4.9* Review: Nokia E51 Unlocked Phone

By Randall Radic

In the first Transformers movie, a Nokia phone was placed in a tiny glass prison and zapped with energy from the Cube.  Galvanized by the Cube’s power, the Nokia transformed into a demented robot, which, if it hadn’t been in the glass prison, would have been tried to kill anything that got in its way.  Hollywood’s high-tech version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Luckily, the Cube doesn’t exist and cell phones don’t metamorphose into killing machines.  But Nokia does make some killer phones.  For example, the Nokia E51, which is an all-round excellent smartphone.  It’s not as glamorous as the Apple iPhone, which is pretty much the Ferrari of phones.  Still, despite all their glamour, even Ferrari’s have shortcomings.  And it’s not as sleek as the Palm Pre.  But what the Nokia lacks in comeliness it more than makes up for in sheer functionality and in price.  In fact, the E51 might just be the best deal in town.

The E51 is an intelligent smartphone with beau coup capabilities and a myriad of users, probably because of its design and construction.  Its design shouts good taste, yet it’s constructed like a Timex watch.  It “takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”  Which means if you drop it, it won’t break.   

The screen provides a crisp, clean picture.  Admittedly, the screen is smallish, but the resolution and bright colors compensate for its size.  And the user interface (UI) would satisfy even Picasso, because it’s got pizzazz.  Along with those features, the E51 has a beefy CPU and a ton of RAM.  Which means games and other applications pose no problem.  The E51 has more than enough muscle to get the job done. 

The nicest thing about the E51 is the operating system, which is the tried and true Symbian OS 9.2.  The vast library of applications available for the Symbian OS make you wonder if it’s a smartphone or a handheld version of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  When you hook up the applications with the steroid-like performance already spoken of, the E51 executes like an Olympic weightlifter – no sweat.

Which brings up the E51’s single real weakness.  All that capability sucks the battery dry in no time.  Which means have your charger handy, because you’ll need it.  Under normal usage, the E51 has to be recharged every 24 hours.  And if you’re using a hands-free device like Bluetooth or one of the cheaper knockoffs, you’ll have to feed the battery even more often. 

The only other limitation exhibited by the E51 is the demand for application certificates.  This is a security safeguard.  It is to protect you.  So it’s not really a deficiency.  However, it means you won’t be able to run a lot of freeware.  Some E51 users actually hack into their phones and disable this requirement.  But that seems a touch too much, because the risk of damage is too great.  You’re better off just ponying up the dollars for the apps you want.  That way your conscience is clear and your security remains intact.

The camera.  Some people claim the E51’s camera is skimpy and therefore a limitation.  Wrong, because the E51 makes no claim to being a camera phone.  The fact that it even has a camera is a bonus.  So the camera issue is not an issue. 

Thus if you’re looking for a smartphone that has all the bells and whistles and will never let you down, be sure to check out the Nokia E51.  It’s got what you need and almost all of what you want.

On the Rate-O-Meter, which ranges from 1 star (don’t even think about it) to 5 stars (this is it!), the Nokia E51 rings in at 4.9 stars.  The only reason it’s not a perfect 5 is the battery.  But to paraphrase Meatloaf, “4.9 out of 5 ain’t bad.”          

Nokia E51 Unlocked Phone

2MP Camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, MP3/Video Player

MicroSD Slot – U.S. Version

$349.99   Less at Amazon

Randall Radic is a former Old Catholic priest. After a midlife crisis, he spent time behind bars. Today, he has emerged a changed man.  As the author of  Gone To Hell: True Crimes of America’s Clergy (ECW Press/ Oct 2009), Radic aims to warn the public of the sins committed behind the walls of churches every day.  Randall Radic is also author of A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers and Snitching in a California Jail.

4* Review: ASUS G71Gx-A2 17" Black Gaming Laptop

Review: Sony Ericsson Aino U10

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

 

Economic Theory On The 2008-2009 Financial Crisis

By John M. Mason

Both of these books are excellent reads.  They represent different “takes” on the recent financial crisis and consequently complement each other.  Sorkin’s book is the more personal due to the fact that he is a New York Times reporter and business columnist: he has a legendary collection of connections which he incorporates very well into the story surrounding the events of the past several years. 

