Just be smarter

The McLaughlin Group 2006 year-end awards

2009-09-14T16:23:00.007+03:00

Ось відео: The McLaughlin Group 2006 year-end awards

А ось до нього транскрипт

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, bummest rap. Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: The false, malicious, vicious charge that three Duke lacrosse players assaulted that gal. Mike Nifong and that stripper ought to themselves be in the dock.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Interesting.

Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: That Michael J. Fox exaggerated his symptoms of Parkinson's to make the very effective television ad that helped turn the race in Missouri towards the Democrats.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: I agree with Pat's, but the false charge that Senator Allen was anti-black. It was a malicious campaign to mischaracterize a decent man.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: That John Kerry meant to insult the troops when he flubbed the line in the prepared speech that he was making.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Bum rap.

MR. O'DONNELL: Bum rap.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Bummest rap: Likening George W. Bush to Harry Truman. That's a bum rap on Truman. A few years ago, Bush boosters tried to elevate Bush's stature by likening him to Ronald Reagan. Now it's Truman -- both analogies flat-out wrong. If anything, George Bush is more like Herbert Hoover.

Okay, fairest rap. Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: Against the Republicans, that they did not live up to their principles or support policies they said they would. And so they got their comeuppance deservedly.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: Fairest rap, that Donald Rumsfeld is a disaster and had to go. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: That Rahm Emanuel lied when he said during the campaign that he knew nothing about the Foley scandal.

The evidence has now come out that he did.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: That Bush is one of the worst presidents we've ever had.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Fairest rap: Don Rumsfeld. He just retired as secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld set out to show that the U.S. had overcome the legacy of Vietnam. He ended up creating a quagmire.

Okay, best comeback, Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: Best comeback: Unfortunately, John, it is the Taliban.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The Taliban.

MR. BUCHANAN: They are back.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You think they're back in full force?

MR. BUCHANAN: I think they're back in serious force, yeah.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: Al Gore, who is now in contention as a possible presidential candidate and who is leading a campaign to recognize the potential danger of global warming. Hurray that he is back.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: My answer is similar to Pat's Taliban. In this case it's the House Democrats, who have come back after 12 years to take the central power of American politics back.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence O'Donnell.
MR. O'DONNELL: Jerry Brown, who was elected California's attorney general 50 years to the day after his father won the same office. Jerry could be on his way back to the governorship. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Best comeback -- I'm showing you up, O'Donnell -- Tom Cruise, (in style ?) with the host of this program on Mission Impossible I. You saw that, right?

Who started out 2006 looking like a Hollywood pariah, but he ended the year in charge of running his own studio and a storybook wedding to Katie in Italy and a --

MR. BUCHANAN: Were you there? Were you at the wedding?

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I didn't make it -- (laughter) -- and a -- (inaudible). I was in the helicopter circling around. (Laughter.)

Were you there?

MR. O'DONNELL: No, I didn't make it -- not on the list.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, most original thinker.

MR. BUCHANAN: One of your favorites, John -- General William Odom. He was right about the first Gulf War and he's right about the second Gulf war as well.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And he got terrific response to --

MR. BUCHANAN: He ought to have a good response to it. I've read his six myths, yeah.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Did you?

Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: I give the thinking cap to Jerry Brown, now attorney general of California. He's been governor. He's been mayor of Oakland. He keeps reinventing himself. And he credits his three and a half years of Jesuit training and he quotes the 12th Rule: Let him in all things seek his greater mortification and continuing abegnation, which I think means politics is a form of self- flagellation. (Laughter.) I'm not sure.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah. Well, good luck with him with that.

Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: My old boss, Newt Gingrich, almost every week has discussions about what's wrong with the country and how to fix it, winning people over who say, We wish we had someone who had those kind of ideas in the White House.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.
MR. O'DONNELL: Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, who has given us the best explanations of how the world came to be in the grip of violent religious extremism.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Most original thinker: Al Gore. He turned to a documentary film to make his case for taking action on global warming. An Inconvenient Truth, he called it. It was extreme originality at work -- extreme in the good sense.

Patrick, most stagnant thinker.

MR. BUCHANAN: Senator John McCain. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Are you talking about putting more troops in Iraq?

MR. BUCHANAN: Just more troops, more troops, more troops, more troops. It's always more violence, always more war.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: George W. Bush -- Stay the course, Go shopping more, and also Don Rumsfeld -- Stuff happens and War is complicated.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: Denny Hastert, I hate to say once again. He inherited a vibrant conservative agenda in 1998 and added nothing to it.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: Karl Rove, who thought he could still work the wedge issues and the turnout machine in the congressional elections against a national wave of revulsion for what the White House was up to and the House and Senate Republicans.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Most stagnant thinker: Condoleezza Rice, secretary of State. Condi ended up 2006 as she began it, stuck in ruts with no workable plans for Iraq or Iran or Israel-Palestine. And with so much access to the president's ear so much of the time, Rice deserves sacking more than Rumsfeld.

Patrick, best photo op.

MR. BUCHANAN: You're in trouble, fellow, for that one. (Laughs.)

One million illegal aliens march under Mexican flags, kill Bush's amnesty bill, sell Buchanan's book.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor. MS. CLIFT: That was a photo op? (Laughs.)

MR. BUCHANAN: (Laughs.) One million Mexicans? (Laughs.)

MS. CLIFT: Okay. I'm going to go with Britney Spears flashing.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Interesting.

Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: Something with his most effective photo op -- the bombing, regretfully, of the golden mosque in Samarra, which triggered the sectarian war that had not yet started until then. It was a stunningly effective event.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: Best photo op of the year was Mel Gibson's mug shot.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Best photo op: The kiss, George Bush's and Joe Lieberman's peck on the cheek. During the Connecticut Democratic primary it was mercilessly exploited by Lieberman challenger Ned Lamont, to everyone's delight on this program -- more copy.

Enough Already award, Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton. Enough, girls. (Laughs.)

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: Bush and Cheney in general, and in particular no more racist rants from celebrities.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: All those people and their lawyers who are offended by every expression of individualism in America.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: The Enough Already award goes to Donald Trump.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Donald Trump. Are you going to expand on that?

MR. O'DONNELL: How much more of him can we take? MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You think it's self-evident?

Enough already -- the death of Princess Diana 10 years ago. The so-called definitive investigation, alas, is now over. To the conspiracy theorists, enough already.

Okay, worst lie, Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: That Pope Benedict deliberately insulted Islam -- false.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor.

MS. CLIFT: President George W. Bush -- Absolutely, we're winning.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence -- excuse me. Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: Well, I hate to say this. I agree with Eleanor, but on the proposition that he was going to keep Rumsfeld and not fire him when it came out that -- and he admitted that he was already planning his replacement. It wasn't the worst lie, but for a president, he should never be so brazen.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Oh, come, come, come, come. That's trivial, don't you think?

MR. BLANKLEY: I just designated it the worst, I guess.

MR. O'DONNELL: Tony's right. It was the worst provable lie of the year that Bush says, a week before the election, Rumsfeld's going to stay on till the end of the administration. A day after the election, he's gone.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: It was an okay falsification. A worse lie is We're making progress in Iraq. President Bush and company repeated this lie so often that it's almost as if they think Goebbels was right -- Repeat the big lies often enough and people will believe it.

Okay, capitalist of the year, Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: Warren Buffett gives away $40 billion to the Gates Foundation and shows what a capitalist ought to do with his money.

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, he's not giving it away in one lump sum.

MR. BUCHANAN: (Laughs.) It's a lot more than I've seen John McLaughlin give away as a share of his wealth. (Laughs.)

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, maybe a couple of billion a year, but, you know.

Eleanor. MS. CLIFT: The two kids who started YouTube and then sold it to Google for $1.65 billion.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you know the name of it? Oh, YouTube.

MS. CLIFT: YouTube. (Laughs.)

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Tony.

MR. BLANKLEY: Milton Friedman, who died this year and made capitalism possible around the world.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Lawrence.

MR. O'DONNELL: It's Warren Buffett and his gracious, egoless giving away of the money. He didn't set up a Buffett foundation. He gave it to the Gates Foundation. And he's a very strong supporter of inheritance taxes and gives the lie to the Republican argument that if you tax the rich too much, they'll just stop working and producing.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: All this Buffett talk is good, but I'll give you a different level of magnitude. Capitalist of the year: The People's Republic of China. The PRC's entrepreneurship is creating a massive shift in the global economy. Never in modern history has so much wealth been transferred so fast.

We'll be right back with person of the year.

Підручники в університетах! Як з таким уг можна щось вчити??

2009-08-11T18:05:00.005+03:00

Буде у мене з вересня предмет називається "Гроші та кредит". ну от, щоб з ним не було проблем, плюс є певна зацікавленість як функціонує фінансовий ринок, вирішив почитати ось цю книжечку:Вона відносно маленька - трохи більше 250 сторінок. Але замість того, щоб давати нормальну і корисну інформацію це просто набір визначень. З таким самим успіхом можна просто почитати Wikipedi'ю. Наприклад:
Гроші - http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Гроші
Валюта - http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Валюта
Валютний курс - http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Валютний_курс
і т.д.
Але, ось що мене просто вбило:
Процитую: "...користуються послугами міжнародних інформаційних агенств Raiter, Dow-Jons telerate, Bloombend."
Погугливши ці так звані міжнародні інформаційні агенства отримуємо:
Raiters - гугл пише: Did you mean "Raiders" (search result)
Dow-Jons telerate - search result
Bloombend - search result - це взагалі дитячий будинок в у місті Бенд, штат Орегон.

Що можна сказати? - "Печально!" І на публікацію такої книжки дали гроші і "Рекомендована Міністерством освіти і науки України"

Тут тільки залишається гадати, або автори реально не знають що пишуть, або вони не хотіли рекламувати Reuters та Bloomberg. Тоді не зрозуміло чого правильно написали Dow-Jones??

Я упевнений на всі 100%, що це не єдиний приклад. Їх безліч і це дуже прикро!

Покени - соціальні комунікації майбутнього

2009-07-17T15:07:00.009+03:00

У скорому майбутньому замість того, щоб давати один одному свою візитівку, люди просто будуть обмінюватися контактною інформацією за допомогою покену. У такий спосіб вони одразу додаються до списку друзів у найпопулярніших соцмережах та сервісах.
Це підтверджує і нещодавна перемога за найкращий у світі девайс/ґаджет на TechCrunch Europe Awards 2009

Те що цей ґаджет швидко набирає популярності серед молоді та дітей - це факт. Але як бути з представниками бізнесу, великих компаній, словом з людьми зі світу комерцію?
Чудовий вихід придумали у Голандії: зробити покен корпоративним стандартом:

В Україні цю ідею це ніхто не втілив у життя, тоді як у Голландії вона вже активно юзається.
Але можна придбати звичайного покена на сайті або на твітері.

