SAF

Not Everyone Likes Windows 7

Not everyone likes windows 7? That's a shocker.

Windows 7 will be a big hit. And there will be some segment of the population that hates it.

Is There Really a Global 'Cabal' Aiming to Dump the Dollar?

An excellent article and I agree with the author.

Why Ford Is a Goner

I aggree with your assessment.

Ford is a goner for sure. Compared to Government Motors it has a poor capital structure. The only was that GM will succeed is with import restrictions. Obama cannot let GM fail and whatever it takes for that to succeed, killing Ford and killing imports will happen.

Fiat had such a poor reputation in the US that it abandoned this market long ago. I don't see how they can succeed with the Chrysler take over.

Brace for lousy US made cars and high prices on imports.

The Fate of General Motors' Rick Wagoner

I've seen many startup businesses that had a revolving door at the CEO office. The CEO who was finally successful arrived at a time when the business made sense in terms of customers buying the product. The CEOs who preceded the apparently successful one where not bad guys just too early.

Say what you want about Wagner he arrived at a time when it was impossible to change either labor costs or the engineering culture. Now that GM is facing extinction labor costs can be brought into line and engineering can be fixed. No one could have possibly fixed GM before this crunch just too much momentum.

GM will need a great CEO to emerge from this mess. But that CEO has a chance now because most GM employees finally recognize the old way of doing business won't work anymore.

The Bonus Tax: The Redistribution of Both Wealth And Talent

More stupid laws on the way.

This Recession Is a Reset to a New Normal

I fully agree. There has been a reset.

Will Obama Be Re-elected?

There are many in the wealthy class, notably Warren Buffet, who have been big supporters of Obama and believe in higher taxes. Add in 90% of Hollywood and you get a lot of support.

I think it is the 150K to 1.5M earners who are probably more against him than for him.

He will not be turned out of office for poor economic practice, Roosevelt proved that (although it has been argued that WWII saved his butt). Only a couple of major terrorist actions in the continental US will make him a one term president.

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How the iPhone and Poor Management Contribute to Apple's Downfall

It would be nice to own a stock that never went down. Ask the Madoff investors how it worked out for them.

Most of the bulge bracket investment banks are either down the tubes or need massive government bailouts. GM, Ford and Chrysler would be chapter 11 without government assistance.

So you'll forgive me if I don't think Apple is mismanaged. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis

Countries imitate people. They grow old and die. If a person lives long enough they are bound to get and die of cancer. In the US our cancers are corruption, mismanagement, greed, excess legal happenings etc. One can view our enemies and the terrorists as carcinogens which of course accelerate the cancer.

Eventually there will be a rebirth, painful though it may be

Morningstar's Biggest Error: The Perils of Youth

Marc: Nice piece.

Four of My Favorite Stocks

From time to time I spend periods in rural Arkansas. There are train tracks that run near where I stay and the number of passing trains has greatly diminished from May to November and even more so between November and now. They used to wake me up going through town. Now I hardly ever here them.

Hard to believe we are at a bottom yet with such a perceptible decrease in traffic, anecdotal as this may be.

Buffett's Import Certificates Plan Could Pilot the Economy to a Safe Landing

Buffet's scheme is another set of rules that will be circumvented and to the clever will go the spoils.

Consider this:

Under the same set of laws, SEC rules, economies etc. Buffet made his share holders billions and Madoff stole all his investors' money. And what this show is how ineffective all these laws are. Buffet was an honest broker and Madoff was not. And that in entirety is the difference in the outcomes as every other piece of the playing field was the same.

More rules and schemes won't do the job. We need an overhaul of the SEC and banking rules to make them much simpler. And then we need to enforce them. Good rules would let a Buffet thrive and stop a Madoff at the $50K mark not the $50B mark.

Oil Price Economics the 60 Minutes Way

The 60 minutes piece indicates a bottom in oil prices is in place.

60 Minutes on Oil: Did Anyone Verify Anything?

The Russians cannot live with 40 buck oil. They will create a war situation in the middle east using their Iranian proxies. Some capacity in the gulf will be knocked out one way or another causing oil prices to climb.

Oil=$40/BBl=Russia as a basket case
Oil=$100/BBL=Russia a super power

Which equation do you think Putin will opt for?

Has Google Declared War on Enterprise IT?

Amazon has been doing this for a number of years. They have EC2 service and S3 storage among many.

Cloud computing will grow simply because for many companies it will be much cheaper than hosting their own solutions.