Windy City Finance Biz Lures New Yorkers

Founder Ken Griffin gets cozy with Portfolio

(NEWSER) - Portfolio magazine debuts with a look inside Citadel Investment Group, the $13.5 billion Chicago hedge fund that's even more press-shy than most of its brethren. A rare chat with founder Ken Griffin reveals that he's thinking of taking Citadel public —which the magazine notes could be the biggest stand-alone hedge fund IPO in the US. More»

White House hasn't given it 'a second' of thought

(NEWSER) - President Obama is far more concerned about a second term than his legacy—but two cities are duking it out to host his presidential library, Politico reports. Four groups at the University of Hawaii, in the state where Obama was born, are already hard at work on the matter, hoping to entice officials with a beautiful mountain or ocean setting (they'll pick the final location in the next few months), while the University of Chicago aims to capitalize on Obama’s ties to both the school and the city. "It’s like bidding for the Olympics," says the professor leading the University of Hawaii's effort, "except there are no rules and no formal criteria." More»

City tops IBM's 'commuter pain index'

(NEWSER) - Los Angelenos may have fun in the sun, but they suffer the worst commutes, Reuters reports. An IBM survey of 4,446 motorists found that LA commuters ranked their morning drive highest on a "commuter pain index," which measures traffic, stress, anger, and other factors. Though Los Angeles commuters hate their drives the most, New Yorkers actually have the longest commute times, at an average of 38.4 minutes each way. More»

(NEWSER) - When urban planners dream, they dream that Americans will give up on the suburbs in favor of a dense, environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent lifestyle. And it’s never going to happen, David Brooks writes in the New York Times. “Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there.” According to a recent Pew study, cities are among the least popular places to live for Americans, who still yearn to sprawl outward. More»

Darwinian market bloodletting may eliminate raider targets

(NEWSER) - Short-sellers have the power to utterly crush Lehman Brothers, as they did Bear Stearns, writes James Cramer in New York, but it's largely Lehman's own fault. Lehman shares much of the "mismanagement, arrogance and recklessness" that brought down Bear, Cramer opines in a piece that says excoriating short-selling hedge funds for running down Lehman stock, and accusing them of manipulation, misses the point. More»