The book by Cassidy contains a history of the ideas that led up to the financial crisis with commentary relating to what is needed to prevent or modify the instability of capitalism.  Cassidy’s personal favorite, in terms of analysis and recommendations, is Hyman Minsky, the maverick Keynesian who wrote about the fact that free-market capitalism is inherently unstable and needs to be firmly regulated if its worst traits, as detailed by Sorkin, are to be contained. 

The thing that came through to me in reading these books at roughly the same time is that economic cause-and-effect are often separated by a extended period of time.  That is, economic actions have to work their way through societies (and globally) and many times take years, if not decades, to fully exhaust what they started.  Periodically, economists discuss the lag-in-effect of monetary policy or some other policy and work at explaining the channels through which such a policy works and the time-lags that are involved in connecting the various channels. 

In addition, economists, as well as policymakers, get “locked into” a belief system and become “fundamentalists” in just the same way that the religious become “fundamentalists.”  As John Maynard Keynes once remarked that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”  Of course, the problem now is that this “defunct economist” very often turns out to be Keynes, himself.

So, what the books by Sorkin and Cassidy lead me to consider is, first, the economic theory that led to the economic and financial crisis of 2008-2009, and then, to the actors in the drama as it evolved during this time period.

In terms of the long running cause-and-effect issue, let’s start out in the 1960s. Keynesian economic theory first became a part of the economic policy of the United States in the Kennedy administration which came into office on January 20, 1961.  The Kennedy tax cut was the first explicit government program that can be directly associated with the Keynesian “intellectual influence.”

In the early 1970s we have Richard Nixon supporting deficit spending, wage and price controls, and a removal of the dollar from the gold standard.  And, in his now famous quote, he declared that “we are all Keynesians” now.  And, so we were!

The basis for embracing the Keynesian dogma was captured in the Full Employment Act of 1946 along with the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978.  The basic idea behind this legislation was that a modern society could not tolerate labor be unemployed and that the number one goal of monetary and fiscal policy should be sufficient rates of economic growth to achieve the full employment of the workforce. 

Translating this goal into the actions of the government resulted in an underlying inflationary bias to economic policy.  The purchasing power of the dollar declined by roughly 85% between 1961 and 2009.

But, this cause-and-effect gets lost in the talk about the greed and irresponsible actions of bankers and traders: of all who work in finance. 

However, inflation, and the instability inflation causes, permeates almost everything that people do.  It affects where people work: more and more people go to work in jobs related to finance rather than in manufacturing or industry.  It affects productivity: businesses find it more profitable to invest in short-lived investments that can be put in place quickly rather than those that take longer to start-up but are more productive.  It affects how people finance things: more debt and less equity.  It affects how people construct their balance sheets: more trading and less investing.  And, it creates its own instability as debt burdens are built up and then reduced, only to be built up again in the next credit cycle; asset bubbles are created which eventually burst. 

Cassidy introduces the ideas of Minsky to examine the instability of this behavior.  Free-market capitalism is assumed to be inherently unstable and the financial types are depicted as being innately irresponsible.  As a consequence, the economy will be subject to periodic blowups, some of them quite severe.  The only possible solution to this dilemma is firm, effective regulation.  Thus, the only way that capitalism can move forward as a reasonable structure for society is to make sure that there is sufficient oversight and constraint placed on the executives of financial institutions.  As Cassidy indicates, Minsky was in favor of a capitalistic society and was concerned with making such a society work better.

Sorkin gets into the consequent behavior of those that operate within an inflationary environment.  Remember that inflation takes place not only in what is consumed, but also in what is held, assets.  In the 1990s and 2000s there were at least three examples of inflation in asset prices, something we refer to as bubbles.  The stock market bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble and the stock market bubble of the 2000s.  The subprime market was fueled by the inflation in housing prices.  The stock market bubbles took place within an environment in which some people saw the Dow going to 30,000.  New financial instruments were created to take advantage of this era of credit inflation and other tools like credit default swaps, were devised to hedge against any failure.  Layer-after-layer of finance was constructed to coax out a few more basis points for investors. 

