business - Robert Maguire on Diigo

05 Jan 10

The first distortion is the past diversion of some our best technical and mathematical minds away from physics, engineering, biology, chemistry, and, yes, even economics, to financial modeling, risk analysis, and all the other marvelous tools of speculation and gaming.
1 more annotations...
- bright, young, energetic people who came out of some of our best universities and opted to go to work for investment banks, not in technical jobs, but as traders, ratings specialists, analysts, again to support the conversion of trillions of dollars into chaff. Many of them might have gone on to graduate degrees in chemistry, biochemistry, physics, engineering, biology or medicine.

18 Dec 09

The $2 Trillion Man | Foreign Policy

www.foreignpolicy.com/...the_two_trillion_dollar_man - Preview

brandamerica politics obama rankings statistics reference approvalrating US business money economy intangibles

Yet in one sense, Obama achieved more in the first 11
months of his presidency than his predecessor managed to in eight years. My
research clearly shows that he has begun to restore America's good name, an intangible
asset with highly tangible (read: lucrative) consequences. As head of state,
Obama has boosted the value of "Brand America" by just over $2
trillion, up from $9.7 trillion in 2008 to $11.8 trillion this year. That means
U.S. goods, services, people, and even the country's landscape are about 20
percent more enticing to the global market than they were in 2008.
5 more annotations...
- Indeed, hardly any country's image has
  altered more than 1 or 2 percent since the NBI was launched. Perceptions about
  a given place remained more or less constant even as it was hit by political
  and economic upheaval, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. Nor did the
  countless, ruinously expensive publicity campaigns optimistically designed to "brand"
  countries push up any ratings for the better.
- Following the publication in 2006 of cartoons
  lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, Denmark's image collapsed in Muslim countries
  in the survey. In Egypt, for example, Denmark had typically been ranked around 15th
  in most categories, with a high ranking of seventh for its governance.
- The
  second exception occurred this year and was even more dramatic. The United States,
  which had languished around seventh place in my index since 2005, shot up to
  first place, and not just in the perceptions of one or two countries. For a
  sample representing some 60 percent of the world's population and 77 percent of
  its economy, America is suddenly the most admired country on Earth.
- Closer analysis of the data shows that much of the boost
  comes from improved international opinion of the American people themselves.
  After the re-election of George W. Bush to a second term, I began to record
  falling scores not just for U.S. foreign policy but also for U.S. people,
  culture, products, and even -- by a delightfully illogical extension -- the U.S.
  landscape. Now, the world appears to have
  absolved Americans of any perceived sin, having elected the "right"
  president. Even the country's rolling hills and city skylines, it seems, are
  fully restored to their former grandeur in the eyes of the world.
- Redemption of the brand means more than just the warm
  and fuzzy feeling one gets when thinking about the United States. By
  combining the NBI data with a range of economic and industrial statistics, it
  is possible to hazard a brand valuation for a country, much as corporations
  value their brands. Working with Brand Finance, a consultancy that specializes
  in valuing the intangible assets of corporations, we estimate that the value of
  "Brand America" has jumped from $9.7 trillion in 2008 to $11.8
  trillion today. Even more remarkably, that increase comes even as the global
  recession has seen U.S. GDP growth decline 2.3 percentage points over the last
  year. That number is value that Obama has added
  to the U.S. economy simply by taking office and making the right speeches.

04 Dec 09

Jim Hoggan | The oily echo machine behind "climategate"

www.desmogblog.com/cho-machine-behind-climategate - Preview

US politics thinktanks aei cato coal globalwarmingskeptics conservatives business climatechange money energy

It's no coincidence that the groups pushing this story the hardest have a long history of taking money from oil and coal companies to attack the conclusions made by climate scientists.
Center for a Constructive Tomorrow: owns and operate ClimateDepot.com, which has been a main clearinghouse for the right-wing climategate echo chamber. ClimateDepot.com is managed by Marc Morano, former aide to Republican Senator James Inhofe. CFACT has received grants from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and well-known right-wing foundations like the Carthage Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

American Enterprise Institute: Offered to pay "experts" $10,000 to write papers that countered the IPCC reports. AEI has received close to half a million from oil-giant ExxonMobil, former Exxon Chairman Lee Raymond sits on AEI's board of directors.

Media Research Center: run by Brett Bozell, this group also operates the popular right-wing blog, Newsbusters.org. The Media Research Center has received over $257,000 from oil-giant ExxonMobil since 1998.

