Archive for 'guest bloggers' Category
Contrary Brin: Culture War and the Hijacking of Capitalism
16 December 2011Long-time SNS member David Brin continues his spotlight on Culture War in America and beyond: Let’s hear from two fellows who are unabashed capitalists and acolytes of Adam Smith… just like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (and me!)… starting with one of the world’s top/respected pundits on technology industry, Mark Anderson, CEO of the Strategic [...]
Britain’s Economic Future: An Intercontinental Correspondence
2 December 2011[On November 25, Mark emailed Tim Coldwell, well-known retired British entrepreneur, currently living in Le Touquet and Paris, France. Given Tim's ongoing interest in euro finance and banking, Mark asked for his opinion on Britain's economic future. In ascending order, here are Tim's thoughts. After the opening volley, all entries are written by Tim Coldwell [...]
SNS Special Letter: Quantified Health
20 November 2011Towards Digitally Enabled Genomic Medicine: A 10-Year Detective Story of Quantifying My Body By Larry Smarr This is a report on my 10-year personal quest to increasingly quantify my body. As a lifelong scientist, this form of understanding my physical being has come naturally to me. In many ways, my personal journey is a detective [...]
Frustrated with Telecoms
28 August 2010This a copy of a Comment I put on a Baseline Scenario blog today where James Kwak describes his trials and tribulations with Verizon when trying to move his phone and DSL service from one house to another. http://baselinescenario.com/2010/08/18/more-telecom-hell You should consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to deal with Orange and France Telecom [...]
Devaluing the yuan
25 March 2010Continuing with Thursday’s China theme, SocGen’s Albert Edwards has been looking at the emergence of a trade deficit in the People’s Republic and the implications. The backstory here is the recent, surprise announcement from Premier Wen Jiabao and Commerce Secretary Chen Deming that China would record a trade deficit in March – the first since [...]
Citi plans crisis derivatives
8 February 2010Credit specialists at Citi are considering launching the first derivatives intended to pay out in the event of a financial crisis. The firm has drawn up plans for a tradable liquidity index, known as the CLX, on which products could be structured that allow buyers to hedge a spike in funding costs. “This is basically [...]
Obama eats Republicans’ lunch
30 January 2010For an hour on live television, Obama danced around the Republicans, landing blows and coming out ahead on points When the Republicans invited President Obama to address their congressional House delegation in Baltimore today, they probably had no idea how badly it would turn out for them. Presumably the Republicans thought they’d get a chance to [...]
Volcker Rules OK?
23 January 2010Here’s Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research with an aggressively “pro” take on the Volcker rule… Paul Murphy, FT Alphaville Obama-Volcker on target, avoid Glass-Steagall The furore over bankers’ bonuses illustrates one aspect of current financial market conduct that has wide implications: the casual slippage back to “normalcy”, interpreted as business-as-usual 2007-style. It seems clear [...]
Dynamic Paywall Icon
21 January 2010Will the blogosphere soon need a dynamic paywall icon that appears automatically next to any URL to tell the browser that he can access the story because he is a subscriber or not? Perhaps even indicating how many views are left from his “free quota”. For example, if you use Seesmic to view Twitter feeds [...]
Will Amazon Ever Reveal Usable Data About the Kindle?
8 January 2010From SNS guest blogger and publishing guru Thad McIlroy: OK, I’m obsessed. I just checked and I’ve written over 30 blog entries in the last few years about Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, for what I consider empty, meaningless hype around the Kindle and eBooks generally. Where is Peter Finch’s Howard Beale when we need him: [...]