Що пан Лебедев зробить для ЮТ?

2009-07-02T18:50:00.002+03:00

Зараз україномовний інтернет просто вибухнув розмовами про те, наскільки галімий постер у Яценюка.

Почитати про це можна тут (мабуть найкращий огляд), тут, ТУТ - досить прикольні коментарі.

В загальному я теж був в шоці сьогодні зранку від цього:

Після усіх негативних відгуків на блогах, де розкрита тема рекламної кампанії Яценюка, хочеться поставити питання: "Що Лебедев зробить для ЮТ?"

win-win or win-lose

2009-06-18T16:03:00.010+03:00

«Щoб дoсягти успіху в бізнесі, пoтpібнo
змусити інших бачити pечі так, як їх бачите ви»

Джoн Генpі Патеpсoн

У свoїй книжці «7 звичoк висoкoефективних людей» Стівен P. Кoві багатo уваги пpиділив підхoдам дo міжлюдських кoмунікацій, таких як: «вигpати-вигpати», «пpoгpати-вигpати», «вигpати-пpoгpати», «пpoгpати-пpoгpати».

Ми не будемo poзглядати пpиклади «пpoгpав-вигpав», адже навpяд у бізнесі, хтoсь захoче свідoмo віддавати свoї пoзиції oпoненту, і підхід «пpoгpати-пpoгpати».
Oтже ми бачимo детальний oпис підхoду «вигpав-вигpав» у двoх найкpащих книжках пo ефективнoму веденню пеpегoвopів Вільяма Юpі та Джима Кемпа. Тут і з’являється дві пoзиції, які ділять увесь кopпopативний світ навпіл. За тих, хтo за підхід «вигpав-вигpав» і на тих, хтo пpoти цьoгo підхoду.

Як бачимo з цитати у епігpафі, Джoн Патеpсoн, oчевиднo, за підхід «вигpав-пpoгpав». Oтже, щo нам кажуть вищезгадані автopи пpo пoзицію «вигpав-вигpав»:
Вільям Юpі у свoїй книжці pекoмендує зoсеpедитися на інтеpесах, а не на пoзиціях. Наша пoзиція - це те, пpo щo ви пpийняли pішення а наші інтеpеси - це щoсь, щo змусилo вас пpийняти pішення. У кoжнoї стopoни - безліч інтеpесів. В oснoві пoзиції - лише частина інтеpесів. Наше завдання - зpoзуміти інтеpеси oпoнента і запpoпoнувати pішення, яке задoвoльняє цим інтеpесам.
Для визначення «закoнних інтеpесів» викopистoвуйте oб'єктивні кpитеpії.

· Тoді pішення, яке ви пpoпoнуєте, буде спpаведливим

· Викopистoвуйте пpинцип взаємнoсті

· Пеpевіpяйте твеpдження oпoнента

Пpoдумайте «найкpащу Альтеpнативу oбгoвopюванoї Угoди». Якщo oпoнент не poзділяє Вашу ідею співпpаці, намагається нав'язати Вам стpатегію «вигpав - пpoгpав», і Ви не бачите кoнстpуктивнoгo вихoду із ситуації, у Вас завжди є мoжливість пpипинити пеpегoвopи і пеpеключитися на альтеpнативний спoсіб виpішення пpoблеми. Як немає незамінних людей, так і немає незамінних дoгoвopів, кoнтpактів і т.д. Якщo Вам щoсь не пoдoбається, завжди тpеба мати силу сказати «НІ».

Але цікавіше у підхoді дo кoнцепції «вигpав-вигpав» аналізувати Джима Кемпа, який у свoїй книжці «Спoчатку скажіть «НІ» пpoстo oбpушується на дану кoнцепцію.

Мoжна визначити oснoвні пoзиції у яких підхід «вигpав-вигpав» абсoлютнo не діє:

· Стpатегія «Вигpати-вигpати» і слабкість

· Кмітливість і пoлітика співпpаці

· Спекуляції на "вигpав-вигpав"

Стpатегія «Вигpати-вигpати» і слабкість.

Стpатегію «Вигpати-вигpати» Кемп пеpшoю спpавoю oтoтoжнив з пoзицією психoлoгічнo слабкoю: невпевненістю в сoбі і пoбoюванням кoгoсь засмутити. Слабких б'ють і з задoвoленням.

У багатьoх з нас із дpузями та кoлегами пoзиція «вигpати-вигpати», і тoму, кoли тpеба, їх тpеба піднапpужути: це піде і їм і вашим віднoсинам на кopисть у дoвгoстpoкoвoму пеpіoді. А те, щo на кopисть мoїм кoлегам чи дpузям, на кopисть і мені.
Все залежить від людей з якими ви ведете пеpегoвopи. Якщo кіт Леoпoльд збиpається гpати в пoзиції «вигpати-вигpати», пpибіжать усі миші і будуть над ним глумится. Спoчатку тpеба стати сильним - а пoтім poбити гаpний світ навкoлo себе, і не тільки для себе.

Кмітливість і пoлітика співпpаці.

