Jun 29
Fat guys can surprise you. They don’t move very fast. But they can be very agile intellectually.
That was how G.K. Chesterton was. Laurence Lindsay, former assistant to George W. Bush for economic policy, seems to be the same way. Slow on his feet, perhaps. But quick in his mind.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Lindsey delivers thoughts that might have come from The Daily Reckoning. First, he notes that the budget problems faced by Washington are larger than generally reported. Growth rates have been overestimated, he says, while interest costs and deficits have been grossly underestimated. When more realistic assumptions are plugged in to the numbers it adds more than $4 trillion in ‘budget costs’ over the next four years.
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Jun 29
The Federal Reserve has come to a final decision on the debit interchange fee cap, which will now be at 21 cents per transaction.
The debit interchange fee, which is paid by merchants to banks for every purchase made with a debit card, was originally to be capped at 12 cents. The 21-cent cap is nearly double from previously expected, but still lower than the current average of 44 cents per transaction.
An ad valorem amount of 5 basis points is attached to the base component fee cap of 21 cents. The amount will vary on the average per-transaction fraud losses of the median issuer. Banks are estimated to be subject to an average debit interchange fee cap at 24 cents.
The rule will take effect on October 1.
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Tags: 21 Cents, Cents, Fee Cap
Jun 27
As investors slobber over LinkedIn’s scorching IPO, once-popular Google and its huge tech cousins limp along, unloved and underappreciated.
Google’s IPO, way back in 2004, had even more ballyhoo than LinkedIn. From its initial price of $85, the shares romped, soaring to nearly $750 by fall 2007. Since then, Google has struggled, and its stock performance looks more like other ambling tech giants.
The biggest technology companies have something else in common: They’ve become pretty cheap compared to the rest of the market. The tech titans might even represent one of the best value plays today.
Investors have had little love for Google, Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC) and Cisco Systems (CSCO), even as cash has piled up on balance sheets and executives have tried to get Wall Street’s attention.
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Tags: Google, Google Became