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NYTimes story completely misses the point

vicparekh — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:00:15 +0000

The NYTimes has an ith-tho-thad story about student loan debt(see this one about an auto dealership from CNN).

It goes on in detail about how Citibank and NYU loaned a student close to $100,000 for her college education. The article claims that the university should have done something, anything, to prevent her from being buried under student loan debt.

Now there are a lot of angles to this, such as the cost of higher education, and how universities call it ‘financial aid’ when it is actually not ‘aid’ but a loan.

I scrolled down to the bottom of the article where it told us what this woman (and she was a woman when she entered college, regardless of the article’s attempt to paint her as naive) had studied.

Get ready for this: “An interdisciplinary degree in Religion and Women’s Studies“.

WTF?

100K in student debt for this?

Does anyone expect to get a well paying job after studying this? This student came from a middle class family. She and her mother, (who runs a

B&B), should definitely have been thinking about a return on investment on her education.

Why didn’t the writer mention anything about her poor choice of academic major?

NYTimes article on Mobile TV’s popularity misses the point

vicparekh — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:00:32 +0000

Articles comparing cellphone technology in the US versus Japan / Korea / China usually center on how backward America is. And it is true, we in the USA do not have the advances they have in those countries.

This article says the same thing about TV over mobile but it completely misses the point. (Archived Article)

The article says TV over mobile is very popular in, and will be rolled out in ‘South Korea, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Russia, Nigeria, Thailand, Egypt and China’.

The one thing that all of these countries have in common is PERVASIVE, LARGE SCALE PIRACY.

In the USA the reason we don’t have TV over mobile and over Internet(except for Hulu/netflix) is that people in the USA actually earn a living from intellectual property. There are tens of thousands of people, from stagehands to Wall Street types, who earn money because someone somewhere has to pay real money to view a TV show or a movie.

And that is why a lot of this technology comes late to America. All the owners of the rights have to make sure that their rights will be respected.

Sorry, NYTimes, but this article is definitely a stinker.

Chrysler Dealers whine and whine

vicparekh — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:23:25 +0000

I have been laid off before. I didn’t go crying to my mamma afterwards. I accepted it as a fact of life, and moved on.

But I am very annoyed by the constant whining of the car dealers who are losing their precious franchises. I looked at the list for Los Angeles, and it is mostly dealers that I have never heard of, in locations that no one buys cars anymore. These guys should have moved on long time ago, turned their real estate in 99cent stores, anything other than selling junky American cars.

Now comes CNN and does a little cry-me-a-river-piece on a Chrysler dealership, “Claxton Chrysler Jeep Dodge” closing in a small town called Claxton, GA. Every bit about this piece is intended to elicit little sobs and sniffles from the ith-tho-thad crowd. I feel that CNN has lost any pretense of substantive journalism with this piece. Its writer, Jim Kavanagh, should be forced to turn in his keyboard.

The piece writes about all these locals who supposedly love the dealership. Now, considering that overall, auto dealerships are ranked lower than dentists in terms of customer experience, I pulled up the record of this Dealership with the local BBB.

To no surprise, the BBB rated this dealership an “F”.

Now let me show you some choice quotes from this article, with my comments. Quotes in italics, my comments below the quotes.

“It was like standing out in the road and having a bus run over the top of us,” he said.

Wrong. You most likely knew it was coming, based on your customer feedback, your revenues, etc. If you didn’t, then you deseve the shutdown even more.

“We all know each other, we see each other every day. I spend more time with this group here than I do with my own family.”

That’s a sad reflection on your personal priorities in life.

Take Gary Sapp, for example. The military veteran, wounded in Vietnam, stopped in Saturday, as he does just about every day, to say hello and maybe talk about cars a little bit. He said he might come back Monday and make a deal, just as he’s done there three times in the past 10 years. But it’s not really about the cars and pickup trucks. “These are good folks here,” Sapp said.

No, you just have way too much time on your hands, Mr. Sapp.

“How the hell they gon’ sell to those people in small towns?” he said. “They’re a different breed. They’re not gonna go no damn hundred miles to buy a car.”

They won’t have to, there are three other dealers within 30 miles. Just like Wal-Mart.

“It’s just a cryin’ damn shame, is what it is,” he said.

No, it’s a necessary change that’s been a long time coming.

Michael Phelps’ $10 million dollar bong hit

vicparekh — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:15:01 +0000

Michael Phelps, the man with the wingspan of a large bird, has been photographed using a bong. It is very likely that he was smoking some marijuana.