Пoлітика співpoбітництва дає дуже висoку ефективність, але тільки в пеpспективі і в масі, тoбтo для багатьoх. Якщo ж жити, піклуючись тільки пpo себе і не пеpейматися, щo залишиться після тебе, тo співпpаця не є найефективнішoю стpатегією. Oсoбиста «кмітливість» виявляється ефективніше: oсoбистo для мене. Кoли частина підпpиємців теpпляче й дбайливo будують віднoсини на співпpаці. Не гpабують і не poзopюють, завжди знахoдяться «кмітливі», які беpуть все, щo мoжна взяти. Тoбтo opганізoвують і ведуть у не дуже чесний шлях.
Все пpекpаснo дo тих піp, кoли таких кмітливих виявляється багатo. Тoді вже ніхтo не ствopює екoнoміку співпpаці і всі тільки бажають швидкoї наживи на тих, хтo ще пpацює, пoтім дуже швидкo виявляється, щo кpасти вже немає у кoгo.

Спекуляції на "вигpав-вигpав"

Якщo дo вас пpихoдять майстpи пеpегoвopів, пoсміхаються і кажуть: «Ви oбoв'язкoвo пoвинні піти нам назустpіч! Вигpав-вигpав! », а ви знаєте, щo наспpавді це жopсткі вoвки, заpаз тільки спекулюють на цьoму гаслі. Тут Кемп правий. Не тpеба бути дуpнями, вас пpoстo не будуть пoважати і пpoкoвтнуть швидкo і без ніякoгo задoвoлення.
«Здавати» власні інтеpеси нітpoхи не пpавильніше, аніж тиснути на інтеpеси паpтнеpа. Це не «вигpав-вигpав». Пoважайте себе і свoї інтереси – і тоді вас будуть пoважати ваші опоненти.
Втім, пoки Кемп буде впевнений, щo йoгo oтoчують тільки дві категopії бізнесменів: «тигpи» і «дуpні», у ньoгo нікoли не буде бізнесменів тpетьoї категopії: «кoлеги». Це кoнкуpенти, які нас бадьopять і яких бадьopимo ми, з якими ми pазoм бopемoся на pинку, з якими ми, змагаючись на бігoвoї дopіжці, гopдимoся, кoли oбганяємo ми і навчаємoсь, кoли oбганяють вoни.

Google is on the right way

2009-06-03T19:06:00.005+03:00

Google's new product Google wave. I thinks it will be the most innovative thing for organizing, collaborating, etc. which we ever heard. And we can loudly say: "Google doesn't have competitors in his area of business"

2009-06-02T20:17:00.000+03:00

Эксперт Online

Инновационный манифест «Эксперта»

Мы забыли о творчестве. Потребительская экономика низвела многих из нас до уровня офисного и государственного планктона. Мы перестали изобретать, рваться к звездам, писать хорошие стихи. Мы стали скучными. Это тоже возможная траектория развития человечества, но ее бег быстро заканчивается — без прометеевского…

В Нью-Йорке выпустили купюру достоинством ноль долларов

2009-05-07T01:11:00.001+03:00

В ответ на кризис, охвативший Wall Street, в Нью-Йорке была отпечатана купюра достоинством ноль долларов.

Новую банкноту выпустило не казначейство США, а известная американская художница и дизайнер Лаура Джилберт, разочарованная падением доллара.

На официальном сайте художницы сообщается, что купюра, отпечатанная тиражом десять тысяч экземпляров, будет раздаваться бесплатно в ее галерее на Бродвее в конце октября на презентации проекта.

Основную же массу «долларов» художница намерена доставить непосредственно на Wall Street.

Банкнота художницы внешне повторяют традиционную однадолларовую банкноту, только вместо единицы на ней значится ноль.

Художественный проект Лауры Джилберт совпал с финансовым кризисом, который, как полагают многие влиятельные аналитики, положит конец эре американского доллара как доминирующей мировой валюты.

Манигами - искусство финансового кризиса

2009-05-07T00:51:00.004+03:00

Редакция YouSmi.by
15.04.2009

Учитывая ситуацию в мировой экономике, вероятно, скоро оригами станет самым лучшим вариантом использования денежных купюр.

Одна из американских компаний уже занимается изготовлением оригами из денег и делает это успешно.

Творцы назвали свои произведения «манигами» (moneygami), то есть оригами из денег. Можно сказать, что это искусство, рожденное ситуацией, когда деньги становятся только кусочками бумаги.

Напомним, что не так давно одна американская художница выпустила купюру достоинством ноль долларов, этот символический жест был призван показать конец эры американского доллара как доминирующей мировой валюты. А челябинский сторож Артемий Покатый во всю продвигает идею доллароубежища, где ни одна национальная валюта не обесценится и не будет стоить дешевле, чем другие.

вот в принципе для чего нужны деньги =)

Hedge Funds and the Global Economic Meltdown

2009-04-26T23:00:00.001+03:00

How it happens:

Hedge Funds and the Global Economic Meltdown from Judd Bagley on Vimeo.

Business schools face test of faith

2009-04-22T17:46:00.000+03:00

By Kabir Chibber
Business reporter, BBC News

The Wall Street bulls that fuelled the growth of MBAs are a rare breed

For professional capitalists, it's the ultimate badge of honour.

For years, wannabe Gordon Geckos who wanted to climb the corporate ladder in the financial world needed to have a Masters of Business Administration, or MBA - at least if they wanted to drive the Ferrari and retire by 30 with lots of money.

Held by everyone from former president George W Bush to the current Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, the MBA was the ultimate status symbol for high-flying bankers during the credit boom years.

With the international financial system crippled during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, many are now asking what exactly these people learnt in business schools when they got their MBAs.

