Finance Geek

So you want to be writer. Well, have I got a deal for you. Join Patch, and write for free for a multibillion company run by millionaires. In a continuation of one of the more, um, unusual media stories in recent memory, AOL is asking the editors of Patch to recruit 8,000 people to write for free on Patch’s various hyperlocal news sites.

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Hours after the FOMC released a policy statement that was largely as expected, Ben Bernanke held a historic press conference notable for the chairman’s comments about the economy, inflation and QE2. “Most of the slowdown in the first quarter is viewed by the committee as being transitory,” Bernanke declared, a day ahead of a first-quarter [...]

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UPDATE: Berkshire Hathaway finds former executive David Sokol violated company policies in purchasing shares of Lubrizol.  The full report can be found on Berkshire’s website. Here’s the highlight: “His purchases of Lubrizol shares while serving as a representative of Berkshire Hathaway in connection with a possible business combination with Lubrizol violated company policies, including Berkshire [...]

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It’s that time of year again–time for the “Woodstock of Capitalism,” the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in which tens of thousands of Warren Buffett fans descend on Omaha to see the Oracle in person. This year, there will be an elephant in the room: The recent resignation of Buffett’s heir apparent, David Sokol, after [...]

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The following is the text of the Federal Open Market Committee statement:
“Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in March indicates that the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace and overall conditions in the labor market are improving gradually. Household spending and business investment in equipment and software continue to expand. However, investment in nonresidential structures is still weak, and the housing sector continues to be depressed. Commodity prices have risen significantly since last summer, and concerns about global supplies of…

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In the spring of 2009, when many traders and investors were terrified, investment manager Jeff Matthews made a bold and bullish call here. Two years later, Matthews is much less optimistic about both the economy and the market. “It’s a greater period of risk vs. reward because we’ve got rising costs: This thing called inflation,” [...]

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In just over a month the U.S. will reach its credit limit if members of Congress do not vote to raise the $14.3 debt ceiling. Investors and executives on Wall Street are secretly starting to worry, as Politico’s Ben White reports in his daily Morning Money note. “Wall Street executives and their lobbyists have been [...]

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Your iPhone isn’t stalking you, Apple says, but some of its location-gathering techniques, vilified for the past week, are bugs that will be fixed soon.

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Warren Buffett is widely regarded as the greatest living investor, having grown his company, Berkshire Hathaway, into an investing and business conglomerate valued at more than $200 billion. Along the way he’s made himself and his investors very rich. Today Buffett’s fortune is estimated at $50 billion, making him the world’s third-richest person, according to [...]

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Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner responsible for the ‘digital agenda’ which includes broadband targets is considering allowing network operators to charge content owners to transmit content over their networks.  This would be an abandonment of the principles of net neutrality that have served us all well over the last 15-20 years, but I am starting to think it might give us the best chance of getting improved broadband speeds going forward, which is probably more important than anything else.  That said, it is also critically important that charges are regulated and we don’t end up with a two speed internet where wealthy companies are able to buy fast transit and cash strapped startups struggle.

Here are the facts as they look to me at the moment:

• Faster broadband speeds are the over-riding objective
• Significant investment in networks will be required to maintain and improve speeds
• That investment needs to be funded somehow
• Broadband providers aren’t able to charge consumers more
• Therefore content owners are the next best place to turn

The best solution would be if the fourth bullet above was incorrect and broadband providers were able to charge consumers more for higher speed connections and fund their network capex that way, but I just don’t see it happening and time soon.  Part of the problem may be a failure of local competition (which is what proponents of net neutrality argue) but I think the bigger problem is that no-one has been able to explain clearly to consumers why they should pay up for extra bandwidth.  If there was an easy fix for these issues that would be the best way forward, but I haven’t heard of one.

The other important point here is that the net neutrality regime is already creaking at the edges as network operators shape traffic to limit services that are bandwidth hungry and/or compete with their other services – e.g. Skype over mobile.  It may be better to get it all into the open.

Finally, as I hinted in the first paragraph any charging regime would have to be regulated to avoid a two speed internet.  I don’t think the regulation needs to be complicated as charges could be directly linked to bandwidth, but the price per megabyte should be the same for everyone.  That wouldn’t be a problem for most startups as their traffic requirements are limited until they have proven success.

These are very much emerging thoughts, and the simple act of writing them down has been helpful, but I would love to hear other views.  Here is one counter view.

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As I travel through the state of Illinois, business owners and families alike warn me that prices are on the rise. This trend leads me to believe that inflation has already accelerated inside the U.S. economy and lagging government measurements will take too long to give sufficient warning. Once higher inflation gains momentum, it will do great damage to the U.S. economy by stifling small businesses, challenging families and bringing difficulties for fixed-income seniors.During testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke noted that rising commodity…

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When oil prices blew sky high in 2008, ExxonMobil paid $36.5 billion in income taxes, $34.5 billion in sales taxes, and $45 billion in other taxes, for a total of $116.2 billion in taxes paid and collected in 2008. That’s according to Mark Perry at the Carpe Diem blog.
Exxon will report earnings later this week. And while oil prices aren’t quite as high today as they were three years ago, it’s all a bit like 2008.
I read somewhere that either Exxon or the whole oil industry pays more in taxes than the bottom 50 percent of the whole income-tax system. So while President Obama is…

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“Twitter itself was a bit of a side project. You could say it was a mistake that worked out very well for us.” So begins Biz Stone’s masterclass to MBA students at the Said Business School in Oxford. It’s a dark Monday afternoon in November, and, as part of the annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford program, and alongside other accomplished founders such as LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, mydeco’s Brent Hoberman and Plink’s Mark Cummins, the Twitter creative director is inspiring the audience by openly admitting to having failed.

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Joichi Ito, tapped as only the fourth director of the MIT Media Lab, says having a bio that seems “scatterbrained” will make the 25-year-old institution, famous for its unorthodox research approach, seem just like home.

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Qik Video Connect, just released, allows for compatible Android and iOS devices to connect using video chat — that is, if the opposing camps can tolerate each other for long enough.

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