WhatNowCartoons The GOP has been attacking President Obama for all the Wrong Reasons: Benghazi Libyan embassy fight when the GOP had previously cut the State Departments defense funding. Or No New Taxes when there is general consensus that tax revenues have dried up and tax reform is way overdue. Or the constant return to Obama’s birth certificate. Yet for the past four years, the Obama administration…
The NYTimes had a recent story, The Infinite Pool of Executive Pay. It is a little hit and miss. The report comes down on the increase of 18.7% percent in corporate perks. But then we also learn that overall median pay for the top 100 CEOs increased by just 2.8%. However, I had a devil of a time resolving this with the following direct quote:…
Tom Wolfe’s book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is about PR and Spokespersons who seemingly can turn any criticism to the advantage of their client. But “flak catcher” had a second nuanced meaning – those who bore the brunt of public scorn diverting attention away from client and upon themselves. As well, attention was diverted from other 3rd parties who perhaps deserved the…
I dread reading the following headlines in the NYTimes or the Wall Street Journal – Gargantuan Fines Imposed on Wall Street Institution or Record Breaking Damages Inflicted on Bank. It might as well read => Hugest Biggest Historically Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious Compensatory Damages Imposed on Piteous Bank because of course it means the opposite. The Federal Government after the worst Wall Street Induced Recession of the last…
David Einhorn, the tiny $7Billion Hedge Fund manager, has tweaked the nose of computing’s Goliath, Apple. Since a week Thursday, David has shocked the US business world with his direct, loud, and “uncivil’ attack on Apple’s huge cash hoard of nearly $130Billion. And Apple’s cash hoard islikely getting bigger on a growth rate of 10%per quarter for the next year or two at least. And Apple is not…
The Hostess Twinkies demise is a business case study that also has political implications. I would love to see if any of the major Business Schools like MIT, Harvard, Univ. of Chicago have taken this defining case on. David Weidner of WSJ and Marketwatch tells the story on who killed the Twinkie: Modern finance is ruthless. Desperate companies sell themselves to Wall Street mercenaries who…
No less an authority than the Economist shows that under Democratic Presidents the stock market has outperformed by a wide margin what was accomplished by Republican Presidents. And this GOP poor economic and stock market performance goes back 80 years. The fundamental problem is that Republican Presidents have had poor economic policy and tolerated Business excesses. Hoover and Republican predecessors indulgence lead to the…
Bank of America is reported in the Dealbook of the NYTimes as settling a class action suit by Bank of America shareholders for $2.43B. An earlier Dealbook story decribees the reasons for the lawsuit. This lawsuit, brought by Bank of America shareholders, claims that Bank of America and its executives, including its former chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, failed to disclose what would be a $15.31…
Each quarter the Kellogg School of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business do a survey of more than 1,000 American households examining the trust in US Financial institutions. The latest results for June 2012 are labelled Too Big To Trust. The Stock Market has the lowest confidence level at 15% matched at the same 15% level by large corporations. The…
Shark Week was last week and I am not talking about the GOP Convention. But Financial Shark Week is being resurrected this week in the Wall Street Journal and the NYTimes. It started with Andrew Ross Sorkin noting in the Dealbook section of the NYTimes, that Facebook’s IPO-Initial Public Offering of stock was priced too high : Now, three months after the offering, the company…
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Captain Jack Aubrey and Spymaster Stephen Maturin are the matching pieces in this historical novel. It is remarkable that English literature has two series, Horatio Hornblower and Aubrey + Maturin both set in the same era and of such great quality. Desolation Island tells you why the era of the dawning Enlightenment, European Wars and Industrial Revolution was so tempestuous... and on a prison ship voyage to Australia. Such drama!