- Paulson, in Memoir, Defends Bailout
- Hamptons New York Home Sales Climb 59% as Deal Seekers Buy
- IPad? That’s So 2002, Fujitsu Says
- Apple’s IPad May Take Year to Be Breakout Product, Munster Says
- ‘Enron,’ Sizzling Staging of Downfall, Returns to London Stage
Paulson, in Memoir, Defends Bailout - Wall Street Journal
In his new memoir, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson portrays himself as a fierce champion of free markets, while defending the decision to bail out American International Group and other Wall Street firms.“The intervention we undertook I would have found abhorrent at any other time,” he writes in “On the Brink,” which is set to hit bookstores Feb. 1. “As first responders to an unprecedented crisis that threatened the destruction of the modern financial system, we had little choice” but to bail out the banks.As for the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Mr. Paulson stands by his position that the government had no legal authority to save the investment bank and couldn’t find a buyer for the bank. He describes frustration with the U.K.’s Financial Service Authority, which was reluctant to approve a prebankruptcy deal for Barclays PLC to acquire Lehman. “The British screwed us,” Mr. Paulson said he blurted out when he learned the deal had fallen through….
Home sales in the Hamptons, the New York vacation getaway for dealmaker Stephen Schwarzman and movie star Sarah Jessica Parker, surged 59 percent in the fourth quarter as two years of declining prices lured buyers.Transactions climbed to 409 from 257 a year earlier, the biggest increase in seven years of recordkeeping, New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report today. Competition for properties pushed the median price up 4.9 percent to $917,900, the first year-over-year gain since the beginning of 2008.“This is all very good news, better than expected, but I still think we’re not through this yet,” Miller Samuel President Jonathan Miller said in an interview. “The surge in activity to more normal levels, a large portion of that is a release of pent-up demand.”…..
IPad? That’s So 2002, Fujitsu Says - NY Times
Fujitsu, which applied for an iPad trademark in 2003, is claiming first dibs, setting up a fight with Apple over the name of the new tablet device that Apple plans to sell starting in March.“It’s our understanding that the name is ours,” Masahiro Yamane, director of Fujitsu’s public relations division, said Thursday. He said Fujitsu was aware of Apple’s plans to sell the iPad tablet and that the company was consulting lawyers over next steps…..
Apple’s IPad May Take Year to Be Breakout Product, Munster Says - Bloomberg
Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet may take a year to turn into a “breakout” product with mass-market appeal as consumers wait for the price to drop below $499 and for more publishers to get on board, Piper Jaffray & Co. said.“It needs to be $300 to $400,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. “It’s an amazing device, but investors should have measured enthusiasm about how long it takes for something like this to gain traction.”….
Nine years after it went bankrupt, it looks as though Enron Corp. is to rise again.This time, the rewards are theatrical rather than financial. Lucy Prebble’s razor-sharp play “Enron” about the accounting frauds that led to the Texas energy trader’s 2001 collapse has transferred from sell-out runs in Chichester and the Royal Court Theatre to London’s West End.Prebble, using a dazzling range of techniques from song- and-dance and slapstick to good old-fashioned realism, charts the progress of a company that went from selling energy to trading in it. Initially, shares rocketed. Those at the top merely had to disguise a minor flaw: Debt was piling up…..
Tags: Apple, Books, Enron, Hamptons, Henry Paulson, iPad, Real Estate, TARP, U.S. Treasury
