Category Archives: Technology and innovation

At Least Half of the 21,500 Companies Revealed by the Guardian/ICIJ Offshore Investigation Have Connections With Rogue Agent GT Group

The GT Global sham company network may be far bigger than you ever imagined.

Curtailing Intellectual Monopoly: The Insanity of US Copyright Law

Yves here. While our focus is on finance and economics, rentier capitalism is on the march , seemingly across the entire economy. One of the troubling examples is the expansion of intellectual property rights. The idea that seeds could be patented would be dismissed as ridiculous 40 years ago; we now have Monsanto controlling critical parts of our food supply as a result of its successful IP strategy.

Rajiv Sethi gives an update on the copyright front, where the Republican Study Committee (the RSC) issued a policy document that found, mirabile dictu, that copyright law had become skewed toward protecting content owners/creators.

Harry Shearer: Preventing Another “Sandy”: The Lessons New Orleans can Teach New Jersey

By satirist Harry Shearer, who recently took two years off from comedy to direct “The Big Uneasy”, a documentary about the investigations into the 2005 New Orleans flood

Within hours of the landfall of Sandy, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was telling his homeboy anchor Brian Williams that he was going to get on the phone to the President and request the Army Corps of Engineers to come up with a plan for protecting the Jersey shore. If he hasn’t yet placed that call, he might want to give it a second think.

Bankers Beginning to Look a Smidge Desperate: Goldman Looking for Technology Magic Bullets to Fix its Cost Problem

Now that Wall Street blew up the global economy in its search for fun and profit, it is finally having to eat its own cooking in the form of more modest profits. Of course, the slightly chastened Masters of the Universe seem constitutionally unable to recognize that their own actions might have something to do with the fix they are in.

Shale Gas Will be the Next Bubble to Pop

By James Stafford, publisher of OilPrice. Cross posted from OilPrice.

To help us to look past the hype and take a critical look at whether shale really is the golden goose many believe it to be or just another over-hyped bubble that is about to pop, we were fortunate to speak with energy expert Arthur Berman.

In the interview Arthur talks about:

• Why shale gas will be the next bubble to pop
• Why Japan can’t afford to abandon nuclear power
• Why the United States shouldn’t turn its back on Canada’s tar sands
• Why renewables won’t make a meaningful impact for many years
• Why the shale boom will not have a big impact on foreign policy
• Why Romney and Obama know next to nothing about fossil fuel energy

On the Decline and (Maybe) Fall of Venture Capital

Roughly eight years ago, I had lunch with an ex-McKinsey colleague who had started a venture capital firm. His partners were raising a second fund. He was leaving. I wish I had taken notes, but his message was that the industry did not work.

Hugging a Chicken via the Internet

I’m normally try not to go overboard on videos on NC, but this one features two of our pet interests at once: geekery and being nice to animals.

Ocean Power: The Ignored Alternative

Call it the joy of engineering.

Ocean power is an engineer’s dream, where seemingly all things are possible.

Private Equity: The Mechanics of Intellectual Capture

By Nanea, a private equity insider

I thought I would make a brief digression into how private equity GP*s are able to use a web platform called IntraLinks as a vehicle to intellectually capture and, in a sense, hold prisoner their LP investors.

Is Facebook’s Ad Model a Scam?

I’ve watched the Facebook phenomenon with considerable skepticism, and have refrained from commenting on it, save linking to stories such as GM canceling all of its Facebook ads because they didn’t see the benefit.

But this item via reader Chuck L was a real eye-opener.

New Zealand’s Company Register: Even More Out of Control Than You Thought

My last post on this little mess implied that there was pretty slack official monitoring of the NZ Company Register for obviously false or impermissible registration information. But one or two other sightings invite the question: does anyone in New Zealand take Para 1, Section 377 of the Companies Act seriously, any more? 377 False statements […]

Quants, Models, and the Blame Game

Cathy O’Neil, a quant, looks at the key question raised by a recent paper by Donald Mackenzie on the Gaussian copula model: why do flawed models become widely accepted?

China Punches Back in Rare Earths Row, Claims Rising Scarcity Justifies Export Curbs

A serious simmering dispute involves China versus the rest of the world on rare earths. As most readers know, rare earths are essential to the manufacture of many high tech, defense, and “green energy” products, such as smartphones, lasers, and hybrid batteries. Even though rare earths are not rare, their extraction is an environmentally nasty business, and China, which has less than 30% of world reserves, now accounts for over 90% of global production. That is a stranglehold that China has decided to exploit.