Thursday, April 23, 2009

Mexico to USA: I ain't your Mamma.

10 Countries in Deep Trouble - Yahoo! Finance
The first thing that I read on this page was that Mexico was in trouble because of all of the tourism that has been canceled because of drug-cartel related violence.
It occurs to me that maybe, rather than the US pressuring other countries to cut their supply, that the US should be working to either cut it's demand, or control the legality such that governments can properly regulate it rather than fighting a losing war against human nature.

I mean, honestly, if I were Columbia or Mexico or whomever, and all of these forces were threatening my system of government, I would nationalize the drug trade and tell the US to get it's own act together, I ain't your mamma.


Tuesday, April 21, 2009

What I think I think today about capitalism and CNBC

1 - Melissa Lee is getting more comfortable in the center seat at FastMoney, and starting to be enjoyable to watch. She was a bit tentative at first, but I think she's getting into the spirit of the show. Dillon Ratigan was one of my favorites, and I hope he lands another good show somewhere.

2 - too big to fail = too big to exist. We need to modify anti-trust laws to make sure financial institutions don't get so big that for one of them (or even a couple or three) fail would be the end of the world. THIS is the conversation we need to be having. Not big gov't or small, not capitalism or socialism.

The facts are as follows: A key element (and some would say the MAIN element) that makes capitalism the best system devised to date is its RESILIENCE, its lack of brittleness. Companies are created, innovate, perform, shrink, and die, and life goes on. BUT, when companies become so BIG and IMPORTANT that they can't possibly fail without it being the end of the world, capitalism cannot work. This is where the important and appropriate application of gov't regulation. I wish more people were talking about THIS.

On Oligarchs, Anti-Trust, and how America is just like our third world neighbors

Leading Economist Decries Power of Wall Street "Oligarchs": Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

Maybe I'm just a sucker for an English accent, but this guys makes more sense than just about anyone I've heard in speaking about the current financial crisis.

Agreed - too big to fail = too big to exist.


DBT-50000 when using DBCA.bat on Windows (Oracle 19.11)

I’ve been having some trouble getting DBCA to run in order to create databases. Thought I’d share it with you, and thus document it for la...