The stories Sorkin tells are good ones, even though we have heard variations on many of the stories before.  The sorry part of the story is that no one really comes out looking good, either in the public sector or in the private sector. 

But, people in the private sector were responding to the incentives created by those in the public sector who were embracing the inflationary bias of the Keynesian economic dogma.  And, when things fell apart, those in the public sector quickly pointed a finger at those in the private sector, accusing them of being greedy and irresponsible.  Well, the people in the private sector were greedy and irresponsible, but in focusing upon them, all blame seemed to be removed from the greedy and irresponsible behavior of those in the public sector that had originally created the all-inclusive inflationary environment many years ago.            

Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves (Penguin Group/ 2009), is the award-winning chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for The New York Times, a columnist, and assistant editor of business and finance news. He is also the editor and founder of DealBook, an online daily financial report. He has won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, and a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

John Cassidy is a journalist at The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. He is the author of How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (Farrar, Strous & Giroux/ Nov 2009).

John M. Mason writes on current monetary and financial events. He is a professor at Penn State University and has taught in both the Management Division and the Engineering Division. He formerly was on the faculty of the Finance Department, Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mason has been President and CEO of two publicly traded financial institutions and the Executive Vice President and CFO of a third. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D. C. and as a Senior Economist within the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Mason has served on the boards of venture capital funds and other private equity funds. He has worked with young entrepreneurs, especially within the urban environment, starting or running companies primarily connected with Information Technology.

Fed Pumps $350 Million Into The Banks Last 13 Weeks

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Fed Pumps $350 Million Into The Banks Last 13 Weeks

John M. Mason-

This from the Financial Times on the morning of Friday, November 20, 2009: “Short-term US interest rates turned negative on Thursday as banks frantically stockpiled government securities in order to polish their balance sheets for the end of the year.”

“The development highlighted the continuing distortions in the financial system more than a year after Lehman Brothers’ failure triggered a global crisis.”

“With the Federal Reserve maintaining an overnight target rate of zero to 0.25 per cent, investors are demonstrating a willingness to completely forgo interest income—or even to take a small loss—to own securities that are seen as safe.”

Just how “safe” do these banks have to appear?

The way they are acting indicate that they are not very “safe” at all.

Total reserves at depository institutions for the two weeks ending November 18 averaged $1,106 billion of which $1,068 were reserve balances with Federal Reserve Banks and $38 billion was vault cash used to satisfy required reserves.

The Fed has pumped roughly $350 billion into the banking system over the past 13-weeks primarily through the purchase of open market securities.

The effective Federal Funds rate has fallen steadily through the fall from August and averaged 11 basis points toward the end of the latest banking week.

Putting this information together indicates, to me, a banking system that is still seriously threatened and desirous of all the spare cash that it can attain. This is not a situation of quantitative easing but of bankers that are overly concerned with their solvency. The Federal Reserve is supplying reserves “on demand.” They are not, at this time, initiating the supply.

And, why might this be so?

Well, take a look at some of the headlines of the past week: United States mortgage delinquencies reach a record high; bankruptcies continue to remain near record levels; commercial real estate to remain major problem for years; commercial real estate too complex for government to bail out; unemployment at 25-year high; credit card delinquencies remain at record levels; and bank failures will continue to average about 3 a week for the next 12 to 18 months.

President Obama is even talking about the possibility of a “double-dip” recession.

The distortions in the financial system continue to be enormous. Even given these attitudes within the banking system, as the Financial Times reports, “many” of the leading US banks are “sitting on big trading profits.”

And, why not? When they can borrow for less than 35 basis points and lend out at 350 basis points who cannot make profits. When they can engage in the “carry” trade and profit from the declining dollar as well as earn large spreads, who cannot make profits.

Stock markets have been living off of momentum trading. There are so many unknowns about the future of business and industry, let alone finance that the justification for the rise in stock prices since March can continue to be questioned.

The real problem that exists in the market right now is the huge overhang of uncertainty. Not only are there unknowns about the recovery of industry and finance right now, there are also unknowns related to the huge cloud of government budget deficits that hang over the financial markets for the future and the concern over the ability of the Federal Reserve to “exit” from all the reserves it has put into the banking system.

