Power Pal

My finance professor handed out a fantastic article called " The End " written by Michael Lewis, the writer of Liar's Poker , about the mortgage melt-down and some reasons for what fueled the bubble on Wall Street.  The main take-away from the entire article for me is that incentives on Wall Street are totally mis-aligned - as I'll talk about shortly. In the article, Lewis tells the story of Steve Eisman.  Eisman started his career as a corporate attorny, then turned to become an equity research analyst at Oppenheimer, and finally moved on to a hedge fund (Front Point Partners).  At Front Point, Eisman built up short positions across the entire subprime mortgage lifecycle - mortgage originators, homebuilders, mortgage bonds, CDO's, etc.  The article describes in colorful detail Eisman's journey in uncovering the roots of the industry and at every turn how shocked Eisman himself is. Eisman repeatedly questions how it was even possible (or legal for that matter)...

I read in VentureBeat that a start-up called Better Place is going to partner with California to build a $1B electric car infrastructure for the Bay Area.  It sounds like a pretty ambitious plan.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This presentation from Sequoia was mentioned several times in the media, so I finally got around to Google'ing it and found it off of VentureBeat.  Good times.  Oh, I mean RIP good times.  It's actually a really nice macro-economic summary (albeit incredibly depressing).  I love the "let's get drinks" slide at the end. Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession )

I came across a research article in Knowledge@Wharton titled " Show Me the Money: Aura of Top M&A Banks Often Obscures Low Returns for Clients " about how the league tables ranking investment banks don't necessarily correspond to post-M&A performance of the banks' clients.  In fact, the study finds that there's actually a negative correlation between the league tables and post-M&A performance.  That's obviously counter-intuitive.  One possible reason is as follows: Banks are simply responding sensibly to industry practices. "Since clients ignore the very measures that do predict future performance [i.e. past performance] and instead focus on market share, it is entirely logical for banks to maximize their league table position -- in particular, by accepting even value-destructive mandates," he and Bao write. "Not only will the mandate boost fee income today, but it will also increase market share and the ability to generate income ...

I read an article about 4 months back in the WSJ (" Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web ") regarding a debate between traditional marketing theory where businesses focus on producing and distributing blockbuster products (that have significant marketshare) vs. a new paradigm where businesses shift production and distribution to a vast array of products tailored specifically to the individual tastes and needs of consumers.   The latter theory is generally referred to as the "Long Tail", but a recent study by a Harvard Business School professor seems to refute that theory.  Adding to the discussion, I just watched a fascinating interview with Eric Schmidt , the CEO of Google, in The McKinsey Quarterly where he talks about why businesses should not focus their strategy on the long tail. First, what is the "long tail"? We can summarize the long tail as follows (here we draw on a few sources including HBR - The Long Tail Theory in Short , WSJ - see link a...