Not sure that is the best example. Where I grew (in USA) up one could legally drive by age 14 – car or tractor – on road or off – and those things are more dangerous than lasers.
True. But I thought that the thrust of this thread was about civil actions and fines and if one can lock away board members for something the company does. And you can't.
Now, if those board members fail to due their duty they can be sued for money in civil court. If they personally commit fraud that would be a different story - that would be criminal and jail time would apply.
It is not. Corporations are limited liability organizations - They are legally liable up to the value of the corporation. After that it goes bankrupt.
Now, one can sue board members if they were negligent - as in failed to due their duties - not in making bad business decisions. That being said, the are usually only a few 10s of millions of dollars between the board members and their insurance companies (and yes, most of them take out insurance.) so if they caused a multibillion dollar corporation to go bust one can collect a few pennies per share.
By issuing money the Federal government is issuing debt at 0%. It is called seigniorage. You can look it up in wiki. For most major economies it works out the be less then a rounding error, so no big deal. Here is a article.
No, the real concern is that when it takes 2 pennies to mint 1 pennies mining companies will order lots of pennies and melt them down for the copper (or zinc nowadays).
Actually, most large companies are self insured. They will farm out the “operations” part (billing, negotiating rates, etc.) to a insurance company but will pay all of the costs out of their own pocket.
I am not saying NBC is not greedy – but who has more power, NBC or the IOC? The IOC has a basic package that they sell – exclusive rights to the games for a country. Kind of has to be that way. However, they could sell the exclusive rights for a time period or maybe just for the popular sports and let the small or qualifying rounds be free.
The IOC has the whip hand in this case. That is the point that I was trying to make.
The warships are real money but I am not sure about security. I talked to some Olympians and they were basically on their own. It was the curling team and in Italy, so not high profiled.
Wait – I am confused. How are you watching the Olympics in the US but pay Russian taxes? I can think of a select few cases where that can be true but not many.
Kind of. Advertisers pay less for on-line views then OTA viewers.
And I don’t think it is NBC being greedy, it is International Olympics Committee which is being greedy. They have been able to extract a huge amount of money from NBC so they would have exclusive video rights in the USA. (which may be splitting hairs – they are both greedy, I just think the IOC is more greedy.)
I think you can still do that – IBM engineers sitting down with the foundry engineers.
The problem is that the fab plants are really big and massively efficient. IIRC Intel said that would only need to build a single (billion dollar?) fab plant for its next generation of chips. They are going to build more than that because they don’t want all of their eggs in one basket but you get the idea. At some point it is the costs of out outsourcing the production is going to be less than the costs of running a single small inefficient plant.
Take my antidotal evidence. I probably place a heavier weight on being broadly well informed then the average person – being well rounded and having a broad view is important to me. Honestly I highly value the podcast for convince.
The antidotal evidence I have heard is that people are willing to pay for long form journalism – articles that are longer than a page, requires research, has in-depth analysis, etc. This seems to be true for even some narrow journals (left leaning political, music, etc.)
The short form (headline, The X things you need to now about Y) less so.
As for a practical benefit, I am not exactly sure what you mean. I know people can spend heavily on specialized news serveries – medical and financial comes to mind. However, for those people the subscription is less for the daily news and more about the databases and other tools. For example, a subscription to Bloomberg New Service can cost anywhere from tens of dollars to millions a year.
Primarily it is general news magazine and covers all of the areas that you talked about – politics, technology, and the arts. I believe it has more depth then time, Newsweek, etc. It skews towards international and business news but I am o.k. With that. It is my primary source for general interest items – so all of the items you suggest.
Yet for each of the subjects that you mention I tend towards more specialized sources. For example, for some learning I go to Coursera.org which I found out about on Slashdot.org. The Economist does a o.k. job for presidential elections but does not help me out much for state and local. The Economist does a poor job Sci-Fi. So different sources for that.
You can check them out. The paywall hits only after you viewed a couple of articles - I want to say 7 a month, which is the new model for most newspapers. Let the casual reader in for free, make money off of the ads. If they don't go to you they will go to somebody else. For the hard core, unlimited access plus extras (like the podcast for me).
I am not going to fuss with that too much. Ricardo’s theory came after Smith by about 20 years. I would argue that Smith had the original idea but Ricardo developed it and put it on firmer ground – and in this case more specific and more on point. Do we not all stand on the shoulders of giants?
I might be making an incorrect link between "everything should be produced in country." and "It makes sense".
