Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RESTAURANTS (89%); RETAILERS (89%); BAKED GOODS (77%); BAKERIES (77%); WAR & CONFLICT (74%); TEMPORARY STAND RETAILING (72%); OFFICE PROPERTY (72%); WORLD WAR II (71%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (66%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (66%)
GEOGRAPHIC: TAIPEI, TAIWAN (98%); BEIJING, CHINA (79%) SOUTH CHINA (92%); NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (79%) TAIWAN (98%); CHINA (94%); JAPAN (92%); RUSSIA (91%)
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: SPLIT PERSONALITY: RIGHT: ON TAIPEI'S MODERN EAST SIDE, A VIEW OF TAIPEI 101, CURRENTLY THE WORLD'S TALLEST BUILDING. OPPOSITE: NATIVE CAMPHOR TREES ALONG DUNHUA SOUTH ROAD NEAR NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY, IN THE CITY'S SOUTHERN QUARTER

NATIONAL SPIRIT: RIGHT: TAIWANESE FLAGS ON A CAUSEWAY OVER THE CIVIC BOULEVARD EXPRESSWAY. OPPOSITE: CHIANG KAI-SHEK'S MEMORIAL, THE SITE OF A 1990 STUDENT PROTEST FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORM AND RECENTLY RENAMED THE NATIONAL TAIWAN DEMOCRACY MEMORIAL HALL

FAST COMPANY: RIGHT: SCOOTERS WAIT AT A TRAFFIC LIGHT IN A SPECIAL AREA TO PREVENT THEM FROM BLOCKING OTHER TRAFFIC. OPPOSITE: A TYPICAL TAIPEI BUILDING FACADE, WITH MYRIAD BILLBOARDS

CITY LIGHTS: A Matsu temple in Taipei's Ximending district. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL WOLF)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

949 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 23, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Death Among the Gentry
BYLINE: Reviews by MARILYN STASIO
SECTION: Section BR; Column 0; Book Review Desk; CRIME; Pg. 11
LENGTH: 923 words
BUCKINGHAM PALACE GARDENS (Ballantine, $26) is Anne Perry's 25th novel featuring her 19th-century police inspector, Thomas Pitt. But unlike so many detective series gliding on cruise control, this mature work provides a fine introduction to Perry's alluring world of Victorian crime and intrigue. Ever the master of her milieu, she delivers sumptuous descriptions of life among the gentry when England still basked in its imperial glory. And in an intricate plot about a murder at the palace while the Prince and Princess of Wales are in residence, she also marshals the series's major themes: the way crime reverberates throughout the social classes; the precarious status of women of every rank; and the need for honorable heroes to preserve and protect the Empire, sometimes from itself.

The glittering centerpiece of Pitt's latest adventure is a formal dinner party attended by the royal couple and their guests, including four entrepreneurs intent on building a railway from Cape Town to Cairo. By the time Perry is finished with the menu, the wives' gowns and the barbed conversations, we've been given subtle insights into every character.

The one we care about most is Elsa Dunkeld, the abused but loyal spouse of the most ruthless of the master builders who are seeking the prince's support. Elsa has an independent mind, but because she's no rebel and keeps her intelligence to herself, her views on palace politics seem more authentic than those of the extraordinary proto-feminists who tend to dominate Perry's novels.

To make her point that the most insignificant life matters, even in the most class-bound society, Perry employs an irresistibly appealing ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' perspective. While the prince and his guests try to explain to Inspector Pitt how the naked body of a prostitute got into a linen closet and bled all over Queen Victoria's own bedclothes, Pitt's clever housemaid, Gracie Phipps, infiltrates the servants' hall, alert to clues that her social superiors might miss. But it isn't young Gracie who is most changed by all this exposure to the powerful elite. It's the idealistic Pitt: ''He had still imagined in them a love of the same values as the best of their subjects.'' Disillusioned by royal reality, he's wiser now, but still committed to restoring order to his imperfect world.

The emotional stakes must be high, excruciatingly so, for a suspense novel to maintain its tension, a point obviously understood by David Levien when he wrote CITY OF THE SUN (Doubleday, $24.95). While it deals with the practical mechanics of how a private detective tracks down a boy who has been missing for more than a year, this relentless novel is really about how parents suffer the loss of a child. As such, the story conveys a piercing sense of honesty, even when the investigation itself seems implausibly free of complications.

Twelve-year-old Jamie Gabriel was snatched off his bike while delivering newspapers in suburban Indianapolis. But after more than a year the trail is ''ice-age cold,'' and besides, the police always figured him for a runaway. That leaves his parents, Carol and Paul Gabriel, frozen in a state of grief that begins to thaw only when they hire a former cop, Frank Behr, who lost his own young son in a tragic accident. Scenes are brief and sharp, and there are no stalls in the easy flow of the investigation, which ends with Frank and Paul on a grim road trip to Mexico that also proceeds with remarkably few hitches. But despite all the holes in the plot, the truth of the characters -- and the intensity of their pain -- is as unbearably real as it gets.

