Bernard Watcher 2

First Skirmish: Once and Current Kings of Software

The first big skirmish between the once King of Software, Microsoft, and the Current TitleHolder, Google, was just announced for October 22nd 2009. On that day Microsoft will launch Windows 7 including a Starter Edition of Windows 7 for  Netbooks. By that time there should be several Google Android powered Netbooks available on the market. […]

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Barry Blitt:NYTime Editorial Cartoonist/Commentator

Illustration for Frank Rich’s Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack, a superb op-ed piece. This is just another example of how Barry Blitt has been producing some of the most trenchant illustrative comentary(=politcal cartoons??) today. They certainly carry clout and sly humor as below: Now what could this possibly be about? This is

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Financial Oligarchs

David Brooks of the NYTimes has said the notion of Financial Oligarchs is nonsense; rather the financial upheaval of the past two years and its consequent debilitating recession can be attributed to …. “stupidity”. I would like to quote some dissenting opinions. First, from the Atlantic there is : “The crash has laid bare many

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Islamic Finance

There is a compelling article in the Telegraph on Islamic Finance. The problem is Sharia Law and its restrictions on loans and charging interest with its consequent implications for Islamic financing. The problem is that in Kuwait the Islamic financial firms are trying to work around the loans and interest restrictions in Sharia Law. it

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Wall Street Journal’s Anti-goverment Diatribes

An MBA buddy and I have been chatting a lot about the lessons to be learned from the Subprime Mortgage and Ensuing Financial Disaster. His latest posting came from the venerable Wall Street Journal where John Steele Gordon  has a one-sided diatribe on Why Government Can’t Run a Business . The article counts 7 ways

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Press Suicide?

Frank Rich at the NewYork Times has written a caustic yet timely piece on why the Press, many popular  newspapers and magazines, find themselves on code-blue death watch. And these are not small fry – Boston Globe, LATimes, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune,  Infoworld just to name a scattering few. And Frank is frank – he cites

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Six Sigma Compensation

 We need Wall Street greed control. Why greed control ? Time after time reporters of the financial scene are telling us that unbridled greed spurred otherwise rational bankers and other financial executives to make the stupid bets that has caused the mortgage meltdown and spread a recession throughout the world while many people in developed country’s around the world

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Cause of the Credit Crunch:Oligarchs or Stupid Fools?

It is curious how two article on the Credit Crunch raise more clearly the issue of financial oligarchs controling more of the political economic scene in the US. Here are the two article. One is  by David Brooks at the NYTimes – Greed and Stupidity  and other, cited also  by Brooks, is Simon Johnson’s the

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Consumed and Tortured

Currently Washington is being consumed and tortured by the controversy over President George Bush and his adminstration’s many declarations that “We don’t torture” and the revelation that indeed the US did. And such torture occurred before, during and after the infamy of “We don’t torture”. The Obama administration appears to agree with Republican pundit Peggy

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The Chrysler Brinksmen

Chrysler has gone into bankruptcy – but not quietly. Every party took “shared sacrifices” – the major banks, the unionized employees, the company’s management, dealers and shareholders and …. oops the smallest group of debtholders – a group of hedge funds and other risk-taking  investment firms calling themselves The Committee of Non-TARP Lenders of Chrysler,”

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Apple Media Tablet

Despite denials from Steve Jobs and interim CEO Tim Cook, Apple appears to be working on a Netbook-like, so called Media Tablet. This appears to be a 10inch touchscreen tablet without a keyboard. The Seeking Alpha reviewers are raving and already talking $300 price for Apple stock. Now this blog has already written extensively on

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Rest of the Story 3: Somali Pirates and The Economist

Some people ask why has free Open Source software got such a broad foothold in so many markets? Because at the price of free its protected against “cut off the oxygen” zero pricing tactics by Microsoft, Oracle and other major software players while providing the decided competitive advantage of allowing customers to see and fix

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Presidents Choice Financial – Endemic Financial Disservice

What did PC Financial Insurance do ? Not really much in the general financial sweep of things these days. It discontinued its Auto Insurance business. However, PC Financial did not inform its customers of the fact. No calls, no emails, no contact whatsoever. The only way I discovered the fact was because I wrote a

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Obama Speaks

Barack Obama’s major impact on the change in power and the US Presidency is not that he is extremely well briefed and knowledgeable about a wide range of issues. Nor is  that he can speak eloquently and with purpose on the topics and problems he is confronted with. No the outstanding qualities that are coming

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Apple, Microsoft at Same Tipping Point

See Apple’s  latest moves on this Tipping Point here. Rapid developments in smartphones and the emergence of Netbooks would suggest that Apple-AAPL and Microsoft-MSFT are reaching tipping points in their respective industries. However, the probability of when and the nature of the Tip may be different. But first before considering anything else, lets take a

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

In a previous posting, we have said that now more than ever before, durable, well paying jobs are now the Gold Standard for government’s in bolstering their economies. The problems, especially for developed countries like the US and Europe are threefold: 1)Manufacturing (the best durable and well paying jobs) has been exported overseas, primarily to

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