From today’s Volkskrant (clunky translation mine):
The “milk ponds” and “butter mountains” of Europe are history. For the first time in almost 40 years, Dutch dairy farmers don’t have to ask Brussels for subsidies. Prices on the world market are rising so fast, that they can stand on their own legs…
“The mood is euphoric,” says Klaas
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Okay, I’ve read David Cay Johnston’s article about Blackstone’s funky tax avoidance plan three times now, and I’m still miles from understanding how it works. But here’s the result:
The Blackstone Group, the big buyout firm, has devised a way for its partners to effectively avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion, the bulk of what it raised
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Two news items involving boldface-name CEOs this week ought to teach execs about the perils of the Internet. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, was outed as Rahodeb, a sort of anonymous commenter on a Yahoo! Finance web site who had a thing for slamming Whole Foods’ rival Wild Oats. A bit awkward now that WF owns WO. Oopsy.
The other top …
From an interview with Chicago broker/trader Jay Norris, on the currency-trading blog Piptopia:
I always remembered Bill Williams -– Author of Trading Chaos — my first mentor’s answer when asked what sort of people are best to train as traders. Without hesitation, he said “Give me someone w/ the equivalent of a high school
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I’ve always been a little dubious of the famous Goldman Sachs forecast about the future importance of the “BRICs” economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China. Steve Pearlstein’s column on high-tech business in Russia in yesterday’s WaPo made me a little more dubious.
India and China I get. Barring disaster, they’re going to be the dominant …
We’re undergoing performance evaluations here at TIME, and, although none was offered to me during mine, I believed that a raise that would more than double my salary would erase most if not all of my complaints. But big bucks don’t bring happiness, according to Execunet, which recruits execs:
According to a survey of 2,149 executives
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Reader Tara Lazar writes:
I enjoyed your recent article regarding Facebook and the social networking phenomenom. In your article you state the first of such sites was Friendster in 2002, but another service called Six Degrees was active in the mid and late 90′s. Named after the John Guare play (and subsequent movie), the site sought to
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This, just posted on W$J.com, is a great story:
In January 2005, someone using the name “Rahodeb” went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share.
“Would Whole Foods buy OATS?” Rahodeb asked, using Wild
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I’ve had CNBC on all day, what with its extensive coverage of the “War on Wealth” and all. I turned up the sound when John Snow–former Secretary of Treasury, now the figurehead (but hard-working) chairman of Cerberus Capital Management–showed up on screen a little while ago. Anchor Erin Burnett asked him a few questions about …
President Bush is set to announce this afternoon that the federal deficit will drop to $205 billion, or about 1.5% of GDP, for the fiscal year that ends in September. This is actually a worse deficit than folks were predicting early this year (I think Iraq war spending has had something to do with that), but I still figure the time is …
With the first of several congressional hearings to come on private equity taxation happening today in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building (hurry! hurry! you can still get there for some of the exciting action!), the WaPo (yesterday) and the NYT (today) both have articles on the vigorous lobbying campaign being waged by the private equity …
Japan, as you may know, has been dipping in and out of a recession for the better part of two decades now. Are the country’s workers depressed? No! So long as there’s air to breathe, water to drink and fig leaves to wear over their privates, life is good! So says this insane video (thanks to my husband’s friend Janey Choi for the heads-up).
