Wrong I'm providing a quote from the WSJ that said that Yahoo wants at least $40. The fact that it was made by an anonymous source has no effect on its credibility. That is a statement made in the context of negotiation.
As previously said counter offers are statements made in the context of negotiations designed to change or modify the terms of an already existing offer. The statement that Yahoo wants $40 is a statement. One can reasonably infer that since Yahoo wants it, that is a statement coming from the board, or management, or someone with the authority to speak on behalf of Yahoo. It was made in the context of negotiations, since it's purpose was to elcit a higher offer from Microsoft. Case closed.
You can disagree with the WSJ's reporting, but that's an action most people appear not to be doing. Just look at other discussions on this topic. Plenty more than me mention the $40 counter offer. Perhaps if you're tried of trying to convince me, you can convince them.
I don't even know why we are arguing this fact as it was not pertinent to my original post.
I have explained how I feel Yahoo has met the requirements. If you want pin-cites to everything, it is all there in the previous articles in our discussion. If you want to be so intransigent as to just sit there and repeat your claim that no counter offer was ever made, you're still welcome to, but that's not a good argumentative technique.
TFA never, ever, said any negotiation took place.
Negotiations can happen in many ways, in private, through the media, and like many acts they are defined by their substance and not their form.
I contend that this dissemination of information is at the very least a negotiating tactic. Why else would Yahoo tell the WSJ? The use of negotiating tactics is prima facie evidence of an attempt at negotiation. It may be a unilateral and unreciprocated attempt but what difference does that make? The statement clearly implies that Microsoft and Yahoo are haggling over the price. That's a negotiation in anybody's eyes. Why should it matter whether Yahoo made the request through the WSJ or directly to Microsoft? Substance trumps form.
If you want to be formalistic about this, then this whole discussion is moot because Microsoft has yet to file paperwork with the SEC making a formal offer. Why should we or the rest of the media, Slashdot, investors, finacial advisers, or whoever be arguing about a non-offer?
If the "we want $40/share" statement is not an attempt at negotiation then what is it? Please explain.
Now you can challenge the authenticity of the WSJ's reporting, but you'd have to show more than just "no one else is reporting it" to make an argument.
Yeap, as I say above you want me to prove a negative which can be impossible instead of you proving a positive which should be easy.
Almost all courts put the burden of proving that an offer never existed on the party challenging that offer's existence. My request is not unreasonable.
To accommodate you're desire to have me do all the intellectual heavy lifting, let's couch the issue this way. If Microsoft were to meet Yahoo's demands of $40/share tomorrow, would Yahoo accept? I would say the answer is likely yes, since the WSJ has already established that Yahoo is asking for that much. Since Yahoo's proposal is likely a proposal, the acceptance of which, would conclude at least the money portion of the deal, I would say that the statement meets the legal definition of an offer, ergo Yahoo's statement is a counter offer.
While I think a good segment of Yahoo's workforce won't have to worry so much, an acquisition like this is not going to happen without dead weight being trimmed off.
Assuming the merger occurs Microsoft, regardless of its promises, will have to start integrating Yahoo into MSN or vice versa. It would make no sense to run two competing operations under one roof. Thus we can safely assume that either MSN or Yahoo's upper management are toast, unless Microsoft is completely idiotic and wants to integrate the two, which would create all sorts of loyalty and corporate culture conflicts.
After management, who gets fired next depends on what Microsoft is buying Yahoo for.
If you believe what Microsoft says, it is buying Yahoo for engineering talent, then most of the Yahoo's content departments become redundant and will be eliminated, while the engineers and IT people stay.
If you believe that Microsoft is buying Yahoo because MSN's content is shit poor, then the content people are safe. The engineers and IT people become redundant as Yahoo moves over to a Microsoft-based back end. (For those who think that's impossible, remember that Microsoft moved Hotmail from BSD to Windows 2k with relative efficiency.)
If you believe (as I do) that Microsoft is buying Yahoo for its account/user base, then every employee at Yahoo is conceivably expendable since the value in Yahoo would lie in one of its raw assets (users) and not in the organizational structure of the company itself. Buying solely for the user accounts, would obviate the need for Yahoo as an entity.
Regardless of how you view it though, Yahoo as a completely separate and intact operation under the Microsoft umbrella is impossible just because it competes on a lot of fronts with MSN, and unless Microsoft's plan involves completely dismantling its MSN unit, some consolidation of the two is going to have to occur.
I should have been clearer in saying DVI over VGA but you made my point, so thank you.
My big gripe is that for $1900 bucks it should come with a DVI Input. Sure we're still in a VGA populated world now, but what about in 3-4 years when DVI projectors become the norm? You'll need an adapter then, and then your video output is going to look horribly inferior to native DVI outputs.
Incidentally, for $2k I would expect a laptop to remain usable for 3-4 years, which is why I'm using that time frame. If its not going to last that long then why not buy a cheaper laptop now and upgrade in two years?
Or a better question, why would Ferrari license their trademark out to be slapped on something that any reasonable person could tell is a piece of crap just by looking at it. Seriously who needs a VGA, and a PS/2 port on their laptop nowadays? What year is this, 1998? And for $1860? Unless you really need the dedicated video to play games on a 12" screen, I don't see much reason to buy this one.
As for the case. Who needs carbon fiber on their laptop? Its use obviously didn't save any weight. The case weighs 4.4 lbs. You can also tell it uses cheap plastic that will discolor or crack easily. If I'm paying $1900 for a laptop, it better at least look and feel like a $1900 laptop (see a Lenovo Thinkpad or MacBook Pro). Ferrari has come a long way since the days when they were associated with flashy but brittle cars. I don't think it's in their best interest to rekindle that memory by putting their name on flashy yet brittle laptops.
Do we have a rejection of an offer? Yes. Yahoo's board has rejected Microsoft's offer. That fact has been well established.
Do we have a different offer made during the course of negitiations? Well according to the Bloomberg article cited previously, "Yahoo wants at least $40 a share, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend." This is definitely a statement made during the course of negotiations. It also appears to be couched as a different offer (i.e., no we do not want $31 for a buyout, we want $40). If you want to debate the definition of offer, I have provided it for you here. I put the burden on you to prove that this act was not a different offer.
Did the subsequent offer change the terms? Yes.
Ok so we have met all the three requirements of a counter offer. You could walk into any Chancery Court in Delaware and I'd bet they'd agree.
No, not in and off itself. Trying only one Google query, however, is not resourceful. If you'd extended your query and searched for "yahoo 40 counter offer". Plenty of articles would have popped up. Was this search string one an average reasonable person would have thought of when searching to see if Yahoo made a $40 counter offer? Yup. So by any standard of reasonableness, you were not resourceful.