Since this is a business blog, I want to discuss the problems the ‘morality clause‘ can cause for endorsements. A morality clause usually says that a contract can be cancelled or have its value reduced if the athlete engages in certain activities. Michael Phelps’ contracts are sure to have a morality clause, and they will be invoked, if not to cancel the contract, then to subtly renegotiate the contract.

The most famous morality clause whopper was for Kobe Bryant, whose famous incident in Colorado is estimated to have cost him $300 million.

One of the best analyses of the USA housing crisis

vicparekh — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:12:56 +0000

I like the seekingalpha.com site. ‘Alpha’ refers to trying to make a movement in the financial markets with no risk. It is very tough to do, almost a mirage. Unless you are Bernard Madoff, feeding all the rich yutzes some Kool-aid.

A gent by the name of Richard Lounsbury, has written a very cogent analysis of the housing situation on the seekingalpha.com site. You will never see something this detailed and well written in the pulpy fissures of Time, Money or the same. He has tied in various graphs and refers to many other reports. Very much worth a read.

Bad writing from USA Today: Since when is 10% considered ‘many’?

vicparekh — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:35:39 +0000

USA Today has been publishing for over twenty years but has never become an ‘indispensable’ newspaper. If it vanished tomorrow, would anyone care?

This article talks about how the end of cheap credit is a ‘catastrophe’ for dealers, because ‘many’ of them will go out of business. But if you read the article, it says only 10% of them will go out of business.

So, here we have the article saying 10%, and then saying ‘many’. Since when is 10% considered ‘many’?

Bad, sloppy, writing.

Sloppy reporting about GM share price

vicparekh — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:17:42 +0000

General Motors stock is in a pickle. Everyone has documented how low it has fallen. On Oct 9, 2008, the stock closed at $4.76. All the newspapers are saying how this is the lowest share price for GM since 1950.

What NONE of them mention is what the inflation-adjusted equivalent is. Five bucks in 1950 was worth a lot more than it is now.

According to the Inflation Rate Calculator at InflationData.com, there has been almost 800% inflation between 1950 and 2008. So five dollars in 1950 would buy what takes forty dollars to buy today.

Inflation calculation from 1950 to 2008

Conversely, five dollars today buys what 62 cents bought in 1950.

Therefore, a five dollar close in 1950 is equivalent to a forty dollar close today, and a five dollar close in 2008 is equivalent to a 62 cent close in 1950.

So the stock close today is actually far worse that it was back in 1950. Toyota as a car company didn’t exist. GM was on top of the world. And people actually wanted to buy GM cars. GM’s car launches were greeted with exhilaration, and front pages news.

America feeds the world salacious pics

vicparekh — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:05:09 +0000

Of all the things America has given the world, few are so life-changing as Cheerleaders. Football and Basketball have cheerleaders, but it is really Baseball that should have cheerleaders. People think Cheerleaders are an American invention, however, cheerleaders have a long history, because it seems that every culture around the world has had maidens in a state of undress perform during ceremonies.

I like to go to newspapers from other English-speaking countries to get a different perspective on what is going on, to escape the rah-rah myopic view of the USA mainstream press. So I went to the AOL Australia website, which aggregates Australian news, and what do I see?

PHL cheerleader pic on AOL Australia

I then happen by the NBC11 website , a TV station in the San Francisco area and see the same thing:

Cheerleader pic on NBC11 website San Francisco

The same pic showing up all over the world. We can thank the wire services for this.

Search Engines battle in free-form rap

vicparekh — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:30:29 +0000

Search Engine Rap Battle

When opera was introduced, it had a limited audience. Same for rap. Now, rap is out there, for everyone. It has even become a great way for geeks to battle out the merits of various search engines. Two white guys and a black guy dressed in a skintight blue suit duke out the merits of various search engines.

Magazines keep plugging loser stocks

vicparekh — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:45:12 +0000

I remember when Enron was making the cover page as the best stock to buy. Analysts get a lot of press when they give positive coverage, I wonder why no one goes back and sees if they recommended duds.

A great article from Gawker.com (which these days has more credibility with me than MSM) about how magazines led investors into ruin. How Magazines Led Investors to Ruin

Think about this logically. Magazines rely on ads and subscribers. Ads are bought by the same companies that get plugged. Mention an stock as a big buy, and bam! you sold a few ad pages.

Now, this is the kind of guy you want to listen to:

David Einhorn. He is a fund manager who I think he made a ton of money off Lehman’s collapse. But you won’t hear from him. You know why? Because he doesn’t write a magazine. He is a real investor. One who does his own research, his own legwork, and takes his own risks. If you want to invest, do your own research. Or, be prepared to be led around like a sheep. And remember how most sheep end up.