http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajzwSd03a7c
Charlie Rose - Tom Friedman 11/20/09
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
How Saint Nick Met a Space Alien
An out of this world story about Santa Claus's bizarre encounter in the sky.
Friday, December 18, 2009
About 360 Cities
in szeged
We're dedicated to:
Promoting geo-referenced, interactive panoramic photography and its best practitioners around the world. Check out our World panorama map and Photographer map
Hosting virtual tours of hotels, restaurants and tourist resorts and enabling members to create new tours from their panoramas. More on Virtual Tours
Instroducing the world high-resolution, immersive imagery to an even wider audience of visitors through our content layers on Google Earth
Providing the best-anywhere platform for publishing panoramic photography for our unique and talented network of the world's best panoramic photographers. Why join 360 Cities?
Taking you to new places in surprising ways. See for yourself.
李安：勇敢面對自己
http://video.cw.com.tw/pages/public/movie/player/tv_player.jspx?id=40288ae71addaf66011ade11b88001f7
李安，台灣人的驕傲。從推手到色戒，李安為什麼始終對自己的電影充滿自信？面對人生的挑戰時，李安用什麼來對抗內心的脆弱？對李安來說，成長是什麼？人生最重要的部份又是什麼？（採訪：蘇育琪）
李安，台灣人的驕傲。從推手到色戒，李安為什麼始終對自己的電影充滿自信？面對人生的挑戰時，李安用什麼來對抗內心的脆弱？對李安來說，成長是什麼？人生最重要的部份又是什麼？（採訪：蘇育琪）
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Talks Rory Bremner's one-man world summit
About this talk
Scottish funnyman Rory Bremner convenes a historic council on the TEDGlobal stage -- as he lampoons Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and a cast of other world leaders with his hilarious impressions and biting commentary. See if you can catch a few sharp TED in-jokes.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
China phone rental and travel assistance
斯坦福大學國際管理學院斯隆 (Sloan) 項目成員來華期間使用 YOYOOR 智能 GPS 手機
杭州2008年7月17日電 /新華美通/ -- 久負盛名的斯坦福大學國際管理學院斯隆 (Sloan) 項目成員日前來到了中國，開始他們為期兩周的中國內地-越南-香港之行。這些企業管理學員首先到訪了北京和上海，參觀了一些國內重要企業，包括聯想、康明斯和寶鋼總部。在此期間，擔當“陪同”任務的是全新的 YOYOOR 智能 GPS 手機。
對處理斯坦福大學學員們繁忙的行程， YOYOOR 租賃手機 ( http://www.yoyoor.com ) 遊刃有餘 -- 該手機擁有強大的數據信息支持繫統和全面的城市指南，使用者可以便捷地找到關於交通、購物、旅遊、餐飲等各方面的資訊。實惠的本地通話費取代了國際漫遊的高昂成本，大大節省了通話費。而讓學員們感到最安心的是，YOYOOR 呼叫中心為他們提供了中英文雙語的專業客戶服務，使得完全不會中文的他們隨時可以獲得翻譯服務，克服了文化、語言上的障礙，真正做到了“一機在手，溝通暢通無阻”，YOYOOR GPS 定位服務更保障了學員們出行的安全便利。
其中一位學員評價說，“手機很棒，客戶服務尤其出色，下次來中國還會考慮租用。”學員的導遊則發現手機的群組管理很有用，他說，“我在整個行程中一直使用 YOYOOR 手機和成員們保持聯繫，發布重要信息，保證每個人都知道行程中的一些臨時的變化。”
隨著奧運會的日益臨近，YOYOOR 希望能為大量湧入國內的海外遊客提供高質量的、快捷周到的服務，同時也希望能成為國內各會議組織者和外事機構的合作伙伴，提高其客戶滿意度和業界的國際形像。
YOYOOR 公司成立於2007年，總部在美國舊金山，目前在中國各大城市設有分支機構。它專為海外來華人士提供智能移動電話租賃及配套服務，它提供的服務包括：智能手機租賃，用實惠的本地通話費取代高昂的國際漫遊費用，為客戶節約大量話費。YOYOOR 手機上裝有 YOYOOR 自主開發的高科技軟件，能為客戶提供全面的城市指南和 GPS 定位服務，更重要的是它有一個功能強大的呼叫中心，中心的服務人員使用標准的英語全年為客戶提供各種服務，以滿足他們在中國的交通、住宿、旅遊、餐飲、購物，資訊等方面的需求。
Mobile Tourism
In China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market by users, the usefulness of your handset goes far beyond making and receiving calls.
Text the name of a restaurant to a listings magazine and you’ll receive the address. Buy an air ticket and the confirmation number and flight times will be sent to your phone. Don’t speak Chinese? Text the phrase you want to know and services such as Moka.com will reply with a translation.
And the market is diversifying. In March 2008, CIB reported on i-Vision (尚视互动), pioneers of mobile TV in China, and in the October issue on the battle being fought among the developers of mobile phone operating systems (OS), which may well see its most significant action on Chinese soil.
But the incompatibility of networks and OS means many US cell phones don’t work in China, presenting an often unexpected challenge to travelers, while opening up a niche for companies offering mobile phone-based services for foreigners faced with the particularly obstructive language barrier and challenges in everyday communication. The speed of technological advancement, however, means that these firms face a challenge keeping up with the latest equipment, as well as the wants and needs of users.
SMART IDEA
Yoyoor, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2007 by Cybernaut (China) Capital (塞伯乐中国投资), is taking full advantage of the incompatibility issue and the language barrier by offering Nokia smartphone rental to visitors. Each handset features a GPS positioning and navigation system, a comprehensive in-phone listings guide covering several cities, a hotline to a 24-hour English-language call center for help and orientation, and international direct dialing. It also doubles as a high-resolution digital camera.
Consulting the locals also becomes a more plausible possibility thanks to the phone’s integrated Chinese phrasebook and dictionary which, though limited, contain useful phrases that appear in Chinese characters and can be played back, avoiding the embarrassment of not being understood at the second or third attempt.
