Lynne Kiesling All of this Eric Holder gossip today unfortunately creates an opportunity for me to pick a grammatical nit: the plural of “attorney general” is “attorneys general”, not “attorney generals”. The “general” in “attorney general” is an adjective that modifies the noun “attorney”. The plural attaches to the noun, not the adjective. Bet you …
Michael Giberson New York is about to find out whether zone pricing in gasoline markets is as bad for consumers as some people believe. Zone pricing is “a gasoline industry practice of selling the same brands and grades of fuel to retail sellers at different prices depending on the ‘price zone’ in which the retail …
Lynne Kiesling In yesterday’s meeting in Chicago between President-elect Obama and Senator McCain, Mr. Obama said that they were going to discuss how to “work together to fix up the country”. This language really rankles me. It also rankles Russ Roberts, whose comments on this remark reflect my dislike of the “fix the country” metaphor: …
Lynne Kiesling Even those unaffected by this economic downturn are changing their consumption behavior, a pattern seen in prior economic downturns. This New York Times article by Alex Williams gives some details on the forms that these adjustments are taking among the wealthy: “The era of conspicuous consumption, at least for the foreseeable future, has …
Lynne Kiesling Not being a macroeconomist I have little insight to contribute, but I do find October’s 2.8% decline in the producer price index quite remarkable. Not only is this the largest decline on record, it is also larger than had been forecast for October. And, as the Bloomberg article linked above notes, the UK …
Michael Giberson An excellent look at ExxonMobil in the Sunday New York Times. The article makes a strong case for the view that ExxonMobil is one of the best run large international corporations in the world. The article observes that the company has reacted to recent record profits by, among other things, increasing dividends and …
“Exxon is a Cash Machine, and They Could Be Using That Cash to …” Read More »
Lynne Kiesling For the past 30 years the U.S. auto industry has been like your alcoholic Uncle Bob: his self-destructive habits seem beneficial to him, despite the harm they cause him and the pain they inflict on his family and friends. You want to help him, but don’t know the best way to do so, …
Chris Masse at Midas Oracle links to “How Companies Are Using IT To Spot Innovative Ideas,” an article at Information Week. Among the examples cited: …Starbucks uses the same voting platform, at MyStarbucksIdea.com, and took an online suggestion posted Oct. 7 by BillMac to offer a free cup of coffee Nov. 4 to anyone in …
Crowdsourcing Can Produce New Ideas, but Run Them by Legal First… Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Opinions and analyses on recycling abound, from “it reduces our resource use and conserves landfill capacity” to “processing recycling uses more energy than not, and is therefore wasteful and inefficient”. Of course there’s some truth in these opposing views, and a case-by-case analysis is usually necessary to determine, on balance, the net effect …
Michael Giberson From the Star-Tribune in Minnesota, “Xcel looks to harness wind energy for use even when there’s no wind “: Next spring Xcel Energy Inc., the state of Minnesota and a Virginia-based technology firm will test the first battery in the country capable of storing wind energy. Well, that’s a bit wrong. Any battery …
The First Battery in the Country Capable of Storing Wind Energy? Read More »
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