Perhaps based upon a well-known, anatomically difficult, consensual act, Wells Fargo has sued itself in a Florida foreclosure case reported upon by foxbusiness.com last week: “Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium….As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which [...]
Category Archives: Business/Economics
Enhanced Geothermal Energy and Man-Made Earthquakes (Part 2)
July 16, 2009 – 9:30 am
As described in a previous post, Sausalito-based AltaRock Energy is drilling a Lake County test well aimed at producing energy by utilizing a technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). AltaRock’s project is on federal land leased by the Northern California Power Agency (NCPA) on a ridge just above the community of Anderson Springs, CA. According [...]
“Keynesian” Capitalism Bumper Sticker De-Attributed
July 12, 2009 – 5:31 am
During the research for my previous post, I came across a bumper sticker that attributed the quotation in question to John Maynard Keynes. When I informed the purveyor that the quotation was not from Keynes’s oeuvre, they replied: Well, that is sad. It seems that making things up has been a major accomplishment of the [...]
John Maynard Keynes: Capitalism and the “Nastiest/Wickedest of Men”
July 7, 2009 – 1:28 am
Of course you know that not everything on the web is accurate, but what if you find thousands of hits for a quotation, including citations in Webster’s Online Dictionary, the Washington Post, and the Howard Law Journal (which, in its Vol 48 Issue 1 Fall 2004 issue, blithely quoted the Washington Post article referenced at [...]
Enhanced Geothermal Energy and Man-Made Earthquakes
July 2, 2009 – 11:29 pm
Drill down just a few miles into the earth’s crust, and the temperature will rise substantially. This heat comes from three sources: emissions from radioactive minerals, the compressive force of gravity, and to a lesser extent, solar energy absorbed at the earth’s surface. Although such energy is not truly renewable (radioactive elements do eventually decay [...]
Bank of America’s Bad Marketing
May 16, 2009 – 10:51 pm
Do they even come close to knowing what’s going on? Today I mailed the letter below to Barbara Desoer, President of Bank of America Home Loans, in Charlotte, NC. According to Money magazine, she received $9.6 million in compensation in 2007, and was one of the 25 highest-paid women in America. Dear Barbara: I begin [...]
The Future of Book Marketing?
May 8, 2009 – 4:30 pm
Movies have previews. Why not books? Yesterday, the Avon Books division of HarperCollins Publishers released a short promo video for Julia Quinn‘s soon-to-be-released novel, What Happens in London. The promo is so professionally done, I would probably have commented on it even if best-selling novelist Quinn (her last book hit #1 on The New York [...]
The Babson Boulders of Dogtown
April 19, 2009 – 10:13 am
In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German economist and sociologist Max Weber theorized that capitalism’s ascendancy owed much to Protestantism’s emphasis on hard work and worldly success. Whether or not Weber was actually right, the term he coined, “Protestant ethic,” has, to many, become accepted as part of our [...]
Too Big to Fail? Or Too Big to Exist?
March 7, 2009 – 8:57 pm
AIG is saved once, and then resuscitated again, because it is judged “too big to fail.” Billions are pumped into General Motors because it also is “too big to fail.” I say step back and look at what “too big to fail” should have suggested long before the current financial cliff edge was reached: If [...]
Lincoln Head Cents: 1909-2009 and Beyond…
February 8, 2009 – 10:51 pm
These days Americans accept and expect famous faces on our coins: Washington quarters (first minted in 1932), Jefferson nickels (1938), Roosevelt dimes (1946), Franklin (1948) and Kennedy (1964) half-dollars, Eisenhower (1971), Susan B. Anthony (1979), and Sacagawea (2000) dollars. But from first United States coinage in 1793 until 1909, no coin had the image of [...]
