Najafi Said to Join Borders Hunt

PublishersLunch

The Wall Street Journal says that private-equity firm Najafi--the company willing to take Bookspan/Direct Brands off of Bertelsmann's hands--has joined negotiations as a potential acquirer of some significant portion of Borders 265 superstores.

A prospective buyer would acquire Borders' web site and customer lists, reaffirming our initial inference that a buyer for the superstores would take all of the significant operations, leaving the remaining superstores and Waldenbooks outlets unable to function. The Journal's source adds that "Borders hopes to soon select one of the suitors as a so-called stalking-horse bidder that would make an offer others must top in the bankruptcy auction," with an auction expected for later this summer.

The article does not contain any update on sums being considered by the bidders, so it's still possible that the bids are worth less than the inventory already owned by Borders.

WSJ 

Hello dream bike!

My Pashley took a bit of a beating when it was shipped over to New York. She's currently in a friends bike shop for some R&R, but we fear she will never be the same again (cycling in a straight line is a bit of an issue). So I've started to cast my eye around for suitable replacements... this would be my blow the budget, very naughty, dream-a-rama choice number one. Fluro-green, apple bright and with a choice of sharp accessories (like a leather Scout bag that fits over your handle bars, $425). Its the result of a collaboration between my favorite NYC bike shop Adeline Adeline and Kate Spade. I would say RIP Pashely! but this one is erm $1,100. Sob!

Kate Spade for Adeline Adeline Bike in New York Green

Wisdom Wednesday

I wanted to share with you some verses I have been studying this week with my Good Morning Girls group. I hope they are a blessing to you as they have been to all of us this week!

John 14:27 - Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

John 16:27 - For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.

James 3:10 - Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things out not to be so.

Fitting Room Barcelona 5º Edition

Next 14 of July there would be a new edition of Fitting Room, this time at Barcelona, and I'm glad to say that I'll be there!

(information here)

There would be 30 bloggers that could go to this special edition at the B-Hotel... and I'm so exited about this! there would be designer from Germany, France, Venezuela or Spain; and as I sw some lovely works... well, you can understand why I'm so happy about this!

But maybe you shold have a look by yourself!

The Brandery would be the event partner of Fitting Room, and would give a prize to one of the designers: a big space for showing their work at their winter edition! I think is a great oportunity for all of them! So good luck!
And moreover, more thatn 10 shops around Barcelona will select some of these great artist for their shops. I'm so glad about seeing that there are so many people who wants to give a chance to young designers!

For more information about the event or the participants, please, visit their website: ilovefittingroom.com

PS: I just receive some pictures and reviews for my Take The Square (but stay fashionable) project; but I need more! So just click here to know about the porject and join me and some other bloggers! ;)!

To A Central Banker, Everything Looks Like An Interest Rate

The Fed is befuddled by the lack of economic growth. After all, they've done what they were supposed to do, they kept interest rates low and poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the Federal Government so they could spend, spend, spend. Now that it's been a clear failure, they're scratching their heads and concluding that they have to simply keep at it for the foreseeable future.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the “frustratingly slow” U.S. recovery warrants sustained monetary stimulus while predicting that growth will gain speed in the second half of the year.

“The economy is still producing at levels well below its potential; consequently, accommodative monetary policies are still needed,” Bernanke said yesterday in a speech in Atlanta. At the same time, the Fed “will take whatever actions are necessary to keep inflation well controlled,” he said.

They have the tiniest glimmer of thought that there might be something more than just interest rates at work here.

The chairman also said the Fed needs to do “more thinking” about how new rules requiring banks to hold more liquidity will affect the broader financial system, and that the central bank wants to create new regulations that won’t “unnecessarily constrict credit.”

But in the end, they all want to fall back on what they know - printing money and setting interest rates.

Policy makers have few options left to respond to accumulating signs of a slowdown after their second round of asset purchases sparked the harshest political backlash against the central bank in three decades.

“We’ve gotten inconsistency, hesitancy and unevenness” in U.S. economic growth, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said yesterday in a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I’m troubled by what you might describe as a lack of conviction in this economy.”

Meanwhile, in states like California, the regulatory jihad continues unchecked.

Farming has long been a field dominated by California, yet environmentalist pressures for cutbacks in agricultural water supplies have turned a quarter million acres of prime Central Valley farmland fallow, creating mass unemployment in many communities.

“California cannot have it both ways, a desire for economic growth yet still overregulating in the areas of labor, water, environment,” notes Dennis Donahue, a Democrat and mayor of Salinas, a large agricultural community south of San Jose. Himself a grower, Donahue sees agricultural in California being undermined by ever-tightening regulations, which have led some to expand their operations to other sections of the country, Mexico and even further afield.

It's not just California, either, and it cuts across political lines.

Number of pages in the Federal Register, a crude measure of the growing regulatory burden on the country. Image taken from The Percolator, the free-market environmentalism blog.
Every time I hear Ben Bernanke or even an outside economist like Nouriel Roubini speak about interest rates and quantitative easing, it's like they live in some distant, academic world. You can have all the money you want available to you, but if the rules for using it are hopelessly complicated or punitive, who's going to do anything but sit on their hands?