Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

A long, long time ago, BPSK and I had a conversation on the “capitalism” that UK and the US practice.

We made fun of the faux capitalism that’s in reality a Fabian-esque socialism that Britian practices, and how the US would “differentiate” itself by Paulson calling up Pandit to do a save.

Well, turns out that we weren’t too off. Paulson did not call Pandit, but instead called Dimon to do a save. Isn’t it a joy to be in a capitalist economy where the free market decides what needs to be done?

To this end, I recently came across an article that suggested that the Fed is considering Nordic-styled nationalization of US banks to help bail out the economy from its current crisis.

Let’s just say that I am at a loss for words.

Well, it’s Friday and here is the link fest.

• No Country for Old Maids:  Bill Gross’ take on the current economic situation.
• Clinton Fears Japan-Style Malaise: Hillary’s take on how the US may be slipping into a Japanese-style economic malaise (and of course, Dealbreaker has an excellent take on it).
• Long on Asian Dudes:  Hollywood’s stereotypical casting process.

I recently stumbled upon this gem — a recreation of Dune in Lego.

Granted, it’s made off the movie, but who cares — it’s from Dune, and is rather well made.

Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.

My friend Lydia at a Chicago Bulls game, to some cheerleaders:

“Go read Jane Austen or something.”

Here are a few assorted interesting links from the past month; ideally, I’d have liked to blog about a few (if not all) of them, but there’s only so much you can do in a week.

• Derivatives: The stupidity of the Indian media on derivatives (Rediff)
• Pop goes the economy: The correlation between economic performance and champagne purchases (The Economist blog)
• Information overload: Why we’re powerless to resist grazing on endless web data (WSJ)
• Old-School Economics: Why the recession was bound to happen anyway (NYT)

With a sluggish economy, it was only a matter of time before stores adopted the any-which-way-they-can to make money attitude.

The NYT has a post on how a lot of the megastores are willing to negotiate with the customer on what the prices may be.  This includes such big names as Best Buy, Home Depot and Circuit City. Here’s an excerpt:

“We want to work with the customer, and if that happens to mean negotiating a price, then we’re willing to look at that,” said Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Home Depot.

…

“The recession is helping to push these seedlings to the surface,” she added. “It’s a real turnabout on the part of the buyer and the seller.”

Wow. Un-freakin’-believable.