Viewing profile — crapshoot101

Victor David Hanson is a pretty conservative guy and his point certainly has some merit, but there's definitely some "rose-tinted" glasses here. For example, while I tend to agree …

This is a fair point, and I don't disagree, but the lobbying is by no means limited to private corporations. For the best example, look at California and the State prison guard uni…

Btw, Mark Bowden, the author of the story that's cited as the "official" version, makes his case here. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/mark-bowden-bin-laden...

One big danger is assuming that the Pakistani state is some sort of monolithic entity - it isn't. The ISI is a state within the state, and there are significant sectarian movements…

I think its more that the market is pricing in two things in its probability estimation: 1) The deal won't actually close until next summer. Even if we know for certain that the pr…

Its a fair point, but its a little bit more complex than that. For example, EMC's valuation is really dominated by VMWare, of which it owns 80% (indeed, much of the strategic discu…

That's absolutely false. To take one example, ModCloth came out of CMU. Way back in the past, Lycos came out of CMU (a multi-billion $ exit back in the old days). More recently, so…

The most amazing thing for me of the piece is the realization that HP still had $110B+ in revenue last year - its a useful reminder to us (put myself squarely in this category) of …

Michael Pettis is one of the smartest guys alive covering China - well worth a read. Though I wonder if he thinks the demand-side issues are truly fixable in any systematic sort of…

Japan may not officially have nuclear weapons, but they do not lack the capability - if they decided to weaponize (which would never happen short of a Chinese existential threat), …

By the way, Tyler Cowen has an interesting link on this (Citing the FT): note that financial services are the biggest part of Scotland's GDP now, and getting away from the pound wo…

You think Boris wouldn't be the heir apparent in that case, not Osbourne?

Would be shocked if this actually happens. Most Scottish business will move down south (they've said as much loudly), they will not be able to use the pound, and because of the EU'…

Agreed. There are people doing good work in this area, but if we've learnt one lesson, its that the economic gravity tends to win out. In the drug war (not a perfect analogy by any…

Tiger's are another issue - a big reason for the decrease in India's tiger population is that the demand from China is so overwhelming; apparently a tiger's gonads are considered a…