But if that is true, then the second half of the sentence falls apart. China is very eager to control and censor information – in particular political information. They have been pushing their own phone OS, Linux package, favoring internal social media site over external ones. Etc. They might be a bit more rational, knowing greater freedom means economic growth, but the impulse is still there.
What would make sense for N. Korea would be to adopt some of the openness the China has. At the current trajectory I don’t know when N. Korea will end but I do know it won’t end happily.
Actually, that theory has been disproven a long time ago, see Mercantilism. The idea is that the more trade there is, the more people can specialize, the more productive, and everybody is better off. See Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Or any introduction book to economics.
And one more thing – find a high quality news source which has an opinion different than your own. People have a bias towards what they think is right – placing too much weight on things that support their views and not enough on new evidence that challenges their preconceptions. It is important to seek out opposing (high quality) views.
I will second the economist. It takes me about a week to get though the in-depth articles, which for me is a better use of my time then plowing though daily updates of most issues. Plus the subscription comes with a podcast of the magazine. That for me is worth the price of subscription.
I have some issues with news aggregateors and free sites. They do headline news well but they do a poor job on the long form articles.
You can't get that. Journalist are not robots, dry facts are meaningless without context, and editors have to use their judgment to par the content down to a reasonable size.
Find a source that is intelligent, in depth, aware of it's view, and skeptical of it's view – i.e. willing to be challenged, acknowledging what assumptions and positions it is making, and willing to change it's view when the fact change.
No, earnings trump cash flow. Or if we want to be technical, “future free cash flow to equity”. I can point to great investment situations where the company had low or negative cash flow. I can point to situations where a company had great cash flow but was a poor investment. A company can take out a loan, sell assets or inventory at fire sale prices, or delay routine maintenance – All of these actions bump up cash flow without improving the overall outlook of the company.
I am not sure if your example works. Would not the company be more valuable after the expansion? After all, doesn’t the company now have higher earning potential? And of course the answer is maybe. In this case the companies’ Acid test (cash / current liabilities) goes down, indicating a higher risk of bankruptcy. So the next question is: by how much? There are many industries were 2 months of operating capital is the norm.
Cash flow is required to operate the business; it does not mean the business is growing. In the short term cash flow and earnings can go in opposite directions. (However, if this happens for the long term you need to dig deeper. It is a sign of fraud.)
Not in Dell’s case. Private does not mean personal property. Dell has other owners then Mr. Dell and owes other people fiduciary duty – such as the bond holders. So not frogs, and there is less of a difference between short term and long term profits.
Risk is one thing that Mr. Dell has better control, as in “let’s dump or PC business and strike out for new grounds.” Dell could squeeze a lot of profits out of a declining PC business at low risk. Warren Buffett was able to do so with Berkshire Hathaway – you know – the company that made broadcloth.
Are you slashing costs because you business is going down the tubes? You trim costs to match reduced revenue. To overstate the case, the PC market is going down the tubes.
Are you trying to make yourself look good? There are companies that need to lose weight. Some do it via the crash diet method – not very effective but it looks good in the short run. Some do long term cuts. In Dell’s case they can cut a good number of accountants because they no longer need to be SOX complaint.
In Dell’s case, it is because they want to head in a different direction. I know some of their divisions have been hiring and are continuing to hire as Dell expands into new markets. I am going to guess that over 5 years that these will more or less net to zero. (I am making a lot of assumptions here – like Mr. Dell’s plan works and Dell grows.)
I will have to disagree with you there. First, I think you mean earnings, not “net revenue”. Second, there is no difference if 1 person owns the firm or 1 million – the purpose is to maximize value for the owners. The calculations of both earnings and value are the same; it is just that for the private firm the numbers are more opaque to the public.
Well, value is a bit different. You post the accounting numbers and get the consensus value (from the stock market) back for public firms. For private firms you don’t get that feedback.
Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows......
How is it different now that they are private? Don’t public firms try to maximize profits? I know back in the 80’s, LBO tried to generate as much as cash flow because they have mortgage everything and were up to their eyeballs in debt. Dell is nowhere near that.
No, this is because Mr. Dell wants to take Dell Inc. in a new direction as fast as he can – away from the low profits of a commodity business.
Slashdot Mirror
So maybe only in Fairbanks Alaska, where Apple Maps encourages people to drive on the tarmac.
http://idle.slashdot.org/story...
