Just look at the Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index. It's down from 1 022 points in February to 416 points. - Marcel Janus
If I may be honest, I'm sick of reading how bad economy is. Heck, what is the economy? Isn't it but the sum of single business and their relations? If a single business is in trouble, then likely because it isn't producing something useful, isn't able to sell it or doesn't have the funding and the stamina to survive the dip.
Maybe on the big scale it isn't that different. Maybe we weren't producing the things that we needed. Maybe we didn't build good, strong relationships. Maybe we, as a society, have become crybabies and simple lack the stamina to push through this. - Dushan Wegner
The guy at dinner that Robert mentions was Jordi Soler (@jordisoler). He's really remarkable. He's running a family-owned business that trucks containers around Europe, and is totally plugged into the web tech scene, reading all sorts of blogs, signed up to lots of services, etc. And a really nice guy. - Terry Jones
I'm the guy working at the docks. The Tweetup was excellent and I learned a lot about startups with you guys. As to the economic situation, yes, here in Barcelona times are pretty rough right now. I'm still holding up because I have a little family business, but right now big companies are suffering a lot and firing workers. Business is clearly slowing down and we can only hope that the situation recovers soon. - Jordi Soler
company I work for had a round of layoffs.. thankfully they can't trim the IT dept down any further since there's only 2 of us providing support for our global operations! - alphaxion
Ever ask someone you don't know really well - how's business? I stopped asking because the vast majority of the time all I've heard is "not bad" or "good". All around me I see signs that things aren't good. - Wayne Schulz
Wayne, I ask all the time, and I've been getting "not very good" or "things are slow" from cab drivers and shopkeepers, so while in general that is the response you'll get, it's not the one I'm getting lately. - Chris White
I would just like to see which senators and members of the House received how much money from SIG, and when they received it. And maybe what the SIG hopes to receive for the donation. Live. On the Internet. So I can see it anytime. - Paul Denlinger
How happy you are may depend on how happy your friends’ friends’ friends are, even if you don’t know them at all. “There’s kind of an emotional quiet riot that occurs and takes on a life of its own, that people themselves may be unaware of. Emotions have a collective existence — they are not just an individual phenomenon.” - Mitchell Tsai
So says a new study that followed a large group of people for 20 years — happiness is more contagious than previously thought. “Your happiness depends not just on your choices and actions, but also on the choices and actions of people you don’t even know who are one, two and three degrees removed from you,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and social scientist at Harvard Medical School and an author of the study, to be published Friday in BMJ, a British journal - Mitchell Tsai
A next-door neighbor’s joy increased one’s chance of being happy by 34 percent, but a neighbor down the block had no effect. A friend living half a mile away was good for a 42 percent bounce, but the effect was almost half that for a friend two miles away. A friend in a different community altogether can win an Oscar without making you feel better. “You have to see them and be in physical and temporal proximity,” Dr. Christakis said. - Mitchell Tsai
Still, they said, it is not clear if increased communication via e-mail messages and Webcams may eventually lessen the distance effect. In a separate study of 1,700 Facebook profiles, they found that people smiling in their photographs had more Facebook friends and that more of those friends were smiling. - Mitchell Tsai
sheesh, this happens all day every day .. walking down the street, in a taxi, my god, it is my main activity ... shooting out energy and blasts of smiles, dance moves, jokes, empathy ... all day, every day ... and it is a study!!??!! .. scientists are sooooooo weird - Gregory Lent
The flip side of course is that you can easily become allergic to your family and relatives. This usually starts with becoming allergic to your in-laws, which starts usually before marriage, then your children become allergic to you, and when they reach their teens, you become allergic to them. And so it goes. - Paul Denlinger
Map of closing/collapsing factories/companies in China. Click on province to see details. (In Chinese) Hosted by Netease. - Paul Denlinger
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China move from rule of man to rule of law? Bah humbug! What has Yu Keping been smoking; I want some! No, it's going to move to mob rule and mass chaos, with yet another wave moving to a not very welcoming west, where they will again become model immigrants. The most successful Chinese are.....Americans (yet again)! For those who say anything else, get off your drugs! - Paul Denlinger
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i don't think so .. there are some fundamental frequency changes that have happened that result in different types of dissention .. there may be big demonstrations .. but not mass chaos and mob rule, in my opinion .. reality is a bit different now - Gregory Lent
Susan: no, it is not. I met an Israeli startup CEO last night and he just laid off 20% of his workers. in China they are feeling the effects of the downturn too. It's just that in China the startup world is much younger and they haven't gotten big yet, so they haven't cut back yet. - Robert Scoble
The real problems in China will not happen in hi-tech, they are happening in low tech. But rest of society will feel it. - Paul Denlinger
people are simply readjusting their minds, that is a good thing i think - Gregory Lent
With all the money being pumped into the countryside, the government is implicityly admitting that its plan to complete urbanize China within 20 years is a failure and can no longer happen because of a change in internal conditions. Wonder if this means that urban unemployed will want to become instant farmers and gain benefits? - Paul Denlinger
Actually "I don't like"....but I like the discussions around the topic. the heading could be interpreted as no new cash for start-ups [ the subject matter of the article ] - or - no new cash for VC's [ or the funds ]. I am seeing some early signs of defaults on draw-downs, mostly for Private equity funds. could be that some of the VC funds are experiencing a "cash crunch". - SnakeDoc
Good read on the differences between the American auto companies and the foreign companies who use American auto workers. - Alex Scoble CISSP
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More ammo for my "they dug this hole themselves" theory. - xero
I never would've expected an article like this from a News Corp publication. - invariant
Well, that's as rudimentary as it gets and sounds much easier than it is in practice. I don't claim to be able to time the market better than the next guy. I'm net long of course, especially after a 40-50% market decline and with a long time horizon. However, in my estimation, until housing rebounds, which may be years from now, I don't envision a strong, sustained rally or a return to prior highs. - Mitchell Tsai
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While somewhat rudimentary, I ran a some calculations for how the market has behaved since September when things really got ugly. In effect, each time the market has seen a 5% runup from the day's close back to the prior close (1 day return), there has been a subsequent significant drop before the same process repeated itself. - Mitchell Tsai
Following the 14.5% runup on 10/13, the market dropped 7.8% before the next big pop. - Mitchell Tsai
Following the 6% runup on 10/20, the market dropped 15.9% before the next big pop. - Mitchell Tsai
Following the 11.7% runup on 10/28, the market dropped 8.3% before the next big pop. - Mitchell Tsai
Following the 6.2% runup on 11/13, the market dropped 18.3% before the next big pop. - Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell: Same principles apply to population growth trends and war, disease and famine, which are correction phases. Then eventually, species collapse and extinction. - Paul Denlinger
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