Warren Buffett is paying a hefty price for the biggest bet of his career as his Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) has agreed to buy Precision Castparts Corp (PCP.N), valuing the maker of aerospace and other parts at $32.3 billion. Questions: 1. According to the article, Berkshire’s new deal joins a foray of companies within other… Read more »
Monthly Archives: August 2015
A Model of Innovation or Intimidation?
According to the New York Times, white-collar workers at Amazon are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues… Read more »
What you are doing and how fast you are doing it?
A new generation of workplace technology is allowing white-collar jobs to be tracked, tweaked and managed in ways that were difficult even a few years ago. While the programs are meant to foster connections and sometimes increase productivity among employees who are geographically dispersed and often working from home, questions are piling up about the… Read more »
Hard Times in TeslaLand? A New Type of Company, for Sure!
The Silicon Valley automaker is losing more than $4,000 on every Model S electric sedan it sells, using its reckoning of operating losses, and it burned $359 million in cash last quarter in a bull market for luxury vehicles. The company on Wednesday cut its production targets for this year and next. (As an aside:… Read more »
Morbid Thought, but Necessary Resolution
When a young person dies unexpectedly, his or her family could end up with the burden of paying off student loans. How can that be avoided? Questions: 1. According to the article, which loans are forgiven after a student’s death and which ones are not? What is a rough estimate of the total amount of… Read more »
On the heels of Pacioli!
Jacob Fugger was a Renaissance-era banker and industrialist from the German city of Augsburg. At the time of his death in 1525, his fortune equaled nearly 2 percent of Europe’s total economy. Questions: 1. According to the article, there is much to learn about how Fugger built his riches. Why? 2. What were some of… Read more »
A Good Thing or A Bad Thing? WOW!
Three months ago, Dan Price announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. The result has been turmoil, both internally and externally. Questions: 1. What new costs has Mr. Price faced since his announcement… Read more »
The Journey to Oz
There is severe underfunding for public education by the administration of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback in Kansas. In fact it was so much of a problem that some school districts closed early this past school year because they didn’t have the cash to keep operating. Questions: 1. According to the article, how does the pay… Read more »
What’s in a NAME?
McDonald’s has not opened in Tehran (only weeks after a nuclear deal was reached). Despite the prospect that the deal will ease international sanctions and possibly portend a change in Iranian revolutionary attitudes toward American companies, Mash Donald’s and other knockoffs of American food culture are a home-grown phenomenon. Questions: 1. Do you think that… Read more »