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500-Person Threshold Debated for Its 47-Year History - NYTimes.com
7:46 p.m. | Updated After news broke of the investment by Goldman Sachs in the social networking site Facebook , a harsh spotlight was cast on a nearly 50-year-old law that limits the number of shareholders in a private company. In 1964, regulators started requiring companies with more than 499 shareholders to publicly report their financial results. It is a rule that has been debated from the outset — and the issues raised now are the same ones raised then. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the frenzied buying and selling of Facebook shares and other private technology companies in the secondary market.
Federal Reserve staff and policy makers identified a housing bubble in 2005 and failed to alter a predictable path of interest-rate increases to slow down the expansion of mortgage credit, transcripts from Open Market Committee meetings that year show. Led by then-Chairman Alan Greenspan , the FOMC raised the benchmark lending rate in quarter-point increments to 4.25 percent from 2.25 percent at the end of December 2004. The committee also removed uncertainty about the pace of rate increases by telegraphing that future moves would be “measured” in every statement. Enlarge image
Fed Officials Saw Housing Bubble in 2005, Didn't Alter Policy - Bloomberg
Former US House speaker Newt Gingrich, in 2008: when he took on President Bill Clinton over the budget, which led to a government shutdown in 1995-96, the Republican party lost the battle for public opinion. Photograph: Kevin Wolf/AP Months, even weeks, ago it might have been seen as inconceivable.
John Boehner's high-stakes shutdown game | Alex Slater | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Adam Smith Was Right about Corporate CEOs’ Incentives absent Effective Regulation | The Big Picture
Our different views prove that hindsight is often myopic. Larry White’s take is that Clintonian regulations perverted private incentives. The boom and bust happened in a system with … extensive legal restrictions on financial intermediation. Nor have we had banking and financial deregulation since … 1999.Bleacher Report Raises $10.5M; Now Fifth Largest Sports Site
Bleacher Report is going to announce a new $10.5 million round of venture capital this morning and a lot of people reading this will probably say, “Bleacher-who?” Somehow Bleacher Report has pulled off two things you’re not supposed to be able to pull off in Silicon Valley’s Web scene. The first is keeping a low-profile while growing steadily in users and revenues.
College Football Winners Still Lose as Bowl Costs Exceed Payout - Bloomberg
Rutgers University celebrated its 8- 4 record last football season with a trip to the St. Petersburg Bowl in Florida. Big East Conference schools got stuck with a $740,000 bill.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that he will vote to approve the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal as long as certain conditions are met, a significant step toward the formation of a new Internet and media powerhouse. Julius Genachowski issued a draft order of approval for the merger on the condition that the companies promise to share TV shows not only with competing cable and telecom services but also, to some extent, with new Web platforms , such as Apple TV and Netflix, that want to offer television over the Internet. The order was circulated to the other four members of the FCC for consideration, with the agency likely to vote next month. The Justice Department, which is conducting a separate antitrust review of the deal, has not indicated its position.
Comcast-NBC merger gains traction
Print is dead. Or is it just sleeping? A decade ago, designer Jessica Helfand, wrote a passionate defense of the written word (and of typography in particular) to her then two year old daughter, Fiona. Well, it actually was an essay commemorating the second edition of David Carson's The End of Print , (which was published way back in 1995, ages before Kindles, iPads, and Smartphones and had precious little to say about technology's rapid encroachment).
Print. It Ain't Dead Yet - Design - GOOD
Going Bankrupt: 100 Bailed Out Banks | The Big Picture
The WSJ reports today that nearly 100 U.S. banks that got TARP funds from the federal government in Q4 2008 are in danger of going bankrupt. So far, 7 bailout recipients have failed, resulting in more than $2.7 billion in lost TARP funds. The balance of the remaining potential failures relatively small banks — the median size was $439 million in assets, and the median TARP infusion was $10 million apiece: “Nearly 100 U.S. banks that got bailout funds from the federal government show signs they are in jeopardy of failing.
Publications 'Boston Globe' To Launch Pay Site 10/01/2010
Following in The New York Times' footsteps, The Boston Globe on Thursday announced plans to launch a paid subscription Web site by the second half of 2011. Named BostonGlobe.com, the paid site will feature news and feature stories, commentary, analysis, photographs and graphics published in the paper's daily and Sunday newspapers. As part of a two-pronged strategy, Boston.com will remain free to readers, and continue to serve a platform for advertisers. Its focus will remain daily local news reports, sports, and weather, as well as guides to local entertainment, travel and restaurants.SunChips and Supercapitalism - - Technology - The Atlantic
The Internet is astir with the news that SunChips are ditching their newish bioplastic bag because it is perceived as being too loud . Some agree with Frito-Lay's decision, others disagree, and still others point out that bioplastic is not always an environmental win . But we're all dancing around the larger point:Alexia Tsotsis works for TechCrunch as a writer. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles... → Learn More Yes, according to multiple reports and our own experience (see left) Yahoo.com , the Internet’s biggest portal is currently down for the count, both in the US and abroad. Maybe the traffic behemoth couldn’t take all the “merging with AOL” speculation and just decided to take the day off?
Yahoo Is Down, As If Carol Bartz Needed More Problems
The Long Nose of Innovation
by Bill Buxton In October of 2004, Chris Anderson wrote an article in Wired magazine called The Long Tail , a theory he expanded upon in his 2006 book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More . In it he captures some interesting attributes of online services, using a concept from statistics which describes how it is now possible for the "long tail" of a low-amplitude population to make up the majority of a company's business.TheStreet.com - 15 minutes ago By TheStreet Staff 04/06/12 - 02:59 PM EDT NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The Treasury Department Friday said that the CEOs of Ally Financial, American International Group(AIG) and General Motors(GM) won't get pay raises in 2012. Forbes - 2 hours ago Friday's jobs report definitely put a cap on market enthusiasm, suggesting the recovery remains tepid. Non-farm payrolls (NFP) added 120000 jobs in March, well below the 200000+ recorded over the last three months, indicating seasonal improvements ... Washington Post - 3 hours ago