Such services, says Yoyoor’s vice-president of marketing and business development, Ray Zhu, are designed to make traveling in China as painless an experience as possible. “We called the company Yoyoor because the phone is like a yo-yo — you carry it in your hand, it is magic and fun — but it also makes your life easier and safer as a traveler,” he explains.
Certainly, Yoyoor’s services may embolden travelers to pursue a more scenic route not planned in their hotel room the night before, safe in the knowledge that they can consult the GPS or dial the call center if they get lost. Those who have tried to unfold a map on a windy street corner, or who are reluctant to use a guidebook for fear of appearing conspicuously new to a city, will also no doubt prefer the convenience and even the street- credibility of consulting a smartphone.
Not all of its services are as user-friendly as they seem, however. In navigation mode, the phone’s GPS system shows the user’s present location, as well as a list of restaurants, bars, banks and attractions close by. Doing this returns a long list of businesses – performing such a search at a random intersection in Beijing, for example, produced 2,000 listings. Another downside is the lack of insurance. Lose your Yoyoor phone or have it stolen and you are liable to pay for a replacement, which is likely to set you back almost USD 600.
REVENUE STREAMS
As well as phone rental and international calls — Yoyoor offers different packages, from a daily USD 12 rental fee with free outgoing local calls to pay-as-you-go packages — the company’s main revenue source comes from advertising, in the form of messages sent to the user promoting local restaurants or bars, as well as commission on flights booked or restaurant reservations made via the call center.
Strategic partnerships have already been signed with network operator China Mobile (中国移动), which offers Yoyoor lower airtime rates and volume discounts, and Air China (中国国际航空), which has given Yoyoor booths at Beijing Capital Airport. China-bound passengers flying from New York’s JFK, San Francisco and Los Angeles also receive a Yoyoor boarding-pass holder to enhance awareness of the service.
Since its launch in June 2008, Yoyoor has achieved moderate success, and now attracts more than 300 phone rentals a month. However, CEO Joss Shen is keen to broaden the company’s service offering. Its next project is Yofone, “a basic handset that is free to use for local calls but international call will be charged to your [hotel] room,” Shen explains. “Hotels will then decide whether they want to sell advertising to target their clients in the form of SMS, the revenue from which will be shared with Yoyoor.”
The service will be launched in Hangzhou in the coming months and will expand to Shanghai later in the year. In the long-term, Shen hopes to roll it out across China, and eventually overseas, as well as offering a similar service for Chinese travelers abroad.
DOWNLOAD DILEMMA
However, with Chinese networks poised to roll out 3G technology and working on compatibility with US handsets, and with an increasing number of mobile users now owning sophisticated smartphones — sales totaled 36.5 million units worldwide in Q3 2008, an 11.5% year-on-year increase according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner — the market for handset rentals seems set to diminish.
Zhu is aware that the company’s long-term future may well lie in offering its software and services as a downloadable package, rather than forcing users to rent a separate handset while they are in China. “People’s phones are dear to them, they like to use them and hang on to them, so we have to make all of our software compatible with all the different operating systems,” Zhu adds.
WHO YA GONNA CALL?
One firm that has a head-start in terms of offering services to existing phone owners is One2Call, a Dutch-owned company headquartered in Singapore, which offers telephone-based interpretation, personal-assistant and concierge services to foreigners in China.
One2Call owns and maintains a database covering 15 major cities in China and listings for more than 20,000 merchants, from bars and restaurants to shops and airlines. Included in the many details are the longitude and latitude, to allow for detailed proximity-based searches for export to handheld GPS devices, particularly useful for smartphone users.
According to managing director Harm Hindriks, “This is a very exciting time − 2008 was boom-time for us and I think 2009 will be even better.” He adds that the service is aimed not only at visitors, but also at “longer-term expatriates who have been here some time but who, without being disrespectful, have not learned the language sufficiently, like myself. I often use the service in fact.”
At a time of corporate downsizing and expenditure cuts, Hindriks also identifies the cost-saving aspect for companies with foreign staff in China, which are then able to dispense with the services of a full-time interpreter.
The call center is manned by a full-time staff of 34 and 100 part-timers, all of whom undergo three-months’ training before starting work. “You can ask our people absolutely anything and they will be able to help you,” Hindriks claims. “Out of every 100 people we train, only 10 make it through the three-month course. We deal with VIPs who are used to having problems solved and we have to be able to guarantee a high level of service at all times.”
With China likely to become an increasingly important destination for both business and leisure travelers, and with sales of smartphones soaring worldwide, the market for location-based, mobile tourism services appears set to grow. The challenge for contenders such as Yoyoor and One2Call is to find the right business model, both for advertisers and, more importantly, for customers.
