Billion Dollar Lessons

November 5th, 2009

Billion Dollar Lessons
Welcome to Business Failure 101
In the 1960s, IBM CEO Tom Watson called an executive into his office after his venture lost $10 million. Watson asked the man if he knew why head been called in. The man said he assumed he was being fired. Watson told him, aFired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you. I just want to be sure you learned the right lessons.a
In “Billion-Dollar Lessons,” Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui draw on research into more than 750 business failures to reveal the misguided tactics that mire companies again and again. There are thousands of books about successful companies but virtually none about the lessons to be learned from those that crash and burn.
Lesson One: The Cold Hard Facts
Between 1981 and 2006, 423 major publicly held U.S. companies with combined assets totaling $1.5 trillion filed for bankruptcy. Hundreds more took huge write-offs, discontinued major operations, or were acquired under duress. Again and again, companies follow the same wrong-headed strategies that brought down businesses in the past. The sub-prime mortgage crisis that cost companies tens of billions of dollars in 2007 and 2008 echoes the ill-conceived strategies that pushed Green Tree Financial and Conseco into bankruptcy years earlier. Tom Watsonas executiveas $10 million lesson seems cheap by comparison.
Lesson Two: Failure Patterns
Carroll and Mui found that the number one cause of failure was misguided strategyanot sloppy execution, poor leadership, or bad luck. These strategic errors fall into seven categories, including:
*Pursuing nonexistent synergies: Quaker Oatsa purchase of Snapple was supposed to capitalize on distribution synergies but insteadled to a $1.7 billion write-off.
*Moving into an aadjacenta market that isnat really adjacent: Avon decided its aculture of caringa qualified it to operate retirement homes. Subsequent write-offs totaled $545 million.
*Buying more problems than efficiencies through misguided consolidation: Despite pioneering the discount department store years before Sam Walton came along, Ames Department Stores flubbed consolidation efforts, landing in bankruptcy twice before eventually liquidating.
Lesson Three: Avoid Making the Same Mistakes
But thereas light at the end of the tunnel: “Billion-Dollar Lessons” provides proven methods that managers, boards, and even investors can adopt to avoid making the same mistakes. While thereas no way to guarantee success, this book draws on vivid, off-the-beaten-track examples to help you avoid failure by showing you how to thoroughly assess potentially disastrous strategies before they bring your company down.
Required Reading
Think of “Billion-Dollar Lessons” as the flip side of “Good to Great,” but just as eye- opening and essential as that business classic. Thereas enormous value in learning from companies that lost millions (if not billions) in pursuit of strategies that led to spectacular flameouts. Everyone makes mistakes, but why make the same mistakes over and over?

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Star wars returns – Free speech tv. 1 of 3

March 9th, 2010

Well not about Iraq but equally insane.

“Star Wars Returns,” a video documentary exposing how the Bush administration is moving to make space a new arena of war, in violation of the intent of international law, has just been released by EnviroVideo.

The documentary is being distributed in the U.S. and around the world.” Star Wars Returns” is narrated and was written by investigative reporter and journalism Professor Karl Grossman, directed and edited by Emmy Award-winner Steve Jambeck and produced by Joan Flynn.

It presents U.S. military documents setting forth U.S. plans to “control space” and from space “dominate” the earth below. It reveals the multi-billion dollar U.S. development program now underway to produce space-based laser weapons, and that far more than “missile defense” is involved. It also details the international opposition to the U.S. Star Wars program.

“Star Wars Returns” explores the recently issued report of the Space Commission chaired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld which calls for U.S. “power projection in, from and through space” and declares: “In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on earth and in space.”

U.S. Senator Bob Smith, who wrote the legislation establishing the Rumsfeld Space Commission, asserts in “Star Wars Returns” about U.S. “control” of space: “It is our manifest destiny. You know we went from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States of America settling the continent and they call that manifest destiny and the next continent if you will, the next frontier, is space and it goes on forever.”

Others appearing in “Star Wars Returns” are Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll (USN, ret.), vice president of the Center for Defense Information; Congressman Dennis Kucinich; physicist Dr. Vandana Shiva of India; Bill Sulzman, director of Citizens for Peace in Space; Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York; editor Loring Wirbel; and Regina Hagen, a Global Network director.

