Listen To Nouriel Roubini!

Larry Swedroe writing for CBS Money Watch -

Nouriel Roubini gained fame for accurately predicting the financial crisis that began in the fourth quarter of 2007. As his descriptions of the crisis proved to be accurate, he became a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, regularly appearing on CNBC. People pay attention to what Roubini has to say.

According to Wikipedia, Roubini spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia. In 2009, Prospect Magazine voted him No. 2 on its “list of the world’s 100 greatest living public intellectuals,” Foreign Policy magazine ranked him No. 4 on its list of the “top 100 global thinkers,” and Time magazine him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Mr. Swedroe goes on in the article to criticize Roubini and talk down economic predictors of all sorts.

I don’t agree. Roubini is very good at what he does. No one paid any attention when he predicted our current morass.

Are we going to make the same mistake twice?

James Pilant

Dell Lawsuit Proceeds

Written by Erik Sherman at CBS Moneywatch –

The lawsuit is three years old and the story continues. When a company makes a colossal error, it can simply make a clear breast of it, take its lumps, and recover. Or, it can try to bury the story, protect itself by claiming innocence, and prolong the pain. That’s the route that Dell has taken.

In July, Dell tried to deny fault and simply ignore how it allegedly ignored customers who were having problems with computers plagued by bad parts. And some of the explanations in the past were real hoots. For example, Dell told the University of Texas math department that the machines went bad because intense calculations overtaxed them. Right, the machines were actually supposed to be coasters and were only missing the sign that said, “Warning, Don’t Use For Math.”

Apparently taking responsibility was too risky.

This seems to me to be an obvious case of thinking only as far as the next quarter.

Any kind of long term thinking or ethical thinking would have called for a different action.

James Pilant