Finance Matters

Archive for December, 2009

For something I’m working on: we know that China is pursuing a mercantilist policy: keeping the renminbi weak through a combination of capital controls and intervention, leading to trade surpluses and capital exports in a country that might well be a natural capital importer. We also know, or should know, that this amounts to a beggar-thy-neighbor policy — or, more accurately, a beggar-everyone but yourself policy — when the world’s major economies are in a liquidity trap.

But how big is the impact? Here’s a quick back-of-the-envelope assessment.

Read Krugman’s analysis here –>

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See Also:

• China’s Multi-Decade Worker Shortage Starts Next Year
• Paul Krugman’s Emergency Jobs Program Will Never Work
• Why Krugman’s "Blame China" Mentality Is Completely Wrong

We’re almost clear of the aughts. Just one more day, and we get to leave this decade behind for good. But before we do, it’s worth taking stock of the absolute worst gadgets these last ten years have given us.

We haven’t ranked our picks, but we have put them in a rough chronological order. Think of it as a guided tour through the various circles of gadget hell—and feel free to have a little guilt when you spot the ones you’ve owned (or still do). Anything we’ve missed? Share it in the comments. There have been thousands of gadgets released since 2000, and we’re sure there are at least fifty more out there that should never have seen the light of day.

The 50 Worst Gadgets Of The Decade →

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See Also:

• The Worst Internet Disasters Of The Decade
• 15 Huge Ideas That Flopped This Decade
• 15 Gadgets That Changed Everything This Decade

TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman has some characteristically provocative thoughts about the market and the government’s role in manipulating it.

Via ZeroHedge:

The most positive economic development in 2009 was the stock market rally. Since the middle of March, the market cap of all U.S. stocks has soared more than $6 trillion.  The “wealth effect” of rising stock prices has soothed the nerves and boosted the net worth of the half of Americans who own stock.
 
We cannot identify the source of the new money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast.  For the most part, the money did not from the traditional players that provided money in the past:

• Companies.  Corporate America has been a huge net seller.  The float of shares has ballooned $133 billion since the start of April.
• Retail investor funds.  Retail investors have hardly bought any U.S. equities. Bond funds, yes. U.S equity funds, no.  U.S. equity funds and ETFs have received just $17 billion since the start of April.  Over that same time frame bond mutual funds and ETFs received $351 billion.

Read more at Zero Hedge — >

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See Also:

• Eric Sprott: Stocks Heading Below March Lows, We’re In A Two-Decade Bear Market
• The Federal Reserve Subsumes Washington, As Everything Turns Into An Extension Of Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing
• TrimTabs: The Real Job Loss Number Was 255,000

Last week brought word that a former Fried Frank Associate Julie Kamps was suing the firm and several of its partners for sexual discrimination and its allegedly related failure to promote her to partner.

Kamps was a litigation associate for ten years before being terminated in January.

She did indeed file the suit, and Above The Law posted a copy of the complaint.

It’s a doozy. Kamps is representing herself, though that could always change if employment attorneys evaluate the complaint and find it to be meritorious. After all, suits like this scream quick settlement.

A spokesman for Fried Frank told The New York Post the lawsuit has “no substance.”

Even if that is the case, it is unlikely the firm will want to engage in extensive discovery over whether, as Kamps alleges, her complaints about harassment were ignored or ineffectively dealt with, that a main firm partner said it was her “biggest regret” she had never had sex with Kamps and that she wanted Kamps to perform oral sex on her.

Wrapped up in a complaint full of salacious details are serious allegations about the law firm’s treatment of associates, including whether partners direct negative reviews for associates who they wish would leave the firm.

The full complaint is below. 

Fried Frank Associate Complaint

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See Also:

• Ex-Associate Suing Fried Frank For $50 Million, Says Not Made Partner Because She’s A Lesbian
• Fried Frank Bonuses In Undisclosed, Varying Amounts
• Firm Sues Ex-Associate For "Levinson Axelrod Sucks" Site

FROM TECHCRUNCH: We’ve always had a lot of fun with Indianapolis-based startup ChaCha.

They launched in 2007 as a human powered search engine – meaning a human found you answers when you typed in a query.

Pranksters, obviously, loved it. And we noted the high cost of hiring humans to basically do Google searches and return results to people.

Continue reading on TechCrunch >

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See Also:

• Silicon Valley: No Longer The Home Of The Startup IPO
• Twitter Buys Startup To Help With Geolocation
• Check Out New York’s Newest Startup Hangout, Dogpatch Labs