LONDON - on the street, shoreditch + tottenham court road, 05/31/08

JUNE - sea, six (cities) and sun

Curious about where am I going to shoot these next weeks?
London (until Jun. 6th + 11th-16th)
Istanbul (Jun. 7th-9th)
Munich : opening of the Absolut exhibition "Selected" with my photos (Jun. 10th)
S�o Paulo Fashion Week (Jun. 17th - 23rd)
Paris Men's Shows (Jun. 26th-29th)
Stockholm Fashion Week by Berns (Jun. 30th - Jul. 4th)

Release dates of the next episodes of The Facehunter Show on myspace.com/thefacehuntershow:
Jun. 6th: Mexico City part 2
Jun. 13th: Stockholm part 1
Jun. 20th: Stockholm part 2
Jun. 27th: Moscow part 1
Jul. 4th: Moscow part 2

Cut the Corporate Income Tax

So says one of my favorite economists.

Toward a Better Mortgage Business

In today's Wall Street Journal, Bert Ely suggests that securitization of mortgages has gone too far, and he has a couple of intriguing ideas about how to fix things:

- Encourage banks to use "covered bonds" to fund � and hold onto � the fixed-rate mortgages they originate. Widely used in Europe, covered bonds have longer maturities than bank deposits and are on-balance-sheet liabilities. For example, a bank might sell $2 billion of five- and 10-year covered bonds secured at all times by $2.1 billion of high-quality mortgages and other assets. Those longer maturities would reduce maturity mismatching, which was the underlying cause of the U.S. S&L fiasco and more recent problems in the financial markets. The FDIC has begun to look more favorably upon covered bonds, but far too cautiously.

- Eliminate the double taxation of corporate dividends. This raises the cost of equity capital relative to debt, encouraging financial institutions to use excessive leverage to offset the high cost of equity capital. It also tilts banks toward securitizing assets into trusts not subject to the corporate income tax.

The Law of Demand

From the NY Times.

#307: inspiration.

from the brides cafe.

i love the fresh cool romantic spicy fun passionate vibe these colors exude. i'm totally convincing myself about this whole 'jewel-colored' theme i got going on here. what do you think? yes? does this excitement mean i've found 'the colors' of my day?

#306: jewel-toned goodness.

ok. i don't know if i spilled this to you yet...but as of late, i've been strangely drawn to jewel-toned anythings. i love that burst of pinks with purples with fuschias with dark reds with creams with a little bit of teal. and after i just blogged about mrs. lime's venue, i had to see more of it. and look what i found.


michael norwood photography via mrs. lime

yeah? yeah??

#305: clarke estate.

clarke estate

i thought i'd seen most of the commercial estates/mansions used for weddings but i hadn't seen this place. i wonder what 'reasonable rental fee' means to mrs. lime because if her language is the same as mine, i definitely want to check it out.

LONDON - on the street, soho, 05/30/08

#303: oy.

i've been searching and searching. and searching.

it's proving tre difficult to find a house that is at the same time affordable and willing to accommodate a backyard seated reception for 100 people.

vrbo
craigslist
jetliving
bebworld

anyone have suggestions as to other 'vacation rental' websites i could scour?

on a positive note, i've been slightly re-thinking my reception vision...akin to the tune of...food&wine events. i've been to...oh, about 100 of them...and they're always a joy not only because you end up happily toasted but also because you get to taste a little bit of everything. and also the same thing several times over, if you happen to really like it!

the pros:
*lots of food options - caters to any and all finicky palates
*promotes mingling (and hopefully laughter)
*less stuffy
*no seating cards (or charts...or headaches creating the seating cards and charts)
*fewer tables that can be ornately decorated

THE FACEHUNTER SHOW - mexico city part 1 of 2

mister postman sampler

{ letter to my love necklace by eclectic eccentricity }

i have been writing and rewriting a letter -- a real, honest-to-god, ink on paper letter. sometimes the best and only way to express yourself is by writing everything down, putting a stamp on it and hoping for the best.






{each photo links to its shop}

LONDON - london college of fashion graduate exhibition, royal academy of arts + marylebone, 05/29/08

GDP Growth

With revised GDP data released today, I thought it might be worth taking another look at recent history. Click on the graph to enlarge.

Is the yen a negative beta asset?

Here is an intriguing graph I ran across recently. The blue line is FXY, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the yen. The red line is the S&P 500 index. Over the past year, the two time-series look like mirror images of each other. That is, holding yen seems to hedge U.S. stock-market risk.

Update: John Campbell, the smartest finance economist I know, offers me this explanation:

Why the striking pattern in the last year? I think it's because during the liquidity crisis, the stock market has fallen at times when hedge funds and investment banks are deleveraging -- at such times, they cover the carry trade, that is, they buy yen and sell high-interest currencies such as the Australian dollar.

That story is consistent with the increasing risk of the carry trade.

� ME SUPERFICIAL ?