The Guardian newspaper recently published an article entitled: "Who taught them greed is good?"

Many argue the schools simply became factories for teaching free market dogma, fostering a business culture that got people to take riskier and riskier punts in search of ever-larger rewards.

The accusation is that business schools are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Capitalism questioned

However, at the elite European and US business schools, there is no radical reworking of their purpose or curriculum.

"In one sense, this is like any other event," said Sir Andrew Likierman, dean of the London Business School (LBS).

The LBS has a spacious modern campus in central London's leafy Regent's Park, the type of place that befits being ranked joint-first in the Financial Times' global MBA rankings for 2009.

The dining room serves stir-fried ostrich with honey and cashew nuts for lunch, but hardly anyone is eating it.

Markets happen everyday, whether people call them that or not

Sally Blount, New York University

The financial crisis is definitely being felt here.

"It's as positive as it can be," said Louis Amadio Rezende, 30, who gave up his job working for a cable TV company in Sao Paulo to begin his MBA at LBS last August.

"People are more stressed because they made an investment and they don't know if they're going to get a job or not at the end."

The MBA at LBS costs £45,500, still much cheaper than many equivalent US degrees.

There are signs for seminars on how to navigate the downturn near the concourse where Mr Rezende and his friends sit.

This year, like any other at LBS, students must study hard if they want to earn their MBAs.

Compulsory subjects include "Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility" and, of course, "Decision and Risk Analysis".

Despite accusations that business schools have their heads buried in the sand, most aren't rushing back to revise their curriculum.

'Business essentials'

Neither do schools feel they need to make changes to prevent another economic meltdown in the future.

"We believe that the business essentials that we teach aren't going to alter even in these times," said Jane Trombley, a spokeswoman for the Columbia Business School in New York.

"It isn't like we're going to change corporate finance, because these things don't change."

The MBA schools also reject the notion that they failed, or are responsible for the mess we're in.

"I don't acknowledge that," Sir Andrew said. "You could place the blame on consumers for borrowing too much, banks for lending too much, governments for allowing all of that to happen."

"If you look at history, most of these kinds of crises occurred before MBAs were around," he added.

Many business schools expect their graduates to turn to NGOs

Yet the CEOs of the now-vanquished Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, Stanley O'Neal and Richard Fuld Jr, were MBAs. (Andy Hornby, the former head of British lender HBOS, also had one from Harvard.)

They were supposed to be a smarter breed of banker. Why did they fail so badly?

"It's difficult to to pin the blame on schools when they may not have engaged with those students for years or decades," said Frank Brown, the dean of France's Insead, which has campuses near Paris and Singapore.

Human nature?

But is there any point to the study of economics when so many cherished beliefs about how markets function are being thrown out the window? None of the deans are suffering from a crisis of faith.

"I absolutely still believe in capitalism - just with more substance and transparency," Mr Brown said.

They argue that economics as a field of academic study is still relevant and won't go the way of alchemy or phrenology and disappear from mainstream thinking.

"Economics is the study of how people make decisions," said Sally Blount, dean of New York University's undergraduate school of business.

"Markets happen everyday, whether people call them that or not."

As he prepares to go to another class, Mr Rezende said he understands why people are questioning the value of business schools, but suggests the crisis is down more to human nature than education.

"You can teach risk management, but if afterwards you go to a place where they reward you to take risk and everyone is making money doing it, then you'll embrace it," he said.

"If people expect the business schools to make people less greedy, then that's too much responsibility."

New realities

With banks firing rather than hiring, the business schools are still businesses and have no choice but to adapt to new economic realities.

At Insead, the normal rate of job offers for students after graduation was about 85-90% in the boom years. This past December, Mr Brown said the rate was more like 65-75%.

So most schools are introducing more compulsory courses in public policy as they seek to send their MBAs to jobs in non-governmental organisations and government institutions that are now taking a bigger role in the world economy.

"I don't think there could be a better time to be educating people our economy, or ethics and how they function with our markets," Ms Blount said.

A new NYU course launching next year in business economy with a larger political component had 800 applications for 50 spots, she said.

And though most business schools reject that they are ivory towers pushing a particular type of economics, there are some tentative suggestions that the disciples of free market economists, such as Milton Friedman, may not be in as much demand at faculties anymore.

"It would get very frustrating to get into conversations with people that thought markets could solve absolutely anything," Ms Blount said. "What we've learnt is that markets aren't gods."

It remains to see whether the letters MBA will be as respected in 21st century as they were in the 20th, or how the banking industry will evolve.

Those working in the field now, though, are having to adapt in ways that would have been unthinkable only months ago.

Last week, a former investment banker, who previously worked in corporate finance, joined The Guardian as a business reporter. It's a scary day when bankers seek the professional security of journalism.

Worldwide Economic Crisis Overcoming

2009-04-14T00:48:00.003+03:00

According to the theory of Kondratief cycles, crises come and go. The same was with the Great Depression in the 1930's in the United States, and will be with the Worldwide Economic Crisis (2007 -???). Before I spoke about the opportunities emerging from the crisis is worth paying attention to its causes.

One of the major causes of the crisis is the only world currency – US Dollar. Particularly China which has attracted the most dollars in treasure bonds of Federal Reserve System of United States of America.
Also inside crises in most developed countries. For example financial crisis in the United States, which has being involved big banks and investment companies. As well, it is the financial crisis affecting in the UK. The economy in Germany was more suffered from falling exports due to the worldwide recession, which caused reduction global demand.

