Archive for the ‘Business/Investment’ Category
No April fool, Dean Letfus claims: “DEFAMATION!”
The Jekyll & Hyde-like transformation of Dean Letfus into Phil Jones continues. Now, apparently, he’s sending half-baked threats of ‘legal action’ to people who point out his, um, inconsistencies … Earlier this week I pointed to lawyer/investor/whistleblower David Whitburn’s blog in which he shared his concerns about the way US tax liens were being sold […]
Wow. Dean Letfus = Phil Jones (?)
Remember my comment: “Choose your enemies carefully because you will become like them” ? Well look at this: Property spruiker Dean Letfus has replaced his old boss (and nemesis?) Phil Jones in a ‘venture’ promoting US tax liens to NZ investors. (This after Letfus comprehensively criticized US tax liens as a suitable investment ‘vehicle’ publicly […]
How is THIS good for the TRUMP brand?
Somebody tell me how selling the pie-in-the-sky, one-chance-in-nine-million New Zealand Lotto draw enhances The Donald or his brand … Please.
OK, so it’s not just priests who seek to cover sin…
The most telling omission in this paper is that the word “fraud” does not appear. But the world knows that the collapse of the financial system had, at its core, the largest financial fraud of all time. That fraud was in the origination, the rating, the underwriting and the issuance of credit default swaps against […]
James Cameron calls it as he sees it …
‘Let me put it this way,’ James Cameron said in an interview last month. ‘I’m happy to piss those guys off. I don’t agree with their worldview.’ Can’t argue with that. I feel the same way about weasels who try to paint themselves as my ‘competitors’ or ‘peers in the industry’… when they’re no such […]
Point and counter point … bottled water
Great example of an exposé of ‘Manufactured Demand’ for bottled water … Followed by a ‘fake journalism’ (complete with ‘noddies’) PR/propaganda fightback by the bottled water manufacturers*…’Good Stewards of the Environment’ How do they keep a straight face? *Let me know what BWM Report could possibly stand for.
Branding writ large
This is the fifth-most-photographed building in New York, the 28th worldwide: the Apple Store 5th Avenue New York City. Well, it IS cool. Inside and out. On my first visit it was just starting to rain and Apple Store staff were fitting special rubber covers to the glass steps on the spiral staircase. The shopping […]
Why ‘legal action’ can be sooo dangerous …
Look at the sort of thing comes out in the wash: For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them […]
The truth is disturbing. Who is paying attention?
Fantastic article and video of 60 Minutes on Michael Lewis Wall St meltdown here. “I’m afraid that our culture will come to the conclusion, ’cause it’s always the easy conclusion, that everybody was just a bunch of criminals. I think the story is much more interesting than that. I think it’s a story of mass […]
Murdoch: It’s not old media versus new media …
… it’s about how the content is produced and who is paying for it.” Paraphrase: “Google do not have the right to scrape our very expensively produced content if we want to stop them.” I see content scraped from news sites and reproduced in its entirety on discussion forums and blogs — with a credit […]
Bluster and threat are commonplace
As in life, bluster and threat are commonplace in business – especially the technology business. So that interaction was good preparation for a later meeting with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. They’d flown in over a weekend to meet with Scott McNealy, Sun’s then CEO – who asked me and Greg Papadopoulos (Sun’s CTO) to […]
Asperger’s. Of course. Are we surprised?
Michael Lewis takes an unexpected corner in this excellent book extract about the bursting of the (US) subprime bubble. From his new book The Big Short (they’re ALL very good, from Liar’s Poker onwards), this chapter Betting on the Blind Side is about a gutsy, insightful fund manager called Michael Burry. This extract at Vanity […]
Quote of the week
“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours” — Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs announcing IP/patent lawsuit against HTC. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out.
Ace communicator or duplicitous spruiker? (VIDEO)
There are certain ‘sales types’ who veer so close to Con artists and scammers that you wonder why the ‘authorities’ don’t shut the lying bastards down. Newly-bankrupt Mark Bryers of Blue Chip seems to fit into that category, judging by some of the material I’ve seen privately and from reports in the media and from […]
