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Confessions of a Wal-Mart Schizophrenic
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2007 CommentHow fitting that the symbol of economic angst in America has turned out to be a store. The displacement caused by globalization, the anxiety felt by the undereducated and the have-nots, the national addiction to stuff we don't need: Wal-Mart embodies it all.
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Sympathy for the Subprimes
Tweet Share on Facebook March 9, 2007 CommentBoohoo. I am just distraught over the thousands (millions?) of high-risk borrowers who got mortgages over the past few years and are now unable to pay back their loans. And the poor lenders! They were so generous, offering loans with practically no interest at the beginning, so that people who couldn't otherwise afford a home could enjoy the American Dream. And now they're being vilified just because the interest rates rose to usurious levels in the third or fourth year of the loan. Hey–I'll bet that brief taste of homeownership will make those defaulting borrowers better citizens! Better to have owned and lost than never to have owned at all.
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We Winter Weaklings
Tweet Share on Facebook February 15, 2007 CommentHere in the East, we just endured our first winter "storm" of 2007. If it revealed anything, it's how little we, as American consumers, get for our money.
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America in Decline? Fine With Me
Tweet Share on Facebook February 8, 2007 CommentCould we please call an end to the empire, and get it over with?
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Unlikely Do-Gooders: CEOs
Tweet Share on Facebook January 30, 2007 CommentIs corporate America going soft?
I was still trying to absorb the ramifications of a call for universal healthcare by the Business Roundtable–a collection of leading CEOs who famously lean Republican–when there was more shocking news: DuPont, GE, Alcoa, and seven other industrial companies were calling for major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
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Obese Americans: Not Wanted in China
Tweet Share on Facebook January 5, 2007 CommentAnybody who blinked over the holidays might have missed important news from China. DaimlerChrysler announced that by 2008 it plans to import small "B-class" cars built by the Chinese automaker Chery, the first time a Chinese-made car will go on sale in the United States. Pfizer won a big lawsuit that, in theory, will prohibit Chinese companies from selling blue, diamond-shaped knockoff pills that look exactly like Viagra. Best Buy opened its first Chinese outlet in Shanghai. And Westinghouse nailed a deal to build four nuclear power plants for China, which will bring about 5,000 jobs to western Pennsylvania and other states.
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Home Depot's Nardelli: The Last Overpaid CEO?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 3, 2007 CommentMost CEOs favor market solutions over regulatory ones and laissez-faire economics over other kinds. Little wonder: When you're the most powerful guy in the market–or the company–things tend to go your way.
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Troubleshooting Tips From HP's CEO
Tweet Share on Facebook December 8, 2006 CommentIt started sloppy but ended neat. Three months ago, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd was sitting atop a huge corporate embarrassment. Board members were feuding and leaking their gripes to the press, the company was spying on them, and government regulators, sensing criminal activity, had begun to investigate.
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'Fair Trade' Lifts the Wrong Boats
Tweet Share on Facebook November 30, 2006 CommentWhom does protectionism really protect? Too often, it protects the weakest competitors–while allowing them to get weaker. In a Darwinian way, protectionism also benefits the very people you're trying to protect yourself against. By making it harder for the threatening firms or nations to compete on your home turf, it forces them to adapt to a tough environment, which makes them even tougher. And if the dikes ever fall and protections disappear, the adapters thrive while the pampered perish.
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The Big Three and Bush: A Flock of Lame Ducks
Tweet Share on Facebook November 14, 2006 CommentIt seemed a fitting display of futility: a recently thumped president listening to the gripes of America's besieged auto executives.
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