Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One - Peter Schiff - Mises Institute

Peter Schiff on the financial meltdown at Mises Institute

Sentences to ponder:

Back then, we borrowed money to make investments, to build infrastructure, to build factories, to build farms, to build a productive economy. We invested the money; we didn't just spend it on stuff.
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And we became the world's wealthiest economy because we borrowed to produce. What we've done recently is we've borrowed to consume. We didn't produce anything. ... So how can we possibly pay the money back? We didn't acquire any income-producing assets to pay the money back.

And when the world finally lets the dollar collapse — and they will — our purchasing power isn't going to vanish, it's just going to be redistributed. Other currencies are going to rise. And people in other countries, people that are working in factories right now in China, that are producing products and just shipping them abroad and just kind of waving good-bye, all of a sudden, they'll be able to afford them.

The Chinese will be able to turn in their bicycles and buy automobiles because steel will be cheaper, because cars will be cheaper, because the value of their wages will rise because their currency will gain purchasing power.
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It's the Americans who are going to be buying the bicycles. Because, all of a sudden, cars will be too expensive for us, gasoline will be too expensive for us, because we'll be bidding with currency of much less value. And that's what's going to happen. And the world is not going to suffer because we don't buy their stuff. They're going to benefit because now there's going to be more stuff for them.

Right now, because the world lends us so much money, there's a capital shortage. Wouldn't the world be better off investing their savings productively in their own countries, rather than just giving their savings to us? Wouldn't they be better off enjoying the fruits of their own labor, rather than laboring while we enjoy the fruits? It's obvious. And it's going to happen.

Google buzz comment box on the Chrome browser.

The Google buzz comment box appears to be misplaced, mis-sized on my Chrome.
It works fine in my Firefox. My immediate guess is that something wrong/conflicting with extensions.
Turning off adthwart on google buzz seems to fix it.
Others also reported same problem. Given that adthwart is one of the most popular extensions on Chrome. It might be a wide spread problem.

safety of silence

I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.
-- Howard Zinn, Historian, (1922-2010), author of A People's History of the United States

Microsoft on iTunes in 2003: 'We were smoked' | Digital Noise: Music and Tech - CNET News

It is heard all over the place that Microsoft cannot innovate any more. Matt Rosoff dug into old emails to find some clues.

Microsoft on iTunes in 2003: 'We were smoked' | Digital Noise: Music and Tech - CNET News

One of the most interesting follow-ups comes from Groklaw, which dug up some e-mails placed into the public record a few years ago during an antitrust case against Microsoft. (These materials have been a treasure trove of interesting and sometimes-embarrassing internal communications, including then-Windows chief Jim Allchin's 2004 admission that he would have bought a Mac over a Windows PC at that time.)
Almost immediately after Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sent an e-mail to a bunch of folks in the Windows Media and MSN groups praising Steve Jobs' ability to get "a better licensing deal than anybody else has gotten for music." He continued, "We need some plan to prove that even though Jobs has us a bit flat-footed again, we move quick, and both match and do stuff better."
Allchin added his opinion in a follow-up e-mail: "We were smoked."

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Getting back to Dick Brass's criticism of Microsoft, I find it fascinating that top Microsoft executives were aware almost immediately of the threat the iTunes Music Store posed to the whole Windows Media ecosystem, but Microsoft was still unable to stop it. This matches what I've seen time and time again in my last 10 years following the company.
Microsoft has some smart executives who can quickly and correctly assess market changes and opportunities. Often, they come up with a good strategy to capitalize on those changes. But somewhere between strategy and execution, the thread is lost. Windows Media and Zune are most relevant to this blog, but you can see it elsewhere: online advertising, search, and mobile phones, to name three obvious examples.

Let's fast-forward to yesterday, almost immediately after GOOGLE announced BUZZ, Microsoft PR fought back:

“Busy people don't want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We've done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.” - Microsoft statement on Google Buzz.

Will we read some emails expressing different feelings years later?