If MS were to big [sic] higher they'd be bidding against Yahoo!'s board.
Not they aren't. Yahoo's board doesn't have the funds to take Yahoo private. They couldn't pay the $40/share price if Microsoft said no, so who is Microsoft really up against here? Who is going to step up and buy Yahoo if Microsoft does not raise its bid? No one.
The counter offer was an offer to agree to sell Yahoo for $40 (or as some articles point out to at least seriously consider selling Yahoo). It has nothing to do with another party stepping into the bidding.
however this one dated 14 February says "Yahoo Inc's second-biggest investor urged Microsoft Corp to raise its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo it has few options left, raising the pressure on them to seal a deal." Week in review: Microsoft the magnanimous? dated 22 Feb'08 also says nothing about a counter offer.
First, the Week in Review article wouldn't carry the news since it would only be covering news that happened in the last 7 days (2/14 - 2/22). We're already established that new of the offer came much earlier.
Second, does the failure of one newspaper to report the counter offer (a Pakistani one no less!) mean it never happened? Alley Insider is a reputable widely-read industry periodical. It does little good to criticize its journalistic integrity.
It especially does little good when there are articles from UK Register and Bloomberg citing the Wall St. Journal that say the exact same thing.
Be resourceful dude. This article took me two seconds to find. Microsoft will stay at $31. Why would they bid against themselves? They want Yahoo. They don't need Yahoo. There's a big difference.
I'll take that over some high-paid exec sweating bullets in his black suit when its 90+ degrees out.
You know, since we're on the subject of fashion, I want to err the gripe I have about the black suit. It has been making a comeback in business attire, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.
First, the social argument against the black suit. Traditionally, black suits were the province of the help or the dead (i.e., butlers and funerals). Black dye was cheap, and the suit color looked austere which is why they perfect for funerals and the help since it never drew attention. In fact black was so verboten, famous clothier Brooks Brothers did not even offer an off the rack black suit until the 1990s, because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in one. Source. Why, given its history, that its come back in fashion I do not understand.
Second, the practical argument. You are completely right in that black suits are absolutely miserable to wear in the summer. They also tend to get noticably washed out faster from dry cleaning. They also are show absolutely no originality or as Office Space would say, "flare." A black suit, IMO, shows that a person put less thought into getting dressed than a person who wears sock/sandals and a big Hawaiian shirt. At least those things exhibit character.
I've had this rant building in me for a while, so it feels good to get it out, but if I had one piece of fashion advice to give to fellow geeks its: DON'T WHERE A BLACK SUIT! A simple navy, charcoal, or sharkskin suit will do much to set you apart from bland tasteless masses that insist on only wearing black.
I agree, the board has to do due diligence on the offer, but you have to remember that by countering with a $40 counteroffer, the board has arguably put Yahoo up for sale, in which case it has to make sure that whatever the outcome, it can secure the maximum benefit to the shareholders.
That goal is directly inequipose to the poison pill measures it taking, which is designed to block a sale of the company, especially if the board fails to make the case that shareholders would get the maximum benefit from a non-sale.
Ultimately though, I think this i a moot point because really, who is going to bid against Microsoft? Google has been approached and declined. News Corp is a possibility, but its' a stretch for them given their market cap and cash reserves. Time Warner is another candidate, but they are still smarting from their merger with AOL 7 years ago. No one really has the money to buy out Yahoo other than Microsoft. They'd be fools to raise their bid above $31. I see this playing out like the News Corp./Dow Jones deal. Yahoo will capitulate, it's just a matter of when.
And if they don't, well then you'll have plenty more lawsuits where this came from.
You completely missed the point of my post. See the last sentence of my original post.
I'm not trying to push any particular political point of view. I'm merely pointing out that politicians will do stupid short-sighted things to please their constituents. Those constituents could be anything from the moneyed interests that donate to them to the local voters who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore."
For example, look at Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot Act. Both were half-baked pieces of legislation passed in populous fervor to perceived national crises without thinking through the consequences. We all know the short falls of the Patriot Act, and in the case of Sarb-Ox, almost all of the US's international finance business moved to London to avoid its heinous reporting requirements.
The DMCA, and Telecom Acts were passed to keep the campaign coffers flowing from media company donations. DOMA, and the Communications Decency Act were passed to appease and attract social conservative voters. The Iraq Liberation Act was passed to so that politicians could go back to constituents and say, "Hey see, I'm tough on terror and pro-national security."
All of these laws have one common thread, they benefited the politicians that passed them for benefits they accrued in the short term, but ignored headache the could cause in the long-term because they failed to think about how these laws could be misused and abused.
There's no false equivacy, here and you cannot say to me that Al Gore would not have been tempted by the same short term benefits of signing a law into effect that have tempted other politicians of both parties. (Another example, Nixon, who ran as an economic conservative, is the only President in history to enact comprehensive nationwide price controls.) He's not God, just another politician.
...but the Iraq war and the abuse of signing statements and Gitmo and the DHS and the Patriot Act 1&2 and wiretapping would not have happened under Gore.
Yah just like the DMCA, Defense of Marriage Act, Telecom Reform Act, and Communications Decency Act (Source) would never have been enacted had Bob Dole or Bush I been President?
It's too easy to speculate now since hindsight is 20/20, but remember that the majority of the PATRIOT Act power grab provisions were enacted on recommendation of the Justice Department, and had been provisions which the DOJ had been trying to get enacted for years.
Let us also not forget that the Clinton Administration signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act, which established "regime change" in Iraq as the official US position, and pretty much gave George W. Bush the legitimacy he needed to start a serious dialog on invading. In fact, that law was enacted to provide cover for the Clinton Administration to engage in Operation Desert Fox in Iraq (a very popular move a the time).
The point of the story here is not so much to lay blame on any particular person here, but remind everybody that politicians whose horizons really only stretch as far as the next election will do really stupid things if they think it can score them some brownie points with their constituents.
Institutions account for 85% of the ownership stake in Yahoo. That means at most individual board members only own about 15% of the company, so yes it could be very possible that they have contempt for the majority of their shareholders. Just look at their actions, they have denied the offer, started enacting poison pill measures, and have not even come out with a response detailing how their stewardship of the company is going to be any better than a Microsoft-led one. Its clear that the board and management are more interested in covering their own asses, then doing what's best for the company's shareholders, to whom they owe the fiduciary duty to do so. Now it might very well be that the board, management, and shareholders' interests can be all aligned, but the board has not made the case for this being so. And given Microsoft's offer and Yahoo's recent performance, it is in the boards bests interests to give such an explanation, because from the shareholder's perspective its much easier to see this stock going to $10 or $15 before it reaches the $31 of Microsoft's tender offer.
