1,359 Words for “Caveat Emptor”
“We’re nothing but a mirror of our consistent thoughts. You tend to manifest what you focus on. If you look around for what’s wrong, you’ll find it. But as all we know up here in San Francisco, when you focus on what’s right, you see it all a...
A Very Palpable Hit
We poke fun at many companies in these virtual pages, but there is one in particular that we tend to poke fun at more often than most. It is a company that has been immensely successful in its field and in a financial sense, and has certainly added mor...
This Just In: Tenured Professor Blasts Monopolies
The most incomprehensible treatise on business monopolies that we have read since…well, ever, appears in today’s online Wall Street Journal.
The treatise appears not, however, courtesy of an English professor—as one suspects when reading the ha...
Don’t Tell Ben
Google to Give Staff 10% Raise—Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2010That is the headline and this is the story, which we are not making up:Moving to plug the defection of staff to competitors, Google Inc. is giving a 10% raise to all of its 23,000 e...
An Open Letter to Ben Bernanke
Dear Mr. Bernanke,
Ours is not an economics column, nor do we profess to grasp the mechanics of how it is, exactly, that you do what you do.
Indeed, the truth is, Macroeconomics was, for us, a snooze-fest—and a fairly literal one at that.
Our imp...
Odland Out, Rationality In?
Office Depot announces that Steve Odland, Chairman and CEO, has resigned from co effective 11/1.2010 (4.63) .So reads the headline crossing the proverbial “tape”—in our case, the indispensible Briefing.com. .Seems the board of the once-mighty o...
“QE 2” or “Ben’s Titanic”?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke seems to want desperately to prove Warren Buffett wrong.He is, in fact, betting the U.S. economy on it.Bernanke, as all the financial world knows, is pushing the Fed into a multi-billion dollar buying spree of Trea...
Memo to Ben Bernanke: Listen to a Conference Call Once in a While
The September employment report “is simply a signal, a strong, strong signal for Fed QE2,” Gross said….
—‘Gross Says Employment Report Signals More Fed Easing,’ Bloomberg, October 8, 2010
"The business traveler is back. We're excited to...
Steve Ballmer, on the Blind Side
Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone, AndroidBy Bill RigbyLast month, a few hundred Microsoft Corp employees acted out their fantasy with a mock funeral for Apple Inc's iPhone at its Redmond, Washington campus….—Reuters, October 1, 2010The iPhone “fune...
“Better Lucky than Smart”: The Urban Legend of Warren Buffett
Asked by an audience member if returns such as those posted by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett…are the product of luck or talent, Taleb [Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan”] said both played a part.If ...
The NotMakingThisUp Book Review: What Ace Said About Jimmy
I hadn’t finished reading the Journal story [describing supposed personal peccadilloes of Jimmy Cayne, the then-beleaguered CEO of Bear Stearns] myself when I knew that this was the end…. Did I discuss it with anybody? No. Did I go running around ...
Here They Go Again: “The Death of Housing”
The stock market may be dragging, but home prices are soaring, fueling a national obsession with real estate. Your house is now your piggy bank.—“Home Sweet Home,” Time Magazine, June 2005Buying a house is supposed to make us better citizens, bet...