杭州2008年7月17日電 /新華美通/ -- 久負盛名的斯坦福大學國際管理學院斯隆 (Sloan) 項目成員日前來到了中國，開始他們為期兩周的中國內地-越南-香港之行。這些企業管理學員首先到訪了北京和上海，參觀了一些國內重要企業，包括聯想、康明斯和寶鋼總部。在此期間，擔當“陪同”任務的是全新的 YOYOOR 智能 GPS 手機。
對處理斯坦福大學學員們繁忙的行程， YOYOOR 租賃手機 ( http://www.yoyoor.com ) 遊刃有餘 -- 該手機擁有強大的數據信息支持繫統和全面的城市指南，使用者可以便捷地找到關於交通、購物、旅遊、餐飲等各方面的資訊。實惠的本地通話費取代了國際漫遊的高昂成本，大大節省了通話費。而讓學員們感到最安心的是，YOYOOR 呼叫中心為他們提供了中英文雙語的專業客戶服務，使得完全不會中文的他們隨時可以獲得翻譯服務，克服了文化、語言上的障礙，真正做到了“一機在手，溝通暢通無阻”，YOYOOR GPS 定位服務更保障了學員們出行的安全便利。
其中一位學員評價說，“手機很棒，客戶服務尤其出色，下次來中國還會考慮租用。”學員的導遊則發現手機的群組管理很有用，他說，“我在整個行程中一直使用 YOYOOR 手機和成員們保持聯繫，發布重要信息，保證每個人都知道行程中的一些臨時的變化。”
隨著奧運會的日益臨近，YOYOOR 希望能為大量湧入國內的海外遊客提供高質量的、快捷周到的服務，同時也希望能成為國內各會議組織者和外事機構的合作伙伴，提高其客戶滿意度和業界的國際形像。
YOYOOR 公司成立於2007年，總部在美國舊金山，目前在中國各大城市設有分支機構。它專為海外來華人士提供智能移動電話租賃及配套服務，它提供的服務包括：智能手機租賃，用實惠的本地通話費取代高昂的國際漫遊費用，為客戶節約大量話費。YOYOOR 手機上裝有 YOYOOR 自主開發的高科技軟件，能為客戶提供全面的城市指南和 GPS 定位服務，更重要的是它有一個功能強大的呼叫中心，中心的服務人員使用標准的英語全年為客戶提供各種服務，以滿足他們在中國的交通、住宿、旅遊、餐飲、購物，資訊等方面的需求。
Mobile Tourism
In China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market by users, the usefulness of your handset goes far beyond making and receiving calls.
Text the name of a restaurant to a listings magazine and you’ll receive the address. Buy an air ticket and the confirmation number and flight times will be sent to your phone. Don’t speak Chinese? Text the phrase you want to know and services such as Moka.com will reply with a translation.
And the market is diversifying. In March 2008, CIB reported on i-Vision (尚视互动), pioneers of mobile TV in China, and in the October issue on the battle being fought among the developers of mobile phone operating systems (OS), which may well see its most significant action on Chinese soil.
But the incompatibility of networks and OS means many US cell phones don’t work in China, presenting an often unexpected challenge to travelers, while opening up a niche for companies offering mobile phone-based services for foreigners faced with the particularly obstructive language barrier and challenges in everyday communication. The speed of technological advancement, however, means that these firms face a challenge keeping up with the latest equipment, as well as the wants and needs of users.
SMART IDEA
Yoyoor, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2007 by Cybernaut (China) Capital (塞伯乐中国投资), is taking full advantage of the incompatibility issue and the language barrier by offering Nokia smartphone rental to visitors. Each handset features a GPS positioning and navigation system, a comprehensive in-phone listings guide covering several cities, a hotline to a 24-hour English-language call center for help and orientation, and international direct dialing. It also doubles as a high-resolution digital camera.
Consulting the locals also becomes a more plausible possibility thanks to the phone’s integrated Chinese phrasebook and dictionary which, though limited, contain useful phrases that appear in Chinese characters and can be played back, avoiding the embarrassment of not being understood at the second or third attempt.
Such services, says Yoyoor’s vice-president of marketing and business development, Ray Zhu, are designed to make traveling in China as painless an experience as possible. “We called the company Yoyoor because the phone is like a yo-yo — you carry it in your hand, it is magic and fun — but it also makes your life easier and safer as a traveler,” he explains.
Certainly, Yoyoor’s services may embolden travelers to pursue a more scenic route not planned in their hotel room the night before, safe in the knowledge that they can consult the GPS or dial the call center if they get lost. Those who have tried to unfold a map on a windy street corner, or who are reluctant to use a guidebook for fear of appearing conspicuously new to a city, will also no doubt prefer the convenience and even the street- credibility of consulting a smartphone.
Not all of its services are as user-friendly as they seem, however. In navigation mode, the phone’s GPS system shows the user’s present location, as well as a list of restaurants, bars, banks and attractions close by. Doing this returns a long list of businesses – performing such a search at a random intersection in Beijing, for example, produced 2,000 listings. Another downside is the lack of insurance. Lose your Yoyoor phone or have it stolen and you are liable to pay for a replacement, which is likely to set you back almost USD 600.
REVENUE STREAMS
As well as phone rental and international calls — Yoyoor offers different packages, from a daily USD 12 rental fee with free outgoing local calls to pay-as-you-go packages — the company’s main revenue source comes from advertising, in the form of messages sent to the user promoting local restaurants or bars, as well as commission on flights booked or restaurant reservations made via the call center.
Strategic partnerships have already been signed with network operator China Mobile (中国移动), which offers Yoyoor lower airtime rates and volume discounts, and Air China (中国国际航空), which has given Yoyoor booths at Beijing Capital Airport. China-bound passengers flying from New York’s JFK, San Francisco and Los Angeles also receive a Yoyoor boarding-pass holder to enhance awareness of the service.
Since its launch in June 2008, Yoyoor has achieved moderate success, and now attracts more than 300 phone rentals a month. However, CEO Joss Shen is keen to broaden the company’s service offering. Its next project is Yofone, “a basic handset that is free to use for local calls but international call will be charged to your [hotel] room,” Shen explains. “Hotels will then decide whether they want to sell advertising to target their clients in the form of SMS, the revenue from which will be shared with Yoyoor.”
The service will be launched in Hangzhou in the coming months and will expand to Shanghai later in the year. In the long-term, Shen hopes to roll it out across China, and eventually overseas, as well as offering a similar service for Chinese travelers abroad.
DOWNLOAD DILEMMA
However, with Chinese networks poised to roll out 3G technology and working on compatibility with US handsets, and with an increasing number of mobile users now owning sophisticated smartphones — sales totaled 36.5 million units worldwide in Q3 2008, an 11.5% year-on-year increase according to IT research and advisory firm Gartner — the market for handset rentals seems set to diminish.
Zhu is aware that the company’s long-term future may well lie in offering its software and services as a downloadable package, rather than forcing users to rent a separate handset while they are in China. “People’s phones are dear to them, they like to use them and hang on to them, so we have to make all of our software compatible with all the different operating systems,” Zhu adds.
WHO YA GONNA CALL?
