Finance Geek

Fred Goodman continues his chat with Wired.com about where the ailing music industry might be headed. How about having consumers subscribe directly to artists instead of to a music service? Oh, and drop those battling egos, too.

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While we debate whether falling prices or rising prices would be worse, we could be in for a third scenario. The bright side: Investors might have a way out of the mess.

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The Dodd-Frank legislation gives too much discretion to regulators, extending uncertainty for a financial-services sector in need of less risk, not more.

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With a bad-blood, confidence-destroying battle royale going on between Team Obama and business, you would think a highly publicized White House jobs summit would have produced some kind of positive announcement that gives a nod to the business point of view.
After all, as part of his so-called “business charm offensive,” the president is arguing that “it’s the private sector that has always been the source of our job creation, our economic growth, and our prosperity; and it’s our businesses and workers who will take the reins of this recovery and lead us…

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From The Business InsiderEditor’s note: Michael
Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.comThe 22 statistics

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President Obama travels to Michigan today to try and reinforce the message that this is a “Recovery Summer.”With high unemployment, the housing market rolling over and the stock market stumbling until the past week, it’s a very tough sell. The P

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After months of debate and compromise, the Senate is about to pass the financial regulation reform bill into law. Judging by the comments we’ve received in the past, few in our audience think the new law will do much of anything to change the statu

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The news is out today that Foursquare’s founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai took home $4.64m of their recent $20m Series B.  As I’ve written a couple of times before I think this sort of cash out deal can be really helpful in aligning the interests of management and investors.

Last year I quoted Mark Zuckerberg on what ‘getting a bit of liquidity’ meant for him:

It meant that in making decisions about Facebook I didn’t have to worry about the short term. I could just work on making Facebook as good as possible, and optimize it for 10 to 20 years out.

Not ‘worrying about the short term’ has two important benefits.  Firstly it takes the pressure off compensation discussions, which can get intense, particularly if the founders have been working in startups for a while with payout or have recently switched from a high paying corporate job, and/or they have families and school fees to worry about.  Secondly, if founders already have some money on the side they are going to feel less compelled to accept the first half decent exit that comes along and will be more willing to hold on for the big result.

Cash out deals are much easier in larger rounds at higher valuations.  Otherwise it can be hard for the exec to take out a meaningful amount and still have the majority of her wealth tied up in the startup.  (Leaving the majority of wealth tied up in the shares of the startup is important for VCs both as a sign of confidence in the business and for ongoing motivation.)

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The economy is “rolling over,” says noted cycle-watcher Charles Nenner, who predicts the U.S. economy will “slowly go into double-dip” later this year. And that’s the good news! “I hope it’s going to stay a rece

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Enjoy the recent stock market rally while it lasts. Market forecaster Charles Nenner tells Tech Ticker stocks will peak in about a month and then head south for the year.

“After late August I expect the market to go down again,” and eve

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