Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Kaufman Bros’

10 Interesting Links From March 21st

March 22nd, 2009 Greg Smith Comments off
  • Under 35? Hurray for the meltdown! – MSN Money – If you're 35 or older, the financial crisis may seem to have no upside. Your retirement funds, home equity, job prospects and credit lines have withered so much that it's hard to focus on anything but what you've lost.
    If you're young, though, the biggest threat to your future financial security isn't the current crisis. Your greatest risk is that fear will cause you to miss some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
  • Al Jazeera English – Europe – Italians hold anti-mafia protest – Tens of thousands of people have marched through the streets of Naples to commemorate the victims of mafia violence and demand an end to organised crime in southern Italy.

    Demonstrators, many clad in white, held banners and pictures of relatives killed by mafia gangs, as the names of some 900 mafia victims were read out through loudspeakers on Saturday.

  • Tech Trader Daily – Barron’s Online : Dell: Dude, What Did You Do With Your Cell Phone? – Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., asserts in a research note today that the company’s first attempt was basically rejected by the carriers as too, well, Dell-like.

    He asserts that Dell showed a prototype to the carriers, but that they weren’t all that impressed. “From our conversation with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest and small subsidies, making it difficult for Dell to make a profit,” he write. “In our view, the last thing Dell needs is to enter another money losing business as it seeks to preserve its operating margins of 5%-6%.” (Which he notes compares to Hewlett-Packard at around 11%, and Apple and IBM at 15%.)

  • Part of Biosphere 2 to get boost from sun to run things – Biosphere 2, the giant terrarium in Oracle, plans to use the sun's energy to operate a portion of the facility.

    Solon Corp., a solar-panel manufacturer with a factory in Tucson, is donating more than $200,000 in solar panels to the research center.

  • Report: BofA CEO wants to repay TARP money by 2010 – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis said he’d like to repay the government’s $45 billion investment in his bank later this year or in early 2010.

    “In terms of paying it totally back then you’re probably talking about sometime late this year or sometime early next year when we see the economy improving,” Lewis told the Charlotte [N.C.] Observer this week.

  • New Mexico Independent » New Mexico’s brave new world of film and TV — courtesy of you! – Gov. Richardson liked the idea of luring movies and TV to New Mexico so much that he expanded the incentives package — increasing what had been a 15 percent film production tax rebate to 25 percent. The Democratic governor also led the charge to relax state sales taxes on the industry, and he added a program to subsidize the training of New Mexico residents in so-called “advanced below-the-line” crew positions — a subsidy that amounts to a reimbursement of half of the trainees’ wages.
  • Goodbye Google | stopdesign – Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
  • PETA: Ingrid Newkirk’s Unique Will – a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed;
  • Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG? | PEEK | AlterNet – Today in Slate Eliot Spitzer has a short op-ed that speaks volumes about what is going on, and indirectly, if you follow the money, what happened to him. Plainly stated, Spitzer brings the AIG Ponzi Scheme one step closer to the revered establishment when he explains how the bailout money was funneled straight into the top players, with Goldman Sachs being the name that comes up again and again. These top players already got bailout money, and Goldman is looking at zero losses at this point, while regular Americans are being asked to make concessions or just plain losing everything. here are the biggest financial entities in the world, making billions on what appears to have been nothing but air traded back and forth, and having gutted the American people they are walking away with 100% return to their stockholders.
  • Despair over financial policy – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.
Categories: News And Links Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 Interesting Links From February 24th

February 25th, 2009 Greg Smith Comments off
  • When Consumers Cut Back – An Object Lesson From Japan – NYTimes.com – The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

    Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

  • EU denies Intel an oral hearing in ongoing antitrust case – Ars Technica – The court sided entirely with DG-COMP and dismissed Intel's argument on January 28; Intel's formal response to the EU was sent on February 5. The EU's investigatory process is much less transparent than the US model, as a result we do not know the contents of the original SSO nor do we have information on how Intel responded. One point of interest, however, is that the DG-COMP has denied Intel an oral hearing. Normally Intel would have the right to such a hearing; DG-COMP may be censuring the company for taking seven months to respond to an original two-week deadline.
  • KOB.com – Jimmy Carter writes to NM gov about death penalty – As Governor Richardson weighs his position on death penalty repeal, he's getting prodded by a former president.
    Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the governor Monday. In it, he praised bills pending in the state Legislature that would abolish the death penalty and help crime victims.
  • AT&T Feeling Pressure To Lower iPhone Plan Pricing – On Monday, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said the price of carrier data plans, not iPhone hardware, has caused a slowdown in iPhone sales, opening the door for Sprint and T-Mobile to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.
  • Hands on with Microsoft My Phone: pretty neat, actually – Ars Technica – My Phone can sync pretty much all the data on a phone. The full list is: Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Text messages, Photos, Videos, Music, and Documents. For phones with memory cards, My Phone can be used to sync the photos, videos, music, and documents on the cards, as well as those in the phone's main memory.
  • Safari 4 UI breakdown – Using it casually, I found there’s also some other, more subtle changes and additions that made me really enjoy giving this beta a spin, and perhaps will sway me into using Safari a lot more (provided I can find a working Adblock extension).

    Safari is representative of a ‘smooth’ browsing experience; it starts up quickly, and presents you a very Apple-like intro movie (yes, an intro movie, with a fancy animated Safari icon, and I’ve heard that it seems the intro is largely composed using images and CSS. Very neat).

  • NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – Toshikima does not believe such a small imperfection could have caused the massive explosion. "We are still trying to determine why it suddenly burst into flames," he said. "In all the pre-fueling tests, the procedure went perfectly, but as soon as we ignited the fuel, it exploded. Why?"
  • No longer a gray area: Our hair bleaches itself as we grow older | Science Blog – Wash away your gray? Maybe. A team of European scientists have finally solved a mystery that has perplexed humans throughout the ages: why we turn gray. Despite the notion that gray hair is a sign of wisdom, these researchers show in a research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that wisdom has nothing to do with it. Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair's natural pigment.
  • Idaho Press-Tribune Micron slashes more Idaho jobs – BOISE — Micron Technology, the state's largest employer, announced Monday it will make up to 2,000 more layoffs.

    Already reeling from decreased demand for its specialty DRAM products and from a 15 percent companywide workforce reduction announcement in October, Micron officials said the company will soon cut about 500 jobs and another possible 1,500 positions by the end of the company's fiscal year. The cuts will affect workers in the company's wafer manufacturing operations at its Boise facility.

  • Father/daughter relationships lead to more girls following dad’s career path | Science Blog – Good news, dad! All those times your daughter appeared to be tuning you out? She was probably paying more attention than you thought. In fact, a new study co-authored by a researcher from North Carolina State University says the relationship between fathers and daughters is leading to an increase in the number of daughters who are pursuing careers in the same field as their dads.
Categories: News And Links Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,