Yahoo's brand name is probably second only to Google on the internet, and if they would properly make use of it, they could probably top Microsoft in market cap. However, that said, Jerry Yang, and the last two CEOs have done a shit poor job of running the company, and Yahoo will not realize its full potential as long as Yang and the rest of the old Yahoo vanguard control the board. The company gets many more page views than Google, and has a larger registered user base, yet Google has been much more successful in on both the technical and business fronts.
Yahoo, as evidenced by the chronic underperformance (they can't even consistently meet their OWN guidance, let alone Wall Street's), is not a well run company and certainly is not living up to its potential. While I'm not convinced Microsoft can fix what's wrong with Yahoo and certainly not convinced it wants to buy Yahoo for only that purpose, I am convinced that the board and management have no clue what they are doing, and clearly at the very least is ambivalent toward their shareholders. I'd go so far as to venture that Yahoo's board has contempt for them. If Yahoo does remain independent, it wouldn't surprise me to see a revolt against the board at the next shareholders meeting.
I would say they most resemble sports betting. As a small investor, when you invest in a stock, you are trying to a find a company that you feel the street has valued wrongly, and you are betting that eventually, the Big Boys (mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds) will realize this as well and bid up the price of the stock to the point where it is fully valued. This is no different really than betting the spread on a sporting event. You are betting that the current line is wrong, and you win money if your guess is correct.
Now where investing differs in my opinion from sports betting is that there is more research and information you can gather on a given company than there is on Team A or Team B. You also have the added advantage of knowing that Big Boys essentially all play the game the same way (read a couple books on investing and you'll realize that there are only a handful of strategies out there that are all widely followed). Thus, there are less variables you have to look out for, and more importantly, fewer unforeseen ones that you cannot factor in. Then again, that's also why successful investment returns around 20%-50%, while a successful wager will return almost 100%. Higher risk, higher reward.
There is no retirement fund in the world that should be invested in Yahoo.
Pension funds have lots of constituents at differing points in their life. They have to pay out money to pensioners who have already retired, and they have to make sure there is enough money to pay out those people who will be retiring 5, 10 or 20 years from now. Thus they do have to worry about growing their funds size, which makes growth companies like Yahoo worthwhile investments. While I agree with you that Yahoo itself is a rather horrible investment, there is no way that a pension fund would be able to keep up with growth targets by just investing in Altria, Pfizer, and Proctor & Gamble.
Regular Business Judgment Rule (BJR) does not apply in hostile takeovers. In these instances the Enhanced Scrutiny Standard or Unocal Test applies.
Under this standard the Corporation's Board of directors is presumed self-interested, and must show (1) reasonable grounds for believing the taker over is dangerous to corporate policy and effectiveness, and (2) that their defense against the takeover is reasonable in proportion to the threat posed. Only if these two things are shown will the BJR be applied.
While it is definitely harder to satisfy than the BJR, I still think Yahoo can make some credible arguments to satisfy the Enhanced Scrutiny Standard, especially with respect to how Yahoo would fit within the greater Microsoft corporate structure.
However, what's more interesting is whether Yahoo's comments about wanting a $40 per share price constitutes an attempt by the board to actively sell the corporation. If the that's the case, the Board has effectivley put itself in an situation where it has a duty to get the best price possible for its shareholders and act in good faith with respect to obtaining that price. This the so called Revlon Rule.
Given the available information, it's arguably clear that $40 per share is just a pipe dream, especially since Microsoft is the only bidder. Yahoo's Board, by rejecting Microsoft's offer and countering with an unreasonable offer is arguably acting in bad faith, especially if the $40 offer is just a ploy and not a real negotiating strategy. Given that Yahoo is also attempting to entrench their employees, their overall course of conduct does not appear to be proper and in the interest of maximizing shareholder value for a company that is essentially putting itself up for auction.
In sum, Yahoo's board is going to argue for enhanced scrutiny to apply, while the plaintiffs will be arguing for Revlon to apply, and both probably have good arguments as to the matter. It'll be interesting to see how the court draws the line on this one.
I think there is a general misunderstanding of the wealth gap and its significance. The fact that there is a widening gap is not bad per se. The decade of the 1990s saw one of the largest post-WWII increases in the wealth gap any, yet I'm pretty sure most people here that was a pretty bitchin' time.
The key lies not in the existence of the gap, but the reason for its existence. Increases in the wealth gap are totally immaterial if they are accompanied by a general rise societal welfare. For example, if the average income of a person in the top 1% increased from $1 million to $2 million, while the average income of someone in the middle 50% increased from $45,000 to $90,000, the wealth gap has increased between these two percentiles has nearly doubled, but the person in the 50th percentile has still seen his quality of life nearly double (assuming money is an adequate proxy).
If on the other hand, the increase in the gap is due to the fact that one part of society is benefiting from wealth creation and economic growth disproportionately, then that is when societal problems start to creep up, as the poorer segment of society feels cheated or taken advantage of.
Of course, the same logic also applies to attempts to decrease the wealth gap. Decreases resulting from policies that encourage the poorer segments of society to benefit from a larger portion of economic growth, are more desirable that merely confiscating wealth from the rich. For example, I would argue that policies that make it more affordable for lower income people to go to college are a much better than merely raising marginal tax rates on rich. In the 1960s, we had marginal rates that varied from 70% to 91%(!). These rates were so high that they actually encouraged high income individuals to create businesses that actually lost money (i.e., negative economic growth) to reduce their taxable income.
People must remember that economic growth and wealth generation are not zero-sum games. A widening of the wealth gap is not prima facie evidence that the inequities in society are becoming imbalanced, and merely trying to shrink it for its own sake is not sound policy. After all, there is the old Russian saying that the one thing the Soviet Union did well was making everybody equal, equally poor.
Actually, the objective reasonability prong of the rule is something that will be decided by the judge. Objective reasonability, or the "line" drawn by it is usually a question of law. The determination is usually based on facts that are found by the jury. So yes, the court will define who is an "eggshell" victim versus who is normal. It makes these kinds of determinations every day. Go look at common law negligence or Fourth Amendment law. You'll see this kind of analysis every day.