In case of lack of understanding processes and underlying business models due to lack of education leads to poor quality of operational management. Even today, top-manager may think linearly, and working in this way they don’t want to change themselves. Some managers and CEOs relaxed and rested after a very rapid increase in the cost of their companies.

All reasons mentioned above caused falling of world monetary order, The Bretton Woods system.

As in every country in the world, the crisis manifests itself in its own way, crisis have to be fought in each country with its own unique methods.

However universal approach of crisis overcoming could be considered. The first, «resellers» and companies who offer low-quality goods have to disappear from the global market in effect to crisis.

We know that economy science is divided into microeconomics and macroeconomics from Universities’ courses. So I recommend for overcoming the crisis we have to scrutinize on two levels: micro and macro.
At the micro level, especially on the level of human consciousness (individual), it is necessary for people to convey the idea that they are not simply consumers but they are an intelligent human being which can make a consciousness choice. This means that they will never buy something that is imposed by advertising. All kinds of BTL actions, PR actions, TV advertising – these are all imposing on person’s mind. Low quality products are being sold better then high quality products due to advertising on TV and because their’s brighter package.
At the macro level, at the level of countries or unions of countries we have to prevent policies of protectionism. Markets must be opened. It is should to be established new global currency to make a competition for the U.S. dollar. This function will take the International Monetary Fund. There is SDR among other competitive currencies, which includes in a portfolio: U.S. Dollar, Pound Sterling, Euro and Japanese Yen. China has long insisted on repeal that binding the Yuan to the dollar. China wants to be included Yuan in the SDR basket.
It also should be revised estimated costs of many companies which are represented on London’s, New York’s and Tokyo’s stock exchanges. Most of them do not meet the fair value and were overestimated. We were able to see the collapse of all the indices on world’s stock exchanges. In the near future, it is necessary to revise the approach to determining a fair value.
Also, many analysts scope the crisis period as a time of changes. The crisis can only accelerate the introduction of innovations in our lives. This crisis should be a catalyst for the global implementation of initiatives to protect the environment. The problem of excessive amounts of CO₂ emission is still very high and implementation of new methods of operational management, new ecological machines and manufactures will give their investors only positive ROI.

2009-01-30T17:54:00.000+02:00

U.S. GDP Shrank 3.8% Last Quarter, Most Since 1982 (Update2)

By Timothy R. Homan - www.bloomberg.com

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economy shrank the most since 1982 in the fourth quarter as consumer spending recorded the worst slide in the postwar era, a trajectory that’s likely to continue in coming months.

The 3.8 percent annual pace of contraction in the final three months of last year was less than forecast, with a buildup of unsold goods cushioning the blow. Without the jump in inventories, the decline would have been 5.1 percent, the Commerce Department said today in Washington.

“It looks like the economy carried a lot of negative momentum into the first quarter,” former Federal Reserve Governor Laurence Meyer said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

The economy is likely to contract further after retailers and manufacturers from Starbucks Corp. to Boeing Co. this week announced plans to slash payrolls and cut production to get rid of unwanted goods. Today’s report will maintain the pressure on President Barack Obama to win quick congressional approval of a fiscal stimulus package in excess of $800 billion.

“Without the stimulus plan, the economy would be flat to declining in the second half of the year,” said Meyer, who is now vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington. With the recovery package, the unemployment rate may peak at 8 percent instead of 9.5 percent or higher, he added.

Stocks, Treasuries

Stock-index futures pared losses as some investors were encouraged by the smaller drop in gross domestic product than forecast. Contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index rose 0.1 percent to 843.90 at 9:14 a.m. in New York. Treasuries advanced, sending benchmark 10-year note yields to 2.77 percent from 2.86 percent late yesterday.

A separate report today showed that employment costs in the U.S. rose at the slowest pace in almost a decade in the fourth quarter as companies limited wage gains and benefits. The Labor Department’s employment-cost index rose 0.5 percent.

GDP was forecast to contract at a 5.5 percent annual pace last quarter, according to the median estimate of 79 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy, dropped at a 3.5 percent annual rate last quarter following a 3.8 percent drop the previous three months. It’s the first time purchases declined by more than 3 percent in consecutive quarters since records began in 1947.

Third Quarter

The world’s largest economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual rate from July through September. The back-to-back contraction is the first since 1991.

For all of 2008, the economy expanded 1.3 percent as a boost from exports and government tax rebates in the first half of the year helped offset the deepening spending slump.

Congress is considering a two-year fiscal stimulus package supported by Obama. House lawmakers this week passed the $819 billion measure.

The GDP price gauge dropped at a 0.1 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, the most since 1954, reflecting the slump in commodity prices. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, linked to consumer spending and excluding food and fuel, rose at a 0.6 percent pace, the least since 1962.

Unadjusted for inflation, GDP shrank at a 4.1 percent pace, the most since the first three months of 1958. The drop in so- called nominal growth explains why corporate profits slumped as the year ended.

‘No Quick Fix’

“This is a severe, steep, broadly based recession” with “no quick fix,” Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Davos, Switzerland today.

Americans may pull back further as employers slash payrolls. Companies cut 524,000 workers in December, bringing total job cuts for last year to almost 2.6 million. The unemployment rate last month was 7.2 percent, up from 4.9 percent a year before.

More cutbacks are on the way. Eastman Kodak Co., Target Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. are among U.S. companies that announced thousands of layoffs this week.