Certain books come to mind whenever that little voice whispers in your ear, ''Oh, lighten up!'' The mysteries of manners that M. C. Beaton sets in the Cotswolds and laces with the acerbic wit of her village sleuth, Agatha Raisin, are always good for a nasty laugh. Somewhat sweeter, but also restorative, are the ''Morgue Mama'' whodunits of C. R. Corwin, whose small-town snoop, the longtime librarian at a Midwestern newspaper, has yet to miss a dirty trick. Louise Penny's series about the eccentric residents of a postcard-perfect town in Canada can also be pretty funny.

Two relatively new series are putting twists on this impulse to laugh in the face of death. ''The Spellman Files'' was Lisa Lutz's quirky introduction to Isabel (Izzy) Spellman, dragooned into the family firm by parents who run investigations from their San Francisco home. Izzy returns in CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS (Simon & Schuster, $25) with another breathless tale of comic woe, related through intelligence reports (''Subject Is Observed Digging a Hole''), tape transcripts (''The Stone and Spellman Show -- Episode 48'') and annotated accounts of everything from Izzy's ex-boyfriends to her arrest history. It's nice to hear such an original voice.

AVALANCHE (Simon & Schuster, paper, $14) is Patrick F. McManus's second shaggy dog tale (after ''The Blight Way'') about Bo Tully, sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, and a good man to have around if you're hunting elk. Bo's current case, tracking down the missing owner of a fancy ski resort, gets tricky when an avalanche traps him inside the resort's lodge with his crazy-old-coot father, an assortment of rowdy guests and maybe a murderer. McManus is a columnist for Outdoor Life and Field & Stream, so it's not surprising to find him setting a pretty nature scene. But his idiosyncratic characters and their lunatic ways are what make this folksy whodunit such fun to curl up with.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOK REVIEWS (90%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (89%); MYSTERY & SUSPENSE LITERATURE (78%); MURDER (77%); WOMEN (74%); RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION (67%); BRITISH MONARCHS (79%)
GEOGRAPHIC: ENGLAND (74%); UNITED KINGDOM (74%)
TITLE: Buckingham Palace Gardens (Book)>; City of the Sun (Book)>; Curse of the Spellmans (Book)>; Avalanche (Book)>; Buckingham Palace Gardens (Book)>; City of the Sun (Book)>; Curse of the Spellmans (Book)>; Avalanche (Book)>
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY WES DUVALL)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

950 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 23, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

It's Hard to Thaw a Frozen Market
BYLINE: By TYLER COWEN.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 899 words
REAL estate bubbles have burst before, without bringing such trouble to the financial system. What is distinctive today is the drying up of market liquidity -- the inability to buy and sell financial assets -- caused by a lack of good information about asset values. The American economy is suffering from an old conundrum: that liquidity is there when you don't need it, but missing when you do. The results have been a form of financial gridlock.

If you think that traders have been well informed of late, take another look at the wild path of Bear Stearns shares: A year ago, the stock was selling for $170 a share. At the close on March 14, just before the deal by which Bear Stearns was to be bought by JPMorgan Chase, Bear had a book value of $80 a share -- and a share price of $30. The JPMorgan transaction, arranged two days later, valued the company at about $2 a share. Since then, the shares have been trading above $2, which in part reflects the possibility of the deal breaking up.

Every step of the way, the pricing of the stock has surprised the market -- and yet Bear Stearns is a firm with a lengthy history, not an Internet start-up or a biotech whose value is based on a new but untried wonder drug.

To understand the depths of the current crisis, let's go back to an apparently unrelated episode in economic thought: the socialist calculation debate. Starting in the 1920s, Ludwig von Mises, the leader of the so-called Austrian School of Economics, charged that socialism was unable to engage in rational economic calculation. Without market prices, he reasoned, no one knows how much economic resources are worth.

The subsequent poor performance of planned economies bore out his point. For instance, the Soviet Union did a poor job of producing consumer goods and developing innovative industries. In the absence of well-functioning markets for capital goods, these mistakes festered, rather than being rectified by the independent judgments of individual entrepreneurs.

The irony is that the supercharged capital markets of the American economy are now -- at least temporarily -- in a somewhat comparable position. Starting in August, many asset markets lost their liquidity, as trading in many kinds of junk bonds, mortgage-backed securities and auction-rate securities has virtually vanished.

Market prices have been drained of their informational value and thus don't much reflect the ''wisdom of crowds,'' as they would under normal circumstances. Investors are instead flocking to the safest of assets, like Treasury bills.

