The sudden departure of HP’s CEO Mark Hurd didn’t add up. Ethical lapses by CEOs demonstrating at least adequate performance get buried unless unfavorable media coverage won’t go away, or the internal damage is so great that his authority is impaired. Neither seemed to be the case with Hurd. I hadn’t given the Hurd case […]
Read more...David Pell in a post at NPR worries that information overload leads many to miss broader issues. His point of departure is a recent Time magazine cover image of a young Afghan woman mutilated by the Taliban. After being put off by the editorial decision to use such a grim photo, he pinged some colleagues […]
Read more...Wow, the efforts to find and discredit strategic defaulters and other types of mortgage borrower reprobates appear to be picking up steam at the New York Times. Let’s be clear: there are not doubt more than a few people who bought more house than they could afford who had out of control spending habits. But […]
Read more...Stress will bring out an organism’s or an organization’s defenses, and the beleagured Obama administration is looking mighty defensive these days. The great unwashed public isn’t buying its PR about its supposed accomplishments, such as the disgrace that it misbrands as financial reform (which 80% are skeptical will prevent a future crisis) and health care […]
Read more...Economists have been rewarded all too well for fetishing numbers and mathematics. The self-conscious effort within the discipline to turn it into a science (a goal most real scientists would deem to be impossible, given the fickle nature of human behavior), which meant making it more mathematical, has resulted in economists being better paid than […]
Read more...By Jack Sparrow, who writes at Mercenary Trader The employment picture constitutes yet another headwind and a significant one to the already-faltering U.S. recovery. It will undermine future spending, company earnings and profitability. Indeed, the poorer the employment picture, the greater the likelihood that households will become more cautious and that the corporate sector will […]
Read more...The press has been duly supportive of the successful effort by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to get other mega-rich individuals to give away at least half their wealth to charity. But is this the unalloyed boon that it is presented as being? William Langley, in the Telegraph, points out that the new model of […]
Read more...By Glenn Stehle, an engineer who began working in the oil industry in 1974. He has extensive experience in drilling operations. He retired in 2000 and now lives in Mexico. “Equal protection” under the law is the best safeguard that the average person enjoys. Remove the law and you remove the protection, and it is […]
Read more...Don’t expect this updated assessment, that Medicare now is expected to be viable till 2029, to stem the expected push to gut Social Security and Medicare. From Bloomberg: Medicare will gain an extra 12 years of fiscal life as a result of the health law signed in March by President Barack Obama, a government report […]
Read more...Nassim Nicholas Taleb has an intriguing piece at Huffington Post, “The Regulator Franchise, or the Alan Blinder Problem,” with a juicy anecdote at its core. It highlights a critical issue: how we’ve come to accept what other eras would view as dubious conduct as business as usual. Note that Taleb does a particularly artful job […]
Read more...Even though St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard created a bit of frisson last week by discussing deflation, and Treasury yields are awfully reminiscent of Japan, investors and consumers have been so conditioned to be on the watch for inflation (particularly increases in food and fuel prices), that the suck of deflation on much bigger […]
Read more...Robert Frank at the Wall Street Journal contends that the rich don’t need the rest of us all that much (hat tip reader Don B): Late last year, the U.S. economy experienced a surprising decoupling. As stocks boomed, the wealthy bounced back. And while the Main Street economy was wracked by high unemployment and the […]
Read more...Thought I’d make a very crude effort to assess how much interest there is in strategic default, via looking at how often it comes up in Google searches versus other hot topics. Be sure to look at the left scale. Not surprisingly, strategic defaults is a new subject of interest: Some old and new pet […]
Read more...This post first appeared on May 11, 2007 I am beginning to suspect that many are reacting to the overstimulation of the modern world – the accelerating pace of change, data overload, time pressure, work and relationship instability – by turning off their brains. The rise of fundamentalism and the “family values” push, both efforts […]
Read more...This post first appeared on May 6, 2007 I’m certain you’re familiar with the expression “death wish.” I am beginning to wonder whether America has a banana republic wish. The country has been taking steps towards being a small-minded, elite-dominated, sham democracy. Mind you, I am pointing to a tendency, not an established fact. The […]
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