Bookmarks for December 16th through December 17th

These are my links for December 16th through December 17th:

• FT.com / Columnists / Luke Johnson – The toughest year I have ever had to call – Interesting article about next year's economy. Some thoughts are good, others are still missing things. ie, he said that now is a great time to buy real estate, but there are still 8 million ARMs set to adjust over the next year to two years, so the best bet may actually be towards the end of next year.
• Lean muscle mass helps even obese patients battle cancer – The better shape you're in… meaning amount of lean muscle mass not necessarily fat or skinny… has massive affects on survival rates with cancer. Get in shape now.
• What Club Penguin Can Teach Media Companies | BNET Media Blog | BNET – Pay for social network. How can you add that in to your own projects?
• Answers to huge wind-farm problems are blowin’ in the wind –
• Brown economists: Ancestral history explains roots of income inequality – Interesting idea, but seems flawed in a few ways. What if this study had been done in the 1930s or what if it's done again in 10-15 years (if the US/Europe declines)? And, why the 1500s as opposed to 0 bc (in order to take the Arab conquests)? The idea that is most interesting is how communities transmit information from generation to generation. Are we reaching a point where we are transmitting information directly between interested parties instead of by communities? Will that change the cultural landscape, the future of economics, and migratory patterns?
• Aging brains allow negative memories to fade – Interesting ideas about the cause of this. Their theory: older people have trained themselves to discount bad experiences.

Bookmarks for December 12th through December 15th

These are my links for December 12th through December 15th:

• The Three Most Important Words for Sales Success | EyesOnSales –
• Don’t be tricked by your Web analytics results – DMNews –
• We’ve got your number: Consumers choose products with more technical specs –
• No regrets: Avoiding bad feelings about missing a great sale –
• How To Sell MORE During the Meltdown | Sales Machine | BNET –
• Why Your Elevator Pitch Stinks | Sales Machine | BNET –

Bookmarks for December 2nd through December 5th

These are my links for December 2nd through December 5th:

• FT.com / Business Life – Bosses are a bad idea – fantastic discussion of W.L. Gore's "management" model
• Loneliness and friendship – Bloody good.
• Use Small Actions to Get Big Results – Creating Business Relationships – Entrepreneur.com – Absolutely genius piece
• 3 Tips for Smarter Business Reading | Sterling Performance | BNET –
• Top Business Books for 2008 | Sterling Performance | BNET –
• Developing a neighborhood watch for the Internet – Genius use of crowds, see how I can apply this to other issues.

Bookmarks for November 9th through November 12th

These are my links for November 9th through November 12th:

• Let them fail, so someone else can do better –
• How This Crisis Could Make You A Fortune –
• In the Congo, history repeats itself more quickly than usual –
• Covering Their Arses (by Don Boudreaux) –
• Peak Oil: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide From Higher Oil Prices –
• The West versus the Rest? –

Welcome

I’d like to welcome you to my site. My name is Cody Boyte and this is my first blog post. I’ll be commenting on the things that affect my life, most often I will comment on business and economics. At this point, that seems to be the most important thing in the national news so it bears comments.

I won’t outline any manifesto or ground rules for my blog, I have chosen to let it evolve. Please comment as you please. I look forward to talking to everyone who gets involved.

I’ll start my blog with a comment on the state of the economy and give a little hope for the future. I’ve spent a bit of time over the last few months thinking about whether our economy is going to stay stagnent, move towards a recession, recover, or go into runaway inflation. At this point it seems like we’re occillating between inflation and deflation because the major financial institutions have started to completely deleveraged, which causes deflation, and yet at the same time the Fed is handing out money and has lowered the interbank rate back to the same rate that it was at when our economy started towards the problems we currently have.

In any case, I read an interesting article today. It was called “How Japan learnt how to stop worrying and love the recession” in the Times Online (timesonline.co.uk). Towards the bottom of the article I read a little passage that shared the secret for anyone that wants to learn what to do if we hit a deep recession:

Japanese instinctively hoarded cash for a rainy day: financially and philosophically, companies and the general population began carrying umbrellas even when the forecast was good. Household risk aversion now commands cultish devotion: books about living on a fiver a day sell in millions, and TV programmes on the theme are primetime fare.

If you can learn to be the guy selling the tome on how to live on a fiver a day, watch out. You’ll be doing just fine in the recession. The key it seems is to play to the times, whatever they are. Best of luck.