How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo - WSJ.com

WSJ published a nice essay of going solo. How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo - WSJ.com

So, what do these thriving solo artists have in common? What is the recipe for their good fortune? My research points to five ingredients to keep in mind.

Think Long Term

Pick Right Skills and Keep Them Fresh
Typically, consultants keep their edge by attending workshops or training courses. But the most successful often add another key element to their training: They teach—whether at a regional business college, through university continuing-education programs or through workshops given by professional associations.

Join a Network

Have Your Own Space

Think Like an Entrepreneur

bing still behind google

I just published a post about the recent essay titled " The end of the Beijing Consensus".

I first got to know the essay from a twit this morning. I googled "end of beijing concensus", without the quote, and easily located the essay at the original website, a Chinese translation, and several insightful comments. 10 hours later, just before I publish this blog, I binged again, the same phase, with and without title, the only relevant entry led me to the magazine's main page, not the essay.

Clearly Bing crawls the web much slower than google does. It is age of real-time search now. That should not be too hard to solve. Microsoft can what they are good at, throwing money at the problem. But they did not. Instead, Microsoft spends tons of dollars on TV commercials, and is sitting on a pile of cash.

Bing still has a long way to go to catch up, and it may never happen. Microsoft just becomes more and more irrelevant. They lost the ability to innovate.

The End of the Beijing Consensus | Foreign Affairs

The essay is worth noting not only because of its content, but also that the author is close to the current Chinese administration. The fact that such an essay made its way to Foreign Affairs may imply some internal tensions within CCP.

The End of the Beijing Consensus | Foreign Affairs

Those measures, however, may be too weak to discourage the emergence of powerful interest groups seeking to influence the government. Although private businesses have long recognized the importance of cultivating the government for larger profits, they are not alone. The government itself, its cronies, and state-controlled enterprises are quickly forming strong and exclusive interest groups. In a sense, local governments in China behave like corporations: unlike in advanced democracies, where one of the key mandates of the government is to redistribute income to improve the average citizen's welfare, local governments in China simply pursue economic gain.
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The reforms carried out over the last 30 years have mostly been responses to imminent crises. Popular resistance and economic imbalances are now moving China toward another major crisis. Strong and privileged interest groups and commercialized local governments are blocking equal distribution of the benefits of economic growth throughout society, thereby rendering futile the CCP's strategy of trading economic growth for people's consent to its absolute rule.
An open and inclusive political process has generally checked the power of interest groups in advanced democracies such as the United States. Indeed, this is precisely the mandate of a disinterested government -- to balance the demands of different social groups. A more open Chinese government could still remain disinterested if the right democratic institutions were put in place to keep the most powerful groups at bay. But ultimately, there is no alternative to greater democratization if the CCP wishes to encourage economic growth and maintain social stability.

The main thesis is thought provoking, and worth further exploring. The narrative is familiar, though. The central government is the good "cop", and the local governments act only in self-interest and ruined the well intended policy. It still leaves people wonder how to explain those policies clearly favored the interests of members of central government.

Mr. President, the Moon is too far

When then Senator Obama responded to the accusation of raising the "false hopes" from his rival, he said:

“How have we made progress in this country? Look, did John F. Kennedy look at the moon and say ‘Ah, it’s too far. We can’t do that. We need a reality check,’”   (source: Politico)

Seemingly, after the reality check, President Obama deemed that the moon is too far. 

It is probably a right decision, which is more upsetting the decision itself. GOP members still cherish the "The Shining City Upon A Hill" speech by Reagan, but the reality keeps reminding people of the possibility that the United States of America can no longer afford to be the leader of the world. For a nation, the dividends of being a world leader is huge, but at times cost might be even higher and unaffordable. It happened to older empires, Rome or Spain.

Is the moon too far? The money needed to keep the mission alive is several billion dollars per year. Considering the money handed out to bankers, and the number of executives collected more than a billion in the recession years, it is not a big amount. So the question is when it comes to spending, what are the priorities. The answer changes the direction of the nation.