Cato Institute: Is the main front group for the most prolific climate denier, Patrick Michaels. Cato is the second largest recipient of funding the foundations run by Koch Industries Inc. (the largest private energy company in the United States).

Heartland Institute: Organizes a "denier conference" every year for the past three years. Used to receive funding from ExxonMobil, still recieve grants from tobacco companies and are also a major recipient of grants from the foundations run by Koch Industries Inc. (the largest private energy company in the United States).

Heritage Foundation: Heritage is massive and operates on about $50 million a year. They have received significant funding from ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and other fossil fuel companies.

National Center for Policy Analysis: the NCPA is a small, but very vocal Dallas, Texas-based freemarket think tank and has received over $540,900 from oil giant ExxonMobil since 1998.

Competitive Enterprise Institute: The CEI is well-known for its public efforts to aggressively counter the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change, especially after their infamous set of television ads with the tag line "C02, We Call it Life." Since 1998, the CEI has received over $2 million in funding from oil-giant ExxonMobil.

01 Dec 09

Transparency: Do Health-care Companies Have to Compete for Customers? - Transparency - GOOD

www.good.is/...-have-to-compete-for-customers - Preview

US politics competition business free markets healthcare capitalism statistics reference visualization

27 Nov 09

Backlash Grows Against NC Health Insurer's Anti-Reform Campaign | TPMMuckraker

tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...c_health_insurers_anti-ref.php - Preview

private insurance business corruption bcbs healthcare nc south lobbying mailer

A North Carolina health insurer is facing a major backlash in the wake of its campaign to enlist customers in the fight against health-care reform.
in the wake of its campaign to enlist customers in the fight against health-care reform.
1 more annotations...
- The state's Insurance Commissioner has begun an inquiry into a mailer sent recently by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina -- and first revealed last month by TPMmuckraker -- that urged customers to lobby Senator Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) to vote against the public option. As we reported Tuesday, the state's Attorney General has opened his own probe of a barrage of follow-up robo-calls generated by the insurer.

CNN Keeps Castellanos, Dems Hit Back | TPMDC

tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...-castellanos-dems-hit-back.php - Preview

US politics conservatives business conflictofinterests media press alex castellanos cnn

CNN will retain the services of Alex Castellanos, despite his new role as unpaid flack for the RNC (his official title will be Senior Communications Adviser).
"When Castellanos is on CNN as a top strategist for the GOP, the insurance industry, and the Chamber of Commerce, he certainly won't be offering any 'independent analysis.'"

24 Nov 09

Matthew Yglesias » Private Sector Forecasters Say Stimulus is Boosting Growth and Employment

yglesias.thinkprogress.org/...ting-growth-and-employment.php - Preview

stimulus US politics reference statistics business privatesector economy unemployment obama

all indications are that it really is working—and working quite well—in terms of keeping the unemployment rate lower than it otherwise would have been while also keeping the GDP level higher than it otherwise would have been.
but as Jackie Calms and Michael Cooper points out in an excellent piece among private sector forecasters there’s a clear pro-ARRA consensus:
3 more annotations...
- “It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.
  
  Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”
  
  In interviews, a broad range of economists said the White House and Congress were right to structure the package as a mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than just tax cuts as Republicans prefer or just spending as many Democrats do. And it is fortuitous, many say, that the money gets doled out over two years — longer for major construction — considering the probable length of the “jobless recovery” under way as wary employers hold off on new hiring.
- As Brad DeLong points out these are people who need to sell their forecasts to paying clients.

23 Nov 09

Western Men Are Doomed - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

David Brooks: Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more emphasis on individuals. This seems like a gross generalization but it is robustly supported by hundreds and hundreds of studies. Richard Nisbett’s book, “The Geography of Thought” summarizes some of the evidence.

If you show Americans a fish tank, they’ll talk about the biggest fish in the tank. If you show Asians a tank they will make, on average, 60 percent more references to the context and the features of the scene. Western parents tend to emphasize nouns and categories when teaching their kids, Korean parents tend to emphasize verbs and relationships. If you show Americans a picture of a chicken, a cow and grass, they will lump the chicken and the cow, because they are both animals. Asians are more likely to lump the cow and the grass because cows eat grass. They have a relationship.

