Free Republic

How do you define a bad investment? Perhaps the best definition has to do with the relationship between risk and reward. We are seeing -- in a very dynamic way -- this tug of war being carried out in Greece. Government bonds are by definition guaranteed by a sovereign entity, so should be risk free. At least that is the basic idea as far as US Treasuries are concerned. Of course no sovereign entity can go bankrupt and court orders are generally ineffective methods of enforcement, so the use of law to limit risk does not generally apply to these...

WASHINGTON : US oil major Chevron ruled out splitting up Unocal if it wins a battle against a state-owned Chinese company for control of the California firm. Chevron vice chairman Peter Robertson said the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has no chance of winning Unocal's Asian assets in a carve-up. "If the idea is that we take the US assets and somebody else takes Asia, that is not why we got into this game," he told The Financial Times. Unocal's Asian operations, which comprise 70 percent of its total assets, are the key appeal for both Chevron and CNOOC...