One firm that has a head-start in terms of offering services to existing phone owners is One2Call, a Dutch-owned company headquartered in Singapore, which offers telephone-based interpretation, personal-assistant and concierge services to foreigners in China.
One2Call owns and maintains a database covering 15 major cities in China and listings for more than 20,000 merchants, from bars and restaurants to shops and airlines. Included in the many details are the longitude and latitude, to allow for detailed proximity-based searches for export to handheld GPS devices, particularly useful for smartphone users.
According to managing director Harm Hindriks, “This is a very exciting time − 2008 was boom-time for us and I think 2009 will be even better.” He adds that the service is aimed not only at visitors, but also at “longer-term expatriates who have been here some time but who, without being disrespectful, have not learned the language sufficiently, like myself. I often use the service in fact.”
At a time of corporate downsizing and expenditure cuts, Hindriks also identifies the cost-saving aspect for companies with foreign staff in China, which are then able to dispense with the services of a full-time interpreter.
The call center is manned by a full-time staff of 34 and 100 part-timers, all of whom undergo three-months’ training before starting work. “You can ask our people absolutely anything and they will be able to help you,” Hindriks claims. “Out of every 100 people we train, only 10 make it through the three-month course. We deal with VIPs who are used to having problems solved and we have to be able to guarantee a high level of service at all times.”
With China likely to become an increasingly important destination for both business and leisure travelers, and with sales of smartphones soaring worldwide, the market for location-based, mobile tourism services appears set to grow. The challenge for contenders such as Yoyoor and One2Call is to find the right business model, both for advertisers and, more importantly, for customers.
Shopper's Market: 12/7: Skateboarder Tony Hawk changes the 'game'
Shopper's Market: 12/7: Skateboarder Tony Hawk changes the 'game'
Stopping Heel Pain: Q&A with Dr. Manny: I have plantar fasciitis, how can I stop the pain in my heels?
Stopping Heel Pain: Q&A with Dr. Manny: I have plantar fasciitis, how can I stop the pain in my heels?
A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr.
A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates Jr. about the book "Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime"
CHARLIE ROSE: Bill Gates and his father, William Gates Sr. are here.
Together, they have had a productive and lifelong collaboration. The elder
Gates is one of his son’s closest advisers and confidantes. He’s a former
lawyer and civic leader in Seattle. He now serves as co-chair of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. He’s also the author of a new book called
"Showing Up For Life." It relays the wisdom of a life spent practicing
law, serving the community, and helping raise three successful children.
Joining me now, father and son, Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates. I’m
pleased to have them both at this table. Welcome.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Glad to be here.
CHARLIE ROSE: Good to see you again.
BILL GATES JR.: Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE: Your son knows this table.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, I know he does. It’s new to me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just start with this. I mean, this is a story
about a family. Only two of them are here. There is your late wife and
his mother, and two siblings.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why did you want to write this book at this time?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, it started off -- you know, I’m 83 years
old. I have had a lot of experiences and had a lot of things that I
believe in, and I was going to write a memoir for my grandchildren and
future generations, because I didn’t have anything like that from my
predecessors. And as we got working on and I had some help with it, people
said, well, we should -- this is better than -- this is more important
thing to get out than to just give to your family and friends. We should
see if it might attract a wider audience, and so that’s the phenomena that
occurred is that people encouraged me to do this.
CHARLIE ROSE: How many grandchildren now?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Eight at this point.
CHARLIE ROSE: My goodness. You said, Dad, the next time somebody
asks you if you’re the real Bill Gates, I hope you’ll say yes, I hope
you’ll tell them that you’re all the things the other one strives to be.
What is that? What is it the other one strives to be?
BILL GATES JR.: Well, my dad has set an example by what he does, you
know, whether it was at the university, speaking out on tough political
issues or going to war, or being a great lawyer. You know, he’s the one
who really got the foundation going, encouraged me to give early, got us
involved in some very key causes and helped us build what is now a strong
group of people that I -- I get to work with full-time. So my dad is
somebody I aspire to live up to what he’s done.
CHARLIE ROSE: To know you, and you and I have done interviews for a
while now, is to know of this insane curiosity. To read this book is to
know it started very early.
BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. A love of reading. A desire to ask
questions. And when parents made it fair game to talk to them about my
dad’s lawsuits or my mom’s charitable activities, you know, the questions,
were they doing things the right way. And so, we had great dinner-table
conversations and we had a comfort with talking to adults and knowing what
adults were up to.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: You have to understand that he had a point of view
about whether we were doing it the right way or not.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you mean?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, he matured early.
CHARLIE ROSE: Now, this -- your bedroom was in the basement at some
point?
BILL GATES JR.: That’s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he was in the basement, and his mother called down
and said -- you pick up the story.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: And said -- well, we were all standing around, the
two girls and Mary and I were standing around upstairs, waiting to get into
the car and go somewhere. And said, “Bill, what are you doing?” He said,
“I’m thinking, Mother. Don’t you ever think?”
And mother and I...
CHARLIE ROSE: You don’t say that to your mother.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, Mother and I looked at each other on that
question, and looked at each other rather carefully and said, “You know,
I’m not sure we do.”
CHARLIE ROSE: There is also this, which is alluded to here. There
was a point in which somebody in the family thought it might be a good idea
if he had some counseling, yes? And after the counseling, the counselor or
whatever he was -- psychologist, psychiatrist.
BILL GATES JR.: Yes, psychiatrist.
CHARLIE ROSE: Said to your parents, give up?
(LAUGHTER)
BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes. He actually told me that, you know, my
parents were on my side, and it was a pretty important insight, that, you
know, fighting with your parents over things is just -- you know, that’s
really not where things are. And that happened early. So as I grew older,
I -- my parents were helping me, and I focussing my energy on the world at
large.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just give a different interpretation, if I may,
even though I wasn’t there.
BILL GATES JR.: OK, good, good.
CHARLIE ROSE: It was that he said to your parents, stop arguing with
him. He’ll never stop arguing, and he’ll always win in the end. Does that
ring true to you?