The mode of thought more common in Asia is better suited to the complex networks that make up the modern world. The contextual, associational style is simply more valid. The linear style we’ve inherited from the Greeks is less adaptive toward the modern age. I think the West may be doomed.
David Brooks: I haven’t even mentioned gender differences yet. I think the same things I’ve said about Asians can be said about women as compared to men.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read this stuff as part of your book research, but my understanding is that the cognitive processing of male and female brains is mostly the same except for in one area: social cognition. Women, on average, pick up more social signals.
2 more annotations...
- Gail Collins: Still skeptical. Given the long span of time in which women were said to be particularly well-suited for everything from typing (tiny fingers) to domesticity (“She has a head almost too small for intellect and just big enough for love.”) I’m becoming increasingly leery of giving too much credence to theories about how any group is particularly well adapted to anything.
- Gail Collins: Ah, what I hear is the sound of a group that was on top for so long and then goes into a funk at the first sign of really serious competition. As a nation, we’re in trauma over the very idea that anybody else might be the economic superpower. As a gender, guys who were perfectly fine with the idea of women in business or in Congress are totally unnerved with the thought that their gender someday actually might not be running the show.

18 Nov 09

It looks bad when retired generals make money for mentoring by Tom Ricks | The Best Defense

ricks.foreignpolicy.com/...ich_from_conflicts_of_interest - Preview

US politics business conflictofinterests military militaryindustrialcomplex reference

USA Today tells
the unseemly tale of retired American generals who go to work for the
defense industry, but also work as paid "mentors" to the military, which gets
them helpful inside information -- and all the while collecting generous
pensions.

12 Nov 09

Sen. Graham Censored for Climate Stance : TreeHugger

www.treehugger.com/...graham-censured.php - Preview

lindsey graham pollution climatechange environment conservatives republicans business sc south economy

11 Nov 09

Harvard Business Review: SuperFreakonomics Ignores the Business Case for Sustainability « Climate Progress

climateprogress.org/...onomicsharvard-business-review - Preview

climatechange US superfreakonomics freakonomics business economy economics resources oil fossilfuels statistics reference

Instead, let’s just think about the business benefits of changing our products and processes to reduce carbon emissions, regardless of the atmospheric benefits. How will changing to a lower-carbon economy help companies? Well, there’s real money involved here — energy and other resources are getting fundamentally more expensive over time as demand around the world rises and supply gets harder to find. Oddly, the SuperFreakonomics authors acknowledge this Econ 101 supply problem in passing with the statement: “In just a few centuries, we will have burned up most of the fossil fuel that took 300 million years…to make.” So why wouldn’t we want to move away from a declining resource?

Put really simply, it saves money to reduce greenhouse emissions. It makes businesses more competitive to use less energy and to help customers do the same. It also creates jobs in a wide range of industries that help build a low-carbon economy — from the obvious solar panel builders and installers to the less sexy home weatherizers, electric vehicle manufacturers and mechanics, and building efficiency consultants and experts.
2 more annotations...
- The countries and companies that decouple themselves from fossil fuels will slash their costs and increase profits mightily. In fact, as Robert Kennedy, Jr. pointed out in a speech recently, the countries that have already reduced their reliance on fossil fuels — such as Iceland, with its geothermal energy, and Sweden, with a carbon tax driving down energy use as the country grew — have made their economies richer and more stable. (Yes, Iceland then bet its wealth on bad investments at the heart of the financial crisis in 2008 and bankrupted itself, but that’s another story.)
- As many have repeatedly argued, we also place ourselves at great risk globally by continuing to pour money into oil markets.

05 Nov 09

The Western “Lords Of Yesterday” attack climate action « Climate Progress

climateprogress.org/...esterday-attack-climate-action - Preview

politics US conservatives republicans climatechange globalwarming globalwarmingskeptics energy fossilfuels business

Witness the letter 16 House and Senate Republicans sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting his secretarial order creating a Climate Change Response Council that is designed to coordinate efforts among Interior agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cope with the impacts of climate change. The new council, the lawmakers said, represents an end-run around Congress and could be used to stifle oil and gas development and other activities on western lands on behalf of “special interest groups with narrow agendas”:

Businesses in the West are worried about potential court challenges and administrative action. These new rules will allow special interest groups with narrow agendas to block all existing and future activities on federal lands in the name of climate change.
Leading the charge in this effort to ignore the new realities of a changing climate is Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the Senate’s leading opponents of legislation to regulate carbon pollution. Barrasso represents Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer, and is the chair of the recently formed Senate Western Caucus, a latter-day reincarnation of the 1970s “Sage Brush Rebellion” that fought federal oversight of Western lands, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Barrasso has previously temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s choice to head the air office at the EPA, fought the establishment of a CIA climate change center, and accused the EPA of “silencing” a dissenting voice to its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

