Economic data rolls on

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 22, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Chinese GDP China released its third quarter GDP figures today. They claim that their economy grew by 8.9%. [I say ‘claim’ because Chinese statistics are notoriously manipulated.] Additionally, there is evidence that the economy is becoming more self-supporting and requiring less government stimulus. In the aggregate revenues are rising and not just profits. Profits can rise due to...
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Czar czaps pay

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 22, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Kenneth Feinberg, who has the ignominious title of U.S. pay czar is zapping the pay of firms receiving U.S. government monies. To me this is exciting news. For over a year I have been waving the flag of salary and incentive compensation reform. Thankfully the egregious and unwarranted size of executive pay is no longer a secret. So what’s the czar up to? Salaries at firms such as...
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Good economic sign

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 21, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Gross domestic product is formally calculated as follows: C + I + G + X = GDP In that formulation ‘C’ stands for consumer spending. That number is traditionally around 70% of GDP. As we all know consumer spending of all kinds is flat to down. We are each learning to save for things rather than use credit to buy things. And even more importantly, many consumers are taking a breather...
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Stalling by Iran does not bode well for diplomacy

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 21, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Yesterday further nuclear-Iran talks took place in Geneva. As I described on Monday it looked as if Iran was going to stall rather than negotiate. And that is exactly what took place. Despite the fact that Iran agreed on October 1st to talks with France, they yesterday said that they would not hold discussions if France was present. The rationale was that France had slighted Iran in the past...
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Big talks today about Iran

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 19, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments In Geneva today part two of talks designed to control and curtail Iran’s nuclear program got under way. The entities involved are: the U.S., Iran, Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency. After a limited amount of progress being made on October 1st, these discussions are seeking to finalize an agreement for Iran to process abroad all of its low-enriched uranium....
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Five new technologies article

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 19, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments The Wall Street Journal has an article today about 5 “new” energy technologies to pay attention to. Because our energy future is one of the major investment themes of human future, let’s take a look, shall we? They are as follows… space based solar power – Yes, you read that correctly. The idea here is to place massive solar panels in earth orbit and then beam a...
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Consultant caveat

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Oct 16, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Happy Friday to everyone! Today’s post is inspired by sad news that one of my friend’s has lost her job at the recommendation of a consulting firm. You would hope that losing your job was due to poor job performance. Yet in this case she had turned a catalog company from a decade-long loser into a profit making entity within a short 18 month time frame. She did all of this in the...
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