Thomson Corp.’s plan to buy Reuters hasn’t gotten nearly the attention that Rupert Murdoch’s play for Dow Jones has. There are lots of good reasons for this: Thomson-Reuters is a (yawn) friendly deal, Reuters doesn’t posses the iconic status (at least not in the U.S.) of the Wall Street Journal, and David Thomson is no Rupert …
This is sort of shooting (exotic) fish in a barrel, but here’s a stray comment that recently showed up on my post from a few weeks back about Ari Fleischer’s ridiculous attempt to intimate that rich Americans are paying higher taxes than they did three decades ago (in fact their effective tax rates are down). Writes one Paul Ruedi:
You
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It is an essential American trait to take an activity that’s fun and attack it with such fanaticism that it starts to seem more like penance. Most collegiate drinking fits this description. And I sense that it’s starting to happen with the whole “eat local” movement.
Just to smugly establish my bona fides: During the summer and fall …
The World Bank’s board of directors will meet soon to decide what if anything to do about their president, Paul Wolfowitz, and the steady drumbeat of news lately would appear to indicate that the guy can’t hold on much longer. The NYT reports that the Europeans wants a deal where Wolfowitz goes in return for letting the U.S. continue to …
At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting Saturday, Warren Buffett went into a bit more detail on how he plans to pick the person who will run Berkshire’s money when he’s gone. From the FT:
Speaking to 27,000 investors gathered in his native Omaha for Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, the world’s second-richest man said he had
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The Curious Capitalist commentariat, whose input I value deeply, is alarmed at my apparent soft spot for Rupert Murdoch. Asks Tom T:
What if he started telling you what to write, Justin? What if you were only allowed to write about the economics of John Edwards’ hair-cuts, Hillary’s wine tab at Veritas, and the cost of fueling Nancy
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The semi-big news that Microsoft and Yahoo–united, as Dealbreaker charmingly put it, by their “love of Latin sounding next-gen technological platforms (Vista for Microsoft, Panama for Yahoo)”–are again talking to each other about maybe, you know, getting together seems to have left just about everybody but Yahoo’s long-suffering …
My column is back, in the “Time 100” issue on newsstands today and online here. It begins:
The World Bank is undeniably in crisis. But not because its president, Paul Wolfowitz, got his girlfriend a raise.
It is the Wolfowitz saga that has been grabbing all the headlines, of course. The Iraq-war architect was plucked from the Defense
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No, I don’t really have anything against the guy. It’s just fun to beat him. Although, as I went to bed before halftime of the Mavericks-Warriors game last night (it was already 11:30 or so), I missed getting that satisfaction in real time. Matthew Yglesias may wonder how West Coast sports fans cope with such early TV game times; I’m …
Today’s Journal has an interesting article, apparently available to all, examining Rupert Murdoch’s history as a newspaper editor:
Andrew Neil, a former editor of the Sunday Times, says Mr. Murdoch would likely make changes to the Journal if his bid was successful. “I think he would want the news to be informed by the editorial agenda,”
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Ah, the life of a business/economics/financial reporter. It pretty much is all fun and games. Witness what happened when I stopped by the 60th annual conference of the CFA Institute (the trade group for financial analysts) at the Hilton just up the street this morning to catch a panel discussion on “Envisioning the Future of Retirement …
