Showing posts with label Capitol Hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capitol Hill. Show all posts

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Could America Grow At 5%

I think it is extremely possible. The 2008 fiasco was a policy failure on a massive scale. The 2008 fiasco was preventable. The 2008 fiasco was stupidity run amok, on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill. Main Street paid the price, and continues to do so. In any other industry the fiasco would have given rise to a whole new generation of innovative companies. The rules in finance are obviously not market friendly enough.

It was like somebody (at home) bombed the interstate highways. The basic fabric of finance lay in tatters.

China is on its way to becoming the leading economy in the world by 2016. But that is based on PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) and that is a country with four times as many people as America. And a lot of that growth is coming from playing catch up with America. America still shows signs of coming up with the industries of tomorrow. I think the explanation is simple. A country that celebrates free speech will beat a country that does not celebrate free speech any day when it comes to cutting edge innovation.

Yes but of course America could hit 5% growth rates. The Great Recession could have been avoided, if only the people on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill had been doing their job.


The American economy: Comeback Kid
Unemployment is stuck above 8% and growth probably slipped below an annualised 2% in the first half of this year. Ahead lie the threats of a euro break-up, a slowdown in China and the “fiscal cliff”, a withering year-end combination of tax increases and spending cuts...... Led by its inventive private sector, the economy is remaking itself. Old weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste Asia. ..... America’s sluggishness stems above all from pre-crisis excesses ..... Until 2008 growth relied too heavily on consumer spending and house-buying, both of them financed by foreign savings channelled through an undercapitalised financial system. Household debt, already nearly 100% of income in 2000, reached 133% in 2007. Recoveries from debt-driven busts always take years, as households and banks repair their balance-sheets. ...... in the past three years that repair has proceeded fast. America’s houses are now among the world’s most undervalued: 19% below fair value ..... because the Treasury and other regulators, unlike their euro-zone counterparts, chose to confront the rot in their financial system quickly, American banks have had to write off debts and raise equity faster than their peers. (Citigroup alone has flushed through some $143 billion of loan losses; no euro-zone bank has set aside more than $30 billion.) American capital ratios are among the world’s highest. And consumers have cut back, too: debts are now 114% of income. ..... a richer China has become the third-largest market for America’s exports, up 53% since 2007 ...... a growing “app economy”, nurtured by Facebook, Apple and Google, which employs more than 300,000 people; its games, virtual merchandise and so on sell effortlessly across borders .... even small companies are seeking a toehold in emerging markets ..... Many countries have shale gas, but, as it did with the internet revolution, America leads in exploiting it ...... Even the most productive start-ups cannot help an economy held back by dilapidated roads, the world’s most expensive health system, underachieving union-dominated schools and a Byzantine immigration system that deprives companies of the world’s best talent
America’s economy: Points of light
American companies have left their mark all over Shanghai’s skyline..... Five of America’s biggest banks wrote off almost $500 billion in the aftermath of the financial crisis and raised $318 billion in fresh capital. As a result, their equity ratios now exceed 10%—above both pre-crisis levels and those of euro-zone banks. ...... Consumers are now engaged in a long, hard process of shedding debt and learning to live within their means. .... an uncommonly feeble recovery. In the three years since the recession ended, GDP has grown by an average of 2.4%. ..... With many old mortgages defaulted on and written off, and new ones harder to get, debt burdens have shrunk considerably. ..... two things beyond America’s control: the slowing world economy and the rising price of oil, America’s largest import. ..... Sales to traditional markets in the OECD, a rich-world club, have risen 20% since the end of 2007. But they have risen 51% to Latin America and 53% to China, which is now America’s third-largest market after Canada and Mexico. ..... Services have long been an American strength, consistently making up 30% of its exports. ..... scientific, engineering and other consulting, plus financial services .... Exports of such services to Brazil, India and China nearly doubled between 2006 and 2010. .... This trend has been pushed on by digital technology, which makes effortless the sale of many services across borders. ..... Zynga, one of the largest makers of online games and mobile entertainment applications, recorded $1.1 billion in revenue last year, largely from the sales of virtual goods in its games. A third of this came from players who live outside America. ...... Manufacturing employment has risen steadily for two years now. ..... Traditionally, America’s largest companies, such as Boeing and Caterpillar, have dominated exports. Small companies find distribution, regulation and language barriers overwhelming in foreign countries. ...... Small companies (with fewer than 500 employees) accounted for 34% of exports in 2010, up from 29% in 2006. ..... Soaring grain exports have raised farmers’ incomes to record levels, and regulators fret about incipient bubbles in agricultural land. At the same time, surging oil prices have triggered a gusher of new output. ..... America is the world’s third-largest oil producer. ..... a bonanza of domestic gas. Americans pay less than $3 for 1m British thermal units, where Europeans and Asians often pay more than $10. ..... America’s most successful exporters employ relatively few people. .... Emerging markets may have survived the 2008 crisis largely unscathed, but their growth is now succumbing to their own financial excesses. Nor are they an easy place to make money. China’s government, in particular, often forces foreign companies to share with local partners the ideas that give them their competitive advantage
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Friday, August 03, 2012

