The seven-year-old Curious Capitalist Jr. is allowed dominion over the family iMac on Saturday mornings, and one of his favorite destinations is Club Penguin, where he sometimes arranges to chat with friends from school but mainly just plays the lame-seeming games to win more swag for his penguin avatar.
What’s his and a whole lot of …
Whenever I write about the burden that pension and health care costs place on the Detroit-based automakers, I hear from readers who think that’s a sorry excuse for Detroit’s problems. Here’s a thoughtful example from my e-mail inbox:
Your article on the buyout of Chrysler did a great job highlighting the high costs of healthcare for
…
In the comments to my Monday Chrysler post, James asks a couple of interesting questions:
Do you feel that Toyota and other rising automakers will face challenges similar to the Big Three in the future, once their current workers start to retire? Of all the industries facing waves of boomers retiring, why has the auto industry been
…
At Seeking Alpha this morning, hyperprolific venture capitalist/blogger Paul Kedrosky has this to say about the Chrysler deal:
I’m sure I won’t be the only [one] to be intrigued by the juxtaposition of Daimler (DCX) paying Cerberus almost a billion dollars to take Chrysler off its hands yesterday and last Friday’s announcement that Tesla
…
I’m participating in a discussion over at the TPMCafe Book Club on Dan Gross’s Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy. Because I’m such an environmentalist, I figured I should recycle my first post here:
This book is a wonderful counterweight to the mostly finger-wagging historical literature about bubbles. The idea that irrational
…
Here’s an interesting number, from the footnotes to Daimler Chrysler’s annual report for 2006: $18.5 billion. It’s the estimated current value of health-care benefits that Chrysler has promised its many retirees, minus the money Chrysler has set aside to pay for them.
Contrast that with what private equity firm Cerberus is ponying up to …
My belated print contribution to the great media cud-chewing over Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones bid is in the new Time (with Mitt Romney on the cover) and here. It begins:
In 1902, Boston boardinghouse owner Jessie Barron bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, with a down payment of $2,500. She did this at the behest
…
A friend who grew up in Pasadena alerted me to this AP article about a guy who runs a local news Website there. He has apparently decided to outsource reporting to India:
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this
…
His Rupertness has a full-page column at the beginning of the opinion section of today’s New York Post announcing News Corp.’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2010. It begins:
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia; the last few months and years have brought some changes there:
In Melbourne, 2006 was the 10th straight year with
…
I went to the party for Dan Gross‘s new book Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy, last (Wednesday) night in this cool little wood-paneled room with views of Central Park in the Newsweek building called “Top of the Week.” The cameraphone photo above is of Dan making a shockingly touching tribute to his wife and kids. Seriously, I …
The last time the Warriors won the NBA championship, their star was a guy with a hair weave who shot his free throws underhanded and made 90% of them. If the Warriors had made 90% of their free throws tonight, they would have beaten the Jazz, easily. Come on, you people! Skip the hair weaves, okay, but please please please call up Mr. …
First four ingredients: sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, enriched flour, corn syrup. You don’t have to be a locavore to believe that’s nasty. But man it tastes good! Just one more, okay?