Also interviewed is Craig Eisendrath who, as a U.S. State Department officer, was central in drafting the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the intent of which the U.S. is now preparing to violate, charges Eisendrath in “Star Wars Returns.” It is the basic international law on space, ratified by most countries of the world, and sets space aside for “peaceful purposes.”

Duration : 0:9:34

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Securing the cash

March 9th, 2010

http://www.ntv.co.ke
In Nairobi, embattled security firm G4S signed a new memorandum with the Administration Police following a spate of robberies involving the firms employees. The new pact seeks to tighten the loopholes that have made it easy for officers and employees of the firm to steal Cash in transit.

Duration : 0:0:54

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Cash-Official John Wall Video

March 9th, 2010

Cash- “Official Do Da John Wall Video” Southside Raleigh whadup!!
Roc & Cash cumn Real Soon!!…Unsigned Get at us..Myspace/rocncash…shouts out to Dre Cannonz..

Duration : 0:3:48

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collapse of the economy 1 year later

March 9th, 2010

1 year ago…

On Thursday at about 11 o’clock in the morning the FED noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the US to the tune of 550 billion dollars, were being drawn out in a matter of 1 hour or 2. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped 105 billion dollars in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of 250 thousand dollars per account, so there wouldn’t be further panic out there. That’s what actually happened. If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2 o’clock that afternoon 5,5 Trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the US, would have collapsed the entire economy of the US, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. [...] We’re really no better off today than we were 3 months ago. [...] You know, we’re not any geniuses in economics or finance, we’re representatives of the people. [...] Somebody threw us in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without a life raft, and we’re trying to determine what’s the closest shore and whether there’s any chance in the world to swim that far.

“Please note: Kanjorski had the briefing with Bernanke and Paulson on “15th of September”. The event itself, the landslide electronic Cash draw, happened on “Thursday”- meaning the preceding Thursday no doubt.
Thus the date and time when those 550 billion $ were being electronically drawn out was Thursday, Sept. 11th 2008, at 11.00 o´clock in the morning.
This is the 7th anniversary of the Terror attacks, to the minute. ” (Thanks philipschlegel, for this post at video -xKPcyvlfnc ).

Duration : 0:6:9

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Space Chimps [With Concession Cash] Xbox 360

March 8th, 2010

Space Chimps [With Concession Cash] Xbox 360
This is your chance to live the movie! Traverse the galaxy as Ham the Third with your monkey crew at your side to rescue some aliens. Cross deadly desert canyons, and sneak past heavily guarded dungeons in order to defeat the evil ruler Zartog, and save the day.

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Why wont the news media tell you the rest of the story on HR 6? Taxing "Big Oil" isnt the only part..

March 8th, 2010

section 2, title II, section 204 and we actually page 10 under section 204, item C. And I will read this, will find this stunning that it is actually in print. That transfers item C, line 4, page 10: A lessee shall not be eligible to obtain any economic benefit of any covered lease or any other lease.

So President Clinton’s team had negotiated bad leases, and now our friends are saying that those bad leases must be stopped. We simply need to stop them. We don’t need to unravel them. We don’t need to go through the thorny process of making it right for both sides as we unravel. We simply are going to punish you by not allowing you to derive any economic benefit from this type of installation. I will tell you, that undermines the full faith and credit of the United States. If we cannot depend on the word of the United States, then what do we have? I would draw parallels to things that other countries have done. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez in 2001 raised the royalty rates from 1 percent to 16 percent just like that. Now, I will tell you as a business guy, if you know that a cost is going to be 1 percent or 16 percent, it is sort of irrelevant, but you must know that the cost is steady. When he raised those rates just at a single point with no ability to redesign these types of infrastructures, then he severely limited the interest of people to invest in that country, and certainly

[Page:
H782] GPO’s PDFthat is exactly what is happening. Foreign firms are already curtailing their investments in that country.
So in Venezuela we see that there is an attempt to change existing contracts, very similar to the way that we changed yesterday on the floor of this House of Representatives, and it has affected the desire of people to invest in Venezuela.

In Bolivia we have the same thing. The Bolivian government threatened to expel oil companies from that country in 2006 if they did not agree to new government terms on existing contracts. What has happened? I think you could forecast what has happened. What is done is that foreign investors are now beginning to reconsider whether or not they will actually be a part of the Bolivian economy or not. This is the thing that all shareholders, they will live with any certainty in life, but they will not live with uncertainty. And when we begin to change the contracts, they begin to pull their investments out and go to places where certainty is more of a potential.

