LA Times (May 21)
Although Mike Pence “would be the most conservative president of modern times,” he would clearly be better than Trump. “Pence would be an improvement on grounds of simple competence. He would make the country safer. Under a President Pence, Americans would have less cause to fear that a blundering president might lead us into war with North Korea or Iran.”
Tags: Blundering, Competence, Conservative, Iran, North Korea, Pence, President, Trump, War
The Economist (May 20)
The WannaCry attack reads like the script to “a Hollywood disaster film.” Even though it had a relatively happy ending, “the incident rammed home two unpleasant truths about the computerised world. The first is that the speed, scalability and efficiency of computers are a curse as well as a blessing.” Digital data “can be sent around the world in milliseconds,” both a blessing and a bane. “The second unpleasant truth is that opportunities for mischief will only grow.” As we embrace the internet or things, vulnerabilities will multiply “as computers find their way into everything from cars and pacemakers to fridges and electricity grids.”
Tags: Cars, Computers, Curse, Efficiency, IoT, Pacemakers, Scalability, Speed, Vulnerabilities, WannaCry
Washington Post (May 18)
“Nothing could be more disconcerting to allies than dealing with an impulsive, ignorant president — one whose future is far from certain…. The 100-day mark was the end of the beginning of Trump’s term. The appointment of a special prosecutor just four months into his presidency might be seen as the beginning of the end.”
Tags: Allies, Beginning, Disconcerting, End, Ignorant, Impulsive, Special prosecutor, Term
Boston Globe (May 18)
“Some complain that the annual shareholder meeting is a vestige of the old days, a tradition whose time has expired in the era of Skype and webcasts. Others insist it’s the last remaining forum for individual investors in publicly traded companies to sit in the same room as a business’s executives and directors.” Despite the efficiencies, “only about 200 out of 10,000 publicly traded US companies hold so-called virtual stockholder meetings.”
Tags: Complain, Directors, Executives, Individual investors, Shareholder meeting, Skype, Tradition, Virtual stockholder meetings, Webcasts
Wall Street Journal (May 17)
“Activist investors, a perennial nuisance for chief executives, are becoming an existential threat. Since January, they have helped push out the leaders of three high-profile S&P 500 companies” (AIG, CSX Corp. and Arconic Inc.). Moreover, “they are gunning for the CEOs at other companies,” such as Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. and Avon Products Inc. “So far in 2017, activists have started nine campaigns targeting top management, the fastest pace on record.”
Reuters (May 16)
“President Trump is now the leaker in chief.” His “conduct over the past week strikes at the heart of the United States intelligence community. He does not seem to grasp how it works…. The damage Trump has done to his own intelligence services, their foreign counterparts, and their relationships with the White House in four short months might take four long years to repair. If it can be repaired, that is.”
The Atlantic (May 16)
“The bad news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. The good news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history.”
Tags: History, Incompetent, Trump, U.S.
New York Times (May 16)
“The world is led by a child.” Donald Trump is mentally “still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom” and “desperate for the approval of those he admires.” The President is “too incompetent to understand his own incompetence.” This has created a “perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”
Institutional Investor (May 15)
“The Cambrian explosion has nothing on institutional investing.” Rather than millions of years, institutional investing’s journey from small and simple to enormously complex took only half a century…. The unfortunate and ironic part is that all this innovation has done little to quell crises…. Underlying every instance of disaster is the same root: We simply do not know what we think we know.”
Tags: Cambrian, Complex, Crises, Disaster, Innovation, Institutional, Investing, Simple
Reuters (May 14)
“Desperate to overcome Japan’s growing shortage of labor, mid-sized companies are planning to buy robots and other equipment to automate a wide range of tasks, including manufacturing, earthmoving and hotel room service…. If the investment ambitions are fulfilled it would show there is a silver lining as Japan tries to cope with a shrinking and rapidly aging population. It could help equipment-makers, lift the country’s low productivity and boost economic growth.”
Tags: Aging, Automate, Desperate, Economic growth, Japan, Labor, Manufacturing, Productivity, Robots, Shortage, Silver lining
