Addictions Can Be Hardwired in the Brain - ABC News

Addictions Can Be Hardwired in the Brain - ABC News: "Advances in neuroimaging have enabled researchers to peer inside the brains of addicts and patients with addictive behaviors. They can see, in real-time, what gets patients hooked: how the brain's reward system -- based largely on the neurotransmitter dopamine -- thirsts for more, while inhibitory control centers experience a system failure"I

Paulson says he feared run on dollar at start of crisis -FT | Reuters

Paulson says he feared run on dollar at start of crisis -FT | Reuters: "Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson feared there would be a run on the dollar during the early stages of the financial crisis when attention was focused on the United States. 'It was a real concern,' Paulson says in an interview in Monday's edition of the Financial Times. A dollar collapse 'would have been

Interview with Eugene Fama: Rational Irrationality : The New Yorker

Fama defends market efficiency in the following interview. Two look-ins:Interview with Eugene Fama: Rational Irrationality : The New Yorker: "It’s easy to say prices went down, it must have been a bubble, after the fact. I think most bubbles are twenty-twenty hindsight. Now after the fact you always find people who said before the fact that prices are too high. People are always saying that

Economic View - Will More Borrowers Walk Away From Their Mortgages? - NYTimes.com

Economic View - Will More Borrowers Walk Away From Their Mortgages? - NYTimes.com"...millions of American homeowners are “underwater,” meaning that they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Nevada, nearly two-thirds of homeowners are in this category. Yet most of them are dutifully continuing to pay their mortgages, despite substantial financial incentives for walking away

Exchange traded funds are a low-cost way to build portfolio - USATODAY.com

We just spoke on ETFs in class yesterday, so this great timingExchange traded funds are a low-cost way to build portfolio - USATODAY.com: "ETFs are mutual funds that trade on the stock exchanges, just as stocks do. Most are index funds, although there are a few actively managed ETFs on the market. The advantages of ETFs:" here is a list..

Rusal Said to Raise $2.2 Billion in Hong Kong IPO (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

Rusal Said to Raise $2.2 Billion in Hong Kong IPO (Update2) - Bloomberg.com: "“Thanks to the SFC these professional investors got it a lot cheaper than they would have otherwise,” said Hong Kong- based Ben Collett, head of equities at broker Louis Capital Markets (Hong Kong) Ltd., before the final pricing. “Looking to the future, I suspect the quality of these listings will decline, ironically,

Bankruptcy of Japan Airlines

Kyodo News - Story: "Japan Airlines Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday in the biggest nonfinancial corporate failure in Japan's postwar history, paving the way for a massive government effort to keep the flagship carrier flying with the use of about 900 billion yen in public funds....''Notice again the "too big to fail" principle:"If JAL was not the biggest airline company, it would

SSRN-National Drought Insurance for Malawi by Joanna Syroka, Antonio Nucifora

Why not? Great idea. Drought insurance for the entire country. Indeed, could hedge many of these risks. This is sure to be a in class discussion.SSRN-National Drought Insurance for Malawi by Joanna Syroka, Antonio Nucifora: "...describes a weather risk management tool that has been developed to help the government manage the financial impact of drought-related national maize production

SSRN-CEO Characteristics and the Value of Corporate Refocusing by Sheng Huang

Interesting look at who divests what. Important also as it suggests that CEOs do play a more important role than some might think.SSRN-CEO Characteristics and the Value of Corporate Refocusing by Sheng Huang: from the abstract:"...CEOs in diversified conglomerates are more likely to divest divisions that they are less qualified to manage. This evidence is consistent with CEOs divesting divisions

Venezuela Nationalizes French-Colombian Retailer Exito - WSJ.com:

And why would a company try to business with Venezuela?UPDATE: Venezuela Nationalizes French-Colombian Retailer Exito - WSJ.com: "President Hugo Chavez ordered Sunday the seizure of a French-owned retail chain on accusations that it raised prices after Venezuela devalued the currency by half.... Separately, Chavez also ordered the nationalization of a large shopping-mall recently built in a

Do Hedge Fund Indexes Tell Only Part of Story? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Do Hedge Fund Indexes Tell Only Part of Story? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com: "Taken at face value, historic index figures suggest that even an average hedge fund manager can easily beat the stock market while taking less risk. Since 1990, a weighted index of hedge funds has returned around 12 percent annually — about four percentage points more than the returns for the Standard & Poor’s 500-