Category: News

It’s an unfortunate fact that great historical speeches and literature are often bastardized to justify poor management practices, leadership decisions and policies. There are at least 84 Chicken Soup for the Soul-related books on the market today and not one directed towards tech startups. As told through a series of abused “inspirational quotes”, here’s our effort to explain why.

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“It is better to be feared than loved.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
Hold a contest for worst employee of the month, instigate a bathroom pass for your five person team and remove all flare from the office. If the message you’re hoping to express to others is that you’re a terrible human being, then by all means, engrave this quote into your desk.

If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. – Sun Tzu
Send your vast army of interns on fact finding missions, monitor every signal from the competition’s trench and position yourself as the RC Cola to their Coke. If you define yourself by your industry leader and let your employees know it, they’ll be enthused to exclaim the inspirational company cheer “We’re number four!” every chance they get. After all, you can’t lose a battle if no one thinks you’re worth challenging.

“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” – Napolean Bonaparte
Armed with reruns of the Apprentice, some advice from a second cousin and a Wired magazine article from 1996, you’re the most brilliant person alive. Reduce your designers to pixel pushing monkeys, make the CTO your whipping boy and drive your product manager to prescription medication abuse. If you think you can code, design and sell better than any one else alive then surely your chutzpah and street smarts will make you the Charlemagne of startups.

Discuss

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(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

I asked a fellow investor, and a gentleman I have great respect for, if he would invest in California Debt and if so in what timeframe. He replied that he would not. I am going to attempt to make the opposite case.

First two caveats:
1) I would be selective in the particular instruments and the time frame I would invest in.
2) I would not invest widows and orphans fund money. For the sake of this I will stipulate that I would invest with money I would normally invest in other Municipal Debt.

The Case Against:

California has as bad a problem with residential real estate as any state in the country with a 20% increase in mortgage defaults in 2009. (CA along with FL, AZ, and IL are responsible for 51% of the nations defaults).

It’s Civilian Unemployment rate for November 2009 was 12.3% versus 10.0% for the nation as a whole. And this is predicted to remain constant through 2010 (per CA dept of Finance). Total Wages and Salaries declined in 2009 to below 2007 levels. It’s CPI is higher than the national average.
Large budget shortfalls for 2010

This is certainly a pretty bleak picture and there are many more things one can point to in the case against the debt of California. Here is a link to a PDF put out by the California Dept of Finance entitled “California at the Brink of Financial Disaster”. When your own Dept of Finance entitles a presentation thusly, things are pretty bad. Financial_Disaster-Presentation-w

The Case For:
Below is page 4 of the aforementioned presentation. I put this up to note the second item in the “Will Pay” column.

As indicated the state is committed to paying off the General Obligation debt.

There are still many investment grade Muni Bonds issued by California and Tax Districts inside California. The current environment has pushed the yield of these bonds well above the national average.

There are more than 15 million registered voters in California, with the Democratic party having the largest share by a wide margin. In my opinion the current Congress is unlikely in the extreme to let the largest state in the country (by total population and registered voters), who have supported the Democrat party in national elections since 1992 default on it’s debt.

So what would I invest in, for how long and Why?

Bonds of aa2 or AA or higher and Insured.

I would be looking at the 2-3 year time frame simply due to the belief that towards the end of that time frame we will be entering into a higher interest rate environment and I want to avoid interest rate risk.

I would not buy any bond callable during that holding period other than make whole calls.

I would be looking at General Obligation, Necessary Services such as Electric and Water Utilities, and Public Education.

I would mediate my risk by examining the economic condition of the issuing entity thoroughly.

First let’s look at the comps:
— The 2 year U.S. Treasury is currently yielding .96%
— The advantage of UST’s is they have the lowest risk of any investment
—  A 2 year Bank Certificate of Deposit is yielding around 2.05%
— CD’s have the disadvantage of illiquidity.
— Nationwide average yield for 2 year Municipal Bonds is AAA 1.00% AA 1.44 A 1.51

I did a search of current offers where at least $25,000 worth were on offer using the above criteria and came up with many hits. Average yield to maturity (feb 2012 to feb 2013) was 1.5% with a range of .77-2.7% nearly all of which were insured. If one can get 50-100bps above a comparable instrument it seems prudent to examine it.

Conclusion:

If you’re a Muni investor, California Municipal Debt is worthy of your consideration here because fear has made the yields attractive when compared to the debt of other states.

I do not think I would reallocate from other asset classes into Municipal debt in the current economy on any time frame, but I would reallocate from the Municipal debt of other states to gain the additional yield.

Additional Considerations:

While California Municipal Bonds are Federally Tax advantaged they are probably not in your state, the difference in after tax yield may be a mitigating factor.

Disclaimer:
The Author holds positions in California State Municipal Debt as well as the Debt of other entities within California.

Read more market analysis at the author’s blog — >

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See Also:

• S&P Downgrades California To Third World Country Status
• Jumbo RMBS Defaults Triple: California, Florida, And New York Lead the Way
• Now See The Real State Of Collapsing State Tax Revenues

The whole AllThingsD team was shaking off the Consumer Electronics Show haze this week and getting back to business as usual. Just when we thought we’d left the craziness behind, we found ourselves knee-deep in a week of international espionage, network TV nastiness and a certain semiconductor manufacturer makin’ a heap-o-cash. But more on that later.

