I first started reading biographies of men of great accomplishments in high school; the first was that of Eddie Rickenbacker. I haven’t stopped, either; the most recent was that of Steve Jobs. Sometime after I’d started my career in the automotive industry, I took to reading books about the men who had created that industry. One thing you learn quickly about these individuals is that most had suffered serious financial setbacks before they finally succeeded. In fact the setbacks they encountered would have stopped the average individual in his tracks; but those who finally succeeded to greatness seemed to brush off defeat even faster than they accepted their ultimate success.
The other fact one notices in reading great car guys’ biographies is that many of the greatest names in business history actually started in the absolute worst of economic times. Others, such as GM’s Alfred Sloan, made their reputations in periods of horrendous economic activity.
Category: History
Best Photos of 2011
From the uprisings across the Arab world to the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, there was no lack of news in 2011. Reuters photographers covered the breaking news events as well as captured more intimate, personal stories. In this showcase, the photographers offer a behind the scenes account of the images that helped define the year.
Is There Life After Debt?
Fact: The debt crisis is global – and, yes, this includes the so-called creditor nations, such as China. After all, in our fiat currency world it takes a debit in order to create a credit.
The way we got into this mess is well known: the West foolishly (even criminally, if you ask me) gave up its industrial/manufacturing base and the high earned-income jobs it generated, replacing them with services and low value-added jobs. However, it didn’t lower its consuming and spending habits to balance the losses, instead it piled on debt from vendor nations, and constructed Rube Goldberg asset bubble contraptions that attempted to generate “wealth” out of thin air (e.g. real estate, derivative-based bonds, etc.).
History and Evaluation of the Policy Response to the Great Recession: Summers BGP-266M Crisis Economics Syllabus
Course Overview: This course will examine the American policy response to the recent financial crisis
and associated Great Recession. The objective is to illuminate (i) the changes in macroeconomic thinking necessitated by recent events (ii) the relationship between analytical macroeconomics, finance and policymaking in a political context (iii) lessons of recent experience for public policies directed at preventing crises in the future and responding to them when they come. The lectures will draw on the professional economic literature to the minimum extent necessary to facilitate understanding of the issues involved. The primary focus will be on the process of policy choice and the factors entering into actual policy decisions. Each lecture after the first introductory lecture will cover a different aspect of the policy response to the crisis. Sections will take up relevant analytical economic aspects.
34 Veterans Day Pictures
World power swings back to America
The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.
Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline – so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue – will seem wildly off the mark by then.
Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia.Less known is that the technology of hydraulic fracturing – breaking rocks with jets of water – will also bring a quantum leap in shale oil supply, mostly from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves across the Mid-West.
Immelt on America going “all-in”
I had breakfast this week with Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, and the main dish on the menu was tough love. In an interview before a packed hall in Times Square, the boss of the more than a century-old $177 billion global behemoth told me that Americans can still win in the global economy — but that they need to fight harder.
“We are not trying that hard,” Immelt said. “We haven’t really tried as hard as we can to compete, educate and sell our products around the world and I think we can do better.
“The world just plays harder than we play,” he said. “Whether it is on exports or whether it is on foreign direct investment, the rest of the world plays for keeps. And we just don’t have a similar philosophy.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has her own reasons for feeling grim, but she can take some comfort from the fact that Immelt pointed to Germany, whose version of capitalism Americans are accustomed to dismissing as plodding and inflexible, as one nation that is outselling the Yanks.“Chancellor Merkel flies from Berlin to Beijing, there’s 25 German C.E.O.’s that get off the plane right behind her. And they connect the dots. They play hard, they play to win, they play for exports,” Immelt said. “We’re not all-in the same way that the Germans are all-in.”
The Germans certainly play the world much better than we Americans.
The advent of the global brain
Get ready for the global brain. That was the grand finale of a presentation on the next generation of the Internet I heard last week from Yuri Milner. G-8 leaders had a preview of Milner’s predictions a few months earlier, when he was among the technology savants invited to brief the world’s most powerful politicians in Deauville, France.
Milner is the technology guru most of us have never heard of. He was an early outside investor in Facebook, sinking $200 million in the company in 2009 for a 1.96 percent stake, a decision that was widely derided as crazy at the time. He was also early to spot the potential of Zynga, the gaming company, and of Groupon, the daily deals site.His investing savvy propelled Milner this year onto the Forbes Rich List, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. One reason his is not yet a household name is that he does his tech spotting from Moscow, not a city most of us look to for innovative economic ideas.
Milner was speaking in the Ukranian city of Yalta, at the annual mini-Davos hosted by the Ukrainian pipes baron and art collector Victor Pinchuk (disclosure — I moderated at the event). What was striking about Milner’s remarks was how sharply his tone differed from that of the other participants.
Patenting the Ponzi: the extraordinary growth of Ponzi schemes
“Two world poker champions and other leaders of one of the largest internet card gaming sites turned the company into a massive Ponzi scheme, wrongly taking out more than $440m from player accounts, US officials alleged on Tuesday.”
Office of Charles Ponzi & Sons:
“Mr Ponzi, have you seen what the US Justice Department is saying about this poker website?”
(Sighs) “Don’t tell me, Massimo: they say it’s a Ponzi scheme?”
“You’ve got it in one, Mr Ponzi.”
Geocities Archive Data Turned Into a Stunning Digital City [VIDEO]
The Deleted City from deletedcity on Vimeo.
via Stan Schroeder.