27 Oct 09

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...albert-wept.html - Preview

children psychology learning education business products babies brain tv dvd baby einstein advertising marketing bush politics

The academic studies show that what infants learn from watching a
family member once takes them four times as long to absorb in a DVD.
And the very act of watching a DVD with the pulsing refresh rate of the
screen can be at the same time soporific and stimulating, making it
more difficult for them to get restful sleep. The only thing they learn
from these DVDs is how to watch television.

26 Oct 09

The Economic Case for Slashing Carbon Emissions | Green Business | Reuters

www.reuters.com/...idUS5797573120091021 - Preview

US politics climatechange statistics reference government spending costs business privatesector

"The Economics of 350."
McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm, has carried out detailed studies of the costs of hundreds of emission-reducing technologies. They find that some emissions can be eliminated for no cost or even an economic savings; more than half of worldwide business-as-usual emissions in 2030 could be eliminated at very small total cost. The net costs of reducing carbon emissions (i.e. investment costs, minus the value of energy saved) go down when the price of oil goes up, and vice versa. McKinsey's entire package of reductions, eliminating more than half of world emissions, would have zero total cost if the price of oil were $90 per barrel.
6 more annotations...
- Both assume high oil prices - up to $140 per barrel for Greenpeace - along with rapid change in emissions-reduction technologies.
- Alternatively, we know we can afford to devote 2.5 percent of income to protection against a remote but disastrous threat - because we already do, year after year. In 68 countries, military spending exceeds 2.5 percent of GDP. In the United States and China, the top greenhouse gas emitters, military spending absorbs more than 4 percent of GDP. Both countries would be safer, not more vulnerable, if they diverted half of their defense spending to defense against climate crisis.
- The most important conclusion of our research involves what we did not find.
- There are no reasonable studies saying that a 350 ppm stabilization target will destroy the economy. This is not surprising. The ominous recent research on potential climate damages does not examine the cost of doing something; instead, it looks at the cost of doing nothing about emissions.
- If the worst happens, our grandchildren will inherit a degraded Earth that does not support anything like the life that we have enjoyed. On the other hand, if we prepare for the worst but it does not quite happen, we will have invested more than was absolutely necessary - in perfect hindsight - in clean energy, conservation, and carbon-free technologies. Which extreme presents the greater danger?
- the public sector must also guide research on clean energy technologies. Despite free-market mythology to the contrary, this has worked well in the past. Wind power is profitable today as a result of decades of government investment in the United States and Europe. In another arena, the U.S. government essentially invented microelectronics in the 1950s and 1960s: At first, almost all transistors, integrated circuits, and the like were bought by agencies such as the Pentagon and NASA, because no one else could afford them. Just a few decades of massive government purchases of these items turned microelectronics into the premier private-sector success story of the late-20th century, transforming everyone's life in countless unexpected ways.

24 Oct 09

Shocker for conservatives: Obama may not hate the Constitution - War Room - Salon.com

www.salon.com/...index.html - Preview

conservatives politics attacks lies limbaugh thesis obama business constitution nuclear weapons columbia

[T]he Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.
As a bit of basic research would have shown Limbaugh, Obama didn't technically write a thesis at Columbia -- at the time, Columbia didn't really have senior theses -- though he did write a thesis-length paper. But it was on Soviet nuclear disarmament, not the Constitution.
3 more annotations...
- Limbaugh and many others -- including Fox News' FoxNation.com -- fell for a hoax, believing that a post put up by a conservative blogger in August as satire was the truth.
- Limbaugh noted later on in his show that it seemed the excerpts were fake, though he said he didn't care, both because of a series of quotes falsely attributed to him recently and because, "I know Obama thinks it."
- Update: Ledeen has put up a post noting that the excerpt is a fake, and that he fell for a satire.

20 Oct 09

U.S. Chamber Disclosure Report No Hoax : NPR

www.npr.org/...story.php - Preview

chamber of commerce US money spending business lobbying climatechange congress lobbyists

But in an announcement that wasn't fake, a disclosure report indicates the Chamber spent $35 million in the past three months alone to influence Congress and the administration.

15 Oct 09