Finance Geek

Fiscal Policy: The balanced budget amendment idea has lain dormant for years. But Republicans are bringing it back. In a day when runaway spending is running away faster than ever, we need a mechanism to rein it in.
GOP leaders expect in the next two weeks to introduce to the public a balanced budget amendment that they believe will fix the profound debt and deficit problems that lawmakers have created for the taxpayers. Done correctly, a balanced budget amendment might do just that.
Congressional Republicans had planned to announce their intention to amend the Constitution in the middle of…

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As the somewhat confusing New York Times paywall went up Monday, theoretically pushing readers towards new digital subscriptions, Amazon announced that Kindle subscribers will also get access to nytimes.com for free — just not right away.

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“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” - C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law, p. 2
Last fall’s national elections showed that voters are increasingly wise to the basic truth that governments can only spend what’s been taken from them first. From that there’s developed a growing consensus inside the electorate that Washington must mend its profligate ways.
As a result, politicians on both sides of the aisle, at least for now, are paying lip service to the idea of reining in Leviathan. What’s unfortunate about their spending…

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GE is playing defense after a NYT article said the company paid zero in US taxes. On Twitter, GE PR is fighting with Henry Blodget over the same technicalities. The company has put up a GE Tax fact sheet, which links to this presentation (.pdf) from the Business Roundtable laying out the need for reform [...]

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With gas prices at two-year highs and food prices at record levels, the value of a dollar just does not go as far today as it did a decade ago. Get used to it, says Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. “If people think that gas prices are high now and that food prices [...]

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I’m often asked to opine on potential names for companies, both at the formation stage and when they are considering a change of name, usually following a shift in focus.  Having this morning read what Techcrunch described as the seminal post on the subject of choosing a company name which was written by VC Rich Barton in 2009 I thought I would share some thoughts.

Firstly a comment on how to go about choosing a name: Do it quickly!! 

My experience across the naming of choosing the names for Reuters Venture Capital when we span out from Reuters and DFJ Esprit when we span out from Cazenove has cemented that advice in my mind.  When it takes a long time to choose a name people form strong opinions and some of those people inevitably end up feeling disappointed and like their view hasn’t been taken account of.  This is a particularly acute problem when potential names are shared with friends and family and it then becomes embarrassing to go back home and say ‘we chose that name that you thought was stupid, and we didn’t choose the one that you and I thought was great’.  Additionally, thinking about choosing a name is a distraction from real business.

Further, whilst some names are better than others ultimately it is the product and execution which counts so prolonged deliberation in the hope of coming up with a perfect name is unlikely to be time well spent when the focus could be on other areas that create value more directly.

That said, there are some company names that are just obviously bad, and it is worth taking enough time to make sure you don’t end up with one of those.  Bad names are the ones which make people wince or laugh when you test them out – watch out though – if you test with enough people you will get bad reactions eventually, often of a ‘it rhymes with something rude/inappropriate’ nature.  Don’t be put off by one pseudo-funny put down.

Turning to the positive, I favour names which give a clue as to what the company does, but are not too literal.  I think these sorts of names are the most memorable and getting people to remember the name of a company is one of the biggest challenges for cash strapped startups.  From our portfolio healthy snacks service Graze.com and movie rental service lovefilm.com have both benefited from semi-literal names.  Names that are too literal are somehow harder to remember (and I say that as someone who has to remember a lot of company names).

The counter argument as espoused by Rich Barton is that most of the best consumer brands have invented their own word.  He argues that whilst building recognition for a new word company name takes a long time (Expedia took eight years to achieve unaided awareness over 50% in their target market) the early pain, and financial risk, is worth it if you really want to create a game changing brand as new words have a unique ability to define new categories – just look at Kleenex, Ebay, Nike, etc.

It may be right that inventing a word maximises the potential impact, but in my opinion it makes life more difficult in the early stages of a company’s life, and that is the time when success or failure really occurs, and it is worth sacrificing potential impact on the upside for an easier life early on.

Beyond that I would say keep the name short, avoid names that are difficult for people to spell, avoid names that give a misleading idea of the company’s product, and finally (obviously) have decent URLs and social media handles available.

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The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet’s guest contributor program, which is separate from the company’s news coverage.
By Marc Chandler
 
NEW YORK (BBH FX Strategy) — More than a year since the European debt crisis began, officials have still failed to resolve it. They raised expectations for a “grand bargain,” but those expectations crashed on the shoals of political reality. The March 24-25 Summit was to finally provide closure, yet the situation remains fundamentally unresolved.
Greece and…

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Princeton professor Paul Krugman took a victory lap of sorts last week in a column in the New York Times. Krugman, who has been calling for even greater stimulus spending to pull the U.S. economy out of its funk, pointed to the UK’s crappy economy as an illustration of the downside of spending cuts and [...]

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Facing a $1.6 trillion budget deficit, even Congress knows the size of the government debt is unsustainable. However, both parties lack the political to will to act. Republicans talk about cutting government spending, though the record shows they are no more fiscally prudent than Democrats. Democrats say “tax the rich,” but President Obama agreed to [...]

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Paul Baran, who dreamed up what became the internet’s fundamental architecture, an idea so out-of-this-world 50 years ago that AT&T wouldn’t deal with him, has died. He was 84.

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It isn’t often that the government launches a major program that achieves its main goals at a tiny fraction of its estimated costs. That’s the story of TARP - the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Created in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, it helped stabilize the economy, using only $410 billion of its authorized $700 billion. And most of that will be repaid. The Congressional Budget Office, which once projected TARP’s ultimate cost at $356 billion, now says $19 billion. This could go lower.
You would hardly…

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If you own a boat, or have a friend who does, you know that it has to be hauled out periodically to scrape and paint the bottom. Neglect this and over time the barnacles grow so thick that despite cranking up the engines you can barely make 10 knots. Not to mention burning prodigious amounts of fuel.
The corporate tax code is very much the same. Every generation or so it has to get hauled out to scrape off the encrustations of tax breaks that this Congressman or that has doled out to one special interest group or another. Neglect this and over time not only does government revenue decline,…

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By Daniel Gross This is a superstar economy, in which A-listers live large while minor leaguers struggle. Hedge fund managers like John Paulson may rack up big returns, CEOs like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman, Sachs bag huge compensation packages, and all-star baseball players like Alex Rodriguez ink nine-figure contracts. But few of them can match [...]

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In the curation nation, author Steve Rosenbaum says, computerization is on its way out, and people are marching in.

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There’s a distinct possibility the U.S. stock market could plunge as much as 6,000 points if the U.S. continues to rack up record amounts of debt, causing the dollar to lose its reserve currency status, says Daily Ticker favorite Howard Davidowitz. “The dollar has never been at greater risk,” he tells Henry in the accompanying [...]

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