Great video mock interivews of what’s really roiling the markets, from “The Two Johns,” and another from them: “It’s Credit, and It’s Crunchy“.
Archive for January, 2008
The Truth About the Markets
Monday, January 28th, 2008When Rappers Get Ahold of PowerPoint
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
Check it out.
Brokeback Bankers
Thursday, January 24th, 2008It’s no “Baby Got WACC,” but …
MBA Marketing
Thursday, January 24th, 2008When it comes to education, the “business model” is pretty clear. There’s even a conference on marketing higher ed to (suckers like us) people who’ll pay for it.
I’ve Got a Crick in My Neck Watching This Sony
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
In our latest example of questionable marketing, we notice the Sony commercial that intones, “When you watch on a Sony HDTV set, you’re watching the same way the cameraman [at a sporting event] does.”
So, watching a Sony TV is like having my neck craned at an uncomfortable angle, while standing for hours in inclement weather with a director screaming in my ear? Mmmm. Get me one o’ them Sonys, dude!
Be a Banker: Enjoy “Change”
Monday, January 14th, 2008University of Chicago GSB treats us to a podcast with alum Brady Dougan, now the head of CSFB (Credit Suisse First Boston), giving a speech on how much change there is in banking — how the numbers of deals and complex deals and so on goes from eight in a year to eight in a finger snap. And he tells the students they should get into banking because it’s so exciting and they’ll see so much change.
Some of that change, of course, being that the grads who go to work for a major bank will get laid off and lose their jobs. Or go through the equal stress of having to lay off others. (Unless they’re trained not to stress out — as good MBA students are, of course, of course — because if all accrues to “shareholder value,” the economy grows and there are opportunities to trade the one job for another.)
Search for the Chicago GSB series on iTunes if you want to find it. Or, you can get it at this URL from the iTunes store (it’s free — you need iTunes software). Be prepared to also listen to Dougan drop the names of countries he’s been in the way some people drop the names of famous people they’ve dined with. Hard to say if it’s unassuming or trying to get all these GSB newbies to sign up for jobs at CSFB.
Shorter, Faster !
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Unlike bagels and convenience store drinks, which have to get ever bigger to keep Americans satisfied, the workweek has to keep getting shorter. We go from the One Minute Manager to the 10-second variety. From a four-hour day to a four-hour week!
What do YOU think? What will the next book be? “The Two-Hour Day”? “The 5-Second Manager Working a 15-Minute Day While Chomping an Oversized Bagel Washed Down with a Bucket-Sized Slurpee”?
Sign on and say!
Eddie Murphy, Business Genius
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
In the movie Trading Places the Eddie Murphy character catches on quickly to the concept of stock broking, likening it to bookies who make money off both ends. We’re led to believe by the popular press and a bunch of self-aggrandizing books that the highest value on Wall Street is creating value. Unh hunh. Then how come stock brokers make a fortune whether your money goes up or down? (Do they teach THAT in business school, that the best way to make a fortune is to collect fees off both sides?)
Why Don’t They Invent: Eyephones
Monday, January 7th, 2008Why doesn’t someone do for the eyes what headphones do for the ears. In today’s Wall Street Journal there’s a story about people frustrated with surfing the Web on small handheld devices who want something bigger but not so big as a laptop, which is “inconvenient to whip out in a restaurant.”
So, why not some sort of magnifier or something you can put on your eyes or some sort of virtualization to make the smaller screen you can carry in your jeans pocket seem bigger when you look at it? And some sort of correlation for the hands, so you can move your fingers a normal amount for mousing and not have it swipe the cursor off the screen? Or, perhaps some sort of foldable screen you can flip out to make much bigger than it was in your pocket?
Lefties?
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008Why are so many professors in business school — training people to be capitalist captains of friggin’ industry — Lefties (as one prominent b-school prof confided to me).
