'News' Category
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Clarence Clemons Of The E Street Band Dead Of Stroke At Age 69
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 19, 2011Although not the typical small business story, I wanted to report to you all that Clarence Clemons died Saturday night at 7pm from a stroke suffered on June 12. Clarence was the saxophone player for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. I have loved music for many, many years and had a love/hate relationship with Bruce [...]
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Congressman Weiner: It Is Hard… Not To Write A Provacative Headline
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 9, 2011I have been reading the headlines about Congressman Weiner and just cracking up. I thought I would share with you a few that I have found, but before I get started… I was kind of wondering if there was anything serious going on in Congress these days? I mean, things must be going pretty good [...]
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Mr Bernanke: Please Don’t Raise Interest Rates
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 6, 2011Large and small businesses alike borrow money for a lot of things. Some borrow for equipment. Some borrow for new plants. Some just borrow to fund their accounts receivable. Borrowing has been very tough lately for all businesses but at least interest rates are low. For the most part, the Federal Reserve Bank sets interest [...]
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Don’t Share Your Netflix, Rhapsody Passwords
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 4, 2011Add one more crazy law to the list of new technology laws… Tennessee now makes it illegal to share logins for services like Netflix and Rhapsody. I would assume that Hulu and iTunes would be a similar story. It seems to me that this kind of sharing would already be a form of theft, where [...]
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Could We Be Seeing A Supply-Side Slowdown?
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 2, 2011Typically a decline in GDP, or some of the more granular data decline, is due to demand-side factors. For instance, people don’t want to buy so demand for products falls off a cliff. Imagine, though, if demand could be there but supply is lacking. Sounds like a recipe for inflation, right? Too many dollars chasing [...]
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Get Ready For A Housing Bounce
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on June 2, 2011Residential real estate has been miserable for a long, long time now. However, I think there is a bounce coming very soon. I think we may have now eliminated most of the bad players: people that financed with mortgages they really couldn’t afford. Most established home owners now will not sell until prices come back. [...]
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No Cause Given For Death Of Mark Haines (Update: Cause Given)
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on May 26, 2011Please read 6/29/2011 update at the end of this post. Being a CNBC junky, mainly the online version, I had grown “close” to several personalities on CNBC. Mark Haines was an anchor on CNBC, both in position and in effect… he was solid, a consummate professional and playful at the same time. It was extremely [...]
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Who Will Run Al Qaeda, Inc. Now That Osama bin Laden Is Gone?
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on May 19, 2011I know what you’re thinking: Osama bin Laden is some terrorist leader that orchestrated attacks against the United States and its allies, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Osama was CEO of the biggest jewelry distributor in the world: Al Qaeda, Inc. No no no, Al Qaeda is not a terrorist organization, it is a [...]
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Boeing Quality Control At Fault For 737 Cracks
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on April 27, 2011According to the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) and the referenced Marketwatch article below, Boeing and not Southwest Airlines is responsible for the cracks and holes in the fuselage of the Boeing 737 airplanes. At issue was misaligned rivets and loose bolts. Boeing will need to address quality control as it ramps up production to [...]
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Lessons From The Gulf Oil Disaster
Posted by Brian E. Satterlee on April 21, 2011There were a lot of mixed messages in the past year about the Gulf Of Mexico disaster of the Deepwater Horizon. I want to highlight what I believe the lessons should be: 1. We are human, we make mistakes Even with a perfect plan, imperfect humans will make mistakes. We will think the rules don’t [...]