From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

An Interesting Counter Argument - Why Paulson is Wrong

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/luigi.zingales/Why_Paulson_is_wrong.pdf

Here is the first paragraph as a teaser

Why Paulson is Wrong

Luigi Zingales

Robert C. Mc Cormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance

University of Chicago -GSB

When a profitable company is hit by a very large liability, as was the case in 1985 when

Texaco lost a $12 billion court case against Pennzoil, the solution is not to have the

government buy its assets at inflated prices: the solution is Chapter 11. In Chapter 11,

companies with a solid underlying business generally swap debt for equity: the old equity

holders are wiped out and the old debt claims are transformed into equity claims in the

new entity which continues operating with a new capital structure. Alternatively, the

debtholders can agree to cut down the face value of debt, in exchange for some warrants.

Even before Chapter 11, these procedures were the solutions adopted to deal with the

large railroad bankruptcies at the turn of the twentieth century. So why is this wellestablished

approach not used to solve the financial sectors current problems?

The rest is here

Hadron Collider Starts in Half an Hour...

Here is the video that says it all

First Impressions on Chrome

Just downloaded it. 

Before downloading I was looking for one feature and one feature only.  And I found it.  It was just as I expected.

You have to opt-out of opt-in to the browser sending your surfing history to Google.  Here is the image right at the General tab if you opt-in.  One wonders why opting in is the first thing Google asks you to do after agreeing to the terms of use.  It's because collecting usage data is paramount.

Now think of the data Google will have access to:

1) Pages you visited (everything below is a subset of this)

2) Pages that made you go to google and search

3) Pages you went after searching

4) Pages you go to while using google products

5) Pages you go to right after using google products

6) Which google competitor is doing well

7) Which isn't

the list goes on and on and on

This kind of rich data will make advertising a lot more relevant, but it gives a ton of power to Google.

It also makes product development all that much easier, they'll know what to build next by looking at what people are doing.

We live in the age of statistical sociology, that's for sure.

What I don't know is whether the Google toolbar did the same.  If it didn't this is a big big product for Google.