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Bad News is Good News

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Bad news is good news, at least in stock markets around the world.  If that doesn’t make any sense, you’re far from alone.  But you are on the wrong side of the most important trend around the world right now, which is the fine art of printing (and eventually incinerating) money.

In the last 4 years, central banks in 4 of the 6 largest currency zones (Euro, US, Japan, and UK) have literally printed about $6 trillion, or 5 weeks worth of total production in those places.  Markets are excited by the fact that things look so weak that they are about to print even more.

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What is Google?

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What is google?  If the first thing that comes to mind is “search engine”, you’re not alone – nor far from the mark.  96% of their $38B in revenue last year came from web searches.  Years of fairly intense competition from Bing, Yahoo, and a lot of others hasn’t really dented their position at all.

If you take a closer look at where google gets its money, it’s nothing more than placing ads in those searches.  After all the hype about the online world the business model for google – and facebook – is not significantly different than the one developed about 150 years ago for newspapers and duplicated as broadcast technologies were developed.  The only difference is that google is in the business of curation, or using other people’s content rather than developing their own.

My hunch is that William Randolph Hearst would be impressed, but should anyone else?  Not given the threat by mobile devices spurred in part by google itself.  Google’s biz – curation for profit – has one really big enemy to deal with, and that is google.

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The Big Parade

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At the end of a sticky day in June the excitement will bubble over and fill the halls of Expo Elementary.  It’s the last day of school and the kids are ready to burst through the concrete walls and into the summer.  But first, there is a great ritual that has to take place – all the sixth graders line up and march in one long parade through the school, high-fiving and smiling through the shouts of those who will be back.

My son George, my youngest, is in that parade today.  After 11 years of greeting my kids at the end of every day as I came to pick them up, my time as an Expo parent is coming to an end.  I will miss the place because it taught me a lot, too.

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Secret Ingredients

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Barataria has been too intense lately.  That’s no good as we head into Full Blown Summer, the period of time defined by no school for kids.  It’s time to have some fun.

I love to cook, but I don’t follow recipes.  I work on a sense of balance between the five flavors, and yes there are five if you count umami.  The techniques I use run between East Asian stir-fry, Indian masalas, French saucery, and just a touch of American excess.  I work with whatever looks good at the market or is on sale.  The ingredients I rely on include these “secrets”, my special thangs that round out the tastes and achieve a special balance.

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Small Ripple, Big Waves

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Bad news has been roiling financial markets for some time.  It’s hard to stay on top of what has spooked investors recently and how important it might be.  A sense of fear and at time panic drives much of the news.  But last week a few things happened that might just be the worst news we have seen since the meltdown of Lehman in 2008, the event that plunged the financial world into crisis.

Two things have happened that have investment houses running for the exits very rapidly.  The first is that Spain appears to be in need of a bailout, the largest European economy to hit a key threshold yet.  The second is that a weak US jobs report has bid up demand for safe US treasuries to a dangerously high level.

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