The absence of trading is a big problem. Financial institutions have been stuck holding illiquid assets, whose value cannot be easily determined. Who wants to lend to the institutions holding them? No wonder there is a credit crisis and a general attitude of wait and see.

This gridlock is especially harmful because leverage is so high, and financial institutions are so interconnected through swaps and loans. Institutions that rely so heavily on debt are precarious and need up-to-date information about valuations. When they don't have it, markets freeze up. This is what has taken policymakers by surprise and turned a real estate crash into a much bigger financial problem.

You might wonder why asset prices don't simply fall enough so that someone buys them and trading picks up again. First, many bank managers would rather postpone the day of reckoning; why seek ''fire sale'' prices when you might lose your job for doing so? Second, only so many financial institutions have the size and expertise to buy up low-quality assets in large quantities. One scary fact about the Bear Stearns situation is how few buyers were waiting in line.

So what now? Regulators should apply capital requirements consistently to the off-balance-sheet activities of financial institutions. This will limit dangerous leverage, contain contagion effects and make the system less dependent on the steady flow of good information.

In the shorter run, economists are generally in three camps when it comes to strategies for recovery.

The fundamentalists argue that housing prices need to fall, and rapidly, so that mortgage-backed securities can be valued more accurately. Then trading can resume and financial gridlock will be undone. Advocates of a bailout, by contrast, argue that this process would be a disaster. In their view, the solvency problems are too great and the market is too skittish for the foreseeable future, so the government needs to buy up mortgage securities to prevent catastrophe.

The third group, the ''wait and see'' faction, finds the first two alternatives unpalatable. This group hopes that if the Fed pumps enough liquidity into banks, the passage of time will improve market information, ease worries and lead to a resumption in asset trading.

NO matter your point of view, real-world events are likely to intervene and force an outcome. The Fed and the Treasury have been forced into a mode of emergency response and daily improvisation, not long-term planning. Sooner or later, trading in the illiquid assets is likely to resume, but the major question in all of this is the eventual cost.

That cost won't be measured only in terms of bailouts and guarantees. The longer this crisis mode drags on, the more the entire reputation of American capital markets will suffer.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ECONOMIC NEWS (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); AUCTIONS (78%); SECURITIES TRADING (78%); BANKING & FINANCE (73%); STARTUPS (65%); TREASURY SECURITIES (60%); MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES (60%); INTERNET & WWW (51%); HIGH YIELD BONDS (50%); CREDIT CRISIS (78%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (63%)
COMPANY: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (85%); BEAR STEARNS COS INC (84%)
TICKER: JPMC (BRU) (85%); JPM (NYSE) (85%); JPM (LSE) (85%); 8634 (TSE) (85%); BSC (NYSE) (84%)
INDUSTRY: SIC6022 STATE COMMERCIAL BANKS (85%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING AND SECURITIES DEALING (84%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (84%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (84%); NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (85%); NAICS523999 MISCELLANEOUS FINANCIAL INVESTMENT ACTIVITIES (85%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (85%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY DAVID G. KLEIN)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

951 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 23, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Fashion Statement
BYLINE: By MARC ECKO; As Told to BOBBI DEMPSEY.

As told to Bobbi Dempsey.

SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; THE BOSS; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 639 words
I HAVE a twin sister. That's how I got the nickname Echo. My mother didn't know she was carrying twins. The doctor said the second heartbeat was just an echo in the fluid.

I grew up in Lakewood, N.J. It's a very ethnically diverse town. Growing up in the '80s, kids in nearby towns were all about Aerosmith, but for me it was all about Run D.M.C., skate culture and hip-hop.

I was always better at art than sports. Fortunately, my family encouraged my interest in art. You have to let kids wander and discover what they're passionate about.

Sometimes kids are interested in stuff like video games that are seen as a pastime, but those pastimes generally have industry behind them. If you look under the hood, you can probably find skill sets to take to the bank.

At 13, I got an airbrush and started a business out of our garage painting T-shirts and airbrushing denim jackets. But that didn't seem like a secure career path to most people, so I was advised against pursuing art. Instead, since my dad had graduated from the department of pharmacology at Rutgers and I had done pretty well on my SATs, I heard: ''Hey, you can make 60 grand as a pharmacist. You should go after that.''

After graduating from high school in 1990, I went to Rutgers to pursue a five-year pharmacology program, but stopped after three years. Between classes, I was making $200 or $300 a pop for a custom jacket. I realized my passion was in art.

Fortunately, my dean gave me permission to leave for a year while I pursued my interest in art. In 1993, with help from my sister and a friend of mine, I printed up six T-shirts. That's how it all started. Then I got my PC, around the time the whole desktop publishing thing started to take off.

The first few years were rough financially, because the three of us knew nothing about the business aspect. We didn't know anything about warehousing or receiving, were clueless about merchandising and had no information management system.

