Success is doing fifty small things well.  Failure is doing fifty small things poorly. Chrysler which should have married Mitsubishi, now begs Fiat for the courtesy of purchase.  Circuit City is kaput.  Fifty small things done  poorly. We are told that group exercises are the way to go and so there are more and more…

Two economists apparently think verything is hunky dorey again.   I think they are confusing a bounce with a recovery. But the way the govt is playing fast and loose with numbers it is a b it difficult to tell.

Check out http://www.professorelam.typepad.com/markets We now have a companion site that specifically covers markets. 

A criticism of Americans is that we are to consumption oriented. Here is a description of life in Finland. I would note that Finland does not have the diverse content of different ethnicities and backgrounds that we have here. In addition the Northeast clearly has a different view of expectations than say the Southwest. 

Austin Kroll discussed Atlas Shrugged in Ethics class last week. I incorrectly suggested that Gary Cooper had been in the movie of the book, whoops, it was Ayn Rand's Rountainhead instead. That book, click the hyperlink for a description, is all about sacrificing principle for profit. Like Atlas, a great topic for an ethics class.   Patricia Neal fans…

John Kerry reporting for duty, again, this time for newspapers. Worried that the 'diversity of opinion' will suffer without the Boston Globe (that never met a Democrat it did not like) Kerry plans hearings for the newspaper industry. If the idea of the Feds running Fannie Mae and GM is not enough, how about the…

Tax paying Texans  will no doubt be thrilled to learn that their legislature, ever vigilant to spend money, will be subsidizing solar power. As the price of oil falls through $50, funds will be siphoned off from electric bills for solar, ah, innovations. (So all the electric bills somehow contain ‘extra’ money?)  Firms, indeed homeowners,…

The surviving pirate turns out to be a Somali teenager who according to his parents was lured and recruited by strangers with money. Gee this is starting to sound like some sort of ocean going Goldman Sachs internship program! Of course a civil rights attorney now questions whether our pirate is of age to be tried. Gee…

Mercedes Benz lyricsOh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?  Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV ?Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.I…

George Will  suggests that President Obama has missed the big picture with Russia.  When I was a kid Russia had about the same population as the USA, well maybe that was the Soviet Union, at any rate, no longer. Russia decimated its own population with internal revolution, mass starvations by Stalin and then losing millions in…