Archive for the ‘Business/Investment’ Category
Subliminal messages
So, what messages is this law firm sending by having such an expansive “reception area”? Looks expensive, huh? (It’s just me sitting here at the moment.) – P
Memorable quotes
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!” – Oliver Hardy, from the movie Sons of the Desert, 1933.
Spotted in comments on Fran O’Sullivan’s double-minded article on the SkyCity casino licence extension deal with John Key
Fran O’Sullivan is a smart person. I do sometimes wish she’d be more forthright, however. Her article ‘Too soon to say if SkyCity deal is buy of the century‘ seems a brave attempt to couch mild criticism of the John Key/Steven Joyce/SkyCity ‘negotiation’ (cough) with a semblance of evenhandedness by dredging up the former Labour […]
Privacy? Can you dig it?
This statement from Apple is no doubt prompted by the worldwide furore over revelations of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance. Read the full statement at Apple: Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy but here’s the important part (for me): Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain […]
Jon Stewart: ‘There is nothing Apple can do to get us mad at them.’
Hardy-har-har And here, with less mirth, making the same point is Joe Nocera writing in the The New York Times … Here Comes the Sun Indeed, Apple’s fabulous success over the past decade or so — its creation of the iPads and iPhones that the world lusts over — is a large part of the […]
Google deceives the taxman with smoke and mirrors
British tax department ‘bamboozled’ by Google: MPs confront search giant over ‘devious’ attempt to avoid paying UK tax The internet giant Google was today branded “devious, calculating and unethical” by MPs who accused the company deliberately subverting its motto ‘do no evil’ in order to pay less tax. Infuriated members of the House of Commons […]
Steven Joyce’s hyperbolic response to an Opposition policy announcement
Wow. I heard and saw some response from NZ government figures to the joint Labour/Green announcement of policy concerned with electricity market reform. Ministers Steven Joyce and Simon Bridges apparently couldn’t wait to slam the policy vociferously, taking the opportunity of ‘stand-ups’ in Parliament’s hallways to foam at the mouth issue a comment. Having paid no […]
Misunderestimating* a player’s willingness to ‘burn the rules’
Reading a quite good column from Marco Arment about the Google Reader shut down, emerging competition and ‘free’ services (he’d earlier said, and I agreed: “It may suck in the interim before great alternatives [to Reader] mature and become widely supported, but in the long run, trust me: this is excellent news.”) I came across […]
So who CAN afford a house?
It can be good to challenge assumptions. Here’s an article by my pal (and fellow investor and author) Andrew King, president of the NZ Property Investors Federation. Andrew examines the subject of the ‘Housing Affordability Crisis’ — a contentious political issue at present — and finds it mislabelled. According to him it’s more a ‘Housing Expectation […]
Read this and tell me it doesn’t remind you (just a little bit) of John Key’s SkyCity Casinos convention centre deal for extra pokie machines
Dave Pell’s Next Draft recommended weekend read was Matt Taibbi’s The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia in Rolling Stone magazine. I agree. It’s a fascinating read, but kind of sickening too. USA v. Carollo marks the first time we actually got incontrovertible evidence that Wall Street has moved into this cartel-type brand of criminality. […]
Good values, positively expressed
I briefly mentioned the challenges someone advocating for ‘better’ can face, with other ‘crabs in the bucket’ pulling them back as ‘sanctimonious and hypocritical’ (see Choking on one’s own sanctimony …) Here’s nice model from Bennetts Bookshops … pointing to their ‘Core Values‘. Bennetts exists to serve students and the campus communities of which they […]
Distribute comment spam. Get pinged. Ask that YOUR OWN SPAM be removed. Hahahaha!
From Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com. He calls it ‘chutzpam’. I call it bleurgh! In other words, the estimable businessmen and women at realinsurance.com.au have been paying SEO companies to spam the comment sections of sites around the globe. But now Google’s new search algorithms are making that legacy spam really damaging. So now they’re sending […]
Blind trust? Hang on, isn’t that a ruse?
I was part of a brief Twitter conversation about the use of trusts to keep assets out of the clutches of creditors which included this … @badtom “I want to slap their tax-dodging babyboomer snobfaces.” Fine epithet. There are less foul reasons to establish a trust @keith_ng — Peter Aranyi (@onThePaepae) June 11, 2012 “I […]
Facebook price droops. Hands up if you’re surprised
See Facebook Stock Collapse Contributes To Mistrust Of Wall Street (Huffington Post) if you care. … the Facebook IPO had examples of pretty much everything that is wrong with the stock market today. Media and analyst cheerleading? Check. The destructive influence of high-speed trading? Check. A system built for insiders to profit while retail investors […]
