Archive for 'Uncategorized' Category
Facebook and Business Model 2.0
5 January 2009Tim O’Reilly probably meant no more than to market his omni-present conferences when he coined the term “Web 2.0,” but the results have included giving some kind of ill-conceived business model faith to tens of thousands of hapless would-be entrepreneurs, and a smaller number of even more at-risk investors.
As though the Ferris Wheel (or, more [...]
It Isn’t What We Are Learning - It’s Who Is Learning
4 January 2009There is a lot of important conversation going on currently about what we have all learned about regulation in the financial industry, and what happens with a lack of it, what we could have done differently, why we (and the regulators) ignored often-prescient warnings, and so on.
This all presupposes that learning is, in some way, [...]
The Big Mistakes They Still Don’t See
29 December 2008Imagine this: SNS members now know that the real causes of the current economic crash, on a global dimension, came from the Japanese carry trade and huge petrodollar increases inflating the global liquidity bubble until it was unstable.
Amazing that Fortune magazine would put a cover up claiming that a) the sub-prime mess was the whole [...]
NY NY
8 December 2008Every time we arrive in New York for our Predictions Dinner, it is more fun. The city is all dressed up for Christmas; some would say this is New York at its best. The hotel is incredible, and the choice of things to do is literally unequalled world wide. I am looking forward to seeing [...]
A Few Last Desperate Consistently Self-Oriented Moves
5 December 2008Many people have been forced into having their own verbal and intellectual lenses for explaining the behaviors of George Bush.
He can’t just be insane, so — what is it? What explains his behavior?
Today, as Congress fished around for money to save the U.S. auto companies, in a pickle because they had not invested earlier in [...]
And Now for the Winners —
1 December 2008While everyone is watching GDP figures to understand who the winners and losers are in the global economic crisis, one could also pick a different ruleset, if one sensed there were a different game on altogether.
Currencies, for instance.
Here is a quick quiz:
Q: How many world currencies fell against the dollar since the crisis began?
A: All [...]
The Obama Rebound?
25 November 2008The old adage says, The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
It’s hard to be upbeat these days, when every statistic is worse than the last. But the other day, as I was considering predictions for the coming year, a thought occurred to me: we are experiencing the waning days of the administration I have [...]
The Men Who Killed JFK
23 November 2008While some gullible souls (fewer than half, by most surveys) continue to buy the Warren Commission myth of a lone, crazed assassin, the rest of us, reflecting on yesterday’s anniversary of the assassination of John Kennedy, are convinced that this killing, like almost all of its kind, was the result of a conspiracy.
Based on the [...]
Shorting the Shorts
20 November 2008Today, Citigroup begged the U.S. government to reinstate the ban on short selling in the financial sector. CNBC ran an interview piece on shorts yesterday, with experts generally agreeing that drops of over 15-20% per day in a stock was not because of value, but could only be because of shorting.
A day earlier, a US [...]
Companies on the Road South
18 November 2008I mentioned last week at the WTIA Predictions Dinner that Jerry Yang’s act of refusing Microsoft’s $33 / share offer for Yahoo! may have been the greatest disservice to shareholders in recent memory. That followed an earlier prediction in the SNS newsletter that Yahoo! stock would act like a reverse rocket if they turned down [...]