Cult Figures

Cult Figures
•​The long-term history of inflation adjusted returns from stocks shows a persistent but recently fading 6.6% real return since 1912.

•The legitimate question that market analysts, government forecasters and pension consultants should answer is how that return can be duplicated in the future.

•Unfair though it may be, an investor should continue to expect an attempted inflationary solution in almost all developed economies over the next few years and even decades.

The Dark Side of Dubai - a defining article..

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.



But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

The Hamster Wheel -Credits to Timothy Lee

Image via Wikipedia

If you talk to business travelers above a certain age, they’ll tell you about the good old days of airline travel. Airports used to be less crowded, the food was better, the service was more attentive, and the stewardesses were more attractive. This was because price controls kept fares high, and airlines competed for passengers with generous perks. The situation was great for the small minority of rich people and business travelers who could afford it because they didn’t have to deal with the hoi polloi clogging up the airports. But it sucked for everyone else, for whom an airplane flight was a rare luxury.

Why dictators and democracies are failing at the same time: Thomas Friedman

Kishore Mahbubani, a retired Singaporean diplomat, published a provocative essay in The Financial Times on Monday that began like this: 

``Dictators are falling. Democracies are failing. A curious coincidence? Or is it, perhaps, a sign that something fundamental has changed in the grain of human history. I believe so. How do dictators survive? They tell lies. Muammar Gaddafi was one of the biggest liars of all time. He claimed that his people loved him. He also controlled the flow of information to his people to prevent any alternative narrative taking hold. Then the simple cellphone enabled people to connect. The truth spread widely to drown out all the lies that the colonel broadcast over the airwaves. Libya. We can vote out our liars, unlike certain Arab, and Asian countries. Still, Mahbubani's comparison warrants some reflection this week, which coincides with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the president's jobs speech. It is a great week for truth-telling. 

Can you remember the last time you felt a national leader looked us in the eye and told us there is no easy solution to our major problems, that we've gotten into this mess by being self-indulgent or ideologically fixated over two decades and that now we need to spend the next five years rolling up our sleeves, possibly accepting a lower living standard and making up for our excesses? 

For me, this is the most important thing to say both on the anniversary of 9/11 and on the eve of President Barack Obama's jobs speech. After all, they are intertwined. Why has this been a lost decade? An answer can be found in one simple comparison: how Dwight Eisenhower and his successors used the cold war and how George W. Bush used 9/11. America had to face down the Russians in the Cold War.

Pictures of Ghost Chinese towns

There's been a lot written about ghost towns in China.



Now, state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) has built a town in Angola. And it's fairly empty.

Just outside Angola's capital city of Luanda is Nova Cidade de Kilamba a residential development of 750 eight-story apartment buildings, a dozen schools, and more than 100 retail units, reports the BBC's Louise Redvers.

The $3.5 billion development covers 12,355 acres and was built to house about 500,000 people, and this is one of "several satellite cities being constructed by Chinese firms around Angola," writes Redvers.

The 10 Best-Selling Products Of All Time

Besides selling in droves, many of the products on this list changed American culture. While each product is in a different industry — from smartphones, to video game consoles and music albums — there are clear similarities among the leaders.

All the products that made the list were innovative in their respective categories when released. Before Star Wars, people never camped out in front of the theater to see the midnight debut. Harry Potter was the first major fantasy book series particularly geared toward tween readers.

20 Qualities That Make A Great Salesperson

Vivian Giang

The only way to make it in this economy is to be great, because "it's the only thing that pays," according to Grant Cardone, sales expert and author of Sell or Be Sold: How to Get Your Way in Business and in Life.


"If you're not going to be great in sales, go get another career, because it's too hard to do if you're not going to succeed," Cardone adds. "Great salespeople are literally the engine of every economy in the world."

So how does one become great? How do you close the deal faster than anyone else? We recently caught up with Cardone, who shared with us 20 qualities that he thinks set great sales people apart from everyone else.

The Facebook IPO: A Note to Mark Zuckerberg; or, With “Friends” Like Morgan Stanley, Who Needs Enemies?

I just received this letter from a friend in the banking industry. He prefers to remain anonymous (you’ll see why soon enough).

Dear Mark,

There’s been a lot of ballyhoo recently about your IPO and your choice of investment bankers. Indeed, a war was fought by the banks to win your “deal of the decade.” As reported in the press, the competition was so intense banks slashed their fees in order to win your business. Facebook is “only” paying a 1% “commission” for its IPO rather than the 3% typically charged by the banks.

How can to be more persuasive at work?

A good idea alone has never been enough to move a listener to action.




Aristotle tells us that to be persuasive, we must connect to a listener on 3 levels: Logos, Ethos and Pathos.

Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last?

Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last?


