Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
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Interesting read from the online opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this morning. The subject is Sarbanes-Oxley, Congress’ magic bullet intended to stop the Enron mess from ever happening again. The Journal has taken a consistent position against this new oversight, claiming the regulatory cost to be high, and the benefits to the public to be sparse at best, since Enron’s shenanigans were the exception rather than the rule from the very beginning.
Now the appeal to investors is getting skewed. The market of publicly-traded equities is down, or stalling, while privately-held concerns are up, as are the foreign stock markets.
Behind much of this trend is basic economics. Hedge funds, pension funds and endowments are all looking for new places to invest their mountains of cash, and private equity has been offering some impressive returns. Corporate management, meanwhile, far from running from these new barbarians at their gates, often see a financial upside. With capital abundant, the cost of borrowing low and return on equity soaring, why not?
But that’s hardly the whole equation. At least part of the strength of private equity is a direct result of the problems besetting public markets. Public-to-private deals are in fact lengthy and costly and can lead to unpleasantness with shareholders–often via lawsuits. The fact that so many companies have nonetheless been willing to take the plunge speaks volumes about how eager they are to escape the increasing burdens of public-company regulation.
Sarbanes-Oxley has been the last straw for some, with its auditing and reporting requirements imposing major new costs, especially on smaller companies. This has already played a part in the remarkable slowdown in U.S. initial public offerings. Today’s largest IPOs are taking place mainly on foreign markets, away from the reach of U.S. regulators. New York Stock Exchange CEO John Thain understands this as well as anyone, which is one reason for his $20 billion EuroNext purchase.
I’m looking around, and I see that overall the economic climate is doing pretty good. But wherever there is a business, it’s a big-big-big business. The startup, the spinoff, these seem to almost be a thing of the past. And that’s a sad thing when you stop to consider how much of what we have today, we owe to businesses like those. We may very well have just killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
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