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business newsBest of the Blogs: Dude, Where's My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton's on Hold!)
Minyanville's daily roundup of some of the best financial commentary from around the Web.
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All Things D
Okay, okay, we get it: Morgan Stanley got the coveted left-hand lead position on Facebook’s blockbuster IPO filing. Goldman Sachs is there too, but in the third-place, always-a-bridesmaid spot and is crying big salty tears about the injustice of it all. It’s hard to feel badly for overpaid investment bankers and focusing on them is kind of like discussing the lawyers who processed your mortgage. Does anyone except a few Richie Rich zipcodes in Manhattan care about this one deet of the initial public offering of the social networking giant? (Also Read The Facebook IPO: Google All Over Again, and a New Tech Bull Market?)
Bits
Link: Will AT&T Get Rid of the Yellow Pages?
AT&T has hinted that it may sell off parts of its business that are performing poorly. Perhaps the most obvious candidate is the good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Yes, the fat phone book that you probably toss into the recycling bin after it has been out on the porch for afew weeks. Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call last week that the company would accelerate its growth by getting rid of or restructuring “low-performing and nonstrategic assets.” The Yellow Pages would fit that category. AT&T took a write-down of $2.9 billion for the fourth quarter of 2011 to reflect the declining value of its directories business, which includes the Yellow Pages in print and online.
Economix
Link: How the Fed Presidents’ Assets Stack Up
The Federal Reserve, in its latest show of transparency, on Tuesday made available to the public the annual financial disclosures filed by the 12 presidents of its regional banks for 2010. Unfortunately, only the Atlanta Fed put its president’s disclosure online. So we’re posting the entire set in a document viewer. What did we learn? Some Fed presidents are very wealthy; a few have strikingly little wealth. Some hold shares in individual companies; some prefer index funds. And as a group, they have much more reason to fear inflation, which weighs on the wealthy, than to fear high unemployment, which so far has not cost them their jobs.
Epicenter
Link: For the Future of YouTube Ads, It’s All About Context
It must have been frightening to be among the first advertisers for YouTube. Since the site’s inception it’s been seen as the wild west of digital content platforms, with millions of users uploading anything from pirated material to the patently offensive, and of course, the plainly ridiculous (think: stupid pet tricks). To slap a branded ad on a piece of user-generated content in the site’s early days, frankly, was a risky business proposition. For advertisers today, however, there is strength in dog and cat b-roll. It’s about context, not content. (Also Read Another Reason to Avoid 3D Movies: Ads.)
Zero Hedge
Link: Bill Gross Explains Why "We Are Witnessing The Death Of Abundance" And Why Gold Is Becoming The Default "Store Of Value"
While sounding just a tad preachy in his February newsletter, Bill Gross' latest summary piece on the economy, on the Fed's forray into infinite ZIRP, into maturity transformation, and the lack thereof, on the Fed's massive blunder in treating the liquidity trap, but most importantly on what the transition from a levering to delevering global economy means, is a must read.
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