On The Turning Away

Crossposted.

Crossposted.

Crossposted.

Stop the press: NYSE suspends trading in Lehman Brothers shares

NEW YORK, Sept 17 (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory arm said on Wednesday that trading in shares of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc has been suspended, effective immediately.

The exchange said that a listing was no longer considered suitable after the investment bank filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

If anything, the glee of a sewing circle over the paroxysms underway in the financial market presents a splendid bit of irony in an otherwise tumultuous week.

On the heels of de facto nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, venerable Lehman Brothers fell on its sword, dying an ignominious death, followed by an eleventh-hour rescue of AIG that “brings on bloodbath”, as investors fear more shoes may drop.

Continued at the other blog.

Crossposted.

Last week Bob Garfield hung up his boots after an 11-long months of crusading against Comcast. In the interim, many thousands “angry, mistreated” customers have visited the site to voice their grievances. Now their efforts appear to bear fruit: Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back.

Besides cable providers, credit card companies also deserve a place in the pantheon of abusive customer service. And we’ve had our fair share of woes with Chase credit card, part of JP Morgan Chase.

If you google “complaints about Chase credit card”, you’ll get hundreds of thousands of results, with the most recent ones dated yesterday. Which makes you wonder: Is Chase listening at all to those complaints or is it business as usual? If our experience today is any guide, the answer might be the latter.
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You’d be forgiven for being at a loss with received wisdom: Gawker is “over” but a lightweight, who’s “too fond of vaporous abstractions“, is lauded as the great white hope? Except for GOP presidential candidate Huckabee, the nation is gripped by what knows what when concerning the NIE report on Iran. Time for a throwback to our fave subject - management research, which “no one seems to know much about”, according to FT’s management columnist Lucy Kellaway.

What do Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, Charles Schwab, founder of the eponymous discount brokerage firm, and John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, have in common? According to professor Julie Logan at the Cass Business School in London, dyslexia is what catapults them into the entrepreneurial world. (more…)

“If the twentieth century was the American century, then the twenty-first century belongs to China.” A phrase that has been repeated so often that it has almost become a truism. Ironically, it’s rather appropriate for the blurb of a book whose author calls himself the world’s worst market timer.

That author is none other than Jim “China bull” Rogers. Back in January 2006, Rogers told the New York Times that China would “fully float its currency” in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing - a prediction that’s increasingly unlikely to materialize, according to received wisdom.

But the occasional shooting his mouth off apparently doesn’t deter many China enthusiasts from braving the cold for his autograph at the Barnes & Nobles in midtown Manhattan yesterday evening.
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In a day of “stock plunge with dollar” encore, thoughts invariably turn to the seeming dichotomy of the woes of Wall Street and the buoyancy of US economy. Whether the economic glass is half full is better left for Fed Chairman Bernanke when he testifies before Congress tomorrow.

On Wall Street the carnage inflicted by subprime-inflicted credit turmoil may yet claim more victims. Hot on the heels of $12 billion loss for Citigroup and $8.4 billion for Merrill Lynch came reports about Morgan Stanley’s $2 billion to $4 billion write-down next month. Meanwhile, the golden boys at Goldman Sachs are purportedly to have set aside $16.9 billion to pay salaries, benefits and bonuses, enough to buy the beleaguered Bear Stearns, whose stock market cap is now down to $14.7 billion.
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In the space of a week, two head honchos on Wall Street succumbed to the second wave of credit tsunami. Both Chuck “accidental chief executive” Prince of Citigroup and Stan O’Neal of Merrill Lynch met their fate when they had to write down tens of billions of dollars of exposures to the subprime market that triggered a broad sell-off in banking sector.

The unfolding impact of the credit market mess has sparked speculation about whether financial firms are withholding bad news or if they “know the extent of the damages” at all. Perhaps more importantly, last week’s sell-off helped crystalize the spillover impacts into other credit and funding markets that have prompted central bankers to question the “basic banking model of origination and distribution”.
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