The risk that is incorporated in this environment shows itself from time-to-time. Of course, the massive rise in the price of gold has been one place that investors have flocked to this year. Another continues to be the world-wide demand for United States Treasury securities. And, like yesterday, enough bad news causes currency traders to move rapidly back into United States dollars for “reasons of safety.”

I know many measures of market risk have declined substantially over the past six months or so. One has to go back to November 2007 to see a spread between Aaa and Baa yields as low as they are now. Likewise, with spreads on high-yield securities. The VIX index has fallen, once again, around its 52-week low. My belief is that these measures are so low because of the Fed’s interest rate policy. Interest rates, in general, are lower than they would be if the Fed was not forcing low rates on the market, and interest rate spreads are low for the same reason.

Still, there is much to be wary of. The only certainty that exists right now is that the Federal Reserve, and other central banks around the world, will keep short term interest rates low for an “extended period.” But, at some point, these rates are going to have to rise. Until they do, the interest arbitrage opportunities will remain and large financial institutions will continue to take away large profits from the financial market. Furthermore, the carry trade will continue to prosper using funds from the United States.

The question here is, when will all the investors that are “making it” through government support and government guarantees head for the doors. It is only logical that when there is an indication that the Federal Reserve is going to start letting interest rates rise that there will be a rush to get out of the market or move to the other side of the market. In such a situation, the financial firms that are big in the trading area cannot afford to be second or third getting to the door to pull their own exit.

How will this leave the banks that are written about in the Financial Times? If these banks, generally the smaller ones, have “stockpiled” government securities, how will they handle the decline in the prices of these securities once interest rates begin to rise? If they are concerned about their solvency now, what will their condition look like under this kind of scenario?

If there is a rush to get out of bonds, will the Federal Reserve back off its exit strategy?

Uncertainty continues to rule the markets. And, on top of the basic market insecurity, there seems to be a growing insecurity about our governmental leaders (Geithner and Bernanke to start with), and about the institutions of our government (see House attack on secrecy in the Federal Reserve). Uncertainty is bad enough but if people have little or no confidence in our leaders and our institutions where are they to turn?

John M. Mason writes on current monetary and financial events. He is a professor at Penn State University and has taught in both the Management Division and the Engineering Division. He formerly was on the faculty of the Finance Department, Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mason has been President and CEO of two publicly traded financial  institutions and the Executive Vice President and CFO of a third. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D. C. and as a Senior Economist within the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Mason has served on the boards of venture capital funds and other private equity funds. He has worked with young entrepreneurs, especially within the urban environment, starting or running companies primarily connected with Information Technology.

Federal Reserve Exacerbating The Mess

U.S. Dollar Has NO Credibility Left, Down 15% Against The Euro

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

U.S. Has Bases In 130+ Countries, 5.2 Million Contracted Employees (2005)

By Loyd Eskildson

The intent of One Nation Under Contract (Yale University Press/ 2009) is to highlight the implications of privatizing government policy, that present practice is scandalous, and that undoing government privatization is not the answer.  Unfortunately, Stanger's overly academic treatise fails in all three missions, though her anecdotes and documentation of some of the numbers involved make the book worthy of a quick skim.
 
The Dept. of Defense is a good place to start. Stanger points out that the Pentagon's acquisition workforce shrank 25% between 1990-2000, while the volume of contracting increased seven times, and that between 2002-2005, the number of its contract employees rose from 3.4 million to 5.2 million. A key point here is that the simplest way to handle increased contracting with reduced staff is to issue giant contracts that allow subcontracting as desired - including evaluations. Thus, we end up with contracts that generate sub-contracts that generate sub-contracts, etc., for as many as five layers - adding costs at every layer. Then there are the missing billions in Iraq.

Another typical problem is that various reports on procurement estimate that at least half of these contracts take place without full and open competition. Thus, there is no need for surprise when Stanger points out that a school costing USAID $250,000 to be built in Afghanistan could have instead been built for $50,000 by local Afghans (and probably generated good feelings for the U.S. at the same time). As for quality - shoddy electrical work by KBR is blamed for the deaths of at least 18 soldiers in Iraq, and Blackwater Security severely damaged U.S. credibility when it killed 17 civilians in Baghdad.
 
