There are eight days to go before the borrowing authority of the US Treasury runs out. The Secretary of the Treasury has sounded an alarm, but Congress is busy. For one, the House has to elect a new Speaker. There is a good chance that authorization will pass in the nick of time but House […]
Posted on October 26th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 198 Comments »
Amazon.com is carrying on a public battle of words with The New York Times. Amazon is outraged over the Time’s expose of working conditions inside the company. The Times is standing by its lengthy story. Amazon is breaking the basic rule of never fight with a company that buys ink by the barrel. It would […]
Posted on October 21st, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 177 Comments »
Fox news has removed a so-called expert from its group of regular interviewees because the fellow lied about his background and now is indicted for fraud. The individual claimed to have worked in the CIA for 27 years, but apparently he didn’t. He had been a frequent guest on Fox news since 2002. One wonders […]
Posted on October 20th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 178 Comments »
Amazon is suing more than a thousand freelancers for their phony reviews of products. Amazon is concerned that such fakery will harm the credibility of its own review system. The suit is important, although it won’t stop false statements about products and services. The web is too wild and free for one lawsuit to make […]
Posted on October 19th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 185 Comments »
It is a constant lesson in business, often repeated here, that no organization or individual is safe in the marketplace. In the last two days, we learned of two more examples of stumbles by major corporations — American Express and Wal-Mart. This is why CEOs should exhibit a healthy paranoia about their businesses. Some thing […]
Posted on October 16th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 181 Comments »
A long-standing PR headache for pharmaceutical companies has been the price of drugs in the US by comparison to other countries. It is a self-inflicted pain that the companies defend because they say it costs millions for them to discover and produce new cures for diseases and they have as many failures as successes. That […]
Posted on October 13th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 189 Comments »
The National Rifle Association has much to answer for, not the least of which is this. That we still don’t have good data on gun deaths is inexcusable. Nothing in the constitution bars gathering information, but the NRA in its paranoia has blocked any such data collection. I’m not adverse to guns just like I’m not against […]
Posted on October 8th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 185 Comments »
How costly is a bad reputation? In the data world, post Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Administration, it means that data is frozen in the EU. It might have been difficult in any event to continue data transfers between Europe and the US, but NSA’s bad reputation for snooping sealed the decision. This […]
Posted on October 7th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 193 Comments »
Cue and queue lobbyists for and against this trade pact. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is both detested and celebrated and will be full employment for lobbying and PR firms for months to come. Unions hate the deal because to them it means lost jobs. Businesses support it because it means less expensive and faster ways of […]
Posted on October 6th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 187 Comments »
One way to tell whether an organization cares about its reputation is how it behaves. The Islamic State wants to be feared, and it has reduced ancient sites to rubble to show its intent. There is nothing about Palmyra that should offend IS. The muslim terrorists blew up the Arch of Triumph because it was […]
Posted on October 5th, 2015 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1,498 Comments »
