As reported by the Triad Business Journal the Wake Forest MBA program's student run blog and related Twitter feed have been recognized as a "must follow" by TopMBA.com.
Five years into this whole blog experiment thing and I still feel the need to justify my existence. I never knew I was so insecure.
I was doing some research for the day job and came across this article about a panel discussion on the future of GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). There are several good quotes contained within, but these two really caught my eye:
But according to White and Booher, it was a broader cultural issue, an unbalanced federal housing policy that stressed homeownership at the expense of rational underwriting. “I believe that the deception of our culture, that money grows on trees, that there can be action and no reaction, is so prevalent that we live in a fantasy world,” White said. “And members of Congress were the ultimate actors there.”
That unbalanced housing policy was prevalent on the operations side as well. "The problem really starts with a culture that’s increasingly looking for something for nothing,” Durkin of Wood Partners explained. “That permeates our housing policy.”
I really do hope my children's generation ends up being smarter than mine or my parents'.
Apparently the more educated you are the more likely you are to fake it in bed. Ignorance truly is bliss.
Remember a month ago how the rumors started flying about the NCAA men's basketball tournament field potentially getting expanded to 96 teams? Today the news hit that there would indeed be an expansion, but it would be to 68 teams and not 96 teams. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that there's a very high probability that the NCAA deliberately "leaked" the 96 team number so that when the true expansion hit everyone's reaction would be "Only 68 huh?" and not, "Jeez, 68 teams will totally dilute the field and make this thing a crapfest!"
PR flaks around the world are smiling.
I'm no scientist (I'm actually the antithesis of a scientist), so this is probably the dumbest question ever asked, but I have to ask it: Is it wise to put a solar array on the roof of a hardware company's distribution center? Still it's kind of cool that Winston-Salem will have two of Duke Energy's new solar sites.
It's easy, convenient, a good story line, etc. to blame the Great Recession on a-hole investment bankers trying make a quick buck, or stupid home buyers who should have known better than to buy a $500,000 house on $45,000 a year in income, but it's also wrong. As with most things in life it's complicated, and hopefully we'll start seeing more in-depth explanations for the financial meltdown as we move out of crisis mode and into recovery/finger-pointing mode.
I might have found a good place to start in today's Wall Street Journal. Columnist David Wessel profiles the University of Chicago's Raghuram Rajan who has an upcoming book (July publication date) titled "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy." Based on the quotes that Wessel provides from his interview of Rajan it sounds like the book will look at the crisis from a big-picture angle, and while the usual suspects are identified as key players in the crisis they are also seen as role players and not arch villains. I think that's an important distinction if we're going to learn anything from this crisis and fix whatever we need to fix if we're not going to completely torch the economy.
Anyway, here's my favorite quote from the column:
"When easy money pushed by a deep pocketed government comes into contact with the profit motive of a sophisticated, amoral financial sector, a deep fault line develops," Mr. Rajan writes.
Check this out: The Supreme Court is losing its only Protestant to retirement. Of course he might be replaced by another Protestant, but I don't think that's going to be one of the criteria that the Obama administration looks at when nominating a new justice.
According to the article, of the Supremes that Justice Stevens leaves behind, six are Roman Catholic and two are Jewish. It's hard to believe that just 50 years ago it was a HUGE deal that Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to be elected POTUS. From the article:
It was not ever thus. Presidents once looked at two main factors in picking justices.
“Historically, religion was huge,” said Professor Epstein of Northwestern. “It was up there with geography as the key factor.”
There is, for instance, no official photograph of the justices from 1924. The court had to cancel its portrait that year because Justice James C. McReynolds, an anti-Semite and a racist, refused to sit next to Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice.
The fact that William J. Brennan Jr. was Catholic seemed to figure in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to nominate him to the court in the election year of 1956.
But when Justice Abe Fortas resigned in 1969 from what was considered the “Jewish seat,” President Richard M. Nixon saw no political gain from replacing him with another Jew, settling instead on Harry A. Blackmun, a Methodist.
As that progression suggests, religion, which once mattered deeply, has fallen out of the conversation. And it seems to make people uncomfortable on the rare occasions it is raised.
(h/t to Lex for the link)
Not surprising, unfortunately.
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According to The Northwest Observer the Summerfield Town Council has decided that the spouses of Council members may serve on town committees but they can't be voting members. From the article:
Council began discussing the issue after Town Manager Michael Brandt recommended that council members’ relatives be allowed to serve only as nonvoting committee members. Brandt said because of their relationship to council members, relatives might carry more weight on committees and it might be difficult for the town manager to discipline them if they did something wrong.
The Council applied the recommendation to spouses but not to other relatives, which leads me to think that they have a different point of view on marriage than I do. I can guarantee you that of all her relatives I'm the least influential on my wife.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall when someone tries to tell my wife she can't do anything just because she happens to be married to me. Actually, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that explosion because I'd definitely catch some shrapnel, but you get my point.
According to this story on WXII's site the Winston-Salem city council is considering a new set of fees for Internet cafes. From the story:
The city of Winston-Salem could stand to generate more than a $500,000 if City Council members approve new taxes on Internet cafes.
The City Council has proposed a $2,500 license fee and a fee of $500 per machine for the nearly 50 new locations operating inside the city. Currently, the businesses pay no taxes to the city or state.
"We're getting no revenues from these very rapidly growing businesses that are in our communities," Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said. "Our budget is very difficult right now, so any revenue enhancement we can come up with that will not really impact a business, we're trying to look at. We believe these are very lucrative businesses and could easily afford this fee we are proposing."
I haven't seen the actual proposal so I can't speak to the specifics, but what worries me about this is the definition of "Internet cafe". If the definition is too loose then here are some of the businesses that could get sucked into this:
It sounds to me like the City Council is trying to target a specific type of business (essentially legal gambling parlors), but sometimes when fees or ordinances are adopted to target specific types of businesses then other "innocent" businesses get caught in the crossfire.
I can guarantee you this: if every company that offers free wi-fi learns that it's going to be hit with a $2,500 fee then you can bet your bottom dollar that free wi-fi will disappear in Winston-Salem. Paid wi-fi might survive, but you'd have to sell a LOT of daily access passes to justify it. As for hotels that charge $15.95 a night for internet access in your room? I'd like nothing better than to say "Hit 'em with your best shot!" since that's one of the most annoying business practices in the hospitality sector, but if you do they'll just pass it along as a higher daily rate.
That Winston-Salem is looking for additional sources of revenue is not surprising, and neither is the fact that the targeted industry is a "sin" business, but let's hope the City Council is smart enough not to tax itself. After all, this is the city that just a few years proudly unveiled its own free wi-fi on Fourth Street. The description of the free wi-fi service from the city's own website sounds to me suspiciously like what the rest of the world considers an Internet cafe:
Fourth Street Wireless Internet access is a free service provided by the City of Winston-Salem. Citizens in restaurants and businesses along Fourth Street can access the Internet through high-speed connections and enjoy browsing the Web, checking and sending e-mail, or chatting through instant messaging services.
Like I said, I just hope the City Council is very careful with this thing.
One last thought: Can anyone think of other fees that are targeted at specific industries? I'm sure there are some out there, but my fatigue-fogged mind isn't hitting on any right now.
Befuddled 