Drones In The Sky

A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares...
A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land after a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The Reaper has the ability to carry both precision-guided bombs and air-to-ground missiles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is like the Google Maps truck peering through your window, all the time. Allowing domestic use by law enforcement will be tricky enough. Wait until civilians get their hands on the licenses. This thing is a serious invasion of privacy, potentially speaking. Paparazzi would have a field day. Too bad because so many great uses can be thought of.


Lawmakers Want to Know: What Are Those Drones Doing Up There?
issue licenses to commercial drone operators and to make it easier for law enforcement and other government agencies to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles ..... Drones are already used to monitor movement on the borders .... shooting Hollywood movies, monitoring oil spills and conducting criminal investigations ..... the possibility of ubiquitous surveillance, especially because the law currently protects the right to take pictures of anyone and anything in public. ..... a voluntary code of conduct which includes a provision to “respect the privacy of individuals.” .... The prospects of any imminent movement on Capitol Hill, though, seem to be minimal. Stubborn partisan divisions have so far doomed agreement on a bill that seeks to strengthen cybersecurity for the electrical grid, nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure

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Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Tech Leadership On Patent Reform

The official online color is: #A4C639 . 한국어: 공...
The official online color is: #A4C639 . 한국어: 공식 온라인 색은: #A4C639 . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is for the biggest tech companies to take the lead on patent reform. Perhaps there are allies on Capitol Hill. But this Microsoft gesture seems to seek patent defeat not patent peace. For now the big dogs are in mood to duke it out, not hug it out. That is the impression I get.

Microsoft to Google: Enough With the Diversionary Tactics, Let’s Hug It Out
called on Google and Motorola to join it in hammering out a comprehensive settlement of intellectual property disputes between them ..... Motorola’s public proposal to take a license for only a small sub-set of the large number of Microsoft patents used in its products will not result in durable patent peace ..... “Microsoft wants to undercut Motorola’s industry-leading patent portfolio, licensed by more than 50 other companies on fair and reasonable terms, while seeking inflated royalties tied to standards that Microsoft alone controls. Motorola is always open to negotiations that avoid wasteful and abusive patent claims.”
A Solid Foundation for Patent Peace
we are seeking solely the same level of reasonable compensation for our patented intellectual property that numerous other Android distributors – both large and small – have already agreed to recognize in our negotiations with them.
Microsoft to Motorola: The way to 'patent peace'
The patent wrangles have a complicated history: earlier this year more than a dozen Android-powered Motorola devices were banned from being imported to the U.S. for sale because Motorola was found to have infringed Microsoft's ActiveSync patent, thanks to a ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). ..... More recently, a German court banned the sale of all Motorola devices running Android because the smartphone maker infringed a Microsoft-owned patent relating to file storage. .... Meanwhile Motorola secured an injunction against Windows 7 and the Xbox in Germany over H.264 video codecs, though the sales ban will not be enforced immediately. Microsoft said it wanted to use the video compression technology, but Motorola would charge in the region of $4 billion in annual royalties -- which Microsoft said was not at the market rate.
Microsoft wants 'patent peace' in ongoing Motorola spat
Microsoft's lawyers pen a public note to Motorola: 'We want to talk because this patent nonsense is getting way out of hand.' Will the two companies kiss and make up, or squabble until a court rules?

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Sunday, April 15, 2012

Give Me Blazing Broadband, Or Give Me, Give Me


Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

I once said there is a direct correlation between Sergey's parents having to flee Russia and Sergey's principled stand on China. Some of us are free speech bigots. I am one. Now I am extending that metaphor. Only now it's not about China, it is about America. And it is still about free speech.

