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Patrick Clark

By Patrick Clark 1/01 5:06pm

Clocking out

the clock

Ringing in the New Year at MoMA With Christian Marclay’s The Clock

Time passes, which is the point of Christian Marclay’s much-talked-about installation The Clock. The work, a 24-hour cinematic loop composed of sequences appropriated from the last century of film, chronicles this passing in real time, as they say. An alarm clock sounds, a movie star eats breakfast; a wristwatch ticks, actors wait for a train. Some reviewers were surprised that watching time pass could be so captivating, although they might not have been if they’d thought back to any old New Year’s Eve, when the world’s citizens fixate on their clocks. Read More

By Patrick Clark 12/21/12 4:47pm

rumble on the docks

(Illustration: Tim Lane)

Shippers Warn of ‘Havoc’ in Weeks to Come If Longshoremen Strike

The U.S. Maritime Alliance, which negotiates union contracts on behalf of shipping container terminal operators on the East coast, warned of “serious consequences for the nation’s still-recovering economy” if labor and management can’t reach a new master contract by December 29.

“A shutdown would wreak havoc on manufacturers, retailers, farmers and others who depend on Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/27/12 7:30pm

on the rebound

By Alex Fine.

Hoops Hoops Hooray! Knicks, Nets Make New York a Basketball Town Again

Basketball is back. Three weeks after opening night was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, four months after the Knicks let Jeremy Lin slip out of town, 13 years since the Knicks’ fluke run to the NBA finals, and two decades since Pat Riley’s tough-guy team captivated New York in the early years of the Giuliani era, fans in the world’s greatest basketball city care without cynicism again.

The Isiah Thomas era and the Knicks’ failed pursuit of LeBron James are old news. The Nets’ long struggle for big-city relevance got lost somewhere in New York harbor. When the teams squared off Monday night in Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center, the city had plenty to cheer about: real stars, the top two spots in the Atlantic Division standings and the eyes of millions upon us. Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/14/12 9:57am

The Day After

betty liu newsroom6

Gauging Wall Street’s Post-Election Day Mood With Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu

It was the morning after the presidential election on the set of Bloomberg Television’s In the Loop, and Leo Hindery Jr., a partner at InterMedia Partners and a sometime adviser to Democratic officials, was pumping his arms in an off-air shimmy.

“Ohio, baby,” he said, naming the point in the previous night’s returns when he’d begun to celebrate. Then the cameras rolled, host Betty Liu repeated the question, and the private equity investor stifled a smile. Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/07/12 4:18pm

Whither Europe

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The Greeks Are Throwing Fire Bombs Again Over Austerity Vote

The situation in Greece: With Parliament set to vote today on austerity measures that would raise $17 billion for the cash-strapped government, protestors lobbed Molotov cocktails at police, who answered with giant fire hoses.

The austerity bill, expected to pass by the narrowest margin, would be Greece’s third in four years, raise the retirement age to 67 from 65, lead to layoffs of civil servants and benefit cuts for private sector employees. Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/07/12 1:19pm

election hangover

day after dow

Stocks Fall on Day After Obama Re-election, but Not as Far as in 2008

The stock market plummeted in morning trading the day after President Barack Obama’s re-election, with the S&P 500 falling 1.9 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both down 2 percent.

Those numbers, however, may not be a ringing indictment of President Obama’s second term: according to Bespoke Investment Group (hat tip to Sam Ro at Business Insider), today’s losses appear to be an amplification of a recent trend: Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/06/12 7:40pm

insuring the shore

David L Ryan/Globe Staff Photo

With More Storms on the Horizon, Insurers Could Drop Coastal Homes Altogether

In 1938, when storm-watchers gave hurricanes names fit for railroad lines, the Great New England formed off Africa’s western coast, hurtled across the Atlantic and turned north, making landfall in Central Long Island.

Winds as fast as 130 miles per hour blew across the peninsula, sweeping a Westhampton movie theater out to sea, toppling the tallest building in Sag Harbor and turning Montauk into an island. In Manhattan, streets three blocks inland from the East River flooded, and the Empire State Building is said to have swayed. By the time the storm finished cutting through New England and into Canada, some 57,000 homes were destroyed, and as many as 800 lives lost.

When present-day risk experts think about the worst-case scenario for the New York region, they base their assumptions on the Great New England.

That wasn’t even a direct hit. “If you take that storm and put it on the Irene track, then you get multiples and multiples of the damages,” said Karen Clark, the chief executive officer of catastrophe risk firm Karen Clark & Co. and the mother of the catastrophe-modeling industry. Read More

By Patrick Clark 11/05/12 2:30pm

Tip Jar

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German Banker Told at Least One of His Girlfriends/Accomplices That Insider Trading Was Due Diligence

Remember Jessica Mang is a Hong Kong-born chiropractor who met Mr. Ammann at a London nightclub in 2009, according to Bloomberg, and began seeing her banker beau weekly. “It wasn’t just sleeping together, in my mind we were definitely boyfriend-girlfriend from the start,” Ms. Mang said in court today.

Indeed, Mr. Ammann appeared to have couched his insider-trading scheme as a show of trust, and the first steps to building a joint financial future. According to Ms. Mang, who said she’d paid Mr. Ammann’s rent on two occasions, said the Mizuho banker told her she needed to prove she trusted him: if she’d take part in his scheme, the couple could go on vacation in the Seychelles. Per Bloomberg: Read More