Probably not. If you read the proposed law it requires showing that the affected person had (1) actual emotional distress and (2) that the emotionally distress suffered was objectively reasonable. Objective reasonableness is just legalese for saying that the distress must be of the type that an ordinary person in society would suffer. It is meant to prevent abuse of the law by so called "eggshell" or "thin-skinned" victims.
In your hypothetical, someone who suffered actual emotional distress from a mere disagreement on politics is probably of the thin-skinned variety since behavior is probably out of the range of distress that a normal person would suffer. (Think about it, how many people actually take politics so seriously that they would kill themselves or become severely depressed just because somebody vehemently disagreed with them?)
This is a far cry from actual case at hand, where a 13-year old girl was repeatedly insulted, called a "slut," and arguably had her intimate confidences violated by someone who gained her trust. I think an ordinary person (especially an ordinary teenager) could suffer significant emotional distress under these circumstances. Heck we have civil libel and slander laws that almost create a per se assumption that such conduct is harmful.
In sum, while not commenting on the directly on the law's merits, I think that you have failed to correctly understand how it would be applied.
I have been reading Alan Greenspan's autobiography and he consistently mentions the concept of "creative destruction," which perfectly describes the duality of the capitalist society we live in (even all of you supposed socialists in Europe). It describes both the benefit and burden of the market economy. The benefit of having (generally) free markets allocate resources in society is the innovation they brings (i.e., progress), but a cost of that progress is the obsolescence of things which are now, for lack of a better phrase, useless because of it.
I've noticed that we on Slashdot seem to struggle with this concept daily, be it the loss of jobs to outsourcing, development and adoption of new technology, reform of IP laws, the slow death of the MPAA/RIAA, and even the subject of this article (which is the perfect example). It is probably a little off-topic, but I think this common thread should in these subjects should be pointed out, because all of our discussions seem to hinge on this critical question: Is the creation worth the destruction?
Well Exxon makes such huge profits because they control reserves that let them pump out oil at something like $5-15 dollars a barrel. In fact, while everyone was driving SUVs and laughing up the cheap oil of the 1990s, they were out finding new reserves and buying up rights to existing ones for the day when (we all knew) oil headed higher. Should we really punish them for their foresight?
Ok fine, assuming we should, what do you propose doing? Let's examine the possibilities.
Scenario 1: Capping Exxon's profits with an excise tax. That'll only discourage it from pumping out oil which will further drive the price up. After all, what's the point of pumping out more oil if you get no return on it.
Scenario 2: Price ceilings on the price of oil in the US. One word, 1972. All this will do cause gas shortages in the US when oil companies decide to stop selling oil here because they can bet more money from it elsewhere.
Scenario 3: Issue a legislative mandate to force Exxon to keep pumping out oil and selling it at a lesser price. To a simpleton, this seems to solve the problems of scenarios 1 and 2. Of course it fails to ignore the fact that Exxon can shut down its US operations and move overseas. After all, almost none of the reserves it controls are in the US. It has rights in ANWAR, but, hey, guess what we can't do in ANWAR! Not only does this result in loss of oil, but it also results in a loss of jobs. Besides what are we (the US), Soviet Russia? Which brings me to our final scenario...
Scenario 4: Nationalize the oil industry. Yup, lets do what Venezuela did and watch as the whole world laughs because we have no oil in our borders. Plus, as an added bonus the government that "efficiently" run Social Security, Medicare, and the war in Iraq now gets to use its experience streamlining those boondoggles to run the oil industry.
Ok, now I grant that my reply has been sarcastic so far, but lets get serious for a second. The price of oil has nothing to to with some US cartel of oil manufacturers. It even has far less to do with foreign cartels like OPEC. Oil is at $90 a barrel because *gasp* demand for oil puts it there. Unlike 10 years ago when oil was cheap you have China, India, Brazil, and Russia all coming online as major industrial powers. They all need oil (well Russia has plenty of its own that its using) and their aggregate demand is at least equal to that of the US and EU if not higher.
To compound this, most of the easy sources for oil are gone. Most new oil finds are deep ocean, and/or heavy crude fields. Deep sea oil is inherently hard to pump for obvious reasons, and heavy crude is inherently hard to refine into usuable oil. Ergo, the cost of producing oil is going up as well.
Finally, ever heard of Peak Oil Theory? Well, while there is no concrete evidence that we have hit or past peak oil production, the fact that we are now having to search in harder to get to areas and refine lower quality crude are both evidence that we are headed in that direction.
Bottom line, there are many more factors to oil's cost than Exxon, Conoco, or Chevron's greed. Are there wallets getting fatter at our expense? Yes. But is there anything in the short term we can do to stop it without shooting ourselves in the foot? Not really.
What we can do get ourselves off our oil dependence, which hopefully the higher price of oil will encourage. IMO if we have to "suffer" (it's all relative, hey at least we're not in Africa) in the short term to correct our economy in the long term, I say do it. (Hey and while we're on the subject we should do the same with the deficit by cutting spending AND raising taxes. I'd rather pay 30% now then have 15% Treasury Yields wreck my retirement portfolio in 20 years.)
Yah I know this discussion ended a while ago, but as a further illustration of my point, I'd like to refer you to an op-ed written in recently in the NY Times. link.
If you are advocating commodity-backed (i.e., gold) currency, then you should look at the history of the gold standard. By that I don't mean just the Brentonwoods Agreement, but I mean all the way back to the 19th Century.
The gold standard only nominally contributes to price stability. The gold standard has a major problem of trying to match the increase in the amount of gold to the rate of growth in the world. If the gold supply is increasing faster than the rest of the economy you still get inflation because you have more gold than you have things to spend it on. On the other hand if gold supply is lagging behind economic growth, you get tremendous deflationary pressure, and all other sorts of weird effects, like people melting gold and bronze jewelry for their gold.
You also create the problem of gold as a special status commodity. If gold = money, then governments have to restrict access to gold and control the gold market to keep their money supply in check. Before we went off the gold standard, there was actually a physical limit on the amount of gold anyone person or corporation could own. Instead of using interest rates to control money supply like we would now, countries would have to nationalize their gold mining company's to control the extraction rate of gold. You also create a perverse incentive for countries to fight over gold if they feel they need to increase their reserves to balance their growth. This could result in both economic and military warfare, neither of which is desirable. None of this IMO is desirable over the current system.
My personal opinion on Yahoo is that they should just farm their search functions out to Google and stick to their best functions (1) a web directory; and (2) a content provider. I have a Yahoo account as well and their Financial Pages are the best free ones available. If they were to focus on drawing ad revenue (or any other revenue) from their content rather than trying to compete in search, I think they could right the ship. Then again, that's just pure speculation since I haven't gone over Yahoo's financials and don't know where most of their revenue comes from.
