Monthly Archives: April 2008

On the definition of “recession”

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Sick of hearing about it, or waiting until after the fact

Mark Hopkins of Mashable does a pretty good job of railing against the pundits here. And his definition of recession is certainly correct – two successive quarters of GDP decline. However, I believe that a lot of the chatter being heard is a reflection of the speed in which information is now flowing, and those in the middle’s desire to define the state the economy is in before the government releases GDP figures for two quarters in succession.

Ask yourself these questions: If the US does experience two quarters of successive GDP decline, are you in recession on the first day of the first quarter of that decline? And if the quarter subsequent to the previous two shows growth, are you out of recession on the first day of that?

Under the above circumstances, and using the word “recession” in its strictly defined manner, the only thing a person would ever be able to say is…”We were in a recession.”

By then, the fun would be over.

UPDATE: Via Forbes:

Surprising new GDP numbers show the economy is growing, albeit slowly. Your move, Ben.

Maybe that should be “Surprising new GDP numbers show the economy was growing, and nominally.” Of course, you can still throw in the “your move, Ben” part, because it seems that with a stagnating economy and skyrocketing prices for staples, the Fed Chairman has few moves left.

UPDATE 2: Aptly put (emphasis mine):

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that the U.S. economy grew at a 0.6% annual real rate in Q1 2008, mostly because of a buildup in inventories. Without the unwanted buildup in inventory, GDP would have been negative, suggesting the economy is in recession.

Most eloquent quote of the week

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As far as religion goes, maybe ever (at least via the web)

I believe in god but not in religion organized by man. And I think the men (and women) who have cloaked themselves in the name of god have often done great harm. Religion is not the root of all evil but the people who traffic in it sure can be..

- Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures

This is the point where most people say “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” I’ll spare you that.

Tuesday, April 29 must be “Good News Day”

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Nobody got the memo, and I got all this in my feed reader simultaneously

I’m closing my browser for the rest of the day.

UPDATE: Hearing Wal-mart cheers.

Why Marmot (and their gear) is worth its weight in gold

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Gold prices notwithstanding, this is unsolicited and extraordinarily well-deserved praise

I own a bit of Marmot gear, mostly outerwear, and it’s not because I’m spoiled or have money to burn – despite being twice the price of what you’d call “comparable” items, their stuff just seems worth it. Reasoning: it’s apparent when looking at their gear that the company pays attention to details – I’m an accountant…details are good. One of my favorite pieces was this Marmot PreCip jacket I’d had for several years – it served duty as a rainy spring/summer day protector, mostly on dog walks, but also the occasional misty hike. Never abused, its exterior still looked like new.

[SinglePic not found]Unfortunately, on one of those rainy days I noticed my shoulders were feeling a little damp. After returning home, I further noticed that the interior waterproofing material had started to show some significant wear…more significant than should have been apparent with anything but everyday use in the Pacific Northwest (where I spend almost no time). I decide to send this precious garment off to see if something could be done about it. That was April 15th.

Yesterday, I received a warranty claim ticket, saying the jacket had been received and the estimated turnaround time was four to six weeks (while strangely saying “as of 2/08″). It only took one more day to figure out what that claim ticket meant. This morning a package arrived. It was sent priority mail. It contained this:

marmot-precip

…a new PreCip jacket, in the package. Marmot must have figured that spring was well on its way, and that I needed this jacket back pronto. Smart, very smart, especially considering the fact that after I saw the prospective wait time the day before, I’d already started looking for a new jacket (and had even put a few bids on one in my size via eBay). Ridiculously good customer service – ranks right up there with my charming time at Orvis.

PS: Jeez…they even gave me a better color than the one from before. I think these folks should go into the fishing gear business and distribute through Orvis – I’d be like a walking billboard for that deal!

Does “cleaning house” portend widget backlash?

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VCs are doing it. Should you?

It’s pretty obvious by looking at these pages that I don’t have much taste for widgets. Now, it seems, at least one blogging venture capitalist is taking widgets to task – cleaning them out because they slow down page loading time. While I’d like to say I’m a trendsetter, alas it’s really just a matter of having no time and/or patience to find useful, easy to use widgets to slap on the site. The ones I have found that are useful simply take too much time to create and/or maintain.

avcscreenshot I would have commented on Mr. Wilson’s blog – maybe snarkily offering the New York venture capitalist my stylesheet – but the comment section didn’t load. I’m now wondering if it too is a widget of some sort.

I’ve cursorily seen a trend towards cleaner blog pages, and web pages in general. Even one of Mr. Wilson’s own investments, Tumblr, is built on the idea of clean, easy to read pages full of content originating from the owner. Yet, widgets seem to be growing and thriving in places like MySpace and Facebook (and yes, I know all the junk on Facebook pages are called “apps” – sorry, but they look like widgets to me).

Is there a shift in the midst – widgets coming off of personal/independent pages…finally finding their rightful place in social networks? Or are widgets beginning to join the ranks of the homeless?

UPDATE: If social network widgets can’t start producing real revenue, extinction may be the foregone conclusion.

When your market tumbles, promote speculation with leverage!

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Sad but true

The Chinese equities market has not been performing well. But regulators and market makers have the answer.

According to Bloomberg:

China may limit new share sales and allow investors to borrow money to buy equities in an effort to boost the world’s sixth worst-performing stock market…

They are going to restrict the ability of Chinese companies to do secondary financing, thereby reducing the supply of stock, while allowing those buying the stock (i.e. the speculators who have been taking a bath as of late) to borrow money to buy. The market goes back up, but the underlying issue companies starve for new capital. And sooner or later the speculators have to pay back all those margin loans.

It’s extremely short-term thinking. The Chinese are going to have to hope and pray that the market stays up long enough for companies to get the impending backlog of issues out the door. Those same companies will likely be borrowing like mad in the meantime. The only identifiably consistent concept here? Everyone is going to be deeper in debt.

If the Chinese government would just step in and loan money directly to the pummeled shareholders to prop up their brokerage accounts, you might just have the U.S. housing market.

RSS Needs An Easy Button

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Adam Ostrow:

While I might expect a start-up going after the early adopter techie crowd to take so much for granted, this is Microsoft, the world’s largest software company that is virtually unavoidable in at least some part of everyone’s digital lives. But Microsoft has made no effort to explain what RSS is, how to use it, and why it might matter to people outside of the Xhundred thousand (or however many) people use RSS religiously.

Agreed, wholeheartedly (and Microsoft isn’t the only culprit either).