antti.vilpponen.net

Leo Laporte recently wrote something I have been long thinking about. The use of microblogs and other similar services is somewhat of an act of shouting into an echo chamber where it’s hard to attract interest, because everyone else is shouting equally hard as well.

For some reason Leo had come across a bug in his Google Buzz stream that failed his profile to post updates to his followers. These updates should have also been posted to Twitter from his Buzz stream. Except that they weren’t – for about 16 days. Leo has 17 000 people following him, he’s one of the most well known tech podcasters out there and no one noticed.

I’ve become something of a passive follower of Twitter as fell. Tonight I realised I hadn’t kept Tweetie (app for Mac I use to follow Twitter) open all day – and I didn’t miss it at all.

All these small issues have yet again told me that blogging is one of the biggest and best ways to pass your thoughts along. People still read blogs. Each month about 20 000 people read ArcticStartup. I’ve long, no let me correct that, far too long neglected my blog that I’ve kept active for about 8-9 years now. It’s time I got back to blogging a bit more.

If it’s worth sitting down and taking the time to write about it – it’s usually worth the read as well.

Photo by antigone78

I’ve been following the Apple Inc. stock (AAPL) more closely from this spring. It immediately became one of my favorite US stocks to follow. Although I’m a very small time investor, I still like to put my money in stocks to outgrow inflation and hopefully make a little on the side.

However, I’ve been looking at the stock today and found out that it is going through a major battering due to the Consumer Reports analysis on the new iPhone4 – where they ended up saying that they can’t recommend the phone due to it’s signal strength issue with the new antenna design. Due to this, Apple lost a few billion dollars from its market cap.

Something that did not go out with the report though is the fact that Consumer Reports still rate the iPhone4 the best smart phone out there (via Digital Daily).

Something that you also can’t find in any reports is the fact that when I looked at ordering a new iPhone unlocked from the UK (no point in buying it from Finland), there’s a three week queue for the device. Now this is a very long wait for something that consumers “according to press” shouldn’t buy. It’s a clear sign that Apple aficionados aren’t caring a single bit about the Consumer Reports article.

On top of this, Apple has reported in June that they have sold 3 million iPads in 80 days. The iPhone4 phenomenon has also been out of this world – on June 24th they reported 1.7 million phones sold in the first three days.

I’m with the aficionados and at 250 dollars a share, before the earnings call, I say it’s a definite buy. Analysts have a target price on the share at 330 dollars – that’s 32% higher where it is today.

ps. I got in at $249.40.

In my previous post I wrote about Greece and the loans Finland, among other European countries, is giving to Greece without any collateral. Today I wanna spark some conversation about another type of collateral, collateral damage that is. To focus more, I want to put this into the context of banking. In the previous post I fairly openly disclosed that I’m a strong supporter of open markets.

However, having read an interesting point of view in an afternoon tabloid (absurd in itself, but true) I have to agree that the system of responsibility is heavily broken in today’s financial system. The problem is isn’t all that easy though, however there are parts of the ideology that might be worthwhile exploring.

The article I read was from Iltalehti where Risto Kalliorinne, the 1st vice chairman of the Finnish lefties has said that Europe should implement the Brazilian system where bank executives are responsible for the mistakes and harm they cause with their personal wealth. This of course is aimed at reducing the collateral damage banks cause with their overly ambitious risk taking.

This is a drastic change from the legal responsibilities of the regular Limited Liability Companies out there, but definitely an interesting point of view. At the moment the responsibilities are totally off meaning that basically there is an endless upside for the executives with very little downside in the form of personal financial responsibilities. Take this to national level and it is usually the taxpayers that have come to the rescue of the bankers. You can’t claim the downfall of the world economies on single bankers, but it is the system that has failed to some degree and it needs repair immediately.

Like I said in the beginning, this isn’t all that straightforward, but there’s definitely a lot to think about in this scenario.

I’m a big supporter of market economies, let’s start off with that. In general I believe, when given enough freedom and control, markets will choose the best alternatives for all of us. I’m also a big supporter of the Euro and believe we should embrace its stability a little beyond our regular responsibilities every now and then, if it is needed.

Therefore, I do agree we should take necessary steps to ensure Greece is able to pull its self out of debt and ensure financial, and thus social stability. The IMF and EU syndicated loans are probably the best choice out there. This however is, where my understanding for the issue ends.

I read the Finnish Finance Ministry’s proposal (in Finnish) for the money we need to allocate for the Greek loan. It’s a whopping 1.6 billion euros. It’s a lot of money for us Finns, about 300 euros roughly per each and every one. The size isn’t the problem here – in my opinion it should be looked at from the business as well as the political perspective.

The political perspective is fine – we need to agree on it to stabilise the Euro zone. However, the business side of it has not even been thought of. I’m glad there’s a 2.5 %-point margin on the money we loan and lend onwards to Greece, but it doesn’t justify giving the loan without any collateral what-so-ever. You heard me right, there is no collateral for the loan. This is said loud and clear in the Ministry’s proposal.

I’m not supporting the fact that our politicians aren’t able to demand better terms for the loans when a whole nation digs deep into our pockets. It’s not about anything else than proper business sense. No wonder the Euro zone is constantly trailing the US in economic growth. Our politicians are unable to think in proper business terms.

I mean let’s look at it from another point of view; how are we able to negotiate with Greece if they miss to meet their spending cut -targets? Ask them nicely and not give anymore money? Doesn’t really matter, they’ve received the money we’ve already given them and they can always resort to pulling out of the Euro and going back to a hugely devalued Drakhma. And we? Without any collateral, we citizens are left with nothing.

There’s been an enormous shift in how modern people view welfare diseases such as obesity in our society. Adam Ozimek has a blog post about an obese individual who had been put up in the circus as an exhibition people paid money to come and see. This happened about a 100 years ago. By today’s standards, the same individual is just a large person by no means being something extraordinary in our society.