Mucho, each time I read something from Fed and Green$pan critics, they are invariably rabid collages of cliches and unlike your excellent arguments about stock options, I end up getting to the end and thinking that they really don't have a clue and are just 'piling on', in an analogue of 'piling on' that happened in the manic speculative phase when people went berserk buying Biotelecosmictech.com - a kind of mindless Zombie mob.
I'm pretty good at seeing and accepting the other side of arguments and a couple of times my bacon has been saved by switching position when critics of my position pointed out this that and the other. But they have to actually point something out, not merely blather away as those anti-Green$pan articles invariably seem to do.
I like critics because they provide an external focused point of view which is a good way to find the mistakes we all make. That Goedel guy [GG] pointed out that self-referential systems [and in the market case self-reverential systems] lack a certain perspective.
If GG [Geoff Goodfellow] had pointed out that Globalstar management [including Vodafone] suffered metaphysical certitude about their pricing and were congenitally incapable of zooming down the price-elasticity curve and would prefer, like Osama, to go to their 72 virgins in the sky before changing their minds, he might have saved me from crashing my little Tonka Truckful of hard-earned money. That was the single point of failure of Globalstar.
I hadn't realized that people really could be so totally obtuse and march zombie-like to their doom when the facts were proven that subscribers would NOT pay huge prices. Well, I know people can be like that, but not super duper business executives who have been to marketing school and in the business of selling minutes and phones and stuff. Or, if they were like that, the exigencies of reality would soon put them on the straighter and narrower.
Which is just to say that I am quite used to being wrong and missing vital facts and do like critics etc. So, I look for the truth in the anti-Green$pan mania and find fairly thin cruel. Sure, there's a bit in there, but not enough to make a meal of. A far more substantial feed is had by executives and employees who captured and cashed in vast stock options over the roaring 90s.
But let's not pollute this stream with coulda woulda shoulda and it's all Uncle Al's fault post mortems of how much money supply featured in the world's biggest bubble.
The stock options stuff was good, because it's very specific and vital to QUALCOMM investors, many of whom will have not been mindful of just how many shares were being doled out to staff and the impact that has on future earnings per share. But even that has tired the tribe.
So, let's drop it.
Mqurice |