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Wrong I'm providing a quote from the WSJ that said that Yahoo wants at least $40. The fact that it was made by an anonymous source has no effect on its credibility. That is a statement made in the context of negotiation.
As previously said counter offers are statements made in the context of negotiations designed to change or modify the terms of an already existing offer. The statement that Yahoo wants $40 is a statement. One can reasonably infer that since Yahoo wants it, that is a statement coming from the board, or management, or someone with the authority to speak on behalf of Yahoo. It was made in the context of negotiations, since it's purpose was to elcit a higher offer from Microsoft. Case closed.
You can disagree with the WSJ's reporting, but that's an action most people appear not to be doing. Just look at other discussions on this topic. Plenty more than me mention the $40 counter offer. Perhaps if you're tried of trying to convince me, you can convince them.
I don't even know why we are arguing this fact as it was not pertinent to my original post.
I have explained how I feel Yahoo has met the requirements. If you want pin-cites to everything, it is all there in the previous articles in our discussion. If you want to be so intransigent as to just sit there and repeat your claim that no counter offer was ever made, you're still welcome to, but that's not a good argumentative technique.
Negotiations can happen in many ways, in private, through the media, and like many acts they are defined by their substance and not their form.
We can reasonably infer from the WSJ's report that the request for at least $40 was made in the context of trying to get Microsoft to up its offer. How this is not an attempt to negotiate (negotiate - to arrange for or bring about by discussion and settlement of terms is beyond me.
I contend that this dissemination of information is at the very least a negotiating tactic. Why else would Yahoo tell the WSJ? The use of negotiating tactics is prima facie evidence of an attempt at negotiation. It may be a unilateral and unreciprocated attempt but what difference does that make? The statement clearly implies that Microsoft and Yahoo are haggling over the price. That's a negotiation in anybody's eyes. Why should it matter whether Yahoo made the request through the WSJ or directly to Microsoft? Substance trumps form.
If you want to be formalistic about this, then this whole discussion is moot because Microsoft has yet to file paperwork with the SEC making a formal offer. Why should we or the rest of the media, Slashdot, investors, finacial advisers, or whoever be arguing about a non-offer?
If the "we want $40/share" statement is not an attempt at negotiation then what is it? Please explain.
Now you can challenge the authenticity of the WSJ's reporting, but you'd have to show more than just "no one else is reporting it" to make an argument.
Almost all courts put the burden of proving that an offer never existed on the party challenging that offer's existence. My request is not unreasonable.
To accommodate you're desire to have me do all the intellectual heavy lifting, let's couch the issue this way. If Microsoft were to meet Yahoo's demands of $40/share tomorrow, would Yahoo accept? I would say the answer is likely yes, since the WSJ has already established that Yahoo is asking for that much. Since Yahoo's proposal is likely a proposal, the acceptance of which, would conclude at least the money portion of the deal, I would say that the statement meets the legal definition of an offer, ergo Yahoo's statement is a counter offer.
While I think a good segment of Yahoo's workforce won't have to worry so much, an acquisition like this is not going to happen without dead weight being trimmed off.
Assuming the merger occurs Microsoft, regardless of its promises, will have to start integrating Yahoo into MSN or vice versa. It would make no sense to run two competing operations under one roof. Thus we can safely assume that either MSN or Yahoo's upper management are toast, unless Microsoft is completely idiotic and wants to integrate the two, which would create all sorts of loyalty and corporate culture conflicts.
After management, who gets fired next depends on what Microsoft is buying Yahoo for.
If you believe what Microsoft says, it is buying Yahoo for engineering talent, then most of the Yahoo's content departments become redundant and will be eliminated, while the engineers and IT people stay.
If you believe that Microsoft is buying Yahoo because MSN's content is shit poor, then the content people are safe. The engineers and IT people become redundant as Yahoo moves over to a Microsoft-based back end. (For those who think that's impossible, remember that Microsoft moved Hotmail from BSD to Windows 2k with relative efficiency.)
If you believe (as I do) that Microsoft is buying Yahoo for its account/user base, then every employee at Yahoo is conceivably expendable since the value in Yahoo would lie in one of its raw assets (users) and not in the organizational structure of the company itself. Buying solely for the user accounts, would obviate the need for Yahoo as an entity.
Regardless of how you view it though, Yahoo as a completely separate and intact operation under the Microsoft umbrella is impossible just because it competes on a lot of fronts with MSN, and unless Microsoft's plan involves completely dismantling its MSN unit, some consolidation of the two is going to have to occur.
I should have been clearer in saying DVI over VGA but you made my point, so thank you.
My big gripe is that for $1900 bucks it should come with a DVI Input. Sure we're still in a VGA populated world now, but what about in 3-4 years when DVI projectors become the norm? You'll need an adapter then, and then your video output is going to look horribly inferior to native DVI outputs.
Incidentally, for $2k I would expect a laptop to remain usable for 3-4 years, which is why I'm using that time frame. If its not going to last that long then why not buy a cheaper laptop now and upgrade in two years?
Or a better question, why would Ferrari license their trademark out to be slapped on something that any reasonable person could tell is a piece of crap just by looking at it. Seriously who needs a VGA, and a PS/2 port on their laptop nowadays? What year is this, 1998? And for $1860? Unless you really need the dedicated video to play games on a 12" screen, I don't see much reason to buy this one.
As for the case. Who needs carbon fiber on their laptop? Its use obviously didn't save any weight. The case weighs 4.4 lbs. You can also tell it uses cheap plastic that will discolor or crack easily. If I'm paying $1900 for a laptop, it better at least look and feel like a $1900 laptop (see a Lenovo Thinkpad or MacBook Pro). Ferrari has come a long way since the days when they were associated with flashy but brittle cars. I don't think it's in their best interest to rekindle that memory by putting their name on flashy yet brittle laptops.
See Source 1; Source 2; Source 3; Source 4;
Lets apply the definition to the facts.
Do we have a rejection of an offer? Yes. Yahoo's board has rejected Microsoft's offer. That fact has been well established.
Do we have a different offer made during the course of negitiations? Well according to the Bloomberg article cited previously, "Yahoo wants at least $40 a share, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend." This is definitely a statement made during the course of negotiations. It also appears to be couched as a different offer (i.e., no we do not want $31 for a buyout, we want $40). If you want to debate the definition of offer, I have provided it for you here. I put the burden on you to prove that this act was not a different offer.
Did the subsequent offer change the terms? Yes.