Not sure that is the best example. Where I grew (in USA) up one could legally drive by age 14 – car or tractor – on road or off – and those things are more dangerous than lasers.
True. But I thought that the thrust of this thread was about civil actions and fines and if one can lock away board members for something the company does. And you can't.
Now, if those board members fail to due their duty they can be sued for money in civil court. If they personally commit fraud that would be a different story - that would be criminal and jail time would apply.
It is not. Corporations are limited liability organizations - They are legally liable up to the value of the corporation. After that it goes bankrupt.
Now, one can sue board members if they were negligent - as in failed to due their duties - not in making bad business decisions. That being said, the are usually only a few 10s of millions of dollars between the board members and their insurance companies (and yes, most of them take out insurance.) so if they caused a multibillion dollar corporation to go bust one can collect a few pennies per share.
By issuing money the Federal government is issuing debt at 0%. It is called seigniorage. You can look it up in wiki. For most major economies it works out the be less then a rounding error, so no big deal. Here is a article.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
No, the real concern is that when it takes 2 pennies to mint 1 pennies mining companies will order lots of pennies and melt them down for the copper (or zinc nowadays).
Actually, most large companies are self insured. They will farm out the “operations” part (billing, negotiating rates, etc.) to a insurance company but will pay all of the costs out of their own pocket.
I am not saying NBC is not greedy – but who has more power, NBC or the IOC? The IOC has a basic package that they sell – exclusive rights to the games for a country. Kind of has to be that way. However, they could sell the exclusive rights for a time period or maybe just for the popular sports and let the small or qualifying rounds be free.
The IOC has the whip hand in this case. That is the point that I was trying to make.
The warships are real money but I am not sure about security. I talked to some Olympians and they were basically on their own. It was the curling team and in Italy, so not high profiled.
Wait – I am confused. How are you watching the Olympics in the US but pay Russian taxes? I can think of a select few cases where that can be true but not many.
Kind of. Advertisers pay less for on-line views then OTA viewers.
And I don’t think it is NBC being greedy, it is International Olympics Committee which is being greedy. They have been able to extract a huge amount of money from NBC so they would have exclusive video rights in the USA. (which may be splitting hairs – they are both greedy, I just think the IOC is more greedy.)
I think you can still do that – IBM engineers sitting down with the foundry engineers.
The problem is that the fab plants are really big and massively efficient. IIRC Intel said that would only need to build a single (billion dollar?) fab plant for its next generation of chips. They are going to build more than that because they don’t want all of their eggs in one basket but you get the idea. At some point it is the costs of out outsourcing the production is going to be less than the costs of running a single small inefficient plant.
Take my antidotal evidence. I probably place a heavier weight on being broadly well informed then the average person – being well rounded and having a broad view is important to me. Honestly I highly value the podcast for convince.
The antidotal evidence I have heard is that people are willing to pay for long form journalism – articles that are longer than a page, requires research, has in-depth analysis, etc. This seems to be true for even some narrow journals (left leaning political, music, etc.)
The short form (headline, The X things you need to now about Y) less so.
As for a practical benefit, I am not exactly sure what you mean. I know people can spend heavily on specialized news serveries – medical and financial comes to mind. However, for those people the subscription is less for the daily news and more about the databases and other tools. For example, a subscription to Bloomberg New Service can cost anywhere from tens of dollars to millions a year.
All of those and none of those.
Primarily it is general news magazine and covers all of the areas that you talked about – politics, technology, and the arts. I believe it has more depth then time, Newsweek, etc. It skews towards international and business news but I am o.k. With that. It is my primary source for general interest items – so all of the items you suggest.
Yet for each of the subjects that you mention I tend towards more specialized sources. For example, for some learning I go to Coursera.org which I found out about on Slashdot.org. The Economist does a o.k. job for presidential elections but does not help me out much for state and local. The Economist does a poor job Sci-Fi. So different sources for that.
You can check them out. The paywall hits only after you viewed a couple of articles - I want to say 7 a month, which is the new model for most newspapers. Let the casual reader in for free, make money off of the ads. If they don't go to you they will go to somebody else. For the hard core, unlimited access plus extras (like the podcast for me).
I am not going to fuss with that too much. Ricardo’s theory came after Smith by about 20 years. I would argue that Smith had the original idea but Ricardo developed it and put it on firmer ground – and in this case more specific and more on point. Do we not all stand on the shoulders of giants?
We have logic - why would people trade if it were not to their advantage? See Pareto Optimal.
