Roads To Riches (or We've Got a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You--Seriously) -- Why investors are clamoring to take over America's highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous.--...a slew of Wall Street firms—Goldman, Morgan Stanley, the Carlyle Group, Citigroup, and many others—is piling into infrastructure ... Assets sold now could change hands many times over the next 50 years, with each new buyer feeling increasing pressure to make the deal work financially. It's hardly a stretch to imagine service suffering in such a scenario; already, the record in the U.S. has been spotty. ...
posted on Apr 29, 2007 - View this thread

EarthShell, a small Maryland company that makes environment-friendly packaging (among others) may wink out of existence thanks to PIPEs, or private investments in public equities. Who likes PIPEs? Hedge Funds, mostly. Companies that take the pipe, as it were, may be sealing their doom. 10 percent of PIPE deals done this year are 'death spirals', where the company's stock price plummets from short selling by the financiers who structured the deal in the first place. And of course it's legal if you don't get caught shorting the stock naked and covering with the shares from the PIPE. (BTW, http://www.earthshell.com appears to be on the margins now or I'd have linked it).
posted on Dec 27, 2006 - View this thread

Everything you need to know about investing in 129 words.
posted on Oct 15, 2006 - View this thread

We've been talking about bird flu here in the blue and in the green for a while. Now to help us answer the question eveyone is asking, Citigroup and Smith Barney bring us the Global Portfolio Strategist: Avian Flu [pdf].
posted on Mar 14, 2006 - View this thread

Smokers Brokers is brilliantly simple: take the cash you'd waste on cigarettes and invest it instead. Perhaps this could help coax economists into quitting smoking, for everyone else, it might be better to have some savings and your health than burning up a few more expensive coffin nails. [this site from mefi projects also won the contest for banished]
posted on Dec 14, 2005 - View this thread

I'm not a fan of followup posts, but this is cool enough to mention. Remember the challenging question of how to turn $14 into $1,000? BirdD0g has taken that noodle-scratcher of a problem and turned it into his personal challenge, and he's taking everyone along for the ride at 14bucks.com. He's got until April 15, 2005 to turn it over into a grand, which sounds like plenty of time, but that's a lot of profit to turn over (7000% return on investment). Who wants to take my $14 bet it doesn't happen?
posted on Apr 29, 2004 - View this thread

"It's good policy and good business." NYC's Employees Retirement System (5 funds managing $78.6 billion in holdings) is targeting Fortune 500 companies to adopt policies that specifically bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. One of them, CSX Corp., didn't even wait for their shareholder meeting, but immediately amended their policy in response. These funds recently had great success after a decade-long battle with Cracker Barrel Restaurants--infamous for firing gay and lesbian employees because they don't “demonstrate normal heterosexual values." Here's wishing an especially happy holiday to employees of those companies that have stopped discriminating and hopes for many more to join in. More info on this "shareholder activism" at The Equality Project.
posted on Dec 24, 2003 - View this thread

Qwest Finds Buyer For QwestDex The buyer is a group led by the Carlyle Group and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe. The question is: Why does an investment firm that primarily deals in Defense Contracts want a phone directory company? Tell me I'm just being paranoid.
posted on Aug 20, 2002 - View this thread

Malcom Gladwell's got a new one in the New Yorker about a guy whose investment strategy positions him to profit from unlikely and scary random catastrophes like 9/11. Its' not on newyorker.com, but the story's subject was kind enough to scan it and post it.
posted on Apr 16, 2002 - View this thread