Richard T. Wilkey (owner of Fisher-Barton), who runs a small Wisconsin company that makes cutting blades for lawn mowers and harvesting equipment, worries that he will soon be vulnerable to competition from China. But he is afraid that by the time he gets help from Washignton, it ma be too late.
Monthly Archives: October 2005
KPMG Tax Shelters: A Very Strange Indictment
Robert Weisberg and David Mills:
The recent indictment of some KPMG partners makes for very interesting reading. In the months leading up to it (and the now-rumored indictment of other tax advisors on similar grounds), numerous news stories suggested the KPMG accountants had somehow knowingly participated in tax fraud by creating fake losses for wealthy clients. Whether or not this proves true, the indictment makes no such allegation. While the accountants and their clients may have done some bad things, the notion that their behavior is criminal, and even sufficiently criminal to threaten the very existence of this major firm and its thousands of jobs, casts doubt on the fairness and judgment with which the federal prosecutors have exercised their discretion.
Why did they do so in this case? Probably for the simple reason that they are — quite properly — offended by the proliferation of newfangled and economically questionable tax shelters, yet at the same time exasperated that Congress shows no interest in legislating these shelters out of existence or enacting a clear “business purpose” requirement, in spite of repeated requests from the Internal Revenue Service. The prosecutors seem to be venting their frustration over this failure to act by fashioning felony charges out of ethereal legal material.
Delphi’s Bankruptcy
Peter DeLorenzo points out the stakes in play with Delphi’s bankruptcy:
The Delphi bankruptcy is the latest major crack in the pressure cooker that the U.S. auto industry has become over the last two decades – only this one is definitely the tipping point into a dimension that industry insiders have been dreading. Lower cost competition from around the world has changed the auto manufacturing landscape completely – and Detroit has been operating under a model that has been obsolete for years. Strapped with a crushing wage and benefits structure negotiated in an environment fueled by an optimism that in retrospect had absolutely no right to exist, the American car companies and the United Auto Workers union are now facing a future that revolves around a harsh reality that comes down to this one simple but all-encompassing statement: change or die.
Northern Opportunities
Fascinating article on plans to open polar shipping routes. Reminds me of 15th century opportunism:
With major companies and nations large and small adopting similar logic, the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Even before the polar ice began shrinking more each summer, countries were pushing into the frigid Barents Sea, lured by undersea oil and gas fields and emboldened by advances in technology. But now, as thinning ice stands to simplify construction of drilling rigs, exploration is likely to move even farther north.
Entrepreneurs: Austin’s Soup Peddler
Yes … that’s David Ansel, the Soup Peddler, in a lengthy spread from November’s issue of FOOD AND WINE magazine. (Nice to see the Law of Remarkability in action.)
This autumn we find the Soup Peddler in the beginning throes of his fifth soup season. But this year, many things have changed for Brand Autopsy’s favorite jumboSHRIMP Marketing business. Gone is the infamous delivery bike in favor of deliveries by refrigerated trucks. And gone is the single-minded soup menu. In its place is an expanded menu including entrees because as David said in an email to his Soupies,
Wholesale Surveillance: Boston’s License Plate Scanners
he Boston Transportation Department, among other duties, hands out parking tickets. If a car has too many unpaid parking tickets, the BTD will lock a Denver Boot to one of the wheels, making the car unmovable. Once the tickets are paid up, the BTD removes th boot.
The white SUV in this photo is owned by the Boston Transportation Department. Its job is to locate cars that need to be booted. The two video cameras on top of the vehicle are hooked up to a laptop computer running license plate scanning software. The vehicle drives around the city scanning plates and comparing them with the database of unpaid parking tickets. When a match is found, the BTD officers jump out and boot the offending car. You can sort of see the boot on the front right wheel of the car behind the SUV in the photo.
Some Clipping at the Newspapers
“The basic newspaper, when you take out the Internet and all the other targeted publications that people are starting, is just not growing,” said P. Anthony Ridder, chairman and chief executive of Knight Ridder, which owns The Inquirer. “Newsprint costs are up significantly. Wages and health benefits are up. So you have the cost pressure on the one hand and the lack of revenue growth on the other. That’s really the problem, and everyone is having essentially the same problem.”
RFID & Privacy
If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ”shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.” An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn’t really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn’t intend to pursue. Still, it’s clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.
Wading Toward Home
Michael Lewis (with his better half, Tabitha Soren riding shotgun taking pictures) visits post flood New Orleans:
Immediately he had a problem: a small generator that powered one tiny window air-conditioning unit. It cooled just one small room, his office. But the thing made such a racket that, as he put it, “they could have busted down the front door and be storming inside and I wouldn’t have heard them. There could have been 20 natives outside screaming, ‘I’m gonna burn your house down,’ and I’d a never heard it.” Fearing he might nod off and be taken in his sleep, he jammed a rack filled with insurance-industry magazines against the door. (Haywood sells life insurance.) In his little office, he sat all night – as far as he knew, the last white person left in New Orleans. He tried to sleep, he said, but “I kept dreaming all night long someone was coming through the door.” He didn’t leave his air-conditioned office until first light, when he crept out and squinted through his mail slot. In that moment, he was what Uptown New Orleans had become, even before the storm: a white man, alone, peering out through a slot in search of what might kill him. All he needed was the answer.
Long Now Foundation Seminars – Online
Fascinating stuff.