Target, the second-biggest U.S. discount retailer, said this week it will slash 600 existing jobs and 400 open positions, mainly in its hometown of Minneapolis. It also said it will close a distribution center in Little Rock, Arkansas, later this year that employs 500 workers.

‘Unprecedented’ Environment

“We are clearly operating in an unprecedented economic environment that requires us to make some extremely difficult decisions,” Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel said in a Jan. 27 statement.

The economic slump intensified last quarter as companies also retrenched. Business investment dropped at a 19 percent pace, the most since 1975. Purchases of equipment and software dropped at a 28 percent pace, the most in a half century.

The slump in home construction also accelerated, contracting at a 24 percent pace last quarter after a 16 percent drop in the previous three months.

PPG Industries Inc., the world’s second-biggest paint maker, said this week that it may cut as many as 4,500 employees, or 10 percent of its workforce, because of weak global demand from automakers and homebuilders.

“We are probably looking at the sharpest downturn that anyone working at our company has seen,” Chief Executive Officer Charles E. Bunch said in an interview Jan. 27. “The regions outside of North America, which had been really helping PPG in the first three quarters of last year, have sort of caught the disease that started here in the U.S. with the credit crisis.”

Export Impact

The slowdown in global demand indicates American exports are unlikely to contribute less to growth in early 2009. World growth will be 0.5 percent this year, the weakest postwar pace, the International Monetary Fund said Jan. 28.

Inventories grew at a $6.2 billion pace in the fourth quarter, the first gain in more than a year. Its contribution to growth was the biggest since the fourth quarter of 2005.

The Fed this week said it’s prepared to purchase Treasury securities to shore up lending and warned inflation may recede too rapidly. Fed policy makers voted to leave the benchmark interest rate as low as zero.

The GDP report is the first for the quarter and will be revised in February and March as more information becomes available.

To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy R. Homan in Washington at thoman1@bloomberg.net

Google's Enterprising Future

2008-10-24T13:49:00.004+03:00

Nitin Mangtani 10.24.08, 6:00 AM ET - Forbes.com

For a while now, people have argued that search on the Internet is different from search within the enterprise, and that businesses have markedly different needs from consumers.

At Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), we couldn't agree more. When it comes to search, businesses have a greater need for security and a growing amount of structured and unstructured content to manage. They also continue to cope with information that gets buried in databases, file shares, intranets and increasing numbers of business applications.

However, as consumer needs continue to drive innovation and redefine the expectations of businesses from the bottom up, we feel we have a leg up over enterprise search systems designed to suit a purpose rather than a person. The line between an employee's work life and home life is blurring more and more every day, and this puts Google in a unique position to take what has worked at home on the Internet and tailor that experience to meet the specific needs of the enterprise.

The Internet is no longer a simple list of pages or a collection of text. It's a jungle out there--and the jungle is huge. Google today processes 1 trillion unique URLs, and organizes information ranging from images and videos, to geospatial data, news stories, blogs, books, scholarly articles, finance quotes and more.

Businesses today are staring down the barrel of a similar information overload. Studies show that digital content within organizations is growing at 80% a year, and new types of content are constantly emerging. The challenge these organizations face is analogous to the challenge of Internet search: How do you sort through vast amounts of disparate data and present employees with information they can act on?

Given the innumerable variety of searches possible from one person, let alone from the world's hundreds of millions of Internet users, there's no golden standard a search engine can rely on to organize the world's information. PageRank is one of more than 200 signals we use to rank Web sites and get users the results they need, and we update our algorithms every week.

Similarly, the Google Search Appliance instantly assesses more than 100 variables for each user query, searches more than 200 file types, and is constantly crawling to ensure that new content appears in search results fast. Using our search appliance, consumer products giant Kimberly Clark is able to index 22 million documents from across its vast company infrastructure. All told, more than 20,000 customers use our enterprise search products.

Our online search experience is relevant to businesses in another important way: Employees today expect the same experience at the office, whether they're planning meetings, conducting market analysis and delegating assignments, as when they're at home deciding where to go for dinner or where to take vacation. Search has become a core part of people's lives, and employees operate most efficiently when they have one resource that can bring it all together: Universal search.

In the enterprise, we've engineered a universal search experience similar to what is found on the Internet to securely pull results from across a business's infrastructure--that means databases, file shares, intranet and content management systems.

Furthermore, employees can quickly refine their searches through an automated grouping of search results by topic we call "dynamic clustering." If you need to find out more about a topic, you can drill down your search by categories that are suited to your unique query. To keep things flexible, we also provide a variety of biasing controls for IT administrators, which allow them to better match searches to the searcher. This means engineers get coding specs and marketers get marketing documents.

One of the cardinal lessons we've learned in the consumer world is that none of this works without user trust. In addition to serving the best results, it's essential that users feel secure and in control.

There is no question that the need for security is even more acute within the enterprise. With confidential information, attorney-client privileged exchanges and a host of permissions parameters, it is imperative employees only have access to the documents they have permission and rights to see.

The Google Search Appliance allows employees' access permissions to follow them everywhere--regardless of the system they're logged into. This means employees get the granular, document-level security they need across your business. And if they don't have permission to access a document, it simply doesn't show up in their search results.

So to anyone who believes that simple search isn't enough for enterprise customers--we completely agree. But many of the packages posing as products offered today are less like search and more like developer platforms--complex systems that take huge amounts of time, money and expertise to set up and maintain. At Google, we provide an easy-to-use software and hardware solution that lets you focus on business goals, rather than worrying about the technology that gets you there.