Stanger is correct that private contracting weakens control over government policy, but she does not account for some of the major mechanisms by which this occurs. A major source of the problem is that creative people can always find their way around a government contract; this problem is sometimes further acerbated intentionally by government managers, and the fact that government contract positions are not attractive to anyone with high skills and initiative. Then there's the 'revolving door problem.'  A USAToday article (11/16/09) pointed out that 158 retired general officers now consult for the Pentagon, and most also work for private industry - all at salaries far exceeding their former military pay.

Clearly, the potential lure of those jobs can skew thinking of today's active-duty leaders. My own experience with contractors and consultants is that they spend about half their time looking for ways to extend and expand their scope of work, are much harder to get rid of than to bring in, and become a crutch for weak managers to lean on and hide behind - as a result, their advice must always be taken with a grain of salt.

Another problem is that bringing in contractors usually reduces flexibility (eg. the outsourced warehouseman can no longer be asked to pitch in to help with a delivery crisis) and unforeseen changes in technology and/or task requirements create never-ending 'discussions' over who is responsible. Another problem with privatization is that it creates a powerful never-ending incentive too for private contractors to lobby for more government services etc., and a major new source of campaign donations.
 
In another section, Stanger points out that U.S. interests in the Mexican embassy were (and probably still are) promoted by representatives from 32 different agencies, that in 2005 the federal government had contractors in every U.N.-recognized country but Bhutan, Nauru, and San Marino, and we have military bases in 130+ countries.

This gets to an even bigger problem - the size, reach, and complexity of American government. We end up with a spaghetti-like organization and flow charts, never-ending coordination meetings, and obvious silliness such as the Director of Homeland Security giving briefings on the availability of swine flu vaccine. More important, it just doesn't work - both 9/11 and the Ft. Hood shooting took place despite numerous warnings, government's response to Hurricane Katrina was horribly botched, our financial system nearly collapsed last year, and pupil test scores and dropout rates have stagnated for decades,
 
Bottom Line: I doubt that any 'super-manager' (eg. a composite of Peter Drucker, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch and anyone else you might want) would even want to try managing the federal government as it now stands. Significantly improving government performance requires that we first stop digging holes - the most obvious example is the link between our overly-biased support for Israel and the ensuing increased motivation for terrorism.

A second is staying out of the affairs of other nations - our own 'bought and paid for' democracy is an embarrassment, as well as our financial management, and we need to stop telling others how to run their affairs - especially China and Russia.

A third is reducing our dependence on foreign oil and associated interference in Iran, Iraq, and (formerly) Saudi Arabia.  Fourth, get out of Afghanistan - there is no reason to be there. At that point we need to implement a major government downsizing - eg. at least 50% in the Pentagon (we already spend about as much as the rest of the world combined), 75%+ in Departments of Commerce, Labor, State, and others. Then, reconsider restructuring. Only then does it make sense to consider Stanger's question of "What should be privatized?" Perhaps nothing.

Allison Stanger is Russell Leng '60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College and director of its Rohatyn Center for International Affairs.

Loyd Eskildson is retired from a life of computer programming, teaching economics and finance, education and health care administration, and cross-country truck driving.  He's now a reviewer for Basil & Spice.

$260 Billion +, U.S. Looted By Oil Countries For War Against Ourselves

Shortage Of U.S. Microchip Engineers--Rising In Asia

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Purchasing Power Of The Dollar Has Fallen 85%

John M. Mason-

Ben Bernanke spoke in New York yesterday and, depending upon which paper you read this morning, he basically said one of two things. First, he said that the Fed was interested in a strong dollar and would continue to keep the value of the dollar in mind in deliberations concerning monetary policy.

Chuckle, chuckle.

Second, Bernanke said that the pain in the labor market was going to last for a long time and that we shouldn’t expect the unemployment rate to fall anytime soon.

That is, don’t expect interest rates to begin to rise in the near future.

Remember, the number one policy goal of the Federal Reserve (and the federal government) is full employment and don’t you forget it. Put inflation, commodity prices, and the value of the United States dollar on the back burner.

So much for an independent Fed!

