Computer servers at the Climate Research Unit, based in the UK's University of East Anglia, were recently hacked. Internal email messages reveal that the scientists who were entrusted by the UN to provide the most objective view of the climate problem were actually engaged in over-hyping the dangers posed by global warming, suppressing research findings which might either cast doubt on the issue or reduce the sense of urgency, trying to discredit dissenting scientists, and even rigging the peer-review process itself, to reduce the influence of some of the more problematic research studies and scientific papers.

Continue reading "Perils of Consensus: Climate-gate, WMDs, and Asset Bubbles" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (2)

Billionaire fund manager Raj Rajaratnam and a bevy of other highly placed Wall Streeters have just been arrested on charges of profiting from inside information in their trades of securities over several years. Under financial regulations, insider trading is prohibited because it gives an unfair advantage to people who have information not available to public investors. In the days of paper-based financial reports and a news cycle that was measured in hours, if not days, this might have made sense. But today, news travels at Twitter speed, and the wisdom of the online crowd might itself be a much better policing mechanism than a thousand pages of difficult-to-read legal jargon.

Continue reading "CONTRARIAN IDEA: Let's Legalize Insider Trading" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first afternoon at the World Business Forum, our after-lunch speaker was David Rubenstein, billionaire investor and founder of the Carlyle Group, former Carter advisor and generally very bright guy. His rapidly delivered speech was like a ticker-tape coming almost too fast to read, fact and stat, fact and stat, stat stat stat stat. Recession is way worse than most people think. Taxes will increase substantially following recovery. Government will continue too involved with business for a long time. NYC will no longer be the world's financial capital. The dollar will cease to be the world's primary reserve currency. On the other hand, he says, a downturn like this creates great investment opportunities, and lots of room for innovation. His was a rapid, bleak, but fairly balanced presentation. Sobering, disturbing, worrisome, and factual.

Jeffrey Sachs, on the other hand, gave what can only be described as a disappointingly shallow and politicized analysis of the world's problems in his "Economics for a Crowded Planet" talk.

Continue reading "Hellfire and Brimstone on a Tuesday Afternoon" »

Posted by Don Peppers | Permalink | Comments (1)