Random Thoughts

1. Salary Czar. The President is appointing Mr. Kenneth Feinberg to be the Salary Czar to oversee executive compensation in those companies which the Federal Government has taken and equity position or bailed out with funds. Bad idea. I am sure that there are a large number of anti-capitalists out there who are happy to see executive compensation being controlled by the government. I would remind those individuals that it is a competitive marketplace for executives and that a company gets what it pays for. While wholly satisfying it might be to punish the executives at GM, it is unlikely that low pay (relatively speaking) and Congressional oversight will be a recipe for success.

2. Iran. The apparent theft of the recent election by hard-liners in Iran has set in motion the eventual demise of the Islamic revolution: or so I would hope. The Boston Globe web site “The Big Picture” and the BBC web sites both have great images and some text regarding the mess over there. Yesterday when I checked the BBC had a short clip taken from an individual’s cell phone of gun fire coming out of government offices. Nice.

3. Software. When I was in b-school at University of Maryland I was able to use the Oracle software product “Crystal Ball”. It was great stuff. Now I’d like to have a copy for my own use and am dismayed that the user cost is $1,995 per copy. Yikes. Far be it from me to criticize Mr. Ellison, but it would seem that this price point limits the adoption of the product from a wider array of users – other than hard-core financial wonks.

Bottom line: I will be investigating further and posting later on the Salary Czar. This is going to end badly.