To see tonight the 1st episode before everyone at midnight (London Time), it means 1am in Paris, 7pm in NY, 4pm in LA, 8am in Tokyo or 9am in Sydney, befriend The Facehunter Show here.

STOCKHOLM - s�dermalm + strandv�gen + r�dabergsgatan + ess, f12, 05/27-28/08

On the Case for Free Trade

Vanderbilt's Robert Driskill takes free-trade supporters to task. The article is thought provoking, even if I end up unconvinced.

The essence of his argument:

Do economists know something, though, that Joe Sixpack doesn�t, and does this knowledge inform their thinking about free trade? What they know that Joe Sixpack doesn�t is a basic but not obvious result from economic analysis: The gains to winners from free trade are sufficiently large that a hypothetical redistribution of these gains from winners to losers could make everyone better off. Note that economic analysis doesn�t say that these compensations actually take place. In fact, everyday experience shows us they don�t, and economists know that there are practical problems that make it virtually impossible to carry out such redistribution schemes. Why, then, do economists support free trade?...

What if free trade is making a small percentage of the country much better off, but is hurting a much greater percentage (the �Joe Sixpacks�), as some argue is the case? Even if the total gains to the few winners are sufficiently large that they could hypothetically compensate the losers, why would it be obvious that �Americans as a group are net winners�?

I agree with Professor Driskill about one thing: Any normative statement goes beyond sheer economics and involves a degree of political philosophy. Economists' devotion to free trade is based not only on the positive conclusion that it leads to a bigger economic pie but also on a couple of related philosophical positions.

Some economists take the libertarian view that people should presumptively be allowed to engage in mutually advantageous trades, absent any externalities. Under this view, the restricted-trade equilibrium has no claim to moral superiority--indeed, just the opposite. The fact that some people lose when trade is opened up compared to a restricted-trade status quo is of little moral relevance.

Other economists take the utilitarian view that we should use society's resources to maximize total utility of everyone. Because of diminishing marginal utility, income redistribution from the rich to the poor is a key part of the utilitarian's plan. But a progressive tax and transfer system, rather than restricting international trade, is the most effective way of achieving that goal. Once again, the economic gain or loss compared to the restricted-trade equilibrium is no special relevance. Maybe it would be relevant if for some reason a progressive tax/transfer system were infeasible, but that is not at all the case.

As a theoretical exercise, we often examine the effects of trade by imagining the economy with and without trade. But the situation without trade is not a philosophically noteworthy benchmark under either libertarian or utilitarian perspectives. The libertarian wants maximum freedom; the utilitarian wants maximum social utility. Neither goal is best served by trade restrictions. The fact that some people lose when trade is opened up has no philosophical significance. (Whether it has political significance is another matter.)

Note that the arguments that Professor Driskill uses would also suggest that we economists should not be so hard on the Luddites. After all, there are sometimes losers from technological progress. And the original Luddites were precisely such losers. Yet I doubt that one would find many thoughtful libertarians or utilitarians (or economists of any other stripe) siding with the Luddite cause.

Calling All Dallas Preps

Sorry for the late notice girls, but Mr.Preppy Wedding has been fishing here for the last few days and I have been slammed at work.

Anywho, if you are a Dallas prep and you want to meet up for drinks tomorrow (Thursday) night in the West Village, e-mail me and let me know. Also any suggestions on where to meet would be appreciated (the West Village is very close to my hotel).

Also on the preppy road show this month -

New York City (MMM - hoping your in for another dinner!) on June 18.

Sen on Hunger

Amartya is no fan of ethanol.

toybreaker (tielab) redux, plus interview

{ poppy bronze and cream hand-silkscreened woven silk scarf }

since toybreaker is the current featured seller interview, now seems a good time to revisit since my first post and mention she's branched out into gorgeous, fair-trade, hand-screened silk scarves (my favorite is, of course, the red one). do check out the interview -- detroit-based (and cranbrook-educated!) bethany shorb does what she loves, makes beautiful things, takes enormous care with the environment and with sustainable sourcing, and does awesome custom work. giant etsy crush. check out her store: there's a discount for large orders/wedding parties.






more at toybreaker.etsy.com

MY SECRET LIFE IN MEXICO CITY

The Facehunter Show.
Launch May 30th on MySpace TV.
Befriend the show here!!

How to reduce health care costs

Jagdish Bhagwati and Sandip Madan want freer trade in medical services:

This is what the Great Society program did in the 1960s, with imports of doctors whose visas tied them, for specific periods, to serving remote, rural areas. U.S.-trained physicians practicing for a specified period in an "underserved" area were not required to return home.

It is time to expand such programs � for instance, by making physicians trained at accredited foreign institutions eligible for such entry into the U.S. But in order to do this, both Democratic candidates will first need to abandon their party's antipathy to foreign trade.

STOCKHOLM - flower time in s�dermalm, 05/26/08