search engine Bing — its David to the Goliath Google. And Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist, writing in the Economic View column, defends the performance of Ben S. Bernanke, the regularly pummeled chairman of the Federal Reserve.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: the G.D.P. report (31:09); news summary (22:52); Microsoft (19:46); Gregory Mankiw (12:45); European stocks (6:24); the week ahead (0:51).

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=679b219666eab3eda39ddf01b95bdcce

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Economix: Podcast: Dodd-Frank, Housing and Europe’s Power Banker

June 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a year since Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. That might seem plenty of time to get the new rules in good working order. But as it turns out, many haven’t even been written yet, and lobbying is under way to derail at least some of them.

Louise Story, who covers finance for The Times, has been writing about the obstacles to completing and implementing the regulations required by the law, and she discusses them on the new Weekend Business podcast. Some lobbyists are trying not only to slow the process, she says, but also to overturn the law, if not during this Congress then after the 2012 election.

In another conversation in the podcast, Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, says a social epidemic of rampant optimism caused the housing bubble. As he writes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business, the expectations of home buyers have since plummeted, making it likely that the housing market will remain weak for months to come.

And David Gillen talks to Liz Alderman about the central role of Josef Ackerman, the head of Deutsche Bank, in dealing with the European debt crisis. As she writes on the cover of Sunday Business, Mr. Ackerman may be the most powerful banker in Europe.

While he dispenses advice to European politicians, he is a servant of the shareholders of his own bank. Deutsche Bank’s interests and those of the citizens of an embattled country like Greece are hardly identical, as has been made very clear as the financial crisis continues.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: financial regulation (31:07); news roundup (22:05); Deutsche Bank (18:22); Robert Shiller (10:38); the week ahead (2:08).

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=f257de830ce9ae1f534c8f069c8f1d30

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,