LinkedIn’s public offering yesterday got a lot of buzz. Its shares surged over 90 percent on their first morning of trading and hit nearly $87 apiece after opening at $45. Today the shares are trading around $100. That’s good …
Technology & Media
Can China compete with American manufacturing?
No, the headline is not a mistake. I know we’re usually worried about the opposite – whether or not U.S. manufacturers can compete with a rising China. But today I’m turning that question around. What doesn’t get enough attention in today’s discussions about America’s economic competitiveness is that the U.S. remains a robust …
Why Google Still Needs “Adult Supervision”
In explaining his decision to pass the boss torch back to co-founder Larry Page, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted that, ha-ha, “adult supervision” is no longer needed at the company that dominates internet search and advertising. And Google’s monster fourth-quarter earnings offer evidence that Schmidt is true to his tweet: profits …
Does the U.S. need factories to be an economic power?
I recently had a fascinating conversation with Hartmut Jenner, CEO of a German firm named Kärcher, which produces very high-quality cleaning equipment. Kärcher is a prime example of those mid-sized, extremely competitive manufacturers that are the backbone of Germany’s export sector, the part of the economy that drives the nation’s …
The end of the racial digital divide?
Over the past decade or so, there has been a lot of hand wringing about how minorities in the U.S. use computers and the Internet at lower rates than whites. That ostensibly handicaps them in realms from searching for a job to finding the best deal on a car. A 1999 report from the Commerce Department found that “Black and Hispanic …
As Inventories Decline, Bargains May Disappear
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report released today bodes well for economic growth in the months ahead, but it may also hold bad news for frugal shoppers. Not only did manfacturing increase at a healthy rate for the 10th consecutive month in May, it did so expansively. According to Norbert J. Ore of the Institute for Supply …
The missing legal link in the Gizmodo-iPhone case
Last month a software engineer at Apple accidentally left his iPhone in a bar. A fellow patron picked up the phone and asked the people in the bar around him if it belonged to any of them. It didn’t. He took the phone home and the next day noticed that the phone looked odd. He jimmied open its case and saw that the phone was different …
Driver’s licenses for the Internet, Part 2
The conversation about where to draw the line between privacy and security is as old as society itself. I didn’t mean to so forcefully insert myself into the middle of that debate when I wrote about a Microsoft executive ruminating on the possibility of driver’s licenses for the Internet. Alas, here I am. That original blog post is …
Driver’s licenses for the Internet
I just went to a panel discussion about Internet security and let me tell you, it was scar-y. Between individual fraud, organized crime, corporate espionage and government spying, it’s an incredibly dangerous world out there, which, according to one panelist, is growing exponentially worse.
These are incredibly complex problems that …
Bye!
I started writing this blog in Sept. 2006 at Fortune.com (a wholly owned subsidiary of CNNMoney.com). The very first post was about boards of directors. Law professor Stephen Bainbridge thought it was stupid. I said no it wasn’t, and my blogging career was off.
At the time it was still not all that common for staffers at mainstream …
A time for transition, Part 2
The Curious Capitalist is getting curiouser. As Justin takes his leave, we’re adding three new voices to the Curious Capitalist. They belong to these people:
Let me introduce, from left to right, John Curran, Bill Saporito and Steve Gandel.
A time for transition, Part 1
The day is quickly drawing near for Justin to move on to bigger and better things things. As you can see, I am putting on a brave face, but I’m really quite upset. (Justin, as you can see, has taken to drinking.)
Justin will post more about his transition later today, and I’ll post again about some new folks who will be joining the …