Ok so we have met all the three requirements of a counter offer. You could walk into any Chancery Court in Delaware and I'd bet they'd agree.
No, not in and off itself. Trying only one Google query, however, is not resourceful. If you'd extended your query and searched for "yahoo 40 counter offer". Plenty of articles would have popped up. Was this search string one an average reasonable person would have thought of when searching to see if Yahoo made a $40 counter offer? Yup. So by any standard of reasonableness, you were not resourceful.
Not they aren't. Yahoo's board doesn't have the funds to take Yahoo private. They couldn't pay the $40/share price if Microsoft said no, so who is Microsoft really up against here? Who is going to step up and buy Yahoo if Microsoft does not raise its bid? No one.
The counter offer was an offer to agree to sell Yahoo for $40 (or as some articles point out to at least seriously consider selling Yahoo). It has nothing to do with another party stepping into the bidding.
First, the Week in Review article wouldn't carry the news since it would only be covering news that happened in the last 7 days (2/14 - 2/22). We're already established that new of the offer came much earlier.
Second, does the failure of one newspaper to report the counter offer (a Pakistani one no less!) mean it never happened? Alley Insider is a reputable widely-read industry periodical. It does little good to criticize its journalistic integrity.
It especially does little good when there are articles from UK Register and Bloomberg citing the Wall St. Journal that say the exact same thing.
Look, I know you have an emotional attachment to this deal not going through at $31, but whether you like it or not it probably getting done at or near that price.
Be resourceful dude. This article took me two seconds to find. Microsoft will stay at $31. Why would they bid against themselves? They want Yahoo. They don't need Yahoo. There's a big difference.
I'll take that over some high-paid exec sweating bullets in his black suit when its 90+ degrees out.
You know, since we're on the subject of fashion, I want to err the gripe I have about the black suit. It has been making a comeback in business attire, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.
First, the social argument against the black suit. Traditionally, black suits were the province of the help or the dead (i.e., butlers and funerals). Black dye was cheap, and the suit color looked austere which is why they perfect for funerals and the help since it never drew attention. In fact black was so verboten, famous clothier Brooks Brothers did not even offer an off the rack black suit until the 1990s, because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in one. Source. Why, given its history, that its come back in fashion I do not understand.
Second, the practical argument. You are completely right in that black suits are absolutely miserable to wear in the summer. They also tend to get noticably washed out faster from dry cleaning. They also are show absolutely no originality or as Office Space would say, "flare." A black suit, IMO, shows that a person put less thought into getting dressed than a person who wears sock/sandals and a big Hawaiian shirt. At least those things exhibit character.
I've had this rant building in me for a while, so it feels good to get it out, but if I had one piece of fashion advice to give to fellow geeks its: DON'T WHERE A BLACK SUIT! A simple navy, charcoal, or sharkskin suit will do much to set you apart from bland tasteless masses that insist on only wearing black.
I agree, the board has to do due diligence on the offer, but you have to remember that by countering with a $40 counteroffer, the board has arguably put Yahoo up for sale, in which case it has to make sure that whatever the outcome, it can secure the maximum benefit to the shareholders.
That goal is directly inequipose to the poison pill measures it taking, which is designed to block a sale of the company, especially if the board fails to make the case that shareholders would get the maximum benefit from a non-sale.
Ultimately though, I think this i a moot point because really, who is going to bid against Microsoft? Google has been approached and declined. News Corp is a possibility, but its' a stretch for them given their market cap and cash reserves. Time Warner is another candidate, but they are still smarting from their merger with AOL 7 years ago. No one really has the money to buy out Yahoo other than Microsoft. They'd be fools to raise their bid above $31. I see this playing out like the News Corp./Dow Jones deal. Yahoo will capitulate, it's just a matter of when.
And if they don't, well then you'll have plenty more lawsuits where this came from.
You completely missed the point of my post. See the last sentence of my original post.
I'm not trying to push any particular political point of view. I'm merely pointing out that politicians will do stupid short-sighted things to please their constituents. Those constituents could be anything from the moneyed interests that donate to them to the local voters who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore."
For example, look at Sarbanes-Oxley and the Patriot Act. Both were half-baked pieces of legislation passed in populous fervor to perceived national crises without thinking through the consequences. We all know the short falls of the Patriot Act, and in the case of Sarb-Ox, almost all of the US's international finance business moved to London to avoid its heinous reporting requirements.
The DMCA, and Telecom Acts were passed to keep the campaign coffers flowing from media company donations. DOMA, and the Communications Decency Act were passed to appease and attract social conservative voters. The Iraq Liberation Act was passed to so that politicians could go back to constituents and say, "Hey see, I'm tough on terror and pro-national security."
All of these laws have one common thread, they benefited the politicians that passed them for benefits they accrued in the short term, but ignored headache the could cause in the long-term because they failed to think about how these laws could be misused and abused.
There's no false equivacy, here and you cannot say to me that Al Gore would not have been tempted by the same short term benefits of signing a law into effect that have tempted other politicians of both parties. (Another example, Nixon, who ran as an economic conservative, is the only President in history to enact comprehensive nationwide price controls.) He's not God, just another politician.
Yah just like the DMCA, Defense of Marriage Act, Telecom Reform Act, and Communications Decency Act (Source) would never have been enacted had Bob Dole or Bush I been President?
It's too easy to speculate now since hindsight is 20/20, but remember that the majority of the PATRIOT Act power grab provisions were enacted on recommendation of the Justice Department, and had been provisions which the DOJ had been trying to get enacted for years.
Let us also not forget that the Clinton Administration signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act, which established "regime change" in Iraq as the official US position, and pretty much gave George W. Bush the legitimacy he needed to start a serious dialog on invading. In fact, that law was enacted to provide cover for the Clinton Administration to engage in Operation Desert Fox in Iraq (a very popular move a the time).
The point of the story here is not so much to lay blame on any particular person here, but remind everybody that politicians whose horizons really only stretch as far as the next election will do really stupid things if they think it can score them some brownie points with their constituents.
Institutions account for 85% of the ownership stake in Yahoo. That means at most individual board members only own about 15% of the company, so yes it could be very possible that they have contempt for the majority of their shareholders. Just look at their actions, they have denied the offer, started enacting poison pill measures, and have not even come out with a response detailing how their stewardship of the company is going to be any better than a Microsoft-led one. Its clear that the board and management are more interested in covering their own asses, then doing what's best for the company's shareholders, to whom they owe the fiduciary duty to do so. Now it might very well be that the board, management, and shareholders' interests can be all aligned, but the board has not made the case for this being so. And given Microsoft's offer and Yahoo's recent performance, it is in the boards bests interests to give such an explanation, because from the shareholder's perspective its much easier to see this stock going to $10 or $15 before it reaches the $31 of Microsoft's tender offer.