We got into a tremendous amount of debt, spending money we didn't have. It wasn't like I came from money or hit up friends for loans. I relied on credit cards and lenders.

I was so into the whole artistic and creative aspect that I didn't think about the practical stuff. The first five years were like a baptism by fire, to the tune of about $6.5 million in debt. Trying to get back out of that debt and turn the business around was something I couldn't do today. I don't have the pain threshold.

Whatever you do in life, be passionate about it. At least once a month, if not every day, reassess what you're doing and make sure you still love it. If you're passionate about something others around you may see as a dead end, pave your own way. Be a trailblazer.

We're currently branching out into starting our own free-standing stores. The idea of a new generation learning about my brand through retail adds a whole new set of pressures and standards and expectations. It's really critical that we get this right.

I have A.D.D., and rather than take drugs to curb it, I just build my world to adapt around it. That's partly why we've branched out into so many different things: clothing, video games, a magazine and other projects.

I don't do it alone. If we went up to the fifth floor of our offices and walked through that bullpen of 40 designers, those are the guys doing the heavy lifting. I look at myself as providing air coverage for the guys on the ground.

In the fall of 2007, I bought Barry Bonds's 756th home-run ball, the one that broke the record. I was determined to get that ball, whatever I had to pay. I'm a huge pop-culture collector, and this was an important piece of today's pop culture. I let the public vote on what I should do with it, and they decided it should be branded with an asterisk. So that's what I'm going to do.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); HIP HOP CULTURE (71%); PHARMACOLOGY (71%); CREDIT CARDS (70%); ACADEMIC TESTING (65%); INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (50%); TWINS & MULTIPLE BIRTHS (90%); DESKTOP PUBLISHING (61%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (57%)
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: MATT DOYLE
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

952 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 23, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

A Failing Grade
BYLINE: By RANDY COHEN
SECTION: Section MM; Column 0; Magazine; THE ETHICIST; Pg. 20
LENGTH: 562 words
I teach at a state university. Sometimes at the end of a semester a student asks me to raise a grade. Typically it is a student with children, who receives financial aid, health insurance and housing and risks losing these benefits if she receives the F she earned rather than the D I could bestow -- harsh consequences. Should I raise the grade? --l; V.H., MONTANA

You should not. I admire your sensitivity to the fact that a grade can have repercussions more severe than a professor intends or most of us find humane. But you are considering the wrong solution to this problem.

You must grade consistently; you may not establish a Free Pass for Poor Students. If you do so, why not announce it at the start of the term, saving these students the inconvenience of attending class and sparing their classmates the demoralizing spectacle later of someone handed a grade she does not merit?

Instead, you should intervene early in the term. It must be apparent long before the end of the semester that a student is foundering. You might give her a chance to make up poor work or find remedial tutoring. If burdens outside of class overwhelm a student, grant her an incomplete or provide extra time for an assignment.

There is something faintly disingenuous about these grade-change pleas. A single F is unlikely to be catastrophic; the student could be failing other courses too. Have you been importuned because you are a soft touch?

That said, neither you nor the student should have to face such a dilemma. It is a cold society indeed that makes a mother's housing and health care contingent on her grades.

Some local hotels contract with limo companies, charging a company a fee for the exclusive right to park its limos at the hotel to provide transportation for guests. I drive for an independent company. We tip the bell staff to call us if the contract company has no car handy, so we can swoop in and pick up the guest. We shorten the guests' wait, and after all, it's the contract company's responsibility to have a car available. Right? -- R.B., SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ.

Wrong. What you call a ''tip,'' more fastidious people like Noah Webster, me and the Arizona attorney general might call a ''bribe.'' You've greased the bell staff to cheat their boss, exploit the guests and stiff the contracted limo company.

Not only have the bell staff invited -- or at least accepted -- bribes from you; they have also set up a little entrepreneurial operation within the hotel, selling what isn't theirs to sell, a limo referral, thus poaching on a prerogative of the hotel owner.

The bell staff also abuses the trust of the guests, who reasonably assume that the staff recommends a limo (or any other service) based on its quality and price, not because its operator lines the staff's pockets. To complete the (rare) quadruple play, the bell staff violates the hotel's arrangement with the contracted limo company, cheating it out of the franchise it paid for. Resourceful? No doubt. Ethical? No way.

Transparency could help here. If the guests, the hotel owner and the limo service understand this arrangement and accept it as a contingency for when no other cars are available, problem solved.

Send your queries to [e-mail] or The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10018, and include a daytime phone number.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (90%); TEACHING & TEACHERS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (77%); HEALTH INSURANCE (77%); POOR POPULATION (77%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (50%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (90%)
GEOGRAPHIC: ARIZONA, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 23, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: DRAWING (DRAWING BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

953 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times