Cognitive Dissonance…
January 28, 2012
The New York Times reports this morning on the latest U.S. GDP figures:
Growth Accelerates, but U.S. Has Lots of Ground to Make Up
The American economy picked up a little steam last quarter, growing at its fastest pace in a year and a half. Whether it can sustain that momentum is critical to millions of Americans out of work — and perhaps President Obama’s re-election chances…

But Nomura Securities analysts looked at the same glass and saw it decidedly half-empty, as Business Insider reports:
Core Economic Growth Slowed Sharply In Q4
In regards to this morning’s mediocre GDP report, Nomura cuts right to the chase in a note titled ‘Core Economic Growth Slowed Sharply’ in Q4.
Here’s their commentary:
Inventory building contributed 1.9 percentage points (pp) to growth in Q4 2011 after subtracting 1.4pp in Q3. The measure of final sales, which is a “core” view of the economy that removes the effect of inventories, grew at an annual rate of just 0.8% in Q4 compared with 3.2% in Q3. Under this perspective, the US economy slowed sharply in the final quarter of the year. The choppiness in quarterly growth in the back half of 2011 is partially due to the rebound following the dampening effect on economic growth stemming from the Japan earthquake and tsunami that hit on 11 March. The second half rebound was front-loaded into Q3. The same pattern can be seen when looking at the industrial production data, which also tracks the broad economy. In Q3, industrial production rebounded to an annual growth rate of 6.3% (following 0.6% in Q2) followed by slower growth of 3.1% in Q4. To smooth the effect of the rebound from temporary factors, economic growth in H2 2011 advanced at an average annual rate of 2.2% compared with 0.8% in H1.
And here’s the chart that demonstrates the point. The gray line is what Nomura calls ‘core’.

You can’t make this stuff up…
November 13, 2011
Sony’s Howard Stringer Says He’s Ready To Compete Against Steve Jobs
November 11, 2011
Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer told The Wall Street Journal Thursday that he’s finally ready to compete against Steve Jobs.
“I spent the last five years building a platform so I can compete against Steve Jobs. It’s finished, and it’s launching now,” Stringer told the paper, referring to Sony’s strategy of competing on smartphones, PCs, televisions, and tablets.
Jobs, of course, died Wednesday, October 5, of pancreatic cancer. In August, Jobs resigned as Apple’s CEO and was replaced by his longtime Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook.
Last week, Sony projected a 90-billion yen, or $1.2 billion, loss for the fiscal year ending in March after the company reported a surprise loss of 27 billion yen for the quarter ending September 30. Sony had earlier promised a 60 billion-yen profit for the fiscal year ending in March…
As the friend who forwarded this noted, given the headline, one might expect to find the article in The Onion… But in fact it is (and one can find it in full) at Forbes.
To put this into context, Stringer is certainly right that (as he goes on to confess in the interview cited above), he’s presided over some lean years. especially as compared to his bete noire. Consider these results, compiled by Dan Frommer at SplatF:
Indeed, as Business Insider (drawing on Frommer’s further analysis) points out, to the extent that Sony has refrained from completely cratering, it is for reasons that have little to do with what consumers understand Sony to be about– financial services– and the one-time sale of Spiderman merchandising rights:
Still, Stringer, who joined Sony in 1997, has enjoyed the continued support of his board. Earlier this year he had to cope with disasters both out-of-his-control (the Fukushima melt-down) and self-inflicted (the multiple breeches of lax online security at Sony’s video game site, which exposed personal data of hundreds of thousands of users)… this, as Motley Fool notes, on the heels of
- Sony’s laptop batteries exploded. A lot. (2006. With a reprise in 2008.)
- Sony repeatedly stood up gamers waiting for PlayStation 3. (2006)
- Sony got “flogged” when Netizens realized it had created a fake blog to push its PSP. (2006) (Incidentally, this kind of marketing fakery wasn’t new — Sony created a fake critic to talk up one of its 2001 films.)
- Music unit Sony BMG took antipiracy efforts so seriously it went anti-customer and sold discs designed to install rootkits (popularly considered spyware) on buyers’ computers. (2005)
- Sony got in hot water for payola — yeah, for real. (2005)
None of these transgressions rise to Olympus-like levels. And Stringer has taken a 15% cut in comp (to $4.3 million per year, plus benefits), while asking other senior execs to shave 11% from their pay… But the stock has lost over half it’s value in the last decade, standing near it’s all-time low. And there’s no end in sight.
You can’t make this stuff up.
I’m a poet, and I didn’t know it…
November 1, 2011
A guest post from (Roughly) Daily…
The Economist‘s Free Exchange blog report’s on the Kauffman Foundation‘s most recent quarterly survey:
THE KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION conducts a quarterly survey of economics bloggers (you can see the third quarter results here). It tends to focus on current economic conditions and policy questions, but the fourth-quarter questionnaire contained something a little different: a challenge to capture the state of the economy in haiku. The results are sublime…
Indeed. Consider the stylings of Reuters’ Felix Salmon:
No one has a job
Except econobloggers
And they’re not paid much
Or the musings of Professor Stephen Karlson:
Intermodal loadings increase
Trade conflict looms without cease
Occupy Wall Street
Or this, from Robert Cringely:
Econ guys, gentle souls
Think policies guide markets
Jail time is better
Or the only-too-culturally-appropriate contribution of Amol Agrawal:
When Japan fell in 1990s
They were lectured by the world economists
Time for Japanese to smile
… more at “The economy in haiku .”
As we think in seventeen syllables, we might recall that it was on this date in 1993 that the Maastricht Treaty came into effect, formally establishing the European Union (EU)… and laying the groundwork for the Eurozone– the European Monetary Union and the creation of the Euro– and thus for the painful pecuniary pageant that is playing out on the Continent today…

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