Steve Cotler Steve Cotler

Category: Business/Economics

Too Big to Fail? Or Too Big to Exist?

— 8:57 pm · View all 4 comments

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 it is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

Capitalism rewards successful innovation and efficiency; saving what has rotted is antithetical. I realize, of course, that by the time AIG was infused, Continue reading “Too Big to Fail? Or Too Big to Exist?” →

Lincoln Head Cents: 1909-2009 and Beyond…

— 10:51 pm · View all 8 comments

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 a real person on it. In 1909, however, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt wished to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth by putting Honest Abe’s face on a coin.

In spite of Lincoln’s popularity, however, not all were in favor of his image on a coin. In addition to setting a “monarchical” precedent (originally kiboshed by George Washington), some were opposed for less worthy reasons:

Continue reading “Lincoln Head Cents: 1909-2009 and Beyond…” →

Innovative Auto Marketing from Hyundai

— 12:27 pm · Comments Off on Innovative Auto Marketing from Hyundai

Hand it to Hyundai.

You can sell anything to some people some of the time (think Hummer), but sooner or later, if you value corporate survival, you have to market a truly competitive product. Staying competitive, especially in industries with long lead-time R&D or complicated and expensive manufacturing tooling, requires attention to those new product ideas that may dramatically change the marketplace. Excepting those rare, unchallengeable patents that create altogether new industries (e.g., Xerox’s plain paper copier, Polaroid’s instant photography, etc.), the big guys don’t have to be first. Even if they trail the garage innovators, their financial and market clout can be used to copy or buy the new ideas.

But when the big guys, even those protected by marketing muscle or a patent’s impregnable castle walls, ignore the dust clouds that signal hordes approaching, obsolescence or obliteration may follow. Continue reading “Innovative Auto Marketing from Hyundai” →

Keep Your Head Down, Bernie

— 7:24 pm · Comments Off on Keep Your Head Down, Bernie

For most of a decade I worked for San Francisco’s Montgomery Securities (which became Banc of America Securities after a purchase).  I was a securities analyst and then an institutional salesman. We called ourselves investment bankers, but no one ever asked for a definition of that title. I joined in 1986, staggered through the 1987 crash, then rode the market upward until my retirement in late 1994, just in time to miss the Great Market Uptick. My boss once told me that could have been a great salesman if I only had “more larceny in my heart.” My assignment, he more than once intoned, was “to turn my clients’ assets into my personal net worth.”

Continue reading “Keep Your Head Down, Bernie” →

Madoff Made Off With My Money

— 1:50 pm · One comment

When a con man is caught, his victims are often too embarrassed to press charges. I’m not. But the Madoff case is so big, with so many losers, I may be far back in a very long line. Take a number.

Bernard Madoff, former chairman of NASDAQ and renown money manager whose astoundingly consistent returns over many years seemed too good to be true, confessed to a $50 billion Ponzi scheme this week.

I left investment banking in 1994, canceled my subscription to the The Wall Street Journal, and put my assets in the hands of others. Continue reading “Madoff Made Off With My Money” →

InTirely Nitrogen

— 4:59 pm · Comments Off on InTirely Nitrogen

“Are you N2 your tires?” asks Ingersoll Rand, marketers of Nitrogeneration™, a new way to inflate your tires…and Ingersoll Rand’s bottom line.

By filling your tires with pure nitrogen instead of air, Ingersoll Rand, one of the various nitrogen-into-tires purveyors, contends that you will: (1) enhance safety because pressure decreases more slowly, (2) lengthen tire life because internal oxidation is eliminated, and (3) increase fuel economy because better inflation increases mpg.

This is terrific—and disingenuous—marketing:  a very slight improvement gets touted as a revolution.  (And by the look of the brochure graphic above, Nitrogeneration is very green.) Continue reading “InTirely Nitrogen” →

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