BILL GATES JR.: Well, yes, he said that I had this unfair advantage,
that, you know, they really cared about me and, you know, didn’t really
prove anything. I shouldn’t think of myself as benefiting from winning
some argument. And he really brought me around.
CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, so you changed?
BILL GATES JR.: I did change. I was a little bit nicer.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: A little bit nicer.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Right on.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember that moment, when he was a little bit
nicer?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, I really do remember the advice from the
counselor, which was quite profound.
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you two disagree about?
BILL GATES JR.: I think my dad might give more sooner. You know, he
encouraged me to start the foundation while I was still working full-time
and, you know, for a few years I wasn’t sure that was right, but then with
him offering to help out, I absolutely did that, which I’m very glad I did.
And you know, he empathizes with the needs out there, and so it’s been a
very positive influence to push me to think with more humility and to do
more rapidly.
CHARLIE ROSE: It is often said that parents learn by watching -- that
children learn by watching their parents. But you say here, parents learn
by watching their children.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: I do say that, and I absolutely believe it. I
experienced it and I -- there are things about their mother and certainly
some things about me which I have learned from watching them. Our oldest
daughter is, for example, just meticulously confident about things. And
her...
CHARLIE ROSE: She’s the accountant?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Pardon me?
CHARLIE ROSE: Is she the accountant?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: She’s the accountant, yes, yes. And it all fits.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLIAM GATES SR.: And she’s a terrific example of, you know, you
think about that when you’re confronted with choices, and you say, well, if
Christy were here, I guess that’s what I’m going to do.
CHARLIE ROSE: His mother had a passion for community service. Served
on the board of regents of the University of Washington.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And United Way. What was that about?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, to start with, it was genuine. I mean, she
believed in the value of community activity, and in addition to which,
which is just sort of tangential, she was also very good at it. So little
wonder that it was a very significant part -- significant part of her life.
It started from a very serious motivation about working on things that
could be made better.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you remember when he first got interested in
computers?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: At this high school where Bill went to school,
there was this very, very beginning kind of computer, keyboard and a
teletype sort of a thing, but it was fascinating to him and some of his
classmates, and they spent hours fiddling with that thing and learning
about it, and ultimately, while he was still in high school, running
programs. He and those boys who he was in cohorts with actually did the
programming for the high school. They assigned teachers to classes and
kids to classes, and did the whole schedule for the high school, and in the
course of that, arranged which girls would be in the classes they would be
in, as a matter of fact -- as a matter of choice.
CHARLIE ROSE: There’s merit in that, isn’t there?
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Reflect on that for a moment. Because you -- Gladwell
writes about it. I think Paul Allen shared the passion with you at the
time and you two went off to do something important.
BILL GATES JR.: Yes, the school bought this device, and the teachers
found it a bit confusing, and lots of students clustered around. I was a
lot younger than most, but I had done well on some national math exams, so
people kind of challenged me to figure it out.
CHARLIE ROSE: Go ahead.
BILL GATES JR.: And after a few months, it winnowed down. Paul
Allen, who was two grades ahead of me, myself, and just a few others really
stuck with it, and we got basically addicted and kept learning more. So it
was a phenomenal opportunity. And then of course Paul later, you know, we
stick together, do a lot of things, and then he founds Microsoft with me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Addiction may be a mild term, might it not? I mean,
you once said to me you...
BILL GATES JR.: That’s true.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: It was maniacal. Is that the word?
BILL GATES JR.: No, if you’re engaged...
(CROSSTALK)
BILL GATES JR.: ... in something like that, you really learn a lot.
And we wanted to know how it worked and how to write software.
CHARLIE ROSE: You went to Harvard?
BILL GATES JR.: Briefly.
CHARLIE ROSE: Briefly.
BILL GATES JR.: Not long enough to get a degree, but it was nice
while I was there.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, you promised your father you’ll eventually get
it, and in fact you did later. But let me just stay -- so you go to
Harvard, but you’re still maniacal about the computer and its
possibilities. Paul is in Albuquerque or somewhere by then, is he not?
BILL GATES JR.: Not yet.
CHARLIE ROSE: Not yet. OK, help me out.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Paul was actually in Massachusetts as well,
working for...
BILL GATES JR.: Honeywell.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... Honeywell?
BILL GATES JR.: Yeah.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: And actually, it was there that the article came
out in “Popular Mechanics” about this company in Albuquerque, which had a -
- it actually was a kit for a desktop computer. And that Paul came running
over, as I understand the story, to Bill’s dormitory and said here it is,
here it is, Bill, here we go.
CHARLIE ROSE: What did he mean?
BILL GATES JR.: Well, Paul had spotted this computer on a chip, the
microprocessor, and we’d been talking about that for several years. And he
had encouraged me, hey, let’s start a company, let’s start a company.
Well, I was under some pressure to go to school and do -- you know, be
semi-normal. So he came back to Boston to keep convincing me we should do
it.
So actually when that computer showed up, we were excited, but we also
thought, wow, this is happening without us, because Paul and I had seen
that the combination of these chips and software could do something
amazing, and that’s why we immediately wrote some software and called up
that company, and they became our first customer.
CHARLIE ROSE: And then you ended up with Microsoft and Intel, and
then you were off to the races.
BILL GATES JR.: That’s right. When we did the first Basic, there was
no looking back. Even though I was on leave there, I did not return.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Remember that period for me, because here’s
your son who’s gone off to Harvard, and you thought he would at least
finish four years.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: You and Mrs. Gates...
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Mary. Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: ... had high hopes for Bill.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he’s going to leave after one year.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Well, actually, it wasn’t quite that. He was
taking a semester off, so we weren’t confronting the ultimate demise of
college education there. We -- he was going to take a semester off and go
to Albuquerque and help Paul work there, and then he would go back. And in
fact, he did take a semester off and go back. The second time after he was
back for a semester, I have got to go back to Albuquerque. Now we started
to get...