Yahoo's brand name is probably second only to Google on the internet, and if they would properly make use of it, they could probably top Microsoft in market cap. However, that said, Jerry Yang, and the last two CEOs have done a shit poor job of running the company, and Yahoo will not realize its full potential as long as Yang and the rest of the old Yahoo vanguard control the board. The company gets many more page views than Google, and has a larger registered user base, yet Google has been much more successful in on both the technical and business fronts.
Yahoo, as evidenced by the chronic underperformance (they can't even consistently meet their OWN guidance, let alone Wall Street's), is not a well run company and certainly is not living up to its potential. While I'm not convinced Microsoft can fix what's wrong with Yahoo and certainly not convinced it wants to buy Yahoo for only that purpose, I am convinced that the board and management have no clue what they are doing, and clearly at the very least is ambivalent toward their shareholders. I'd go so far as to venture that Yahoo's board has contempt for them. If Yahoo does remain independent, it wouldn't surprise me to see a revolt against the board at the next shareholders meeting.
I would say they most resemble sports betting. As a small investor, when you invest in a stock, you are trying to a find a company that you feel the street has valued wrongly, and you are betting that eventually, the Big Boys (mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds) will realize this as well and bid up the price of the stock to the point where it is fully valued. This is no different really than betting the spread on a sporting event. You are betting that the current line is wrong, and you win money if your guess is correct.
Now where investing differs in my opinion from sports betting is that there is more research and information you can gather on a given company than there is on Team A or Team B. You also have the added advantage of knowing that Big Boys essentially all play the game the same way (read a couple books on investing and you'll realize that there are only a handful of strategies out there that are all widely followed). Thus, there are less variables you have to look out for, and more importantly, fewer unforeseen ones that you cannot factor in. Then again, that's also why successful investment returns around 20%-50%, while a successful wager will return almost 100%. Higher risk, higher reward.
Pension funds have lots of constituents at differing points in their life. They have to pay out money to pensioners who have already retired, and they have to make sure there is enough money to pay out those people who will be retiring 5, 10 or 20 years from now. Thus they do have to worry about growing their funds size, which makes growth companies like Yahoo worthwhile investments. While I agree with you that Yahoo itself is a rather horrible investment, there is no way that a pension fund would be able to keep up with growth targets by just investing in Altria, Pfizer, and Proctor & Gamble.
Regular Business Judgment Rule (BJR) does not apply in hostile takeovers. In these instances the Enhanced Scrutiny Standard or Unocal Test applies.
Under this standard the Corporation's Board of directors is presumed self-interested, and must show (1) reasonable grounds for believing the taker over is dangerous to corporate policy and effectiveness, and (2) that their defense against the takeover is reasonable in proportion to the threat posed. Only if these two things are shown will the BJR be applied.
While it is definitely harder to satisfy than the BJR, I still think Yahoo can make some credible arguments to satisfy the Enhanced Scrutiny Standard, especially with respect to how Yahoo would fit within the greater Microsoft corporate structure.
However, what's more interesting is whether Yahoo's comments about wanting a $40 per share price constitutes an attempt by the board to actively sell the corporation. If the that's the case, the Board has effectivley put itself in an situation where it has a duty to get the best price possible for its shareholders and act in good faith with respect to obtaining that price. This the so called Revlon Rule.
Given the available information, it's arguably clear that $40 per share is just a pipe dream, especially since Microsoft is the only bidder. Yahoo's Board, by rejecting Microsoft's offer and countering with an unreasonable offer is arguably acting in bad faith, especially if the $40 offer is just a ploy and not a real negotiating strategy. Given that Yahoo is also attempting to entrench their employees, their overall course of conduct does not appear to be proper and in the interest of maximizing shareholder value for a company that is essentially putting itself up for auction.
In sum, Yahoo's board is going to argue for enhanced scrutiny to apply, while the plaintiffs will be arguing for Revlon to apply, and both probably have good arguments as to the matter. It'll be interesting to see how the court draws the line on this one.
I think there is a general misunderstanding of the wealth gap and its significance. The fact that there is a widening gap is not bad per se. The decade of the 1990s saw one of the largest post-WWII increases in the wealth gap any, yet I'm pretty sure most people here that was a pretty bitchin' time.
The key lies not in the existence of the gap, but the reason for its existence. Increases in the wealth gap are totally immaterial if they are accompanied by a general rise societal welfare. For example, if the average income of a person in the top 1% increased from $1 million to $2 million, while the average income of someone in the middle 50% increased from $45,000 to $90,000, the wealth gap has increased between these two percentiles has nearly doubled, but the person in the 50th percentile has still seen his quality of life nearly double (assuming money is an adequate proxy).
If on the other hand, the increase in the gap is due to the fact that one part of society is benefiting from wealth creation and economic growth disproportionately, then that is when societal problems start to creep up, as the poorer segment of society feels cheated or taken advantage of.
Of course, the same logic also applies to attempts to decrease the wealth gap. Decreases resulting from policies that encourage the poorer segments of society to benefit from a larger portion of economic growth, are more desirable that merely confiscating wealth from the rich. For example, I would argue that policies that make it more affordable for lower income people to go to college are a much better than merely raising marginal tax rates on rich. In the 1960s, we had marginal rates that varied from 70% to 91%(!). These rates were so high that they actually encouraged high income individuals to create businesses that actually lost money (i.e., negative economic growth) to reduce their taxable income.
People must remember that economic growth and wealth generation are not zero-sum games. A widening of the wealth gap is not prima facie evidence that the inequities in society are becoming imbalanced, and merely trying to shrink it for its own sake is not sound policy. After all, there is the old Russian saying that the one thing the Soviet Union did well was making everybody equal, equally poor.
Actually, the objective reasonability prong of the rule is something that will be decided by the judge. Objective reasonability, or the "line" drawn by it is usually a question of law. The determination is usually based on facts that are found by the jury. So yes, the court will define who is an "eggshell" victim versus who is normal. It makes these kinds of determinations every day. Go look at common law negligence or Fourth Amendment law. You'll see this kind of analysis every day.
Probably not. If you read the proposed law it requires showing that the affected person had (1) actual emotional distress and (2) that the emotionally distress suffered was objectively reasonable. Objective reasonableness is just legalese for saying that the distress must be of the type that an ordinary person in society would suffer. It is meant to prevent abuse of the law by so called "eggshell" or "thin-skinned" victims.