Just five years ago, “BlackBerry” was virtually synonymous with “smartphones.” It was well on its way to becoming a generic trademark, like Kleenex or Band-Aid, that would seemingly forever be associated with its entire sector. “For many, the Blackberry is a must-have gadget, a wireless hand-held computer that can send e-mail and make phone calls,” noted a 2005 NPR story on the “CrackBerry,” as some BlackBerry addicts referred to the device. (Incidentally, the story compared the BlackBerry to the Palm Treo, an equally popular device at the time.)

Moving towards a doomsday weapon?

Moving Toward A Doomsday Weapon?

by Paul Johnson

Breaking the speed-of-light barrier can lead to the laws of physics being rewritten


BREAKTHROUGH The large hadron collider at CERN, Geneva. Breaking the speed-of-light barrier will lead to fundamental revisions in scientific theory. These in turn will produce new processes, some of which will inevitably have military applications

99 Tiny Stories to Make You Think, Smile and Cry

99 Tiny Stories to Make You Think, Smile and Cry

blogarchiveaboutrssthought questionsmakes me thinkpost written by: Marc



Sometimes the most random everyday encounters force us to stop and rethink the truths and perceptions we have ingrained in our minds. These encounters are educationally priceless. They spawn moments of deep thought and self-reflection that challenge the status quo and help us evolve as sensible individuals.

Your Friends Are Now Your Customers - thank facebook!

When Facebook announced its recent $5 billion IPO, many applauded the company's mission to connect friends and make the world a more open place. Experts described Zuckerberg as "noble," "grandiose," and "downright inspirational." Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently presented his vision in similar terms: "To instantly connect people everywhere." Indeed, the intuitive appeal of such social networking platforms is hard to overlook and partly explains their rapid growth. But alongside the dominance of these sites has come a disturbing new trend — that social networks are altering the fabric of friendships, turning you into a business, and your friends and followers into customers of your content.

When The Customer Isn't Right

The longest line on a busy Saturday afternoon in a celebrated New York department store is at the returns desk: bad news in these troubling times when every dime counts. First in line is 18-year old Jayne, decked out in the latest Ugg boots and designer jeans. Jayne is returning the dress she bought on Thursday and wore on Friday.

The Catastrophe of Success

Something odd and interesting happens to a lot of people who become very successful. Once the initial thrill wears off, they come to perceive their success as "a catastrophe" and even as "a kind of death," as the playwright Tennessee Williams famously put it, after The Glass Menagerie became a smash hit in 1944. Athletes, scientists, generals, entrepreneurs, executives, performers, and politicians have expressed this paradox in different words. Paul Samuelson, an economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1970, later concluded that, "After winners receive the award and adulation, they wither away into vainglorious sterility."

China's Hard Landing

The People's Bank of China's surprise announcement Wednesday of a half percentage point cut in banks' required reserve ratio is an admission that the economy is facing stiff headwinds. Consumer price inflation remains relatively high at 5.5%, and the true level of inflation as reflected in the GDP deflator is probably closer to 10%.

101 Simple Truths We Often Forget

Sometimes we find ourselves running in place, struggling to get ahead simply because we forget to address some of the simple truths that govern our potential to make progress. So here’s a quick reminder:

12 Things Successful People Do Differently

I’ve always been fascinated by people who are consistently successful at what they do; especially those who experience repeated success in many areas of their life throughout their lifetime. In entertainment, I think of Clint Eastwood and Oprah Winfrey. In business, I think of Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett. We all have our own examples of super successful people like these who we admire. But how do they do it?




Over the years I’ve studied the lives of numerous successful people. I’ve read their books, watched their interviews, researched them online, etc. And I’ve learned that most of them were not born into success; they simply did, and continue to do, things that help them realize their full potential. Here are twelve things they do differently that the rest of us can easily emulate.

Little History session for those who think the US is screwed!

Do you think the US glory days are over or, at a minimum, that we're on the verge of a new downturn?



In his weekly note, Raymond James' Jeff Saut offers up a great batch of history for those who think the US is facing some crisis of historic proportions.

The clock is ticking on China's Cinderella Story!

Everyone knows that when the clock strikes midnight for Cinderella, the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, the horse into mice and the jeweled gown into rags. The spell is broken and reality returns. I keep thinking of China in this context.



One of the big questions of the year is whether China blows up or not. Hard landing or soft? When will the clock strike midnight on the Chinese? Things are slowing down, and it feels like it’s getting late.

10 signs that China is in a bubble

In a recent research note Edward Chancellor of GMO gives us 10 ways to know if you’re in a bubble. He says China just so happens to fit the mold:



1. A growth story that is uncritically accepted.

Here's what your paying for in a gallon of fuel

Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012

I recently got back from a month's vacation — the longest I've ever taken, and a shocking indulgence for an American. (Earlier this summer, I was still fretting about how to pull off two weeks unplugged.) The distance, though, helped me hone in on what's actually important to my professional career — and which make-work activities merely provide the illusion of progress. Inspired by HBR blogger Peter Bregman's idea of creating a "to ignore" list , here are the activities I'm going to stop cold turkey in 2012 — and perhaps you should, too.