CHARLIE ROSE: Nervous.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: ... a little bit concerned, and he never did go
back.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how was Mrs. Gates handling that?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: I would characterize her as being more concerned
than I. She just -- she had a stronger view in her mind of this is one of
my children. My children graduate from college. My children graduate from
college. My boy is not going to graduate from college? Oh, my word!
CHARLIE ROSE: She died of breast cancer and did not get to see this
movement in which you’re asked to come back, deliver the commencement
speech and get an honorary degree. As you go up to the podium, you look to
your father and say? What did you say to your father?
BILL GATES JR.: I said...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL GATES JR.: Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my
degree.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BILL GATES JR.: And that was a fun moment.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Yes, it was. It was.
CHARLIE ROSE: If you look at that as a fun moment, suggest to me in
this relationship and in this business career, moving into philanthropy,
that had been sort of the signal moments for you and for the family.
BILL GATES JR.: Well, as the business got bigger, I got advice from
my dad. Going public was a key milestone that we sat around the living
room and talked a lot about. And I...
CHARLIE ROSE: Now, were you the lawyer for the firm, for Microsoft?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: The law firm in which I was a partner -- actually,
the managing partner -- was the law firm that represented him in this
offering.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: I felt like it was wise for me to step back and
let others be the hands-on lawyers for the project.
CHARLIE ROSE: Just thought it was not a smart idea for father to be
representing son?
WILLIAM GATES SR.: Precisely. Precisely.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, so going public is one idea.
BILL GATES JR.: That was a big, big milestone. You know, the
contract with IBM, then the break with IBM, and getting to be quite large,
deciding to step down as CEO. These are all things that I had a chance to
talk to my dad about before I decided, and then just now, a little less
than a year ago, actually moving to the foundation full-time.
And during all that, my dad’s encouraging me, hey, what about the
giving? When -- can you start sooner and do more? And as early as about
2000, my dad volunteered, and so we started a new relationship, which was
he was looking at the letters and helping gather the team that became the
foundation.
CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come back to the foundation, but I want to
stay with the idea of this relationship within this family.
This has to do with Warren Buffett. Mrs. Gates and you are having a
dinner party in Seattle.
A conversation about print journalism in the digital age
A conversation about print journalism in the digital age with Arianna Huffington of Huffingtonpost.com and Tom Curley of the Associated Press
The future of news and how it’s distributed is in great upheaval. The
debate is growing over how to adjust to digital media. On Monday, the
Associated Press announced that it will take legal action against any Web
site that uses articles without permission. The move raises complex
questions about intellectual property and the fair use of content.
Joining me now is the president and CEO of the Associated Press, Tom
Curley, and from Los Angeles, Arianna Huffington. She is the founder and
editor of The Huffington Post. I am pleased to have both of them here to
talk about this very important issue.
First, just for clarification. AP is a legendary name, as UPI was a
legendary name. What is AP today? Give me the history of what happened to
bring you to make this statement that if you want AP, you have got to pay
for it? One small note, Huffington Post wants AP and in fact, they already
pay for it.
TOM CURLEY: They are a licensee, and we’re pleased to have them.
We made some decisions several years ago, and we’ve had one licensing
policy for the web. Clearly, we’re at a different place. The web has
evolved or devolved, depending on your point of view, and what we believe
is people are trying to build businesses on our back, on our good work, and
on the works of our journalists, who are in some cases risking their lives
to get that news. So they are building their business and they are not
compensating us. And that’s what we want to stop.
CHARLIE ROSE: And how do you suggest you stop that?
TOM CURLEY: We need to get control of our content.
CHARLIE ROSE: So what you want to do in your own judgment is restore
the balance of power between the publishers of content and search engines?
TOM CURLEY: That’s right. We want a fair deal.
CHARLIE ROSE: So tell me how you see where we are at this moment and
where it might go.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, first of all, we need to clarify, Charlie,
that Google has a multimillion arrangement with AP in order to carry their
content, and to have it on their server. Huffington Post has an
arrangement with AP whereby we pay for using their content, and so do many
other sites.
The question is, do we recognize, as Jeff Jarvis puts it, that we’re
living in the linked economy, where links are actually incredibly valuable?
They drive traffic to content providers. At The Huffington Post, you know,
half our traffic comes from links and search. So either we’re going to
really acknowledge the brave new world we’re living in, as opposed to
trying to pretend that we’re still living in the old world, where simply
content reigned supreme, then we need to see how do we monetize links. And
many are doing just that.
For example, MSNBC, NBC, Comedy Central, they have embeddable players
when it comes to video, and so they can monetize that. You can put on a
segment of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” and you get multiple other links
taking you to other parts of Comedy Central, and you get ads that can be
monetized.
So the question is, of course you need to monetize your content, as
Tom has been saying, but how do you do it? Do you do it by creating walled
gardens, which is not going to work? It hasn’t worked when “The New York
Times” did it. That’s why they ended Times Select. It’s not going to
work, because consumer habits have changed. Consumers are used to going
around, surfing the Net, finding different links, following them,
searching. You’re not going to change those habits.
CHARLIE ROSE: All right. But this is true too. Bill Keller just
made a speech in the last couple of days in which he suggested that “The
New York Times” as well is looking for a new model. I mean, do you have
sympathy for the Associated Press, and do you believe that there is a way,
some new model that we don’t know yet, that would satisfy all concerned?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: There are going to be many new models, but I’m
confident that the only new models that will succeed will be those that
embrace the linked economy, that embrace the Internet. Any model that
fights it, any model that tries to create walls is not going to work.
And in fact, I recommend very highly to Tom and anybody else trying to
make this work to read a book by Clayton Christensen called “The
Innovator’s Dilemma.” How do you deal with disruptive innovation? The
Internet, let’s face it, is disruptive innovation. If you try to pretend
that you can go back to the old world, it’s not going to work. If you try
to just put your finger in the dike and stop what’s happening from
happening, you’re going to lose precious time, as many newspaper providers
have lost, instead of learning to ride the rapids and actually provide new
ways to reach the consumer.
