mikefarr

Diana Farrell And The White House Theory Of Bank Size

"I doubt anyone at any of the big banks particularly enjoys the oversight they already have." Such could be said for any felon in prison. It doesn't mean anything.

"Painting the picture that the governemnt and the banks are in cahoots is WAY off base." Citation? Argument? Just look at the numbers of regulators, economic envoys to the G20, Treasury Secretaries, protégées, bank and thrift regulators and others who are from Goldman Sachs alone, or those that go from regulating agencies to Wall Street and, like Carl Sagan used to say, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." GreedCanBeGood offers nothing but empty assertion. He would have us suspend human nature (that our regulators are saints and suffer no conflicts of interest) in order to believe in an unregulated system based on the exact opposite qualities of human nature.

Fantasy and rubbish. Anyone fool make a mistake but it takes true genius operating under moral hazard to crash an economy.

BTW, I'm a free market capitalist. Imagine what the average American thinks.

Mike

Is a Crash Impending?

Mr. Denniger is being creatively decorous. If you put dogfood into a dog when it comes out it's ... used dogfood.


On Aug 31 01:01 PM Tony Petroski wrote:

> I've heard of "Dead-Cat Bounces." "Used Dogfood Stocks?" What is
> the origin of that phrase?

When Will the Music Stop for Government Bonds?

Too few Sundays do I muse on the true. Thanks gentlemen for an enjoyable read.

What’s Really Going on with Apple, Google, AT&T and the FCC

The Trojan Horse part of the argument is important. Everyone tries to get one of their products as standard fare on the other guys'. Google chrome on Mac and Win. Safari and iTunes on Win. Google Voice on the iPhone. Adobe Flash, Sun Java on the iPhone (will never happen). Sun didn't even pretend that Java on Win was anything other than a Trojan Horse which is why Microsoft came up with their own incompatible version. It's a successful strategy. Today, what percentage of the record number of switchers from Win to Mac have been due to iTunes/iPod/iPhone users on Win simply completing the journey?

Back in early days, Microsoft did a version of Basic for the Apple II. It became a standard on the machine. When this happened it gave MS enormous leverage over Apple. They refused to re-license Microsoft Basic for the Apple II, effectively killing it, unless Apple licensed them part of the Macintosh UI. Apple had no choice.

I had the same thing happen to me when my company was bought our key technology licensor at less than we thought fair value. It's a lesson you only have to learn once.

McDonald's' New Burger Is Another Reason to Love It

I'm a big In-N-out fan. Swore I'd never go to Micky-Ds again but was forced to be three friends from, believe it or not, Vienna. Had the Angus burger, they went there for the coffee!? Angus burger was good. McDs is an option again.

Still wish In-N-Out was public.

U.S. Market (Lack of) Action Charts

Thanks Tyler,
Pardon my newness but how do you generate this graph? Is this the infamous "forward yield curve"? What is it the data that it's based on? I'm trying to decide how much weight to give this.

What should I conclude from the DB and JPM buying of SPY? Anything more than that they are betting on the S&P going up? How likely is this to be just a balance to some derivatives trade? Again, how did you generate this screen? I didn't even know you could get this information.

Hidden Crash: The Dumping of Venture Funds

Not to be a sap, but I'd have to agree with everyone. Sure discretionary investment income will be tight for a while but this is actually the perfect storm for venture investing: there are real exciting and critical problems to solve while at the same time valuations are cheap and there are smart people in need of jobs. Would you rather have valuations skyhigh, talent expensive, and have to choose between solutions looking for a problem?

Mike

Why Apple Stock Is Poised To Go Flat - At Best

What would happen to Apple's market cap if it's market share went from 5% to 30% or 50% or higher?

This is already happening in the student market, where this year it is outselling Dell and HP by wide margins. 25% is 5 times Apple's current marketshare. The iPhone has 1% market share. Could it go to 5%?

Unlike 5 years ago, most enterprises now support Macintosh alongside Windows. As baby-boomers retire they will be replaced by new graduates who overwhelmingly prefer Macintosh.

Pick a market share number and invest accordingly.

Of course all this doesn't take into account what else Apple might have in store for us.

Options Trader: Monday Outlook

And the $1trillion questions is: who is that mysterious trader?

Is it possible to agree with both Phil and Mmmark? Taxes should go where the oil is extracted, sounds logical. I don't mind stock buybacks because that money will flow where investments dictate and new energy will continue to be attractive at $100+oil. At the same time, oil companies are good at building large projects. As soon as one of them figures out that it is more profitable to invest in alternate energy generation then others will follow at increasing speed. I think the government can help by the proper carrot and stick tax policy that makes that stampede moment happen sooner.

Analysts Weigh in on Apple Earnings; 10-15 Points More Downside?

More importantly, when a single phone with a miniscule marketshare has the vast majority of web accesses, you would have to conclude that the mobile web is a fad and that Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony-Ericson have spent the majority of their R&D handset dollars (unsuccessfully) chasing that fad.

Only 35% of iPhone Buyers Will Get it For $199

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

A Real iPhone Challenger - Barron's

Take a look at the u-Tube comparisons between the HTC Touch and the iPhone and decide for yourself. For example, compare visual voicemail to having to wade through each message listening to "to reply press 5, to store press ...". VVM allows you to see all your messages at once and decide which to listen to and which to not bother with while for the other, well, telcom execs have admitted (Pogue NYTimes) that the slow, sleepy voice and requirement that the user listen to each message in series is there to waste minutes and cost the user more. Who do you want designing for you?

Is User Apathy About Smartphones Becoming Apparent?

Have you actually used those phones? Apple comes out with the first phone whose browser is actually usable and immediately their small percent of the market had over 50% of the web accesses in the first months. More people surfed the web from a slow iPhone than from Sun Microsystem computers. Looking at how people use phones with a terrible, confusing, difficult user experience is not a good predictor of how they will Apple phones.