January 2010
75 posts
“According to the Journal, Macmillan CEO John Sargent visited Amazon Thursday to...”
– This is the iPad stuff I am waiting for. Despite the endless flow of doomsday words (and images) about the iPad - mainly resentment, disenchantment, and all the other post-traumatic stress symbols of shattered impossibly high expectations - this is the type of effect a company like AAPL will have...
“Untermyer: Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?
JP...”
– The famous duel between Morgan and renowned Democratic lawyer Samuel Untermyer, during the Pujo Committee hearings, 1913.
And if Dawn Comes, by Joaquín Sabina
And if dawn...
Tech Leap
CD: I am tired... I think I am going to get a movie.
JVW: Cool, cool.
CD: I just need to get a VHS to play it.
JVW: (in heavy German accent) What's a VHS?
“Where does all this leave us?
Over the next few days, we are likely to get...”
– Greece is the (news) gift that keeps giving… in a sort of slow-motion debacle. But El-Erian brings some sort of hope today, at least for the short-term spike in yields in the aftermath of China rumors. Which, believe it or not, was only yesterday.
Thank Goodness →
WatchOutstanding rhetoric, outstanding. Especially @ around 5:00.
And Now What Really Matters Today... →
Bloomberg Tells Us About US Universities At Davos →
Ironies… and also a great headline: “Yale Pours Davos Cocktails to Chat With Prince, Land Tony Blair” Fair enough.
“Greece is wooing China to buy up to €25bn of government bonds, a move that...”
– Chieese? (Greece + China; not an ESL misspelling of “cheese”). I guess it doesn’t work as well as Chimerica. In any event, these news are unsurprising, but outrageous. Will this force German hands? Or the EU? Or America? I like how Cohn is akin a modern Pierpont Morgan, mediating...
“Rather than a Greek tragedy, a more appropriate analogy for the Greek economy...”
– With the whole Greek sovereign debt crisis, there are just so many analogies that’s hard to keep up… Achilles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes; and that’s just with “A.” I had missed this oped by Greece’s central bank governor; bit of a statement of hope more than...
“As we pass you by, we’ll wave “hi” to you, and then if you...”
– Nikita Khrushchev famously told off Richard Nixon with that line during the 1959 Kitchen Debate 1959. (They were debating relative industrial production between the US and the USSR) And today, I thought about that specific line as I saw news of AAPL’s blowout quarter and Jobs’ classic...
“Once the White House stepped up the political pressure, and the stock market...”
– Cassidy with an interesting analogy with regards to Bernanke’s (re)confirmation.
“Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming...”
– iPhone saves lives. Literally. Now someone tell me how Android, Blackberry, or Palm WebOS compare…
Two @ Two
An example of a flawless opening stanza… and a great poem overall.
Two Look at Two, by Robert Frost
Love and forgetting might have carried them A little further up the mountain side With night so near, but not much further up. They must have halted soon in any case With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness; When they were halted by a...
The (Neo)Liberal Quandary
Samuel Brittan has an enlightening review of several books published recently that struggle with a term that is as ubiquitous as it is misunderstood. He puts it succinctly:
“The word “neoliberalism” came into widespread circulation two or three decades ago, in particular in French political circles, as a term of abuse to denote the Anglo-American espousals of free markets,...
Big State, Economist Version →
“Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee...”
– Whose idea was it to let go of them in the first place? Still, if this is the only type of reaction from Obama, we’re in it for further trouble. After all, this is not about campaign strategy (talk of change). Rather, it’s about action (change).
“Two Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year announced that they...”
– And it only gets bleaker in DC… More than ever, it is important to reiterate why Bernanke should be renewed as Fed Chairman. No doubt there have been mistakes, and perhaps a bit too little concern about medium-long term inflation (“helicopter Ben” and stuff). But despite what Paul...
WatchBubble talk is back! Bigger fans of Apple than me I know very few… yet this is utterly ridiculous.
“Ben Bernanke’s prospects for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman were...”
– Whatever one thinks of quantitative easing and the central bank’s future behavior, this is simply outrageous. And all because of this…
And Now What? →
The American Supreme Court overrules limits on unions’ and companies’ political contributions. Forget about “maxing out”…
How Do Say 'Overheating' in Chinese? →
One can always just order banks to stop lending; usual autocratic stuff.
“Just as financiers make pilgrimages to Omaha to hear Warren Buffett and aspiring...”
– Enlightening VF feature on McKee, the guru of screenwriting. But more important than the man, at least to me, is his role in the astounding Adaptation, Charlie (and Donald) Kaufman’s 2001 masterpiece.
Two classic examples, courtesy of IMDB:
Charlie Kaufman: [voice-over] I am pathetic, I am a...
WatchEverything that it was cracked up to be - and a bit more. All in all, ‘Giving Up The Gun’ is one of the best songs I’ve heard (in English at least).
Democrats' Defeat by Numbers →
It will be a dark day at the White House…
““Some say this church looks like a mosque,” said Father Dall’Oglio, as his...”
– Ecumenicism lives, or so it seems from this great NYT reportage on interfaith initiatives among modern pilgrims at a recondite Syrian monastery. Worth the trip?
“We have left the realm of what should happen and are now embarked on what is...”
– Political populism + fiscal debacle + desired long-term societal de-leveraging + retaliation against an (overly?) successful sector: new tax on banks. Usual El-Erian clarity on the FT today.
“Sebastián Piñera, a billionaire businessman, has defeated Chile’s ruling leftist...”
– El tiempo todas las batallas vence. (Time wins every battle.) And Piñera gets the Chilean presidency.
Coming Soon: Google Nexus 7.3e (Beta Build...
Generally, I am no friend of Google’s… I think Wave is lame, Voice is overhyped, and Chrome OS scares me. Perhaps more importantly, I completely side with Harvard’s Darnton on the battle over Books and copyrights. Not necessarily because Google is evil (whatever it is, it is not plainly “good”), but because the main threat for this new enlightenment (even perhaps a...
Poster as Propaganda →
Thought the focus is way too modern (hence missing some of the WWI, WWII, and inter-war gems of the genre), the NYT today features a good slideshow on the “poster as propaganda”, mainly focusing on the Swiss decision to ban minarets a couple of months ago. Worth a look.
@ The New Republic
TNR today features an article of mine on the crisis in Argentina between the government and the central bank. It is linked here. Much appreciate the help from the magazine’s outstanding editors…
WatchVampire Weekend’s live ‘Contra’ presentation, London, 18:36.