After having her home on the market for nearly a year — with about 30 showings, multiple price drops, and only one not-so-tempting offer — Phyllis Troia decided to try something different. Very different.

She and her husband put her Dutch colonial in Plymouth up for auction, to be sold to the highest bidder.

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After the weekend, there were nine bidders — a very promising development. But in the end, she was not satisfied with the final two bids, and exercised her right to close the bidding. She's now moved on to a for-sale-by-owner model.

The Russian oligarch Aleksei Mordashov lost the battle for Arcelor for one reason, Russian politicians say: Russophobia, a bias against Russian businesses and businessmen.

The billionaire and his steel company, Severstal, were bumped aside last weekend as Arcelor's board accepted a takeover offer of €26.5 billion, or $33 billion, from Mittal Steel, saying it was a better fit. Mordashov's offer to take a big stake in Arcelor went by the wayside.

Western investors readily admit that the markets may not be completely comfortable with a wave of Russian takeovers.

"There is still this image that Russia is not a nice cuddly teddy bear, it is an aggressive bear" than can turn against investors, said Stephen Pope, head of equity research at Cantor Fitzgerald in London. Some investors still think that anything to do with Russia is "a little bit doubtful and dubious," he said.

When asked why they do not trust Russian businesses, European investors often mention Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the Yukos oil company, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence in a Siberian penal colony, and the Russian company Gazprom's shutoff of gas supplies to Ukraine last year in a price dispute. Both examples show that the government has a strong hand in business matters, they say.

"One is not always clear whether these are genuine companies or fronts for the state," said Geoffrey Wood, a professor of economics at Cass Business School in London.

Incidentally, there seems to be a developing consensus now around another hike at the end of the month. The one point I want to make is not to bet more money than you'd be willing to lose on it until after the inflation reports next Tuesday and Wednesday. If [the core rate] come[s] in at 0.3%, though, the doves will be facing a real headwind.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI-U advanced 0.4 percent in
May, following a 0.6 percent rise in April. Energy costs continued their
advance--up 2.4 percent in May. Within energy, the index for petroleum
based energy increased 4.8 percent, while the index for energy services
fell 0.6 percent. The food index increased 0.1 percent in May. The index
for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in May, the same as in
each of the preceding two months; the index for shelter again accounted
for over half of the monthly advance.

Because I live in Boston, when people hear that my dog is named Tobin, the most common first reaction is, "Oh, like the bridge?"

When I had a dog named Keynes, the reaction was, "Oh, like the mayonnaise?"

On the other hand, when I learned of Tobin in my finance class, my first reaction was, "oh, like the bridge." I started referring to the line on the risk-return graph connecting the risk-free rate and the efficient frontier of the set of risky portfolios as the Tobin Bridge. Which didn't seem to amuse anyone but me.