We have reams of empirical examples. Liberalize markets, rate of growth increases. This holds across cultures and time.
For the social sciences that is about as good as you are going to get.
I might be making an incorrect link between "everything should be produced in country." and "It makes sense".
But if that is true, then the second half of the sentence falls apart. China is very eager to control and censor information – in particular political information. They have been pushing their own phone OS, Linux package, favoring internal social media site over external ones. Etc. They might be a bit more rational, knowing greater freedom means economic growth, but the impulse is still there.
What would make sense for N. Korea would be to adopt some of the openness the China has. At the current trajectory I don’t know when N. Korea will end but I do know it won’t end happily.
Actually, that theory has been disproven a long time ago, see Mercantilism. The idea is that the more trade there is, the more people can specialize, the more productive, and everybody is better off. See Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Or any introduction book to economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
And one more thing – find a high quality news source which has an opinion different than your own. People have a bias towards what they think is right – placing too much weight on things that support their views and not enough on new evidence that challenges their preconceptions. It is important to seek out opposing (high quality) views.
I will second the economist. It takes me about a week to get though the in-depth articles, which for me is a better use of my time then plowing though daily updates of most issues. Plus the subscription comes with a podcast of the magazine. That for me is worth the price of subscription.
I have some issues with news aggregateors and free sites. They do headline news well but they do a poor job on the long form articles.
You can't get that. Journalist are not robots, dry facts are meaningless without context, and editors have to use their judgment to par the content down to a reasonable size.
Find a source that is intelligent, in depth, aware of it's view, and skeptical of it's view – i.e. willing to be challenged, acknowledging what assumptions and positions it is making, and willing to change it's view when the fact change.
No, earnings trump cash flow. Or if we want to be technical, “future free cash flow to equity”. I can point to great investment situations where the company had low or negative cash flow. I can point to situations where a company had great cash flow but was a poor investment. A company can take out a loan, sell assets or inventory at fire sale prices, or delay routine maintenance – All of these actions bump up cash flow without improving the overall outlook of the company.
I am not sure if your example works. Would not the company be more valuable after the expansion? After all, doesn’t the company now have higher earning potential? And of course the answer is maybe. In this case the companies’ Acid test (cash / current liabilities) goes down, indicating a higher risk of bankruptcy. So the next question is: by how much? There are many industries were 2 months of operating capital is the norm.
Cash flow is required to operate the business; it does not mean the business is growing. In the short term cash flow and earnings can go in opposite directions. (However, if this happens for the long term you need to dig deeper. It is a sign of fraud.)
Not in Dell’s case. Private does not mean personal property. Dell has other owners then Mr. Dell and owes other people fiduciary duty – such as the bond holders. So not frogs, and there is less of a difference between short term and long term profits.
Risk is one thing that Mr. Dell has better control, as in “let’s dump or PC business and strike out for new grounds.” Dell could squeeze a lot of profits out of a declining PC business at low risk. Warren Buffett was able to do so with Berkshire Hathaway – you know – the company that made broadcloth.
Slashing costs can take different forms.
Are you slashing costs because you business is going down the tubes? You trim costs to match reduced revenue. To overstate the case, the PC market is going down the tubes.
Are you trying to make yourself look good? There are companies that need to lose weight. Some do it via the crash diet method – not very effective but it looks good in the short run. Some do long term cuts. In Dell’s case they can cut a good number of accountants because they no longer need to be SOX complaint.
In Dell’s case, it is because they want to head in a different direction. I know some of their divisions have been hiring and are continuing to hire as Dell expands into new markets. I am going to guess that over 5 years that these will more or less net to zero. (I am making a lot of assumptions here – like Mr. Dell’s plan works and Dell grows.)
I will have to disagree with you there. First, I think you mean earnings, not “net revenue”. Second, there is no difference if 1 person owns the firm or 1 million – the purpose is to maximize value for the owners. The calculations of both earnings and value are the same; it is just that for the private firm the numbers are more opaque to the public.
Well, value is a bit different. You post the accounting numbers and get the consensus value (from the stock market) back for public firms. For private firms you don’t get that feedback.
Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows ......
How is it different now that they are private? Don’t public firms try to maximize profits? I know back in the 80’s, LBO tried to generate as much as cash flow because they have mortgage everything and were up to their eyeballs in debt. Dell is nowhere near that.
No, this is because Mr. Dell wants to take Dell Inc. in a new direction as fast as he can – away from the low profits of a commodity business.