A lot of people I admire in the tech industry wrongly frame the debate in that they suggest if only people on Capitol Hill knew, if only lobbyists did not have this much unfair power. I think more than that is at stake. The Internet turns the entire world into one country, and the nation state as we know it feels threatened. The Internet sends a clear message that Capitol Hill is not the center of the universe. The universe has no center. And that suggestion riles Galileo's enemies.

The Internet is a country. It is the new country. It is the newest country. I said this back in 1999 when I was with my first serious startup while at college. America is Europe. The Internet is America now.

Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country

Although I'd not put China, Saudi Arabia and Iran in the same category as Facebook and Apple. Facebook's "walled garden" exists because people choose to keep many things private on there. Although I would argue services like Google should have ready access to stuff people publicly share on there, as well on Twitter. API level success, don't need nobody's permission kind of access. Immediate access. Apple's iPhone apps go away when HTML5 and wireless broadband become mainstream just like desktop apps have given way to the cloud. Although one can argue there has got to be a better way to search though the hundreds of thousands of smartphone apps.

The Guardian: Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin
the threat to the freedom of the internet came from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry attempting to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" so-called walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly controlled what software could be released on their platforms. ..... he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet ...... the intensifying battle for control of the internet that is being fought across the globe between governments, companies, military strategists, activists and hackers ....... From Hollywood's attempts to push through legislation allowing pirate websites to be shut down, to the British government's plans to monitor social media and web use, the ethos of openness championed by the pioneers of the internet and worldwide web is being challenged on a number of fronts. ....... In China, which now has more internet users than any other country in the world, the government recently introduced new "real identity" rules in a bid to tame the boisterous micro-blogging scene. In Russia there are powerful calls to rein in a blogosphere that was blamed for fomenting a wave of anti-Putin protests. It has been reported that Iran is planning to introduce a sealed "national internet" from this summer. ........ Ricken Patel, co-founder of Avaaz, the 14 million-strong online activist network which has been providing communication equipment and training to Syrian activists, echoed Brin's warning, saying: "We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realising the power of this medium to organise people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world." ...... Brin said he was not surprised by the effectiveness with which China had so far managed to create a technological barrier against the outside world. "I'm more surprised by the acceptance," he said. "I had imagined people would be more rebellious." ........ it would be hugely difficult for any government to defend its online "territory". ........ He reserved his harshest words for the entertainment industry, which he said was "shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot" by lobbying for legislation to block sites offering pirate material. ...... the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by Hollywood and the music industry would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. ...... "I haven't tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like, it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work – and then when you have to jump through all these hoops [to buy legitimate content], the walls created are disincentives for people to buy"

CNet: Google's Sergey Brin: Facebook and Apple a threat to Internet freedom

Al Zazeera: The UK government's war on internet freedom
Despite declaring early on in his term that internet freedom should be respected "in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square", his government is now considering a series of laws that would dramatically restrict online privacy and freedom of speech. ...... would allow the government to monitor every email, text message and phone call flowing throughout the country. Internet service providers (ISPs) would be forced to install hardware that would give law enforcement real time, on-demand access to every internet user's IP address, email address books, when and to whom emails are sent and how frequently - as well as the same type of data for phone calls and text messages. ....... Because many popular services - like Google and Facebook - encrypt the transmission of user data, the government also would force social media sites and other online service providers to comply with any data request. ....... "In a terrorism investigation, the police will already have access to all the data they could want. This is about other investigations." The information gathered in this new programme would be available to local law enforcement for use in any investigation and would be available without any judicial oversight. ....... "A cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged the government to consider introducing legislation that would force Google to censor its search results to block material that a court has found to be in breach of someone's privacy." ...... a Scottish oil company obtained a super-injunction against Greenpeace to keep photographs of the environmental group's protest off social media sites. Within hours, unaffiliated users posted hundreds of the pictures, effectively nullifying the order. If the recommendation by the MPs were followed, Google, Facebook and Twitter would have to proactively monitor and remove such results from their webpages. ........ Despite the enormous backlash over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US, the UK government is reportedly trying to broker a backroom deal between ISPs and content companies in which search engines would start "voluntarily" censoring sites accused of copyright infringement. The deal would force search engines to blacklist entire websites from search results merely upon an allegation of infringement, and artificially promote "approved" websites. ....... recently, one man was forced to pay 90,000 pounds (plus costs) because of two tweets that were seen by an estimated 65 people in England and Wales. ...... Britain is home to many of the companies exporting high tech surveillance equipment to authoritarian countries in the Middle East, where it is used to track journalists and democratic activists. The technology, which can be used to monitor a country's emails and phone calls, is similar to what the UK government will have to install to implement its own mass surveillance programme.