In Russia we have seen the same thing. Companies such as Shell, Exxon, BP have had valid oil and gas leases in Russia for years. President Putin had a number of government agencies threaten to pull these leases for a number of suspect reasons. By threatening to pull these leases, Shell was forced to give up assets that were worth billions of dollars. So we see in Russia this attempt to maneuver contracts, to manipulate contracts much as what we did yesterday, and the effects are very bad. Long term, Russia will not have people who are willing to come and invest in that country.

In 2001, I had the opportunity to go as a company; my wife and I had a small company that dealt in oil and gas, repairs of oil wells. Russia was looking for such capability. So in 2001, I went with a team of people who did various different projects. We were the ones who did down hole repairs on oil wells. They took me, they showed me files of maybe 6,000 or 8,000 wells that were simple to correct, yet they in their technology in 2001 did not have access to even the basics that my father had seen here in the United States in the early 1950s when he was working in the same industry. My father retired from Exxon; his whole life was work.

So when I went back, I showed him the videos of the equipment that was in Russia in 2001. He said, “Son, in 1950 we were more advanced than what we are seeing here.”

When countries are unwilling to allow people to have stable returns, it doesn’t have to be high returns, low returns, but there must be stability and there must be predictability. When countries do not allow that, there will be no investments. And so here Russia was with over 6,000 wells asking me in 2001 to come and fix because they did not have anyone that was capable of fixing them.

I determined that the environment was very, very unsettling in Russia, so we actually opted not to become a part of the team that went there. There was a company that was about 10 times our size located in Abilene, Texas. They did go. That was about maybe a $50 million company, maybe a $100 million company. Within 2 years, they were selling everything at bankruptcy because the Russians, as you can predict, said, “No. These assets are going to belong to us.”

So this contracting problem that was attempted to be cured yesterday in legislation I think is going to be, instead of a fix, is going to cause prices to be higher at the pump, investments to be less, and at the end of the day we are going to wonder if maybe we did not empower a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs to go around and make commitments on behalf of the Federal Government. We shall see. I wish my friends well.

I would say that I am not the only one who wonder about the contracts. Just day before yesterday the Washington Post had an editorial which declared that these elements that are included in the bill, the ones that begin to undo the contracts that we voted on yesterday and pushed by the majority in this House, the Washington Post declared those solutions to be ones that Russia and Bolivia would be proud of.

who cares as long as no more money is given to big oil. it doesnt matter that more us based business will go over seas, it doesnt matter that jobs in the US will be lost, it doesnt matter that gas prices will go up, it doesnt matter that our foreign need for oil will go up, it doesnt matter that the money coming from the cuts will be put into a fund for no specific purpose, it doesnt matter that we broke contracts signed by the clinton adminitstration, it doesnt matter that business will be hesitant to invest in us based businesses, it doesnt matter that the small oil producing companines will be shutting their doors, as long as big oil doesnt make money nothing else matters.

Can someone please explaine Cash ISA Transfer?

March 8th, 2010

OK i really don’t understand Cash ISA’s at all!

Now i have a Cash ISA with Natwest from last year can i transfer this to another bank and still add my 3600 for this year (2010). Or will that mean i can’t add 3600 this year if i transfer it to another bank.
Also some what are the best ISA accounts at the moment?

I hope i make sense :s

Yes, transferring between ISAs does not affect the maximum you can save in a year. Don’t forget the year runs from April to March.
For the best accounts look at
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/
http://www.moneysupermarket.com/savings/
and
http://www.moneyextra.com/savings/

How do cash registers and using bar codes work?

March 8th, 2010

I’m planning on opening a clothing store when I finish school, and I am wondering, how does using a Cash register with all the bar codes and stuff work. Do I have to put them on file or something? Like the bar code with that item the article of clothing is?

Duh. The computer doesn’t know what the barcode means unless you tell it what you want.
It’s a computer, remember? We built them which means we have to program them.

If someone offered you 1 billion dollars to bash my face in with a bat would you?

March 8th, 2010

You would not face charges or go to jail or anything hypothetical

No I would not. I value my bat and don’t want to damage it.