Croatia’s Crime Problem
Jeffrey T. Kuhner, who wrote this piece, is clearly not smart enough to differentiate crime from communism, which leads to a really weird intro and a lot of ranting. Despite this, there’s some nice snippets that apply to a variety of places across the globe:
A Balkan criminal underworld took root, smuggling guns, drugs and cigarettes during much of the fighting. Many gangsters infiltrated the government. Also, many former communists simply changed the Titoist red star for the Croatian red-and-white checkerboard. They retained their authoritarian, corrupt habits. The Croatian state became pregnant with a new criminal elite – one whose tentacles reach into every sector of society.
Croatia’s politicians derive their power – and wealth – from statism and the massive bureaucracy, creating a vast patronage machine dispensing jobs to loyal allies.
The status quo may serve the elites well, but not the vast majority of Croatians. Unemployment is at 18 percent. The economy actually contracted last year. The soaring national debt threatens the country’s long-term future. Foreign investment and much-needed business capital are fleeing. Economic stagnation has set in. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing dangerously large, potentially leading to social instability. The middle class is shrinking. Croatia is becoming a two-tiered society, divided between the haves and have-nots. This is not the independent Croatiamany dreamed of – or died for.
Whitewashing Lehman
According to the paper, Securities and Exchange Commission officials have begun to doubt they can prove that Lehman broke U.S. laws by moving nearly $50 billion in assets off its balance sheet to make it appear that the securities firm had lowered its debt burden.
Quoting people familiar with the situation, the Journal said SEC officials are also worried they might not win any lawsuit against former Lehman Chief Executive Richard Fuld Jr accusing him of improperly accounting for the value of a large real estate portfolio acquired with the takeover of Archstone-Smith Trust, or to hide losses to investors related to that deal.
Twitter Has An Expectations Problem
Winer Twitter’s announcement today. (Basically killing all client software.)
You know, Twitter could be a great business. One that is building out a larger and larger user base, inventing cool technology to support it, and selling the data to a variety of players in the ecosystem: analytics, brand management, risk management, interface designers. This could bring in a nice, solid revenue stream in the hundreds of millions.
Unfortunately, this kind of thinking:
“At this point, the floor of Twitter’s valuation should be $10 billion. If they sell, they should get a premium to that,” he said in an interview with DealBook on Wednesday.
…has them trampling all over developers in an effort to meet those capital market expectations – despite being a private company. Clearly someone’s focusing on the capital markets (guess who?), and fundamentally altering the ecosystem to get there and meet valuation expectations.
Of course, you can muddle through with this approach and land in the ballpark. So in a very real way, it’s not a problem from their end. It’s just not efficient from a consumer or market perspective (that’s capital, people, resources that could be allocated to doing the next cool thing).
Japanese Earthquake Expectations
From a Google Translated version of study. Y = timeline. X = % of the 1,000 survey participants. Top = Intensity of the expected quake. This was conducted in 2007.
The Rise of the Corporate State
In order to preserve the portfolios of bondholders, Michigan is ramrodding this legislation:
The new law would allow emergency managers to terminate labor contracts, strip local ordinances, hold millage elections, dissolve a government with the governor’s approval, and merge school districts.
It would allow managers to remove pension fund trustees or become a sole trustee if a pension fund is less than 80% funded. It allows managers to recommend that a local government file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, but leaves the final decision to the governor.