TOM CURLEY: There’s a theory out there that all we have to do is make
our stuff available, and there will be enough traffic, there will be enough
audience, and we’ll get proper compensation for that.
CHARLIE ROSE: And that was true in part up until 2008, when there was
a lot of advertising dollars going towards the Internet.
TOM CURLEY: Only true in part. I think most of us knew that free was
never a business model that could really make it. The Internet experience
for most has been a bomb. Unlimited competition, unlimited inventory, a
bad customer experience, very difficult to hold a brand. Arianna’s
HuffIngton Post has been one of the few that has really managed to get a
brand buzz and build content.
We enjoy working with her. We enjoy the license that we have, and
she’s a good example of what we’d like to have -- somebody who takes our
content, uses it in a licensed way, and then blogs about it in a certain
way to build an audience. What we’re talking about is those that take it
and don’t pay for it and try to build a different business.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is your primary concern Google? And the fact that
Google, under fair use, takes clips, and therefore people can access the
clips without necessarily linking to you, because they don’t want to see
the rest of the story?
TOM CURLEY: You know, Google is out there, and everybody is trying to
make it into an AP-Google, and AP trying to out-Google Google. I assure
you that’s not where we want to go. Google is a licensed user of AP. But
it’s what happens to it in the web that goes beyond that license that we
need to pull back, and that’s what we’re working on.
CHARLIE ROSE: Just to make sure I have this, what is AP going to do?
What are you going to create?
TOM CURLEY: There are a couple of things that we want to do. Number
one is we want to create what we call landing pages, but the news map that
takes people to the authoritative source who broke the news. Another thing
that we want to do is a content registry. Take people to the sources of
information and protect the content as it goes through the Internet. Put a
beacon on it, watch where it goes, and police it better than we have.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think this will work or not work, Arianna?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, first of all, everybody is trying to invent
the new rules of the road. And I think experimentation is absolutely
great. For me, there’s one simple rule, which is are you trying to build
walls around your content, or are you honoring and celebrating the linked
economy? Because if you try to do the former, then it’s not going to work.
You know, a great Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you cannot step into
the same river twice. So the old river of content providers being supreme
and links meaning nothing cannot be recreated.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you believe that the AP, in terms of what they have
announced, are trying to put a wall around the AP, or B, refusing to
acknowledge the new digital linked economy?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: You see traditional newspapers moving to the web,
and doing incredible work there, like “The Washington Post,” like “The New
York Times.” They have great content that originates on the web, great
blogs, and we all link to them. We get hundreds of requests every day for
links, because links are powerful. Links can be monetized, and
increasingly, we see that content providers are not just looking to get
consumers to their sites. They’re looking to get their content wherever
consumers are. That’s kind of new promiscuity, if you want. It’s what can
be monetized. And YouTube is doing it and Facebook is doing it. And that,
I think, is going to be the future.
TOM CURLEY: Charlie, this also has to dovetail with some efforts to
get paid differently. What started as a conversation last fall has turned
into a loud roar. We need to get better compensation. We, the industry,
need to get paid differently. The advertising is not going to be there.
So at AP, we’re looking at a couple of things. One is to take our
content and divide it into three broad buckets -- headlines, that first
paragraph that has the who, what, where, when, why, how. And then free --
what we call free the -- everything else that might make the story, how you
would present it in full forum.
We can imagine restricting the number of headlines, restricting the
number of first paragraphs that get out there. We can imagine keeping a
lot of photos back, and we can imagine keeping the full text back. So
there are different business models that we’ll all be experimenting with,
and that’s an approach that we’ve been looking at.
We’ve heard from every major media company except one, that they are
in support of it. So the second thing was to build consensus around these
types of steps.
So I think we’re in a very good spot to continue the conversation and
to imagine different products.
Everybody out there in media, the people who are doing the original
work, has to look at new sources of revenue and how to get it.
CHARLIE ROSE: And you accept that, Arianna?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Charlie, there has been a perfect storm of the
new technology, Craigslist and all that has happened in the last 15 years,
coming together with the economic crisis that has had such dire impact on
advertising. So, obviously, I mean, we read every day headlines about
what’s happening to newspapers, including today “The Boston Globe.”
So there’s no question that everybody needs to be thinking of
innovative ways to deal with the future. All I’m arguing for is to be very
careful not to pretend that consumer habits have not changed, and not to be
looking to get consumers going to a particular source of news, because
they’re not going to do that. They’re used to going everywhere.
CHARLIE ROSE: She has not said anything to you, I guess, that you
didn’t think about long and hard before you made this announcement.
TOM CURLEY: Well, that’s correct. People have looked at this and
have lived with it for 15 years. And I mean, everyone has decided it’s
time to go in a different direction. The one major point to keep in mind
is that the market for news is growing.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s exactly the reality you have to face, it’s how
people are seeking out the news that they want, and how they are using a
digital revolution defined in a different way. And if in fact you change
that, what has become to them free, you are risking something that may very
well be your own downfall, making you, as she just suggested, Detroit.
TOM CURLEY: ESPN has done a very good job at figuring out how to get
premium payment and how to put some other content out there to drive
traffic. People are talking in terms of all or none. That’s not the way
we see it. We see some headlines out there. We see some stories out
there, but we don’t see everything out there.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think it’s very important to recognize the new
realities in terms of consumer habits, in terms of what technology makes
possible, and look at some of the success models. Look at the embeddable
players, for example. I think that’s a great model for the future, because
instead of what was happening even a few months ago, of trying to get all
the traffic to say “Saturday Night Live” itself, now with this embeddable
NBC player, the traffic can go wherever the consumer is. But NBC monetizes
that through advertising, through other links to other content that they
are providing.
TOM CURLEY: There’s a disconnect. I appreciate what she’s saying,
and we know where the market is going. We’ve launched a whole lot of new
products. We have a mobile news network that’s been out there for a year.
We have 1,100 newspapers participating. You can get up-to-the-minute news.
