Brian Gongol
Today is self-exam day
Take a minute or two and conduct some basic self-screenings for cancer. Early detection saves lives.
Toyota goes for a kill shot
While GM, Ford, and Chrysler are laying off thousands of workers because the companies are having trouble staying afloat (GM, for instance is losing bucketloads of money), Toyota is spending a quarter of a billion dollars in a new advertising blitz. Auto sales are down everywhere, including at Toyota, but since the company has almost $19 billion in cash, it's making a smart move by aggressively trying to capture the market that's out there. It's like what Nestle did during World War II: Even though chocolate was rationed and in very short supply during the war, they continued to advertise heavily -- even though customers couldn't buy much of their product. They built demand when times were slow, then pounced when the economy turned around.
Would a Democratic Party with both Congress and the White House re-impose the Fairness Doctrine?
Sadly, it sounds like there's a good chance it might. By how much on how many other planes would a non-divided government (should the election turn out that way) lead to a Leviathan government?
"Stayin' Alive" apparently serves as a great CPR tool
The pace of the song has almost exactly the right number of beats per minute for the proper administration of CPR. And it's a serious earworm.
Tribune Co. tells AP it's leaving
That adds the Chicago Tribune to a list recently joined also by the Cedar Rapids Gazette
61 Nebraska communities will decide on fluoridation next month
Money is now almost free
That is, the cost of borrowing is practically zero -- even in nominal terms, as central banks like the Bank of England consider 1% nominal interest rates. After inflation is factored in, the cost of borrowing actually becomes negative. Bad news for savers, but it sure sounds like the central bankers are trying to avoid a repeat of the banking disasters that led to the Great Depression -- during which the Federal Reserve tightened the money supply at just the wrong moment. But there's plenty of room for things to go much more wrong than they already have: Suppose, for instance, that governments in market economies start trying to tell private firms how to set their prices. It didn't work for Richard Nixon, and it won't work now. Fortunately, at least for prudent value investors, this could be the greatest stock-buying opportunity of a lifetime. Some think this is like getting the best deal since the 1980s.
A whole history of the brass monkey
China has $2 trillion in the bank. Will it use that to bail out the West?
As was obvious in December 2007, the relationship between Western borrowers -- particularly governments -- and China's cash-rich government is an uneasy one. And unless some fiscal prudence is brought to bear quickly, the situation can only become more dangerous to Western interests -- as though the new, close relationships developing between banks and governments weren't already enough to make us uneasy. Related: The Financial Times has a novel illustration of what just happened in the banking industry.
A very good introduction to money and banking
California official says, "Fire season is year-round now"
British government wants more Internet surveillance powers
BBC plans to move half of its shows to outside London by 2016
What would American programming look like if half of it were produced outside Los Angeles and New York? One might imagine it would be different. Very few things get more irritating than hearing "The Late Show" bark out every night that New York is the "Greatest City in the World". 6 billion people clearly don't agree.
Governments commit $3.6 trillion (or so) to fixing the financial markets
Omaha dedicates new Platte West water treatment plant
American Airlines has to figure out what color to paint the new Boeing 787
American usually leaves its aluminum-skinned planes unpainted (which, contrary to instinct, doesn't really save the company money), but the new 787 will be more than 50% composites, which means it'll need paint. If only the choice of which color to use were the most difficult question faced by the airline today: The company has lost a huge amount of money over the last five years.
Electoral projection map
Fight breaks out between Iceland and UK over banks
Lots of local governments in Britain invested in Iceland's banking system -- which has just been taken over by the govenrment there after a huge systemic collapse. While the two countries will certainly find a peaceful way to work out a resolution, the situation does beg the question: What does the frailty of so many banking organizations tell terrorist groups about how they can do tremendous damage without firing a shot? After all, the US government is pumping nine banks with $250 billion in direct investment just to keep them stable. That's a huge amount of money, and it's all because confidence was shaken and needed shoring-up.
UK tries to figure out how 100-year-old houses can be made energy-efficient
52% of Chinese toy exporters go out of business
The industry is still very large, but the government there says that a drop of 5% in total exports to the US included lots of toys from small manufacturers who have been driven out of business. The Chinese Communist Party is banking on economic growth to outweigh its repression of personal rights and keep it in power, but if lots of Chinese find themselves suddenly unemployed, that could prove a difficult task. China's government is thought to be hanging on to $1.9 trillion in foreign cash, which could give it exceptional leverage to buy what it wants during the current asset fire sale, but those assets aren't necessarily going to put those toy-factory employees back to work. Economic growth is never perfectly uniform, and it occasionally involves setbacks; the accumulated effects of those setbacks and the inherent strain that must exist between an over-anxious central government and more than a billion people living in more than two dozen different regions. China as we know it today will almost certainly not exist in the same form ten years from now. A breakup or secession of some sort is virtually certain.
Nebraska legislature looks at water transfers
Wildfires pop up near Los Angeles
The mathematics of cancer
There's evidence to suggest that an evil version of normal stem cells may be responsible for the rapid growth of cancers, and some new research being done on the matter suggests that if we can use a little math and a little computation to figure out how that growth occurs, we might be able to halt the spread. That would be a good thing -- cancer remains one of the top three causes of death in the United States.
Toyota has a good chance of surviving today's financial disruptions
The company has a public 5-year plan, which it calls "medium-term". That suggests they have something a bit longer-term in the boardroom somewhere, which is a very good way to ensure that they'll be around in the future. 100-year business plans seem to be in short supply, but it certainly seems likely that those companies making them might actually be around long enough to use them.
After you've flown Con Air, try Freebird Airlines
Yes, it really exists.
Observations on the recent market squeeze
The most important lesson to remember in the midst of what so many people are calling the "financial crisis" is the advice from Douglas Adams: Don't panic. Particularly apropos to get advice from a fellow like him: He's dead. That alone should be a reminder that our problems today are surmountable: We're still alive. Market economics are still alive -- we just need to get our bearings straight.
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - October 12, 2008