It is Collin Levy’s lead-off sentence in her De Gustibus opinion column in today’s (August 29) Wall Street Journal: College Presidents Stand Up for Common Sense? I’ll Drink to That.  (No, the link is not it, that’s the longish title.)  Her sentence:
Anytime more than 100 college presidents sign their names to a document, one naturally expects […]

“Wow, she is good.”  That is all we could think after reading this morning’s opinion column (August 29) Raising the Bar: How Parents Can Fix Education on the Taste page of The Wall Street Journal.
The “she” above is our elementary school’s principal, an energetic nun with an excellent mixture of compassion and discipline.
Last night while attending the […]

An Illustration with Only One Simple Equation.
Update: we have several newer, related posts: Implied RISK NEUTRAL probability of default, redux, expands the analysis presented here by using a different utility function and considering a couple of different situations;Risk Neutral Valuation: There Are at Least Two Expected Values describes a common source of confusion: the various distributions involved; and Price Implied […]

Earlier today, we erroneously published an incomplete posting on the above topic; we wanted to see how the math appears without realizing how quickly the search spiders visit our site.  We have noticed several would-be readers attempting to access this now discarded page, and apologize for the inconvenience.
This is what you seek: Implied Risk Neutral Probabilities (of Default).
 Thanks.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday, August 18, had a front-page article entitled, Price-Fixing Makes Comeback After Supreme Court Ruling.  The article really isn’t about pricing-fixing as that compound word is usually understood.  It is not about collusion among cartel members; instead, it is about price discipline, particularly a few manufacturers’ attempts to enforce minimum price levels among their […]

Has the reader seen the new Canon commercial featuring Maria Sharapova and Dolce, the Pomeranian?  Very, very cute.
Miss Sharapova pokes fun at herself and her celebrity as four individuals, in four different settings, ask if they can take a photo.  She graciously agrees to each request and then begins to smile and pose—only to have the photographer, each […]

We really like Roger Federer.  In our view, he is the greatest tennis player that we’ve ever seen, and when we started playing, it was with a wood racket.1  He carries himself with such dignity, poise, and grace that he seems to almost be an anachronism or at least an anomaly in this day and age.  So, we […]

Applicants’ Personalities Put to the Test is the title of this week’s The Jungle column in today’s (August 26) The Wall Street Journal.  We have no philosophical bias against such testing, particularly during the pre-employment screening phase, but we do wish that it were more knowledge-based and skill-based.  However, we are not writing about our […]

When is that phrase not a contradiction-in-terms?  (No, it is a rhetorical question.  We think we know the answer.)

There is a very nice article in Monday’s (August 25) The Wall Street Journal, entitled “Münchhausen at Work” by Phred Dvorak. He describes situations where workers consciously create problems and then provide solutions in hopes of recognition and rewards.  When creating the problem the employee attempts to be secretive, but sometimes cameras and colleagues get in the way. The employee then solves the […]

To “scrimp” is the ingenuous or frugal use of rather scarce resources to accomplish a goal, i.e., feed a family on a tight budget by creating making delicious dishes using cheap ingredients.  It generally shows a resourcefulness and frugality to overcome said tight financial situations and is considered a laudable practice.
  

To “skimp” means to short someone—nearly to […]

Consistent with the preceding post and in contrast to the next one, we feel compelled to write about our favorite restaurant, Passport Café of Wexford, PA.
So far, our readership numbers have not been huge, but the trend is pointing in the right direction and we do write for a highly-selective, refined, and intelligent crowd.  Unfortunately, that rules […]

Shortly, we’ll post an entry on differences between scrimping and skimping—as it pertains to food companies, but that will have to wait a few hours.  It is too depressing to contemplate on such a glorious afternoon.
We sit sated and full this beautiful, late-summer afternoon as we listen to the water spill from the spa to the pool and watch the butterflies flit between […]

We’ve watched a decent amount of NBC’s Olympics covierage during the past two weeks, and while we’ve teased them a few items in our posts and mentioned at least one atrocity—Lipstick Jungle—the network should be commended for a job very well-done. 
For the most part, the high-definition videography has been amazing although at times we’ve noticed some pixilation on […]

Update: We have a newer post on the same general topic, Clawbacks: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which we published on December 9, 2008.  It discusses the proposed use of clawbacks at UBS and other firms.
As we mentioned in the previous post, The Wall Street Journal’s breakingviews.com column today discusses newly proposed performance measures […]