Nitin Mangtani is lead product manager for Google Enterprise Search.

From the www.forbes.com

Losing authority

2008-09-08T20:08:00.003+03:00

At the beginning of your fast growth in leadership understanding you began to conquer authority among your friends, classmates, family. Every minute of your time to the top you step the higher level. But when you change your priorities, you begin to lose your authority in that community, coz you become impertinent, maybe brazen person a bit. And if this process continues too long people that were gathered around you, will not follow you and your values any long....

New Google's browser

2008-09-02T18:42:00.001+03:00

Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project

Today there was a comic book in my mail, sent by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics. Within the 38 pages, which I’ve scanned and put up, in very readable format Google gives the technical details into a project of theirs: an open source browser called Google Chrome. The book points to www.google.com/chrome, but I can’t see anything live there yet. In a nut-shell, here’s what the comic announces Google Chrome to be:

Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox (“omni” is a prefix meaning “all”, as in “omniscient” – “all-knowing”) also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.
Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a secret. As far as Microsoft’s InPrivate mode is concerned, people also speculated it was a “porn mode.”
Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar. Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).
To fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model, Google admits.

This looks like a very interesting project, and I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area. Google is playing this as nicely as possible by open-sourcing things, with perhaps part of the reason to try to defend against monopoly accusations – after all, Google already owns a lot of what’s happening inside the browser, and some may feel owning a browser too could be a little too much power for a single company (Google could, for instance, release browser features that benefit their sites more than most other sites... as can Microsoft with Internet Explorer). For now, until Chrome is released in a testable version, how much of the speed, stability and user interface promises will be fullfilled – and how much of the interface you’ll be able to configure in case you don’t like it – remains to be seen.

[Images by Google.]

Update: Google now posted on this at their blog, announcing the launch date to be tomorrow, Tuesday.

Update 2: At gears.google.com/chrome/, screenshots of Google Chrome have appeared:

The service’s logo is also shown on that page (it also appears in Google’s official reprint of the comic at Google Books):

[Thanks Uval!]

Update 3: More screenshots are available now. [Thanks again Uval!]

Google Chrome, Google’s B ... by Philipp Lenssen |

Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results

2008-07-30T18:41:00.004+03:00

Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007, sometimes for higher-value purposes, according to McKinsey’s second annual survey on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Some 21 percent of the respondents are very satisfied with the way their companies use Web 2.0 tools, which are changing management practices and even organizational structures.

Other companies report that the barriers to adopting Web 2.0 tools include management’s inability to grasp their potential financial returns, unresponsive corporate cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leadership.

For the full article, register for free at TheMcKinsey Quartely

Rubik's Cube

2008-07-22T16:05:00.003+03:00

Do you ever here about Rubik's Cube??
You will say - "Of course".
Maybe you ever tried to solve this difficult puzzle, maybe you have done it and not once.

Today algorithm of solving Rubik's Cube declined to 23 moves.

But if we begin to explorer all math aspects of solution(or just look in Wikipedia :) ), we will be able to find a lot of very cute facts.

So, take Rubik's Cube, and begin to solve it. It isn't very difficult)))
Maybe, You can find the God's Algorithm.

Life cycle by Lodger

2008-07-21T15:11:00.004+03:00

Very philosophical video clip by Lodger to the song "I love death"

Ping.fm bug report

2008-07-21T15:04:00.001+03:00

Very strange: First bug that I found on Ping.fm: It doesn't post message on my blog via gtalk.

2008-07-19T21:01:00.001+03:00

Why facebook didnt register a claim to the vkontakte.ru???
Russian developers maybe stole code, templates, etc.

2008-07-19T17:25:00.006+03:00

17.07.2008. It was a great day, it could be a great day, but it wasn't. If you some time read this post, you have to know that i wanted to help, but...
However, 17th of July was day of disappoint for very smart university entrants.

Our Ministry of Educational Policy has begun crazy.

National University "Kyiv-Mohyla academy" is a unique university in the whole Europe, one of the eldest university in the Eastern Europe. Always NaUKMA graduates are high-educated professionals, they hold very high job positions. Neither of universities in Ukraine can't proud of their corporate culture, such as NaUKMA. Everyone in our University is a patriot of his country, but if such policy will be introduced further, Ukraine will be without smart, proactive, high-educated people.

p r i n c i p l e s o f l i f e

2008-07-16T10:33:00.002+03:00

The main principles of life by Steve Pavlina: Truth, Love, Power.
You know, began to live following these principles and it's amazing, everything is ok. You live, do something and you know that's you don't make concessions with yourself.

Here main combinations:

Oneness = Truth + Love
Authority = Truth + Power
Courage = Love + Power
Intelligence = Truth + Love + Power

Follow them and you will be successful and proactive.

2008-07-15T18:31:00.000+03:00

Вперше розчарувався в системі PING.FM Така потужна система, публікує і оновлює статуси у багатьох соціальних мережах. Веде мікроблогінг на ТВІТЕРІ. Респект. Але з Блогером поки є якась лажа.

ЗІ: Сьогодні взяли на роботи, завтра перший робочий день в гарній компанії.

Почалось....!!

2008-07-13T21:51:00.001+03:00

Нарешті і створив свій бліг:). Я сподіваюсь він буде рости, робитись більшим і кращим. Думаю писати у ньому буде англійською(зараз це модно).