Well, today Michel revealed his secret to us in his blog, which actually is not in German, but apparently in dutch, maybe flemish. It is a hot story in Belgium, you can read the details here. Michel just happened to have the right comments in the right language. No wonder he was always ranked first in the morning, before people in the US read other pages, although today he is holding on to first place. Interesting blognamics.
Archive for September, 2002
Huge Digression: Michel Vuijlsteke’s Weblog is hot and so is Veronique de Kock
September 16, 2002I wish I understood more German to understand why Michel Vuijlsteke’s Weblog is so hot. In understand it has something to do with Veronique de Kock
but I just wonder what it is Michel linked or said that has created enough furor to make his blog as hot, after all you can find lots of her pictures online. Right now Michel is in second place in Salon.com blogs,
| 1. | Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment | 2,549 |  | |
| 2. | Michel Vuijlsteke’s Weblog | 2,224 | | |
| 3. | the reverse cowgirl’s blog | 919 | | |
| 4. | filchyboy | 275 | |
but at some point today he held the #1 spot over Scott:
De dag is nog niet over en ik heb al meer dan 1400 hits… Ik geraak er maar niet over.
| Site | | Hits | ||
| 1. | Michel Vuijlsteke’s Weblog | 1,434 | | |
| 2. | Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment | 1,355 | | |
| 3. | the reverse cowgirl’s blog | 364 | | |
| 4. | filchyboy | 176 | |
Two of my frustrations are not being fluent in French or Greman….damm…
Banana Republic Advanced Topic: Hugo Chavez strikes again, asks people to remove deposits from private banks
September 15, 2002The Venezuelan President on Sunday said it would be “wonderful” if people took their deposits out of Venezuelan private banks and made deposits in Government banks to punish the private ones for buying dollars, not lending money and not buying Government debt. He instructed the Minister of production and Commerce to meet with groups that proposed such a clever idea this Sunday.
How stupid can anyone be? Imagine half the people withdraw their deposits, maybe we could have a run on the banking system and have half or all the banks collapse. Nothing like promoting half-baked ideas that in the end only hurt the country. Ignorance is a terrible thing, most of all when it is used by those in power. This has to rate with about the most extreme Banana Republic thing Hugo Chavez has ever said. On top of that, state-owned banks are mostly bankrupt and mismanaged and give terrible service. Way to go Hugo!. It proves the solution is that you leave so that people stop buying dollars, start borrowing money and start buying Government bonds.
Too funny to pass up
September 14, 2002
Some things are just too funny or irreverent to pass up, taken, copied, stolen and enjoyed from the reverse cowgirl’s blog, copyright by Susannah Breslin, who happen to be the same person.
Scamorama: A compilation of 419 scams, $5 record and matching fund
September 14, 2002Through John Fleck’s site I find out about a real hero, somebody who scammed the scammers for $3 bucks, not bad, getting three bucks out of a multimillion dollar scam, I am not sure what they did is legal, but I am sure the FBI will not prosecute. While this appeared to top my earlier post about Zach Beane, upon further research into this profound subject, I found out there is actually a full Scamorama website on this anti-scam topic. Moreover, the three buck record has been topped by none other than Bart Simpson who managed to get five bucks out of the mysterious Mr Ja. Another interesting link is found here about the mysterious Mr. Aba, who should be more carfeul about how he answers his emails. Thus, the counter scam marches on!!! I think we should launch a matching fund through Pay Pal for the person who gets the first $100 bucks out of the scammers……
Economy improving and no double dip: Very bullish!!
September 14, 2002I recently reported that Ken Fisher wrote a bullish article in Forbes calling the current Stock market “A beautiful Market”. The NYT has an article today with two economists who have been very accurate in the past at predicting what the economy will do. (Economists tend to be bad at this, they seldom catch the chnages in slope and always predict small changes from the cuirrent data). In the article, Nancy Lazar of Ed Hyman’s ISI group is quoted as predicting 4% growth in the fourth quarter this year. Lazar predicted quite well the recession as well as the growth this year as reported elsewhere they said:
“All considered, we believe growth in 2002 is likely to surprise on the upside in large part because expectations are so low.”