Fred Wilson: Life Liberty and Blazing Broadband

Saturday, January 14, 2012

SOPA Is So Going Down

South façade of the White House, the executive...Image via WikipediaAnd now the White House is against it. And looks like the bill is nowhere close to hitting the floor of the House. The authors and proponents of the bill have been caught flat-footed. They obviously did not see this coming. Ever since the advent of the internet I have not seen the tech honchos getting this political. Everyone and their competition is up in arms.

I mean, can you imagine Google and Facebook and Twitter all going offline, even if only for an hour, to protest this well-intentioned piece of legislation? That would end up the biggest media event globally.

The often told story is that the old media people who have the politicians in their back pockets got those mercenary politicians to bring forth this awful, awful bill. That is only part of the story. The real story is that the Internet stands to challenge the nation-state itself. Those politicians on Capitol Hill spend much time thinking they are the center of the universe. The Internet is barking at them saying the universe has no center. Everywhere you stand is the center of the universe. And so there is this major culture clash.

The Censorship Bill Is About The Nation State
Assange: An Information Bin Laden? I Think Not

The Internet will win. The nation state will fundamentally transform itself, or it will lose.

White House: Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy
Ars Technica: Obama administration joins the ranks of SOPA skeptics
TechDirt: SOPA Delayed; Cantor Promises It Won't Be Brought To The Floor Until ‘Issues Are Addressed’
GigaOm: Tim O'Reilly: Why I'm fighting SOPA
Ars Technica: Under voter pressure, members of Congress backpedal (hard) on SOPA
CNet: Wikipedia considering joining SOPA blackout protest

Friday, November 18, 2011

The Censorship Bill Is About The Nation State

The western front of the United States Capitol...Image via WikipediaIn a few swift decades, faster than most realize, the Internet is going to be literally the first country most people on the planet belong to. The Internet is beginning to challenge nothing less than the very concept of the nation state itself. And that is what the censorship bill on Capitol Hill is primarily about. Look how both parties are in agreement! And this goes way beyond old media companies buying out politicians. No. This is the politicians themselves feeling threatened. They can feel the ground shift, and it is not China knocking on the doors.

There are those who play this countdown game of where China has become the number one country. Does that happen in this decade? Two decades from now? Or in 2050? The entire paradigm of that debate is foolish. In 2050 there will be no China, not the China we know today.

The political class feels threatened. Because they are wed to the nation state. A future where the nation state framework recedes to the background makes them feel irrelevant. And they would like to fight back to keep the status quo for as long as they can. They know they are fighting a losing fight. They are fighting a tsunami with a spoon. But they will not be the first batch of people in history to take a last stand.

Old America is Britain. The pioneers of the Internet are like America's Founding Fathers. The battles can not be avoided. I am glad it will be a war of words.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Breakfast With Albert (Wenger)


I don't want you to think I was sitting across the table from Albert Wenger, and we had breakfast. That is not what happened.

There were 100-200 people on two floors. We did have breakfast, cupcakes and milk. And Albert was there. But he showed up on stage mysteriously from behind.

Events: Week Of October 3
8:30am - 10:00am CreativeMornings/NewYork with Albert Wenger
Galapagos Art Space DUMBO, 16 Main Street, Brooklyn
So there was breakfast. And there was Albert Wenger.

I think he gave a great talk. It is a shame people like him get outgunned by stupid people lobbying really, really hard on Capitol Hill to defend old industries that can not be defended.

I was sitting in the front. I got to ask the first question. I asked him if he were to put together a trillion dollar stimulus bill for this economy what might it look like? He said the biggest part of it would be about getting cheap broadband to everyone. That reply was in total sync with my own thoughts on the topic.

America And Europe Need To Learn From Japan
The Mini Me Stimulus Bill Lacks Imagination



What Are You Doing Monday? Come Meet Al Wenger