BoomTown just could not wait for Carol Bartz’s one-year anniversary at Yahoo (YHOO) to roll around so that the judging could commence. Kara and Carol have a famously sordid history, possibly involving both K-Fed and Bradgelina. Even with all that history, Kara was pretty complimentary, giving Bartz a solid A- in the management category and a C+ for financials. It looks like we’ll be able to tune in for the next few days and catch this ongoing judgefest. Kara moved on from the report card to a quick post declaring her love of network TV drama, and not the “Law and Order” kind. The fight over at NBC for late-night supremacy has been more hilarious than Leno or Conan. Maybe the solution is just to put some network execs on screen in that slot. Kara finished out the week with a conversation with recently departed RealNetworks (RNKW) CEO Rob Glaser. No, he isn’t dead, but he has very quietly decided to step down to look into other opportunities. Near as we can tell, they had something to do with woolly mammoths.

Digital Daily was abuzz this week with the headline story of Google Labs adding yet another feature to Gmail. The new foreign policy tab enables Google (GOOG) to make better publicized international relations decisions than the Federal Government (and do it 20 percent faster if you’re running Chrome). Of course, it wasn’t all Google rattling China’s cage this week. John covered the party over at Intel (INTC) after the chip maker announced a blowout Q4. Finally, readers got a taste of capitalism at its best. Now you can get either America’s best network or America’s best smartphone (not both, of course) at a significant price cut. Thanks to pressure from Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T) dropped rates on certain calling plans.

Peter hit us with lots of video news this week, starting early with the potential partnership between Vudu and Wal-Mart (WMT). The world’s largest retailer seems to be thinking about getting into the Web TV business, or as it calls it, opening a supercenter in your house. Some might be watching for a rerun of the megaretailer’s failed shot at competing with Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes for music sales, but the Web TV space is wide open, so far. Also on the home entertainment front, Peter reported that it looks like Netflix (NFLX) may get a one-up from Nintendo fairly shortly, if it can finalize a deal to add the Japanese game giant’s systems to the list of places you can stream its digital video content. Peter rounded things out with a little foreshadowing that YouTube, the Web video 800-pound gorilla, may be edging its way out of the red. Since acquisition, YouTube has never turned a profit, and Google execs have been muttering that they expect that to change shortly. That’s different this week? An industry analyst finally agrees.

If a moment of Mossberg just isn’t enough for you, then you are in luck this week as team Walt and Katie went all the way with three new installments of gadget wisdom. In Personal Technology, Walt reviewed the Sony Reader Daily Edition. While the big improvement to Sony’s (SNE) previous e-reader offering is the addition of wireless connectivity for remote download of articles and books (think Amazon Kindle’s “Whispernet”), Sony also upped the ante in form factor and interface. Overall, Walt was positive and felt the device was a strong offering. Mossberg’s Mailbox was overflowing this week with all kinds of questions from the Nexus One crowd. Walt picked three gems and clarified some points on measly app storage capacity, cell company coverage maps and the nitty-gritty on synching data between the phones and computers. Katie donned her gaiters and bravely waded into the weeds of search technology to shed some light on a major emerging trend—visual search. Both Google and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing are offering ways to search for things you can’t recall the name of, doing so by comparing images until you get that ah-ha moment. This stuff is complicated, but head on over to Katie’s article to figure out how it is going to change the search landscape.

Thanks for reading this week. Weekend Update wishes everyone as much good luck as we had making it out of CES Las Vegas alive.

Oh yeah, and a quick note to Siegfried: We may have one of your tigers, and also Roy.

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Apple, like Google, has a habit of causing major waves throughout the markets it enters. Could the master designers behind the iPhone, iPod, iTunes and Mac, one day revolutionize the way consumers manage the energy consumption of their gadgets and even homes? In effect, can Apple do what it did for digital entertainment and cell […]

Last Thursday, Intel (INTC) reported blowout earnings, the stock rose after hours, and everything was looking good for the bulls.

But on Friday morning, JPMorgan (JPM) reported decent (though mixed) earnings, and the stock market sagged, with even Intel ending in the red.

Clearly, worries over the financial system trump signs of a real economic rebound.

And so after US losses, Asian markets are picking up the baton and trending lower in early action. Japan is taking the brunt of things, down about 1.3%. The broader MSCI Asia Pacific index is off a bit less than 1%.

From Bloomberg:

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See Also:

• Not Even Intel’s Blowout Earnings Could Save This Market
• Intel Just Blew The Doors Off
• Financial Stocks Getting Whacked After JPMorgan Earnings

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Japan, Nissan

Tommy Kaira Silver Wolf Nissan GT-R – Click above for high-res image gallery

Japanese tuning enthusiasts (and racing sim fanatics everywhere) have come to know Tommy Kaira as one of the best in the business. The Japanese outfit works its magic on Skylines, Imprezas and more, and has now released a tuning package for the current Nissan GT-R.

