Must See: "Samsung Extreme Sheep LED Art"
This was too cool to leave as a mere Antidote du Jour. Is this what geeks do for fun in New Zealand Wales? If the video plays in a herky-jerky fashion, try viewing it here. Enjoy!
Read more...Category Archives: Technology and innovation
Twitter, Communication, and My Intermittent Inner Luddite
At the risk of losing all cred with tech enthusiast readers, let me use a suggestion (from Dwight) as a point of departure: I thought I would recommend that you both consider adopting Twitter as part of your blogging presence in 2009. Twitter was organized in 2006 and hit 6 million registered users by the […]
Read more...Will Gulf States Beat the US in the Green Energy Push?
The oil-rich countries of the Middle East have some advantages in pursuing the “green” energy market. First, they have pools of investment capital they can turn to this purpose. Possibly more important than access to money is that the funding sources may be willing to take a longer term horizon and lower returns than US […]
Read more...Obama’s Public Works Plan: Trickle Up Economics?
Folks, am just back from a quick turnaround trip to Vienna, which was educational and enjoyable (although I did not have the time to see a Van Gogh exhibition at the Albertina which reportedly has a large number of rarely-exhibited top quality works). Am on the verge of doing a face plant, so forgive me […]
Read more...Even Silicon Valley And Hollywood Hit by Slowdown (Updated)
The people I know in IT (even though they are in New York. they are doing bleeding-edge work) all professed that they were not affected by the stomach-churning market gyrations of the last six weeks: clients were moving ahead with projects underway, prospects still were keen to meet, contracts were being signed. However, if you […]
Read more...Steve Waldman on Good and Bad Financial Innovation
Steve Waldman has a longish and very useful post “I sing the praises of financial innovation” in which he seeks to identify some good and bad financial innovation (I very much support Martin Meyer’s observation that, for the most part, what is called financail innovation is finding new technology that makes legal what was illegal […]
Read more...Leverage (not what you think)
I’m talking platform leverage – the sort of leverage you can get in a proxy battle by putting a page like this in front of millions of people, many of whom may in fact own your stock, the week before the meeting, for free: Or, the leverage in media you can get by interjecting a […]
Read more...On the Prospects for Securitization
A workmanlike piece in the Financial Times, “A re-emerging market?” by Gillian Tett, Aline Van Duyn and Paul Davies gives a cautiously optimistic outlook for the revival of the securitization market. However, it’s a bit disappointing that the article skips over a couple of key elements. The first is that the explosive growth of securitization […]
Read more...You Can Now Track California Burning
I find this simultaneously impressive and a tad repellant (I’m never clear when informed citizenry slips into prurient interest as far as other people’s disasters are concerned). Hat tip Jojo. The state of California now has Google Maps that track fires, although the site dutifully warns visitors that the information is approximate. We can’t embed […]
Read more...Stephen Cecchetti Touts Financial Innovation
A comment in the Financial Times, “Our need to sustain the ‘great moderation’,”by Stephen Cecchetti, professor of global finance at Brandeis, set my teeth on edge. I suspect many readers will react the same way. Let’s start: The US housing market has collapsed, placing severe strains on the financial system and, as a direct consequence, […]
Read more...Guest Post: Does Connectivity in the Financial System Produce Instability?
With the financial system on the exam table, it has been more than a bit troubling, that certain questions are neglected in serious academic/policy debates. The discussion of possible remedies focuses on regulatory solutions, everything from requiring mortgage brokers to be licensed to increasing financial institution capital requirements and having much greater harmonisation, as the […]
Read more..."Money Ruins Everything" (Innovation/Intellectual Property Edition)
Australian professors John Quiggin (economics) and Dan Hunter (law) in a provocatively titled paper “Money Ruins Everything,” which is coming out in the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, argue that the nature of innovation is changing, and that in turn means that we need to rethink policies and incentives. Specifically, they note that the […]
Read more...Do We Want to Foster Customer Neurosis?
As a resident of New York City, I am acutely aware of the perils of neuroticism. This town is full of it. I am as guilty as anyone, although I try to keep it under wraps. If I wasn’t concerned about looking like a control freak in front of clients and friends, I would grill […]
Read more...Guest Post: "Is the Securitization Crisis Driven by Nonlinear Systemic Processes?"
Reader Richard Kline, who provides regular, sophisticated comments, was keen to continue the discussion provoked by a post last week, “Hoisted From Comments: Greater Liquidity Produces Instability.” An anonymous reader offered a complex systems theory view of our modern financial system. The opening paragraphs: Perhaps a lesson to be learned here is that liquidity acts […]
Read more...Microsoft Still Trying Evade the Rule of Law (EU Antitrust Edtion)
Someone needs to tell Microsoft to behave. By way of background, in December 2004, Microsoft lost its final appeal on an EU antitrust case in which it was found guilty of tying its operating system to its media player, undermining competition and hurting consumer choice, and for failing to give rivals the information they needed […]
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