Joanne Jacobs tells a useful story about trying to get money back from a credit card company – with a classic ending.
Monthly Archives: July 2005
Entrepreneurs: An Interview with Wil Shipley
Drunkenblog interviews Wil Shipley, one of the creators of the quite successful Delicious Monster: “The greatest media cataloging software in the world”. Well worth reading. Via Brent.
Open Source Medical Records System
Now, however, Medicare, which says the lack of electronic records is one of the biggest impediments to improving health care, has decided to step in. In an unprecedented move, it said it planned to announce that it would give doctors – free of charge – software to computerize their medical practices. An office with five doctors could save more than $100,000 by choosing the Medicare software rather than buying software from a private company, officials say.
Verona based Epic Systems creates and supports a medical records product along with many other health care tools. Slashdot discussion. Worldvista site.
Kimberly-Clark Plans Job Cuts/Plant Closings
Kimberly-Clark Corp., which has plants in Neenah and Marinette, said Friday that it will cut about 6,000 jobs and sell or close up to 20 manufacturing plants as it increases spending on certain core products and emerging markets over the next three years.
The company, based in Irving, Texas, makes such products as Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers. Kimberly-Clark disclosed its plans as it reported that its second-quarter earnings fell to $421.8 million, or 88 cents per share, from $454.3 million, or 90 cents per share, in the comparable period last year.
K-C moved it’s headquarters from the Fox Valley to Dallas years ago. They still have a large presence in Wisconsin.
Tour de France Quicktime VR Scene – Albi
Gilles Vidal posted a beautiful VR scene of the Tour passing through Albi yesterday.
Saving 10% of Your Salary Is No Longer Enough
The Commerce Department reports a surprisingly low American savings average of under 2% and for those who are dutifully socking away 10% of their pretax income it may not be enough.
Jonathan Clements:
Just when folks ought to be saving more, they are saving less. Trouble ahead? You’d better believe it.
Yes, I have heard all the arguments about how the true savings rate is higher than the 1.3% calculated for 2004 by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA. But don’t let that distract you from the bigger issue.
In a world of disappearing company pensions, skimpy bond yields, rich stock valuations and rising life expectancies, anybody interested in a comfortable retirement should be saving a truckload of money every year — and yet most folks aren’t.
Rate debate. Among pundits, belittling the official savings rate has become something of a national pastime. Some of the arguments seem a little suspect, like the suggestion that buying televisions, cars and other consumer durables ought to be considered saving rather than spending.
Trade & Interest Rates: China sort of Floats the Yuan
The Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog provides a useful look at China’s decision Thursday to slightly float the Yuan (this will likely drive interest rates here higher, unless we actually start to significantly reduce our deficits):
This would imply an unraveling of the Bretton Woods 2 regime and will force the U.S. to make significant and painful adjustments to its private and public savings droughts, droughts that much more than a global savings glut explain why the U.S. external balance has been worsening over time. Then, U.S. private spending, both consumption and investment, may have to fall sharply — driven by higher U.S. interest rates and a bursting of the housing bubble — relative to U.S. output to make room for an improvement of U.S. net exports.
And how much U.S. private spending may be squeezed will depend on whether there is a meaningful structural reduction in the U.S. fiscal imbalance. Less foreign financing of the U.S. external deficits would, for unchanged fiscal balance, tend to crowd out private consumption and private investment via higher interest rates. This U.S. adjustment could be painful.
Reminds of a tale that goes something like this (paraphrasing): a butterfly flaps its wings and this ends up being a hurricane halfway around the world.
US Help for China’s Internet Filtering
Cisco’s sale of networking equipment used to filter Chinese internet traffic has drawn some well justified attention recently (Microsoft’s activities with the Chinese government has also drawn attention):
- Rebecca MacKinnon
Cisco argues that if they don’t do this business, their competitors will. And that will be bad for U.S. jobs. Well, as I’ve said before, at the end of the day either we believe that the ideals of “freedom” and “democracy” mean something, and are worth sacrificing short-term profit so that more people around the world have a chance of benefiting from them, or we don’t. Cisco clearly doesn’t. This is an insult to the thousands of Americans – public servants, men and women in uniform, journalists and others – who risk their lives daily in far-flung corners of the globe for the sake of these ideals.
- Anne Applebaum:
Without question, China’s Internet filtering regime is “the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world,” in the words of a recent report by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The system involves the censorship of Web logs, search engines, chat rooms and e-mail by “thousands of public and private personnel.” It also involves Microsoft Inc., as Chinese bloggers discovered last month. Since early June, Chinese bloggers who post messages containing a forbidden word — “Dalai Lama,” for example, or “democracy” — receive a warning: “This message contains a banned expression, please delete.” It seems Microsoft has altered the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN Spaces, at the behest of Chinese government. Bill Gates, so eloquent on the subject of African poverty, is less worried about Chinese free speech.
UPDATE: Rebecca comments on a recent Newsweek story that fails to mention her 9 years of experience in China, among other items.
Nominee Represented CUNA in Supreme Court Case
WASHINGTON–John G. Roberts, President George W. Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a history with credit unions: He argued the AT&T Family FCU case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6, 1997.
At the time, Roberts was a 42-year-old partner in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. He argued the case for the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, which intervened on behalf of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
The Supreme Court eventually ruled against credit unions in the case, based on a suit brought by bankers in 1990 against NCUA over the field-of-membership expansion the agency granted AT&T Family FCU, Winston-Salem, N.C. The events culminated into the push for the Credit Union Membership Access Act (H.R. 1151), which President Clinton signed into law in August of 1998.
In 1997, after arguing the case, Roberts told CUNA News Now, “It’s always a mistake to try to predict the outcome of a case from the justices’ questions.”
He explained that there was nothing credit unions and members could do to influence the court’s decision. “The court isn’t like Congress and third parties we’ve lobbied. The court is looking at the law,” said Roberts.
CUNA General Counsel Eric Richard worked with Roberts during the AT&T case. He said the nominee is “enormously talented with an exceedingly bright legal mind.”
“CUNA and the credit union movement were privileged to have been represented by him,” said Richard. “We wish Judge Roberts all the best.”
Media Changes SF Chronicle Cutting Jobs
“We understand that they’re losing money,” he said. “We were trying to be good Samaritans, and we got stabbed in the back.”
The paper is in a strong position to seek union concessions because it opened its financial records to a union auditor, who confirmed that the Chronicle lost more than $62 million last year. Ms. Hoyt said that in the last two months the paper has been losing money at a faster rate — about two million dollars a week* — though the loss was less earlier this year.
Because Hearst is a privately held company, it is under no obligation to explain its finances to the public. While the union has confirmed the multimillion-dollar losses, it doesn’t know all the details, such as the salary and benefits of the publisher. The union said the paper is being mismanaged and has too many managers per employee.
Via Dan Gillmor (I agree that it’s hard to believe the Chronicle is losing $1m per week).