- The company also said it is writing off its investment in former Facebook stablecoin project Diem.
- Crypto bank Silvergate Capital (SI) has cut 40% of its staff
- Read more here: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/01/05/silvergate-cuts-40-jobs-writes-off-diem-asset-acquisition/
A review of Aswath Damodaran’s youtube channel about accounting
Hello everyone! In the following traktat I review Aswath Damodaran’s youtube channel, which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@AswathDamodaranonValuation
Intro
In my journey of Looking for Answers (TM), in my quest for gaining understanding of micro and macro money systems, I’ve been watching a lot of youtube videos, some are excellent (Thanks George Gammon!), some less so. Aswath’s channel has been bookmarked in my brave browser for more than a year, and I gave it another try.
I figure, I should post my review of his channel here on my blog as well, because youtube does not have a nice framework in place for having a discourse. Comments just get lost. To save the time I spent on analysis and the write up, I’m saving my comment here – with pictures!
Continue reading “A review of Aswath Damodaran’s youtube channel about accounting”
Bed Bath & Beyond Warns It May Go Out of Business
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Company includes going-concern warning in SEC filing
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Retailer weighing options, including potential asset sales
- Full story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-05/bed-bath-beyond-issues-going-concern-warning-reviews-options
This is sad for us, retailers. We dont want Amazon devouring the entire physical (and digital) economy. We don’t want Wall St devouring Main St.
What happens is that operating normally is just not profitable. Amazon took all the brick and mortar shops out of business – but Amazon’s physical store itself is not profitable, either. Only their AWS branch (digital services) has been profitable lately. So in this “everything squeeze,” it appears more and more that normal operations are not profitable, for anybody.
And if a business entity finds a way to be profitable, the market adjusts quickly (weeks? months? years?) to reduce margins to near-zero, and profit disappears again. Of course, the question is: what do we do now? And how to operate in such conditions? And that, my friends, will be a topic for a future lengthy article (or several).
Turns out (1) University of California gets to gamble with – presumably students’? – money, and (2) Blackstone casually “guarantees” an 11.25% annualized return on investment for 6 years
The value of the deal is $4B with a B, US dollars. And it has been publicized today, Jan 3rd 2023.
A few questions arise. Firstly, where did the $4B come from? ucod.edu says:
Each of the ten UC campuses has an associated Campus Foundation that is a separately incorporated California non-profit public benefit corporation.
Some Book recommendations
Folks occasionally ask me to recommend books to help them in their professional career.I can usually think of a couple recommendations in the moment, but always feel like I’m forgetting far more good book than I’m recommending. In the hope of providing a better answer going forward, I’ve written up some of the general purpose, leadership and management books I’ve read.
Not all of these are classically great books, some are even a bit dull to read, but they’ve changed how I think in a meaningful way. They’re roughly sorted from those I found most valuable to least:
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella Meadows. For me, systems thinking has been the most effective universal tool for reasoning through complex problems, and this book is a readable, powerful introduction.
- Don’t Think of An Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff. While written from a political perspective that some might find challenging, this book completely changed how I think about presenting ideas. You may be tempted to instead read his more academic writing, but I’d recommend reading this first as it’s much briefer and more readable.
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by DeMarco and Lister. The book that has given generations of developers permissions to speak on the challenges of space planning and open offices. Particularly powerful in grounding the discussion in data.
- Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency by Tom DeMarco. Documents a compelling case for middle managers as the critical layer where organizational memory rests and learning occurs. A meditation on the gap between efficiency and effectiveness.
- The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks. The first professional book I ever read, opening my eyes to the wealth of software engineering literature waiting out there.