Nov 18, 2009
Dear Strategy Enthusiasts,
Greetinings!
I
hope you all enjoyed listening to the candy case solved as a Socratic
Dialogue between me and Jay Mishra. If you did not, listen / download
now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed here.
The unemployment is now officially at 10.2%. As per our sister website FRANCONOMICS.COM, this translates to a 25% unemployment + underemployment combined. In other words, one in four Americans is currently unemployed / underemployed. For the FRANCONOMICS "Real Unemployment Calculator" we used to arrive at these gruesome numbers, please click here.
However, the stock markets keep rising: volatility is higher, and the
markets are choppier... NASDAQ and NYSE are both due for a
correction... Listen to my latest podcast on market volatility, selling
into the rallies, and writing covered calls, here.
On
the flip side, the banks are bigger, meaner, and bolder than before:
Goldman, JP Morgan Chase. The Investment Banking Industry is now no
longer an oligopoly: Lehman Brothers is bankrupt and gone, Merill Lynch
is now a part of BofA... The name JP Morgan reminds me of Pecora.
Whatever happened to Pecora 2? Listen to my older weekly podcasts on FRANCONOMICS.COM to learn more about how Goldman and other banks looted America and paid themselves nice bonus in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Goldman is scheduled to pay itself another good round of bonus: they
have set aside more than $16 billion for the same. Not too long ago,
Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke bailed AIG out with $85 billion, and AIG
bailed Goldman out with $13 billion in insurance payments.
Additionally, Goldman changed itself into a bank holding company so
that it could get an additional $10 billion in TARP (Troubled Assets
Relief Program) funding. Without this $23 billion in bailout money, Goldman would have gone bankrupt as a business.
Call it screwed-up capitalism, or call it greed: executives who run
their businesses into bankruptcies make millions and get bailed out at
the expense of the average hardworking American who pays his taxes: after all the bailout money has come from our tax dollars! But don't be disheartened, I have announced my second book on FRANCONOMICS.COM --- The 20 Trillion Dollar Value Drain: How Goldman and Other Banks Looted America, And Why They Will Do It Again.
If you are more interested in the biggest rip-off in the history of
American Capitalism, you can read up on my first and second Value Drain
articles here and here.
Since thanksgiving and Christmas are round the corner, I have a few recommendations for the following:
Employers: Improve
the strategic leadership skills of your senior employees, which will
have positive implications for your organization in terms of strategy.
Please also refer to my book STRATEGIC CASE ANALYSIS - BUSINESS CONCEPTS, STRATEGY FRAMEWORKS, AND SOLVED CASES AS SOCRATIC DIALOGUES.
Business School Professors: I
am happy to announce that the book is now a prescribed text book in
UNLV - University of Nevada, Las Vegas, a large accredited University. If you are a Business School Professor, please write to me to learn
more about receiving the teaching materials which supplement the book. A subset
of the teaching materials can be found here (link coming soon). Further, STRATEGIC CASE
ANALYSIS frequently ranks in the top-fifty most popular books in its
category, and serves as a management 101 guide to many start-up CEOs /
small business owners desiring to brush up on the latest management
theory and practice. Please write to me to receive a desk copy.
Students: The high unemployment will make it difficult for you to land a meaningful job. Banks
are not hiring, consulting firms are pushing the joining date of new
recruits by up to a year. However, there are employers out there who
are aggressively recruiting young talent, since they need to grow. In
some cases, these employers have used this opportunity to get rid of
older workers; so terrible times for
laid off older workers are also good times for those new graduates who
are well prepared to ace their job interviews. You can browse some interviewing tips here and here. You can buy the book from Amazon.com.
This economy is not out of the woods yet. The recession, though declared by the pundits to be over, is not over yet. Another
quarter over quarter decline in US GDP can't be ruled out. The only
thing bad about recessions is that it hurts new graduates.
Nevertheless, I hope you find the job of your choice upon graduation in
2010.
All the best!
Sam
Sam Mishra
President, Franteractive
