Dean Procter

eBay Earnings: Bullish Comments Not Supported by Data

Ebay is attempting to get exemption from anti-monopoly and consumer protection laws in Australia in an attempt to force sellers and buyers to exclusively use paypal for transactions. It remains to be seen how the financial industry, regulators and consumer groups feel about that. It could influence their path. They obviously intend to do this everywhere. Is it a desperate and doomed move?

Still Biased to Commodities

As food prices increase and food shortages occur people will be unable to buy manufactured items, wage pressures will blow out costs, increasing prices and diminishing markets then demand for some raw materials will fall, and energy will follow. It could happen quite suddenly.

Goldman Sachs's GSTrUE : A Child of Regulatory Decay

I can see this as abeing very attractive for new disruptive technologies where discretion and secrecy are paramount to achieve market advantage. Being able to capitalise before becoming public knowledge and getting financed without having to disclose business plans and technology to all the market is an attractive benefit of such systems.