Home » Posts tagged 'business' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: business

Q&A on Greece

Posted on by | 23 Comments

On Sunday, 5 July, voters in Greece will head to the polls on an utterly unique referendum on a proposed bailout. The process is non binding, the question itself is strange, and the consequences of it are completely unknown.

What does any of it mean? The short answer is that Greece, and all of Europe, are in completely uncharted territory at this point. The five year crisis has gone from slow simmer to a full boil in the hot summer sun. Greece is calling Europe’s bluff, and Europe is not backing down.  The only thing we can be sure of is that there will be a resolution shortly, one way or the other. What exactly that means is itself completely up in the air as well.

Here are a few questions and answers on the Greek Crisis based on a variety of news sources.  Follow the links for more information in each question.

Continue reading →

GDP Down? Take It With a Little Seasoning

Posted on by | 11 Comments

The first revision for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first quarter (1Q15) came out negative. The economy is contracting! Is it time to panic?  The White House attributed the slowdown to weak exports, which are quite well known to be a problem.  But is that all?

As we have commented on at length before, the GDP numbers are full of fudge, so it may be hard to know just what to make of them. A cynic would say, and probably does say, that they the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is making the numbers up as they go to make everyone happy.

Perhaps you are a bit too diabetic to handle all the fudge, either, but this problem is a bit more savory than sweet. It’s all about the seasoning – or, rather, the “seasonal adjustment”.

Continue reading →

Devouring the Dreams (and Cash)

Posted on by | 12 Comments

Big incentives lure a big employer into town. It’s the dream many rural regions coping with high unemployment and a “brain drain” of their best and brightest long for and have often put up big subsidies to make it happen. Sadly, however, the dream doesn’t last long and many small cities which put their futures on the line saw the big employer move on. We’ve seen this happen for decades, and usually call it “corporate welfare”.

Today is no different, except for one thing – business is moving much faster and the net time from groundbreaking to heartbreaking is only a few years. That was the experience in Dubuque Iowa and Columbia Missouri who spent a total of $84M luring IBM to expand in their towns. Six years on, a struggling IBM has let go of half of their staff in those places.

How effective are these subsidies? And why does this keep happening?

Continue reading →

Online Ad Bust

Posted on by | 10 Comments

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
– John Wanamaker, Philadelphia retail giant, circa 1893

During the internet boom that defined the previous bull market, before 2000, one thing was clear. Advertising as we knew it was dead. Any maven or guru of the ‘net pointed to the ability to target audiences with pinpoint precision and collect real-time data on how effective the spending was. It was a feature that broadcast, direct mail, and print media would never be able to achieve.

Fifteen years on, we can see just how this has worked out. The short answer is that advertising is just as wasteful and untargeted as ever, even online. Worse, advertisers have not substantially moved away from broadcast ads, with teevee still the largest category of spending.

Is internet advertising a flop, or was the hype just ahead of the promise?

Continue reading →

Logistics

Posted on by | 19 Comments

“Amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics.”
– Common US Army saying

Barataria has been discussing some of the key skills and perspectives that define the next economy with an eye towards teaching them to the next generation that will need them the most. Cooperation in competition is certainly rising in importance in a higher technology world, as is the need for a flexible workforce  and a greater reliance on automation.

All of these come together with a greater need for strategic thinking, and its related leadership models, but are executed with the great challenge of a time when everything moves faster every day – the art and science of logistics.

Continue reading →