Wed 12 Nov 2008
I’ve been pretty sick lately; spending most of my time in bed. This week has been particularly rough with an added resistant cold that even my Benylin with Codeine isn’t taking the edge off of. For the few friends who aren’t up to speed I’m waiting for a bed to open at a hospital, hopefully in the next few weeks.
All this time in bed has me making random notes on things that I’ve been meaning to mention. I have a constantly increasing bookmark folder of articles that I just haven’t been up to commenting on. So here’s a few things for me to cross of my list:
Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama and to the U.S.A.
Ohio is now off notice (For “going blue”). California is on notice (For passing “Prop 8″).
Levi gets the award for correctly predicting Obama due to his razor sharp reasoning that “Star Trek had a Black Captain before a Female one”.
Things I hope Obama does:
1) Keeps Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.
2) Closes Guantanamo Bay.
3) Appoints Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court (Face it: in the likely 8 years of Obama there is the possibility of having to replace Stevens, Ginsburg, and maybe even Scalia).
I bet Grover that she’ll be appointed while she’s still his Dean. I also made the note that after 8 years of executive experience (as President), 12 years of legislative experience (Illinois/US Senate), and 12 years lecturing in constitutional law, in 2017 when he’d turn 58, maybe he’d pull a Taft and serve on the Supreme Court!
Other than Obama, I look forward to seeing Bush’s list of pardons.
Now four minor rants:
1) The Big Three automakers need to suck it up (have you seen their worthless stock?). They’ve got billions of handouts over decades. Both the companies and the CAW/UAW hold responsibility and maybe Chapter 11 and court supervised restructuring is what needs to be done. I’ve worked for two of the Big Three: they have ineffective management, inefficient manufacturing, and poor innovation. Things need to change and it is going to hurt for a while before it gets better.
2) Will the NHL just give Balsillie a franchise? It is clear that he’d be able to run a much more profitable and popular one up here, say in Hamilton.
3) While Nurse Practitioners are a great move in alleviating the burden on our strained health system and its Doctors, hurry up and give Pharmacists reasonable prescription privileges. My Pharmacist knows me and my drug history much better than the Doctors I end up seeing (my family doctor retired) and even on just routine refills I’d rather have my Pharmacist deal with it.
4) Lastly, I am still unsure where I stand on competition law. A Facebook note I wrote only resulted with Grover’s suggestion to buy a textbook, which is a little overboard for me. I’ve read Friedman’s views, and I know I have a Greenspan essay on the topic somewhere in a book on my shelf in Waterloo, but it is recent events that make me seem to lean against the current antitrust law. The classic case being the Microsoft/Internet Explorer one to which I personally side with Microsoft. It seems silly to me to demand a company to provide exactly what you want (e.g. OS w/o Browser).
Earlier this year, Amazon got slapped by French competition law (My impression is the EU’s Antitrust laws are way overboard, but I’m still learning about them), and now Google pulled out of a deal with Yahoo over concerns of antitrust challenges. In these two cases how are customers and shareholders benefiting by the laws? Yahoo’s stock is tanking and there are renewed talks of Microsoft acquiring them. For consumers, isn’t an advertising deal better than having an entire firm acquired by a competitor? Is it really that bad that Amazon offers free shipping on a minimum purchase (as an avid Amazon customer I can say it’s the kind of service I want)?
Okay; enough ranting. I do appreciate discussion. I have nothing better to do than hack out my lungs.
Currently Listening to: Landslide – Smashing Pumpkins
Random Wikipedia Article: – Portuguese Man o’ War
Wow Levi’s prediction made me lol! Can Levi stay in Toronto for another 4 more months?Its sad to see him go.
Onto more serious matters, I heard an interesting comment on CBC Newsworld when they were interviewing a Schulich business prof. He stated like you said that the Big 3 screwed it up big time and should be left to die but now isn’t the time to pass that judgment on them.
A bailout is still needed to protect already wavering consumer confidence. The majority of people don’t know that the companies are failing as a result of mismanagement and instead think that its as a result of the financial crisis and the American recession. If these consumers were to see 3 multi billion dollar corporations fail hysteria would ensue and people would very quickly stop spending , causing the world wide economic situation to become even worse.
Oh, he’ll be back in the summer…and you can always visit Waterloo anytime!
Having worked for 2 of the Big Three, I have first hand experience of both the poor organization as well as the excessive worker compensation. They should go into court supervised restructuring along with negotiations with the government to fund restructuring costs that the lead to a sustainable business.
A direct bailout will just prolong the inevitable. It’s going to hurt; people are going to lose their jobs; that’s reality. Chrysler likely will go under. This is the time to suck it up and fix the companies.