January 2009
27 posts
Fortunes will have been made in 2009
Or so says Richard Branson in this video interview with BBC.
Someone Who Knows What He's Doing
This article on Union Square Ventures blog is a manifesto of investment philosophy. It talks about market structure, gatekeepers, incumbent and new entrants. Barriers to entry, technology and competitive advantage.
Our investment strategy is to arbitrage the difference between the capabilities of the new medium and readiness of the existing economic and social structures to exploit those...
Obama, could you save the New York Times as well?
The New York Times has unfunded cash obligations of over $1.5 billion in the next 7 years and is generating little cash from operations. And has $625 million in underfunded pension liabilities (via Silicon Alley Insider: New York Times: We Owe Retirees $625 Million (NYT)).
We can just add it to the US Government bill.
Yacht Builder Defaults and Takes the Super Rich...
The fact that luxury yacht builder Ferretti defaulted on its debt probably will end the tale of high-end market being untouched from economic crisis: FT.com / Companies / Financials - Ferretti default adds to pressure on Candover.
Foreign Workers Being Cut in the US
In case there was any doubt, being on an H-1B working visa in the US is a comparative disadvantage: Microsoft: H-1B workers among those losing jobs.
Immigration policy will be a major drag on the continued ability of the US to attract people, innovate and get out of this recession. I didn’t feel “welcome” in the US as a worker and that was one of the reasons why I left after my...
Credit Card Debt Starts Shaking
Finally, newspapers start talking about the next tsunami of debt write-off related to credit card debt: The Washington Independent ยป House of Cards.
As job losses mount, the default rate on credit card debt (which reached an average of over $11,000 per card in 2008 in the US!) will spike and trigger a domino effect across financial institutions.
Write-offs will negatively feedback into the...
“If the bet doesn’t pay off, the UK faces national bankruptcy”
– RGE monitor: Can the UK affort to resuce the banks?
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We Are Atlantis
The amount of information produced by humanity has exploded in the past 15 years, due to exponentially growing population compounded - even more importantly - with a discontinuity in content per capita brought about by digital tools and the internet.
New technologies have lowered dramatically the barriers to entry to content production, expanding by an order of magnitude the number of people...
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Free the post code!
Geographic information is still closed and expensive. That is so nineties …
Support this project to free the postal code information: Free The Postcode!
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“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in...”
– Barack Obama
Breaking captchas with JavaScript
John Resig has an interesting post on a simple captcha-breaking algorithm written in JavaScript using a mix of heuristics and neural networks.
“Contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused in every government. It would...”
– Of Public Credit, David Hume via The American Spectator : Was There Ever a Default on U.S. Treasury Debt?
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Inaugural Tag Clouds
It’s fascinating how tag clouds closely represent hopes and fears of people in different times. See the tag clouds of recent and past inaugural speeches of US presidents Word Cloud Analysis of Obama’s Inaugural Speech Compared to Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln’s on ReadWriteWeb.
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More data on the long tail in music
eMusic says that 75% of their 5 million songs sold at least once: eMusic sales data supports ‘long tail’ theory.
That looks like a tail long enough to me. This data seems to contradict prior findings by Will Page and Andrew Bud reporting that only 3 million of the 13 million songs available on the internet sold at least 1 copy.
“The Consumer Price Index dropped 0.7 percent in December, a third straight...”
– Inflation slows to half-century low in 2008 | Reuters
Cities and Ambition →
Great essay by Paul Graham
“I made a killing on Wall Street …I shot my broker.”
– Groucho Marx via Fred Wilson
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$20B for electronic medical records
Through VentureBeat, I found the details on the $825-billion US stimulus plan (pdf).
In particular, I noticed the “$20 billion to jumpstart efforts to computerize health records to cut costs and reduce medical errors”.
Digitalizing medical information represents a huge opportunity to both save lives and drastically cut booming health care costs for our aging population.
2009 may be...
Babel Tower
Construction work on Dubai landmark skyscraper, supposed to stand 1-km tall when done, has halted: Cash Crunch Halts Work on Dubai Skyscraper.
Will this be remembered as the third millennium Babel tower?
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One Google Search Costs 1kJ of Energy
Some energy consumption stats from Google: one search consumes 1kJ (or what the human body burns in 10seconds) and produces 0.2 grams of CO2 (or what a car produces driving 1 meter).
I am very impressed at the simple fact that Google could even calculate and provide this data.
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Would be nice to be a Private Equity secondary...
peHub has an interview with Cogent managing director Colin McGrady highlighting the issues facing investors in private equity funds and how they are desperately trying to get rid of their commitments.
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Population Pyramids
Through this post, I found a very interesting database maintained by US Census on international demographic data: International Data Base (IDB).
Our politicians should look at population pyramids with a little more attention.
Holiday Retailing data finally out
NY Times has a good wrap-up of the holiday season sales data: December Sales Confirm What Retailers Knew.
The miracle did not happen.
“I would rather have people think we’re confused than let our competitors...”
– Larry Page