Category Archives: Uncategorized

Booking the Financial Crisis with Philip Augar

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

If you want to understand the current banking crisis, start with Philip Augar whose latest book about investment banking, Chasing Alpha, covers the crash and its causes.  Augar has a doctorate in history, although his recent books don’t mention it. … Continue reading →

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Can this book really be 20 years old? I found a copy while visiting and have read it again — still as hilarious as I remember, but in hindsight it seems even more on target. Visiting a Geneva money manager … Continue reading →

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt | Comments Off on Liar’s Poker — Worth Re-Reading

Krugman is skeptical about the financial services industry

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

“That’s everybody’s challenge: come up with a clearly beneficial example of financial innovation without mention A.T.M.s, and no one can do it. If there are arbitrage opportunities and you’re able to spot them a few seconds before anybody else, you … Continue reading →

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How Canada Avoided the Financial Crisis

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

You have to admit, they completely avoided the problems the US ran into, and they are offering some advice through the pages of the FT. Chrystia Freeland , the paper’s managing editor who is Canadian, weighed in with  “What Toronto … Continue reading →

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Europe Big on Processes Rather than Decisions — Tony Blair

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

Tony Blair has some critical comments about the EU in his memoir, “A Journey.” “People wanted endless debates about the technical framework, tending to shy away from the core political questions: to liberalise our economy or not; to be strong … Continue reading →

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The Comfort Class and the Experience Economy

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

The Experience Economy is nothing new — Microsoft was deploying the concept in its financial services marketing a few years ago and in 1999 B. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore published  “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business … Continue reading →

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What’s Education Worth in a Sputnik Moment?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

President Obama said something about trying to duplicate the Sputnik concern and improve education in his State of the Union address. Andrew Hacker, co-author of “Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What … Continue reading →

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Social Networking the Old Fashioned Way – at a Pub

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

Richard Holway, a UK IT analyst and a founder of  TechMarketView, recalls the pre-Facebook days in his latest newsletter. “At the weekend a few old technologists like me got together and discussed the ‘good old days’ of the 1960s. How … Continue reading →

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Tony Blair’s Memoir — Fascinating, Quirky and Often Funny

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

This book surprised me — the  reviews I read ranged from mediocre to hostile, but I found  Tony Blair in excellent explanatory form, describing his thinking of New Labour, his efforts to get the party to adopt the ideas, and … Continue reading →

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Wisconsin’s Aurora Uses Teradata To Improve Patient Outcomes

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Tom Groenfeldt

Like other industries, health care initially used technology to automate time-consuming processes such as billing, registration and scheduling.  “What organizations discovered is that, as an indirect result of operational systems, they had collected huge amounts of data on the business … Continue reading →

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