Archive for September 15th, 2008

Visits

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Yesterday, we went to Los Angeles to visit Marv, my old business buddy from my publishing days, and Cousin Alex in her new digs at Occidental College. The photo above was taken by Dan-dan (!). No, I did not crop or change any of it. This is the raw photo as he took it.

Alex took us to the top of a hill in the middle of campus to see the surrounding area. She’s just been here for two weeks now, so she’s still getting everything together here.

Marv is looking much better today than he did when we left for Hungary eight months ago. We saw him and Brenda, shared some pizza with them and caught up with the events of the last few months.

On returning home, I found that DirecTV had refused to record my football games due to an un-advertised package that will add $100 to their total bill. I’m very unhappy with their service so far. It has taken lots of my time on the phone to try and get the service they offered to me in the first place, and it is turning out to be quite a bit more expensive than advertised.

Another Wall Street Meltdown

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Wall Street is clearly realigning itself, with lots of creative destruction in its wake. I feel pretty certain that some vast fortunes are being made from this. This was brought home by some of the Economist’s reporting from New York this weekend: “Not only has (Merrill Lynch CEO) Mr Thain managed to shelter his firm from the storm (by selling to Bank of America), but he has also secured a price well above its closing price last Friday, $29 per share compared with $17. How he managed that in such an ugly market is not yet clear.”

Original story here.