Daily Reading – Wednesday, April 11, 2011
The Big Picture: How Microsoft Caused the DotCom Bubble and why their Skype ‘Hail Mary’ is irrelevant
Since the mid-nineties, I have nurtured a thesis about the dotcom bubble, tech bust, and the role Microsoft played in it. The opportunity to discuss it has never came up.
Until Microsoft’s purchase of Skype yesterday, that is.
The Big Picture: Please Take My Money for a 1% Return Back
The US Treasury is certainly getting the gift of 1% financing costs for three years.
FT Alphaville: From Quito, to Kingston, to Athens?
Moody’s 2011 sovereign default study is out — and it features this illuminating chart on recent sovereign bond recovery rates…
FT Alphaville: Chinese commodity imports are falling
It’s probably fair to say that in the commodity world, all eyes are now very firmly set on the state of Chinese imports.
Streetwise Professor: No Margin For Error
The commodity markets have been volatile of late. The tumult started in silver, which sold off dramatically after reaching post-Hunt highs. Last week the sell-off broadened to a good chunk of the commodities markets, with oil especially hard hit. In response to the roiling markets, the CME raised margins sharply on silver, and today on oil and the rest of the energy complex.
The Source: Silver’s Modern Day Panic
A slump in the price of silver in 1873 started an international depression that lasted around six years in the U.S. and was still being felt 25 years later in the U.K.
Could last week’s collapse in the price of silver, almost 138 years to the day later, herald the start of something similar?
The Atlantic: The World’s 26 Best Cities for Business, Life, and Innovation
New York City, Toronto and San Francisco were named the world’s most impressive metros in a new survey of the global capitals of finance, innovation and tourism.