Daily Brief

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

-- Rupert Brooke
 

In the debt market, there is a corner that is for ever England.

Britain has £1.9 billion (about $2.8 billion today) in bonds from World War I, otherwise known as the Great War, still outstanding. They have no maturities and pay a rate so low that there is little incentive for the British government to redeem them.

At least one investor, however, is putting on his tin helmet and marching down...

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Greenberg's Chutzpah

Hank Greenberg didn't like AIG Bailout I, not AIG Bailout II. So he's pushing for AIG Bailout III, which will be even nicer to AIG's shareholders, such as Hank Greenberg.

More needs to be done to save AIG. A new plan needs to be drawn up to allow private capital to replace the government's capital. And the company itself cannot be so burdened with interest payments that it is forced into effective liquidation, making jobs impossible to keep and decreasing the likelihood taxpayers will be repaid.

There is a plan to allow private capital to replace...

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Banning criminal memoirs

Sam Leith is pretty straightforward in his condemnation of this silly idea:

In addition to banning happy hour, free drinks for women, and big glasses in pubs, the government has made it known that Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech contains notice of legislation to prevent criminals profiting from their crimes by writing memoirs. Sounds well and good. Lot of cobblers, though.

The silliness is here:

Then you think: Jeffrey Archer, Nick Leeson, Howard Marks, Jonathan Aitken. You say: "hmmm." Then again, you think: conscientious objectors, metric martyrs, foxhunting men, repentant members of the Weather Underground or former Islamists like...

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Solving the pensions problem

Leave aside for a moment the differences between private and puclic sector pensions and concentrate instead on the State pension. The two sets of numbers used here don't quite accord with each other but there is an underlying truth.

Second, we are living longer and the increase in global life expectancy since 1840 of roughly two years per decade shows no sign of abating.
...
He notes that if, in 1950, 65 was the age at which people could no longer reasonably be required to work, then on the basis of healthy life expectancy data, today that...

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Daily Brief

The Huffington Post has closed its third round of funding at $25 million -- $10 million above previous estimates. The single investment from Oak Investment Partners was led by venture capitalist Fred Harman, who will now sit on the company's board.

That will put the site's valuation at just "south of $100 million," according to a source of Kara Swisher's at All Things D.

The money will be used to grow the site's advertising capabilities, expand its local coverage and reporting capabilities as well as make strategic acquisitions.

The extra financial backing will also help HuffPo...

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