In your hypothetical, someone who suffered actual emotional distress from a mere disagreement on politics is probably of the thin-skinned variety since behavior is probably out of the range of distress that a normal person would suffer. (Think about it, how many people actually take politics so seriously that they would kill themselves or become severely depressed just because somebody vehemently disagreed with them?)
This is a far cry from actual case at hand, where a 13-year old girl was repeatedly insulted, called a "slut," and arguably had her intimate confidences violated by someone who gained her trust. I think an ordinary person (especially an ordinary teenager) could suffer significant emotional distress under these circumstances. Heck we have civil libel and slander laws that almost create a per se assumption that such conduct is harmful.
In sum, while not commenting on the directly on the law's merits, I think that you have failed to correctly understand how it would be applied.
I have been reading Alan Greenspan's autobiography and he consistently mentions the concept of "creative destruction," which perfectly describes the duality of the capitalist society we live in (even all of you supposed socialists in Europe). It describes both the benefit and burden of the market economy. The benefit of having (generally) free markets allocate resources in society is the innovation they brings (i.e., progress), but a cost of that progress is the obsolescence of things which are now, for lack of a better phrase, useless because of it.
I've noticed that we on Slashdot seem to struggle with this concept daily, be it the loss of jobs to outsourcing, development and adoption of new technology, reform of IP laws, the slow death of the MPAA/RIAA, and even the subject of this article (which is the perfect example). It is probably a little off-topic, but I think this common thread should in these subjects should be pointed out, because all of our discussions seem to hinge on this critical question: Is the creation worth the destruction?
Well Exxon makes such huge profits because they control reserves that let them pump out oil at something like $5-15 dollars a barrel. In fact, while everyone was driving SUVs and laughing up the cheap oil of the 1990s, they were out finding new reserves and buying up rights to existing ones for the day when (we all knew) oil headed higher. Should we really punish them for their foresight?
Ok fine, assuming we should, what do you propose doing? Let's examine the possibilities.
Scenario 1: Capping Exxon's profits with an excise tax. That'll only discourage it from pumping out oil which will further drive the price up. After all, what's the point of pumping out more oil if you get no return on it.
Scenario 2: Price ceilings on the price of oil in the US. One word, 1972. All this will do cause gas shortages in the US when oil companies decide to stop selling oil here because they can bet more money from it elsewhere.
Scenario 3: Issue a legislative mandate to force Exxon to keep pumping out oil and selling it at a lesser price. To a simpleton, this seems to solve the problems of scenarios 1 and 2. Of course it fails to ignore the fact that Exxon can shut down its US operations and move overseas. After all, almost none of the reserves it controls are in the US. It has rights in ANWAR, but, hey, guess what we can't do in ANWAR! Not only does this result in loss of oil, but it also results in a loss of jobs. Besides what are we (the US), Soviet Russia? Which brings me to our final scenario...
Scenario 4: Nationalize the oil industry. Yup, lets do what Venezuela did and watch as the whole world laughs because we have no oil in our borders. Plus, as an added bonus the government that "efficiently" run Social Security, Medicare, and the war in Iraq now gets to use its experience streamlining those boondoggles to run the oil industry.
Ok, now I grant that my reply has been sarcastic so far, but lets get serious for a second. The price of oil has nothing to to with some US cartel of oil manufacturers. It even has far less to do with foreign cartels like OPEC. Oil is at $90 a barrel because *gasp* demand for oil puts it there. Unlike 10 years ago when oil was cheap you have China, India, Brazil, and Russia all coming online as major industrial powers. They all need oil (well Russia has plenty of its own that its using) and their aggregate demand is at least equal to that of the US and EU if not higher.
To compound this, most of the easy sources for oil are gone. Most new oil finds are deep ocean, and/or heavy crude fields. Deep sea oil is inherently hard to pump for obvious reasons, and heavy crude is inherently hard to refine into usuable oil. Ergo, the cost of producing oil is going up as well.
Finally, ever heard of Peak Oil Theory? Well, while there is no concrete evidence that we have hit or past peak oil production, the fact that we are now having to search in harder to get to areas and refine lower quality crude are both evidence that we are headed in that direction.
Bottom line, there are many more factors to oil's cost than Exxon, Conoco, or Chevron's greed. Are there wallets getting fatter at our expense? Yes. But is there anything in the short term we can do to stop it without shooting ourselves in the foot? Not really.
What we can do get ourselves off our oil dependence, which hopefully the higher price of oil will encourage. IMO if we have to "suffer" (it's all relative, hey at least we're not in Africa) in the short term to correct our economy in the long term, I say do it. (Hey and while we're on the subject we should do the same with the deficit by cutting spending AND raising taxes. I'd rather pay 30% now then have 15% Treasury Yields wreck my retirement portfolio in 20 years.)
I'm done ranting.
Yah I know this discussion ended a while ago, but as a further illustration of my point, I'd like to refer you to an op-ed written in recently in the NY Times. link.
If you are advocating commodity-backed (i.e., gold) currency, then you should look at the history of the gold standard. By that I don't mean just the Brentonwoods Agreement, but I mean all the way back to the 19th Century.
The gold standard only nominally contributes to price stability. The gold standard has a major problem of trying to match the increase in the amount of gold to the rate of growth in the world. If the gold supply is increasing faster than the rest of the economy you still get inflation because you have more gold than you have things to spend it on. On the other hand if gold supply is lagging behind economic growth, you get tremendous deflationary pressure, and all other sorts of weird effects, like people melting gold and bronze jewelry for their gold.
You also create the problem of gold as a special status commodity. If gold = money, then governments have to restrict access to gold and control the gold market to keep their money supply in check. Before we went off the gold standard, there was actually a physical limit on the amount of gold anyone person or corporation could own. Instead of using interest rates to control money supply like we would now, countries would have to nationalize their gold mining company's to control the extraction rate of gold. You also create a perverse incentive for countries to fight over gold if they feel they need to increase their reserves to balance their growth. This could result in both economic and military warfare, neither of which is desirable. None of this IMO is desirable over the current system.
Wow I totally didn't think of that. Good Job.
My personal opinion on Yahoo is that they should just farm their search functions out to Google and stick to their best functions (1) a web directory; and (2) a content provider. I have a Yahoo account as well and their Financial Pages are the best free ones available. If they were to focus on drawing ad revenue (or any other revenue) from their content rather than trying to compete in search, I think they could right the ship. Then again, that's just pure speculation since I haven't gone over Yahoo's financials and don't know where most of their revenue comes from.