Hyman’s group was picked by thestreet.com as the top economic analysis team:
| Macro Category | |||
| Economics | Voting Score | ||
| 1 | Ed Hyman | ISI Group | 100 |
| 2 | Ed Yardeni | Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown | 38 |
| 3 | Steve Roach | Morgan Stanley Dean Witter | 35 |
| Best Team | — | ISI Group | — |
Dont know much about the other economist in the article. But since now Lazar and Hyman are saying things are going to remain strong, wthis should be good news for everyone. The two, Fishes and Lazar/Hyman) combined make for a very bullish case, you heard it here first!!! (well, you heard the combination….)
BBC news recommended: Sony’s new products
September 14, 2002Ever since I subscribed to the BBC news I find it more and more useful every day, there are many good items in it. Today there was an interesting article about the Sony show in japan in which Sony presented a tuner within the CoCoon line using Linux that connects your Digital TV set to the Internet and has a hard drive to work apparently like a TiVo, didnt quite understand the Vaio egg (here is the Japanese version), but sounds cool. Love gadgets anyway, welcome them all!!
Just in: Ban on Google lifted….everything lifted?.
September 12, 2002BBC just reporting that ban on Google was lifted by the Chinese Government. Altavista, MIT, Columbia back in the air too. In fact, it appears at this time that no site is being blocked. Even www.harvardsucks.com has been removed from the blocked list, which I find insulting. Whatever happened to the old school pride?
As pointed out by Asian Business Intelligence, there appears to be some intermittency, I just got www.google.com and www.google4.com accesible, but not the other three #2,3 and 5 (9:44 PM EST)
BBC reports Altavista trying to look for a solution to the Chinese block.
September 11, 2002The BBC reports that Altavista is looking for a way to guarantee that Chinese surfers can access their Search Engines. No indication on a solution. Isn’t there any trick that would allow bloggers to put a no-name search engine on our pages so that the Chinese can visit our blogs and flow through Google or Altavista without being blocked? Might be a dumb question, I just dont know.
A beatiful market?
September 11, 2002There are few people whose judgement I trust on the stock market because analysts arguments are ususally full of holes and mostly garbage. Moreover, most people tend to be fairly inconsistent in their advice, lacking conviction and changing quickly as the market changes. There are two analysts that I have a lot of respect for, because their arguments have been always logical, but most of all they have been consistent and full of conviction, they are Don Hays, who has a service I subscribe to, and Ken Fisher who has written some good books and writes for Forbes. In his latest article Fisher calls this market “A beautiful market“. He had been bearish for the last two years or so but changed his stance roughly two months ago. Among some of the things he is saying that impressed me about his conviction:
“This market is sheer beauty–the most stunning I’ve ever seen clearly. Maybe not as beautiful as 1974, but perhaps as a young man I didn’t see that right.”
“This bear, with a 48% decline in the S&P 500 at its worst point this summer, falls in the middle of the range of the seven big bear markets of the last century. With the exception of the Great Crash, which took the Dow down 89% between 1929 and 1932, big bear markets have sliced stock prices 42% to 55%. But if you think this is like 1929-32 you are delusional: Absent are the 1930s’ massive global trade barriers, the massive worldwide destruction of the quantity of money and the massive economic dislocations.”
“Following all the big market drops came 12-month advances, ranging from 29% to 65%, with a 50% average. That’s big. And beautiful.”
Well, there you have it, is one man’s opinion but he has been fairly consistent, I wish I had listened to him more two years ago. By the way Don Hays has been bullish for a while, but he always seems to be early, he was bearish since about late 1998 or so.
The Devil's Excrement 