It took a while, but Matt McAlister finally rose to the bait of my post on “The reign of the enthusiasts,” in which I razzed him as a “web2topian.” My point was that many of the most ballyhooed Web 2.0 applications, from Google’s search engine to digg and on down the list, deliver skewed and [...]
The latest shoe in the Wolfie-gets-his-girlfriend-a-tax-free-$193,000-PR-job scandal appears to have dropped in today’s FT: Paul Wolfowitz personally directed the World Bank’s head of human resources to offer Shaha Riza, a bank official with whom he was romantically involved, a large pay rise and a promotion as part of an external secondment package, according to two [...]
Like a lot of people in business journalism, I’ve been wondering what exactly Conde Nast Portfolio is spending its purported $125 million budget on. I’ve been hoping that most of it was going to my friend and CNP senior writer Dan Roth, since we’re supposed to have lunch soon and maybe he’ll pay. Anyway, my [...]
Leftie rabble-rouser Harold Meyerson been on something of a roll lately in his column in the Washington Post. Last week there was his clever suggestion that maybe it was time to revive the House Un-American Activities Committee to look into American corporations’ lobbying against more rights for labor in China. (The argument being that such [...]
I’ve been walking by this ad, for Manhattan Mini Storage, for weeks now. And while I don’t think there are a lot of customers for oilfield equipment and services strolling the sidewalks of the Upper West Side, it’s still a nice reminder of the hazards of hiring a politician to run your corporation. Dick Cheney [...]
Meet permanently unemployed Dutch guy Gertjan van Beijnum (from today’s Volkskrant, translation mine): The ex art school student stands in the middle of his room in a former squatters’ dwelling, an old hospital in the center of Den Bosch. Since he broke off his studies in 1979, he’s been unemployed. For 28 years now he’s [...]
One of my chief goals in life was realized this morning when I was quoted as an expert alumnus in The Daily Princetonian: The convergence of a slowing economy and rising inflation may present Bernanke with his greatest challenge yet. “Greenspan had this tailwind that he didn’t have any situations like [that convergence]. There’s no [...]
In Birmingham, Ala., where I used to live, lunch places start to fill up around 11:30 a.m. New York isn’t like that–the lunch rush hits here around 1. So when I headed out to look for food today at about 10 minutes before noon (I had gotten to work very early this morning, and needed [...]
A reader writes, in response to my column a few weeks ago on subprime mortgages (which discussed how subprime lending had helped dramatically reduce mortgage denial rates for African Americans): I don’t think that any fair minded person would say because historically blacks and minorites have been kept out of the housing market artificially and [...]