But, we knew that.

The problem with the economic recovery and unemployment is captured by an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Auto Industry Has Room to Shrink Further." Although the article focuses upon the auto industry, the situation that is described can be extended to many other major (and minor) industries throughout the world.

“Over the past two years, the global auto industry has endured one of the worst downturns in its century-plus history. Auto makers around the world have consolidated, restructured and slimmed down—and yet they still have too much of just about everything, especially too many brands and too many plants.”

“According to CSM Worldwide, the auto industry has enough capacity to make 85.9 million cars and light trucks a year—about 30 million more than it is on track to sell this year, the equivalent of more than 120 assembly plants.”

Furthermore, an auto analyst is quoted as saying, “government intervention to save auto-related jobs has forestalled the inevitable—broad and deep restructuring that would shut down unneeded plants and close loss-making enterprises. Not as much capacity has come out that should have.”

This is just talking about the auto industry. But, it is true of industry in general. The United States and the global economy have become leaner due to the current contraction: still, much excess capacity remains.

Even though capacity utilization for all industry is up in the United States (note that capacity utilization for manufacturing in October did not change from September), giving further indication that the recession is over, the problem of too much capacity lingers. As I have mentioned many times before, every economic recovery since the 1960s has seen a pickup in capacity utilization as economic growth increased, but the peak reached in each cycle was no higher, and was generally lower, than the peak reached in the previous cycle.

That is, capacity utilization rose during the expansion phase of each economic cycle since the 1960s but the trend in the United States was for more and more plant and equipment to remain idle.

In addition, this contributed to the under-utilization of labor as is evidenced by the rising trend in those of the population that are labeled underemployed .

Also, as the federal government, and the independent Federal Reserve System, tried to pump up the economy so that fuller employment could be achieved, the pressure was always on for inflation to rise. Since January 1961, the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen by about 85%. This is not a coincidence!

Furthermore, these policy efforts just put people back to work in the jobs they had been in and reduced the incentive for companies to innovate and change moderating productivity growth.

The performance of industrial production in the United States carries with it the same story. (Industrial production is up in October, but at an anemic 0.1% rate.) The growth rate of industrial production rises and falls through the swings in the economic cycle, but each rebound does not bring with it the same expansion as was achieved in previous cycles. This is just another indication that although recovery takes place, the overall trend in the productive utilization of resources in the United States continues to wane.

This fundamental weakness resource utilization is resulting in changing attitudes throughout the world. David Brooks writes in the New York Times about the underlying optimism that seems to be present in China these days, an optimism that used to be present in the United States. Simon Shama writes in the Financial Times about how China is now “wagging its finger at the United States about it wayward monetary and fiscal policies, as yet, still unaccustomed “to being the strong party in the relationship.” Clive Crook, also in the Financial Times, writes about the looming political battle in the United States concerning the “big questions” that voters have to answer “about the entitlements they demand and the taxes they are willing to pay.”

The United States is strong and will continue to stay strong. But, its relative position is changing. And, the way its leaders go about attempting to resolve problems is missing the point.

The United States economy is recovering. But, unless policy prescriptions change, there will continue to be an under-utilization of capacity, a weakness to productivity growth, a bias towards inflation, further declines in the United States dollar, and the threat of protectionism.

It is said that people and a nation do not change their habits until there is a real crisis. Right now it looks as if we have wasted a pretty significant financial crisis in returning to our old ways and old policy prescriptions and will just have to be content with an economy that produces mediocre results. No one seems anxious to change how we attack our problems.

John M. Mason writes on current monetary and financial events. He is a professor at Penn State University and has taught in both the Management Division and the Engineering Division. He formerly was on the faculty of the Finance Department, Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mason has been President and CEO of two publicly traded financial  institutions and the Executive Vice President and CFO of a third. He has also served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D. C. and as a Senior Economist within the Federal Reserve System. Dr. Mason has served on the boards of venture capital funds and other private equity funds. He has worked with young entrepreneurs, especially within the urban environment, starting or running companies primarily connected with Information Technology.

Federal Reserve Exacerbating The Mess

U.S. Dollar Has NO Credibility Left, Down 15% Against The Euro

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.