The Curious Capitalist

New column: Riding the waves

Justin Fox — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:50:27 +0000

My column this week is a brief foray into the world of the market wave and cycle theorists (mainly Elliott Wave guy Bob Prechter). I'll put up some relevant links later, but right now I've got to run.

You are failure-haters, you are gladiators

Justin Fox — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:27:14 +0000

Sorry for the lack of posting. To make amends, here's a little motivational video for all of you:

America, where every city is a health-care industry mecca

Justin Fox — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:07:56 +0000

So I'm riding into Louisville from the airport this morning (I was in town to give a speech to the local CFAs), and I asked my host about the local economy. He reeled off a few employers and then said, "health care, health care's really big here." Funny thing: I was in Winston-Salem a couple of [...]

Goldman Sachs tries to make amends

Barbara Kiviat — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:01:46 +0000

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is sorry. Speaking yesterday at a conference sponsored by Directorship magazine (which has named him CEO of the Year), Blankfein expressed remorse for the firm's role in helping to bring the country to the brink of financial collapse: "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret [...]

New article: the U.S.-China imbalance

Justin Fox — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:11:33 +0000

I've written a piece for TIME.com that's headlined U.S.-China Trade: Prepare for Continued Imbalance. Which pretty much explains what it's about.

Better technology at home than at work

Justin Fox — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:28 +0000

In today's WSJ, Nick Wingfield addresses one of the stranger information-technology developments of the past decade. The off-the-shelf computing technology available to anybody with a few bucks to spend (and in some cases without any bucks, as some of the best stuff is free) is significantly better than what large corporations provide their employees: For a [...]

The U.S.: export juggernaut (if you don't count oil and China)

Justin Fox — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:30:29 +0000

Here's the kind of interesting stuff you can learn reading this morning's monthly foreign trade report from the Census Bureau: Overall U.S. trade deficit for September: $36.5 billion Trade deficit in petroleum products: $20.5 billion Trade deficit with China: $22.1 billion Overall U.S. trade surplus if you exclude petroleum and China: $6.1 billion And so, in the spirit of EBITDA, [...]

The small-business recession isn't over yet

Justin Fox — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:16:01 +0000

Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius writes that bad times among small businesses, which are harder for government statisticians to measure than the doings of big businesses, probably means the economy is growing slower than the feds say it is: We have argued that the weakness of the small business sector may mean that real GDP in [...]

Australia's wine glut

Justin Fox — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:54:09 +0000

The Wine Economist reports that Australia's overproduction of wine has reached a crisis point: Australia has an accumulated surplus of 100 million cases of wine that will double in the next two years if current trends continue, according to the report. The annual surplus is huge – equal to all UK export sales and there is [...]

Poor, poor Robert Benmosche

Justin Fox — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:37:40 +0000

The news that AIG CEO Robert Benmosche is thinking of leaving (now he says he's staying; see update below) because he's sick of dealing with those mean, mean federal regulators—especially the ones who want to cap his and his employees' pay—raised two conflicting thoughts: 1) The federal government isn't very good at running corporations. 2) Who the [...]