Archive for December, 2007
reading (for business)
Mark Cuban republished some old blog posts. I particularly like (and agree with) this excerpt:
I would continuously search for new ideas. I read every book and magazine I could. Heck, 3 bucks for a magazine, 20 bucks for a book. One good idea that lead to a customer or solution and it paid for [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
trade deficits and globalization
Here is a short article in which the author questions prevailing wisdom about trade deficits by looking at his own own “trade deficit” with his local Safeway store.
I have seen a similar point made about the trade deficit that most people run with their auto mechanics: specifically that running a trade deficit with your auto [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
vice fund
There is a new (socially irresponsible) fund on the market called the VICE fund (VICEX) that is poised to take advantage of an economic downturn.
Top holdings include:
Altria (Philip Morris)
Caolina Group
Diageo PLC
British American Tobacco
Boeing (?????)
InBev
International Game Tech
MGM Mirage
Heineken
Wynn Resorts
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Robert Reich wrote in hist new book Supercapitalism:
“Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the 1990s got one thing exactly right. He understood that the economy could run at a faster clip and at a lower level of unemployment without igniting inflation than had previously been the case because companies no longer [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
berkeley
I bought a copy of Supercapitalism by Robert Reich last night at Cody’s Books. When I checked out I got a funny look from the woman ringing me up. Within seconds, it became clear that as far as she was concerned, I might as well have been purchasing Serial Killers For Dummies.Quickly trying to bolster [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
google + youtube = game over
When Google bought YouTube last year, I heard a few opinions that Google had concluded that it would be next to impossible to overtake them. YouTube had built an impenetrable moat around itself.
Bah, I thought. After all, YouTube had only been around for 18 months or so.
Well, it really turned out to be true. YouTube [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
writers strike
One thing I have realized about this writers strike is that…I just don’t care. And the longer it goes on, the more I relish…not caring.
If these dunderheads let this go on too long, the whole industry is going to wake up one day and realize—just as the NHL did—that it’s no longer relevant.
OK, it probably [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
financial cuban missile crisis
It occurs to me that the current credit crisis may turn out much like the Cuban missile crisis: one day economics textbooks will be written about how close the world economy came to financial Armageddon.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
bond insurance…again
Nice blurb from SeekingAlpha.com that alludes to the risks of the disaster that will ensue if bond insurers are forced into insolvency.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
It’s an amusing sign of the times when the Taj Mahal decides to stop accepting dollars.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
