tengen

Having grown up in Victoria, BC in the 70's (not Hong Kong, alas), I have a strong memory of being indoctrinated to want Twinkies, which I still associate with Halloween because I'm pretty sure Hostess was the main sponsor of the Charlie Brown Halloween special. If Hostess does go under, I won't miss them except for brief moments of nostalgia for the passing of an American cultural icon.

Haven't had a twinkie in probably 4 decades and it, along with sugary carbonated water, is on my "do not consume" list. However, I am a dietary hypocrite as I will occasionally snarf down one of these

I recently started reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, which I'm enjoying so far, and this strikes me as a System 1 (fast, emotional, "gut feeling") vs System 2 (slow, logical, calculating). Maybe someone should buy copies for the people who were slagging Silver.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/05/speed-read-juiciest-bits-from-bob-woodward-s-book-price-of-politics.html Those "juicy bits" are somewhat dry and chewy. I hope for Woodward's sake that the "speed read summary" is not doing the book justice.

Great speech. Thanks for posting the link.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/general-motors-pulls-annual-10-million-worth-of-ads-from-facebook/ Not great timing for FB.

The linked article is about JPM, not LUK?

Thanks for posting the link. My favourite quote from the article: "Wall Street was where the dummies used to go, and now all the smart people want to go there; this is not a good sign."

Interesting read but pretty debatable on some points. Steve Jobs, who one might argue had all seven habits, was famous for his "reality distortion field" that allowed him to ignore obstacles and convince his team to "do the impossible". On the other hand, perhaps Jobs was the exception that proves the rule as it's hard to believe another person could come along behaving the same way and have the same spectacular success.

If someone is bad at his job, this makes sense. Firing the bottom salesman every month sounds more like Glengarry Glen Ross.

Dwolla sounds like HyperWallet (or at least the old HyperWallet before they changed their focus to other things) but with a sexy social media veneer, better marketing and the benefit of technical advances that have made it easier to layer on top of ACH. By the way, if you have a merchant account with PayPal, you get socked 2-3% + $0.30 for every payment you receive. That's Dwolla's sweet spot.

I'm not sure MSFT is dominating the home market. According to my sports club's web site, 40% of weekend visitors are using Macs/iPhones/iPads (vs 25% during the week). That's up from about 5% three years ago. The sample size is a few hundred visitors (in one weekend).

If you want to have a one stop solution for all your basic business software needs (email, calendar, web site, office suite) with integrated user management, offerings like MS 365 or Google Apps look pretty compelling. Instead of comparing the monthly cost to the cost of buying MS Office, I would compare it with the cost of owning an office suite + exchange server + web site + other stuff. You might wind up paying a similar amount for the licensing fees (but I actually think 365 would be cheaper) but you'd save a lot of hassle. By the way, if all you want to do is edit some documents/spreadsheets, and maybe share access with a few people, you can use Google Documents for free with your personal gmail account. Google Apps is also free for organizations with 10 or fewer users (the limit was 50 until a few months ago).

Back in the day when I was interested in smaller tech stocks, I would get frequent laughs from companies announcing "partnerships" with IBM, MSFT, etc. when all they had done was sign up to participate in some kind of developer network. You would also see small companies list some giant company as a client when the client was really some regional office that had purchased one or two licenses of the small company's product. Always take these kinds of announcements with a big grain of salt.

Morgan Kelly seems to be Ireland's modern day fiscal Cassandra. Michael Lewis wrote a very good article in Vanity Fair that features a lot of Kelly's views and provides background to the current situation: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?currentPage=all

I hope this isn't a stupid question but is the "price per user" metric generally considered a useful way to look at acquisitions? The last time I remember seeing it used was back in the days of the dotcom bubble. That period traumatized me so much I've stayed away from tech stocks ever since.

Video of the prototype here: Interesting but I'm not convinced. I like the feel of something solid in my hand.

Here's my take. A Harper majority will be good for Canada if the majority gives Harper the confidence to leave the safe cocoon of his right wing base and move towards the centre. This means continued fiscal prudence but less of the ideology that I have found a bit scary on occasion. This could kill the Liberals for good. I kind of like Happy Jack but his financial policies leave me quite unhappy and I think the NDP will have a hard time bearing up under the much greater scrutiny they are going to be facing. As for the Liberals, maybe their time has finally passed. How the mighty have fallen. Confession: Yes, I'm a long time Liberal supporter.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/radiation.png

As I understand it, the cooling system would have been fine if the tsunami had not taken out the backup power generators. A rather dumb design flaw in retrospect.

Thanks for posting the link. Very interesting story and one that probably has more twists and turns to come.

I like this "retirement planner" calculator (includes Canadian CPP, OAS, etc.): https://www.vancity.com/Planning/RetirementPlanning/RRSPs/RetirementPlanner/

Ally used to be known as GMAC. Try searching on the old name.

Here's an interesting and provocative article by Niall Ferguson on fixing the credit crunch: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25115869-643,00.html A few quotes: "No one seems to have noticed that there is already a bad bank. It is called the Federal Reserve System, and its balance sheet has grown by 150 per cent - from just over $US900 billion to more than $US2 trillion - since this crisis began, partly as a result of purchases of undisclosed assets from banks." "The solution to the debt crisis is not more debt but less debt. Two things must happen. First, banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured, a word that is preferable to the old-fashioned nationalisation." "The second step we need to take is a generalised conversion of American mortgages to lower interest rates and longer maturities."