Called the Silver Wolf, this GT-R sees its engine left intact, but gets treated to a full body kit, plus new rolling stock, brakes, exhaust and suspension components. The carbon fiber widebody package gives Godzilla a serious attitude adjustment, while the functional components – if Tommy Kaira’s previous offerings are anything to go by – promise to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of this Japanese icon. Click the thumbnails below for a closer look.

[Source: Tommy Kaira]

Tommy Kaira presents Nissan GT-R “Silver Wolf” edition originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Each winter all we have to face the same problem with hair. Hair grows thin and dry all over the crown. It becomes lifeless, unruly and fragile. Also there can be some drastic change in color. Enough to let those who actually care for their hair almost devastated. Hair shedding is sometimes very slight and we don’t really observe it. On the other hand, hair loss can be intensive and hair doesn’t grow to its usual length because it drops out so much in winter. As a result, this can be really disastrous, primarily for beautiful ladies.  
   
 A great deal of reasons, which result in loss of hair in winter can be marked out. The majority of us face a seasonal pattern of hair loss in spite of the fact that doctors don’t fully support the supposition of seasonal hair loss. All things in our universe are interrelated and we all have to go through seasonal changes. Most animals lose hair and change its color in winter months. All we are so much similar, as we are subjected to the common natural cycle. Furthermore, in most cases it doesn’t lead to heavy loss of hair, that’s why we should pay attention to other winter hair loss causes.  
   
 Is there anything to stop this misfortune or the situation is totally despairing?There’s actually a time-approved remedy that brings great results and, at the same time, has no side effects. Provillus is specially designed for both men and women to treat alopecia (hair loss), including hair loss in winter. These herbals components have been successfully used for a long time to prevent alopecia and provoke hair growth. Provillus pills also comprise vital important nutritive materials and vitamins to feed your hair throughout winter and make it look strong and shining. It works wonders as regards dandruff, splitting ends, static electricity, etc. Men and women who have been using Provillus pills during winter confirm considerable hair growth.  
   
 Indoor heating conditions can do much damage to your hair. Unfavourable heating makes hair and head-skin desiccated and results in splitting tips, excessive hair loss and dandruff. Unluckily, cool weather is one more foe. Winter cold can can be of great threat to your luckless hair. Such precautionary measures as woolly hats, caps and scarves also have a grave disadvantage. And considering sweating, poor diet, emotional disorders and illnesses usual in winter, it makes the situation absolutely distressful.  
   

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Susan and Brian Walsh were preparing to leave Haiti after conducting a weeklong medical clinic, where their more than 1,000 patients included a teenage boy who had suffered third-degree burns after a kerosene lamp exploded in his face, when the earthquake hit.

“It was like a freight train coming,” said Susan Walsh, a pediatric nurse practitioner who lives in north suburban Glenview.

“I thought a plane crashed.”

PHOTO: Susan and Brian Walsh of Glenview talk Saturday about their experience of being in Haiti when the earthquake hit. (Tribune / Chris Sweda)

She and her husband, a housing contractor, were in Haiti with Little By Little, the non-profit group they created about two years ago to bring a team of medical workers and graduate-level nursing practitioner students Walsh teaches to the Mountain Top Ministries clinic in Gramothe.

When the quake hit, the Walshes sprang into action. They first headed from the house where they were staying to the nearby village, finding most buildings intact and people with minor injuries.

But an avalanche had fallen at a nearby riverbed, crushing the head of a girl about 4 years old, Susan Walsh said. She took the girl and rode on a four-wheeler to the clinic about five miles away. The girl’s father, who had wrapped his T-shirt around her head, rode on the back.

The girl died that night.

“The good thing about it is she was with her family, and they were able to take her home,” Susan Walsh said. Many people have died alone and their bodies stacked alongside roads, she said.

Within an hour of the earthquake, hundreds of Haitians had wrapped around the clinic. At one point, the Walshes were climbing over dead bodies trying to help. They taped broomsticks to broken legs and cut up scrubs for bandages.

“It was one crushing body after another,” recalled Susan Walsh, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “There were dead people lying in the hallway. It was a traumatic scene. It was emotionally and physically draining.”

Her 23-member team worked until midnight that first night. The next morning, people had lined up outside the house where the Walshes and her team were staying. They treated people with crushed limbs and gashes in the front yard.

On Friday afternoon, they went to the airport after the State Department recommended Americans leave.

“Personally, I really wish I was still there,” Susan Walsh said while taking a break Sunday from a trauma debriefing. “But we had to come home.”

They left on a U.S. Air Force cargo plane that had brought to Haiti supplies, troops and rescue workers. After a more than 24-hour journey, which included three stops, they got home around 4:30 p.m. Saturday and were greeted with posters neighbors had made welcoming them home.

“This earthquake and the misery, destruction, devastation and death it brought came from below, but love, strength, help, hope and life will come from above,” Susan Walsh said. “Please pray for Haiti.”

–Daarel Burnette II and Kristen Schorsch

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.