Most sectors of the economy, and most of the stock market, are going nowhere now. The best companies are growing, and their earnings are rising. But that’s because of efficiency, cutting costs and (especially) cutting people. Even the Cloud Czars are cutting back, and those on the Left don’t like it. By reducing headcount (on […]
If you’re not into the Super Bowl, this weekend is book reading time. The most thought-provoking book you can read this weekend is Harry Turtledove’s The Wages of Sin. Turtledove got his moniker as “the master of alternate history” with hinge point stories. Two examples are Lee magically getting AK-47s in 1864 or winning the […]
Before the Tech Era really began, around 2008, I had a lot of respect for billionaires. They earned their money. Sam Walton (right) and Bill Gates worked decades building great businesses, which brought great benefits to the American people. They understood that they weren’t doing the work alone. There were thousands of people working with […]
The best prism through which to see current events is something I’ve been writing about here for over 15 years. It’s The War Against Oil. The sub-title of this blog when I started put it simply. “The Sun shines. The wind blows. The tides roll. We live on a molten rock. There is no energy […]
It’s not the “Magnificent 7.” It never was. This era is defined by the companies I called “Cloud Czars” in the last decade. Apple. Microsoft. Amazon. Google. Meta. They invested the $1 billion/quarter needed for the Cloud game when bigger companies stood on the sidelines and watched. Those companies are now in (relative) ruins because […]
It’s becoming clear to me that 2024 will be a global hinge point. That’s not based on, but on technologies I’ve been studying for 15 years. The Machine Internet Open source built the Cloud, and the Cloud is building the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. It’s AI that will build the Machine Internet. AI is scaling […]
I am in my 46th year as a business reporter. The same issue that troubled me at the Houston Business Journal in 1978 troubles me today. That is, we believe anything sources tell us. Accordingly we follow the Golden Rule, the one that reads “He who has the gold makes the rules.” That’s why social […]
Over the last six months shares of Toyota Motor are up 16%. During the same period shares of Tesla are down 22%. There are many reasons. People are down on electric cars, and Toyota makes hybrids. Toyota has plans for electrics that cost less than Tesla and go further on a charge. Elon Musk has […]
America’s economy is by far the biggest in the world. It’s built on incentives favoring oil and gas that have been in place for decades. We’re also driven by the greed that comes from having too much founders’ equity and inherited wealth. It’s going to be tough to turn around. Electing a government with the […]
The biggest surprise to me, reading the latest economic statistics, is that people are surprised. I mean, there are literally thousands of people paid good money to predict the future direction of the economy, and they all got it wrong. Things are great. Simple as 1, 2, 3. The end of the pandemic meant supply […]
