Jan. 01 2012

related, this is what one billion dollars looks like.

My life got no better, same damn ‘Lo sweater
Times is ruff and tuff like leather

“C.R.E.A.M.” - Wu-Tang Clan

Dec. 22 2011

Voluntary poverty – the intention to earn and spend less money — has the potential to be revolutionary. Humor me for a moment by imagining that we all – the moderately wealthy and rich people of the world — earn less money. Imagine how many fewer things we would buy. Imagine how many fewer things we would throw away. Imagine the decrease in the number of vehicles on the road, the increase in people sharing rides. Imagine the number of people who would buy smaller homes that would require less energy to heat and cool. Imagine the disappearance of silly devices like electric can-openers. Imagine our joy at discovering that it is cheaper and more satisfying to grow our carrots and bake our bread. Imagine how we would begin to value again the things we can do and make with our own hands. We might come to appreciate the true cost of labor and the true value of our time. We might be surprised by joy.

The Justice and Joy of Earning Less Money (via azspot)

i think about this every single day.

Jul. 29 2011

Put This On • On Gay Talese & Limited Budgets

It’s easy to be defensive about money. “Well, I’m not some f*cking rich guy.” I think that has as much to do with the speaker as with the rich guy. Certainly, in a consumption-driven society, it can be a great burden not to have the resources to consume ad infinitum. What Mr. Talese was arguing, I think, is that rather than adjusting your price point down, perhaps you should consider consuming less, but consuming something special. Prioritizing something that pays a person who is creating a product that approaches art, rather than approaching widget.

now everyone knows why i hate widgets.

Sep. 23 2010

Facebook is not worth $33,000,000,000

Minority investment valuations aren’t real
Facebook is now supposedly worth $33,000,000,000, but that number is entirely based on what star-struck minority investors have paid for a tiny slice of the company. The company has supposedly taken just under a billion dollars in venture capital and small secondary-market sales of stock. So the actual money that has changed hands is just 3% of the total evaluation of the company! In other words, the evaluation is resting on the flawed assumption that Facebook could actually ever get 33 times as much money to change hands if they wanted to. There’s just no way, no how that’s happening right now. If it could, they’d IPO tomorrow. So the Facebook evaluation based on minority investments is in my mind a complete joke in the sense that there was $33,000,000,000 dollars on the table. Irrational investor exuberance indeed.

…

Now this was all fun and games until somebody promised the Newark schools $100 million in stock based on the fantasy evaluation of his under-profiting company. But now it’s real. They’re selling the skin before they shot the bear or peeing their pants to get to the hut or whatever you want to call it. It’s just not good, alright?

i’m not usually so negative about, seemingly, positive stories but this just doesn’t feel right to me or a friend whom it’s supposed to help (regardless of the PR spin/announcement happening same day as the social network hitting theaters).

Jun. 20 2010

I speak a lot at business schools, and I ask how many people are there to make money. And then I say why don’t you just quit school and be drug dealers then? Because business school is about making things for people. That’s why you should be here.
John Scharffenberger

Jul. 13 2009

Goldman Sachs may just possibly have used security access codes and built a system to acquire trading information PRIOR to transaction_commit time points at NYSE. The profitability of this split-second information advantage would have been and could have been extraordinary. Observed yielding profits at $100,000,000 a day.

WHOA. So this is not insanely far from the plot of Superman III.  Basically Goldman Sachs is monitoring the flow of stock trading information for the entire New York Stock Exchange, and making trades to their advantage in the tiny periods of time from when someone says they want to buy stock, to when they actually buy stock.

LESSON: do not buy stocks, it is over your head.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

(via benjaminpalmer) (via mikehudack) (via asprettyasasong)

this is very real. i have a close friend who runs back-end systems at the NYSE. no way to confirm this instance but, in discussion with him, the possibility is a reality.

Apr. 05 2009

Al Zacharia, apartment broker extraordinaire

marco:

I wasn’t just paying him for 30 minutes of his time — I was saving weeks of mine.

classic argument.  i’m very much a fan of this.  i have no problem paying for something that gives me exactly what i want and need.  isn’t that why currency exists in the first place?  it’s your fault if you don’t use it to maximize the one thing you can never get more of:  time.

recently - everything, in my head, is coming back to a few key words:  authority, direction, curation, editing and value.

too many people are missing the point that amazing value might come in a package that, quite simply, saves me time.

Feb. 08 2009

If you work on something for five years, that’s more than 20 percent of your productive work life. Most people don’t think about that, but it’s the main thing I think about. I think about it all the time, much more than money. Because the only thing we can’t make more of is time.
Dean Kamen, in the fascinating fly-on-the-wall book by Steve Kemper, Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition (via jackcheng)

Jan. 25 2009

Questions for Arthur Levitt - Money Manager

How would you describe him, personality-wise?

He was intelligent and gentlemanly with a certain amount of charm. He smiled easily, rarely lost his temper and was a good listener.

the former S.E.C. chief’s description of bernie madoff.

Nov. 27 2008

A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis (via garr)