"Yahoo was never the strategy we were pursuing," he told a packed hall at a technology conference in Moscow

..

We will spend money on some acquisitions. You can do a whole lot of things with 50 billion dollars," he added.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080523/microsoft_yahoo.html?.v=5

Is Mr.Bernake a magician or are the economists worthless?

Only a couple of weeks back 97% of the economics believed that US is in a Recession and they have said so.

 

Now, most are doing a "U" turn and saying there might not be a recession:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121068163716188223.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

 

Is not Economics supposed to be a stable macro science where you look length and breadth and you work with huge numbers like centuries and Trillions of dollars? They seem more finicky than the Weathermen and Newspaper guys. So, what good is their prediction if they keep changing it everyday? Either Mr.Bernake pulled off some David Copperfield magic and made the recession vanish in a week or these economists are not qualified to ever make a prediction

Is harvard just a tax free hedge fund?

Interesting article…

http://www.theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax-free-hedge-fund

 

Endowments seem to be earning a good deal and must be taxed on capital gains. But, the proposal to charge a wealth tax on 2.5% of their total assets every year is not good. Suppose, if they put all of their money in treasuries, they will be losing money every year not just to inflation but to this tax, because interest rates is less than this tax.

 

OTOH, I don't know what these people invest in, but they are getting pretty good returns (this is as of June 2006)

http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/201/crut_pop.html

subprime primer

too funny :)

http://www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/

Microsoft trying to buy facebook now

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-approaches-facebook-possible-buyout/story.aspx?guid=%7B481A2C2C%2DBF90%2D43E1%2DBC1E%2D084CAA867C9D%7D&dist=hpmymw

Watch this funny video about possible web 2.0 bubble

Some China firms outsourcing to USA to cut costs

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/285596662/some-china-firms-out.html

An article in the LA Times this week on businesses from China bargain-hunting on operational costs by outsourcing to the USA:

Liu Keli couldn't tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It's as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans.

But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.

Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg -- less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn't have to put up with frequent blackouts.

Link (via neatorama, thanks Tian)

 

 

===

The snippet below misses some other interesting parts of the article:

 

About the only major thing that's more expensive in Spartanburg is labor. Liu is looking to offer $12 to $13 an hour there, versus about $2 an hour in Dongguan, not including room and board. But Liu expects to offset some of the higher labor costs with a payroll tax credit of $1,500 per employee from South Carolina.

"I was surprised," said the 63-year-old president of Shanxi Yuncheng Plate-Making Group. "The gap's not as large as I thought."

…

"At seminars and talks, government authorities are saying, 'You're a capitalist; you should be going out,' " said Fred Hong, a Pasadena lawyer who has worked in Guangzhou for 15 years advising Chinese companies.

One of Hong's clients, a Wenzhou man who operates two printing factories in China, recently signed a deal to spend $1 million to buy a 60-worker plant in the City of Industry that makes magnetic cards. Hong said the man's factories had produced strong profit in the last several years, leaving him with a pot of cash. With the dollar having lost nearly 10% of its value against the Chinese currency in the last 12 months, the yuan can go a lot further in the U.S.

Housing Crisis Over?

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003604494869449.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

…Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

 

….In other words, homes on average are back to being as affordable as during the best of times in the 1990s. Numerous households that had been priced out of the market can now afford to get in.

 

… This is all good news for the broader economy.

Berkshire Profit Falls 64% on Derivatives Exposure

Investors in Berkshire Hathaway had expected some disappointing news from the holding company's chief, Warren E. Buffett. But perhaps they didn't expect the Sage of Omaha's investment vehicle to be so badly wounded by what he once called "financial weapons of mass destruction."

 

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/berkshire-profit-falls-64-on-derivatives-exposure/

 

Very surprising to see Buffett tripped up selling CDS contracts. Also interesting to see that Berkshire was (and maybe still is) betting on a stock market crash by buying puts on the S&P500 and other indexes.