You know, we have the world’s largest video news service. We have the best
technology platform in media out there that can link and participate in
this environment. So we’ve studied it carefully. It’s a matter of pulling
it together in a way that we get paid for our hard work.
CHARLIE ROSE: You want to be your own aggregator, too.
TOM CURLEY: We just are business-to-business. We don’t see ourselves
going directly to the consumer, but we can create landing pages or the news
map that our partners in media can put their content on.
CHARLIE ROSE: What’s out there that you think is showing viability?
TOM CURLEY: I’m not sure micro payments will work. I think you need
some business operation that is a collector. The cable model is one that
keeps coming back. We see that happening with mobile sooner. But I think
you can imagine premium types of content where people do pay directly.
That would be more limited applications, probably 1 or 2 percent here or 5
or 6 percent there. But you can restrict your content in how it’s used and
make sure that more of it comes back to your site originally if you put
some out and bring some back. So I think that’s the simplest and the one
that will go further fastest.
CHARLIE ROSE: We are, Arianna, to sum this up, in a moment of change.
People -- notwithstanding all of the historical flow that is so clear and
that you represent, there is, it seems to me, within the conversation a
sense that this is a moment to look for all of the future models that might
be possible, and the kind of questions that Tom has asked with respect to
AP; Rupert Murdoch is asking clearly, making strong statements about “The
Wall Street Journal”; Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger are asking about
“The New York Times” -- this is a moment, is it not?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: The point is that a lot of these ideas are really
not celebrating and fully accepting the present, which is going to be an
essential part of the future. We are not going to go back to the past.
And that’s my only concern about any model that ignores the reality of how
people consume news. Through links, through search, through going to the
communities they love and that resonate with them.
And also, we cannot ignore citizen journalists. Increasingly, we have
many news broken through Twitter and through basically citizens,
individuals who happen to be where the plane lands on the Hudson, or during
the terrible time in Mumbai.
CHARLIE ROSE: But that’s just adding value. That is not the change
in the model. It seems to me that you’re saying we have seen the future
and it is here. It is a linked economy, it is search engines, it is online
advertising. That’s where the future is, and if you can’t find your way to
that, then you can’t find your way.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I -- you said it perfectly. That’s exactly what
I believe, and that’s exactly what gives all of us an enormous amount of
room to maneuver. There are many, many different models within this
future. There are many ways to experiment, and we all should be
experimenting. The rules of the road are being worked out. But the one
thing we cannot do is go back to the past, and anybody who tries to do
that, I predict, will fail.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, Tom would say to you -- and I’ll give him the
chance to say it -- he is not trying to go back to the past. He’s trying
to find a link to the future.
TOM CURLEY: The question that I would ask is who’s going to pay to
ask the tough questions of government? Who’s going to pay to get the
lawyers to help file those Freedom of Information requests? Who’s going to
pay for the security in Iraq or Afghanistan? And who’s going to put that
infrastructure in place to get that news back in a few seconds from
wherever it breaks in the world? That’s what this is about. Not putting
up toll booths, not becoming a plumber. This is about a new world, where,
yes, we’re willing to link, we’re willing to have the content go in
different directions, if there’s a compensation model attached to it. And
that’s the point of change that we’ve reached.
This is about a fair deal. And it’s time that it came back to the
people who are doing the work.
CHARLIE ROSE: Arianna, who’s going to pay?
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, absolutely. These are really the models
that we’re working our. On investigative journalism, for example, we’re
experimenting with a for-profit/not-for-profit model. Because after all,
investigative journalism is a public good, and I believe there are going to
be increasingly foundations that are going to be paying for it, because
just think of it...
CHARLIE ROSE: I thank you very much, Arianna Huffington. Great to
see you, as always.
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Thank you.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tom Curley, AP, thank you too.
A conversation with Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
Michael Arrington is here. He’s the founder and editor of TechCrunch,
one of the most widely read blogs in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch was
founded in 2005, and now has separate sites covering specific countries and
technologies. Arrington has also formed a country to develop a tablet
commuter primarily to use the Web. It is called the Crunchpad. I’m
pleased to have him back on this program. Welcome, sir.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Hello, Charlie.
CHARLIE ROSE: Google versus Microsoft. We now have Bing, their
search engine at Microsoft, and Chrome, which is going to be an operating
system, a browser and an operating system.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes, it’s fascinating, because you think of Google
as a search engine company, which most of the revenue is derived from
search marketing, and Microsoft as a sort of software company. Windows and
Office, that’s where they get a lot of their revenue. And yet these two
companies are competing head on, viciously, because Microsoft wants search
share. There’s so much money in it. So they’ve got Bing and they’re
trying to do things with Yahoo! And Google, I don’t know if they want --
if they want sort of revenue from Office and the operating system, but they
certainly want to take that revenue from Microsoft. So you have them with
Chrome OS and Google Docs competing directly with Windows and Office. And
they’re going at each other’s core businesses, and it’s fascinating to
watch.
CHARLIE ROSE: But do they really look to have great success in that?
Do they expect to take away a lot of Microsoft’s operating system?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: If you listen to Eric Schmidt at Google, he seems
pretty serious, that they want -- they want to do innovative things in the
operating systems space.
I don’t know what their projections are around that, but...
CHARLIE ROSE: There was a story that Eric was the one resisting going
ahead with Chrome as an operating system.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Oh, I don’t know if he resisted or not, but he’s
certainly behind it now that it’s public. And they also have Android, of
course, the mobile phone operating system that is also based on Linux.
CHARLIE ROSE: There’s also Bing. So, Bing got very good notices.
People in the business, the Walt Mossbergs of the world.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. Bing is a great search engine. They
launched it, what, two months ago now. And it’s a little too early to tell
what kind of market share gains they’ll have, if any, but it’s definitely a
great search engine.
One of the problems with search -- and all the guys who do search
testing will tell you this-- it doesn’t matter what the results look like
if you have a testing group sort of blind sampling. If you put the Google
logo on top and ask them what they think of the search results, they like
it more than they like it otherwise. And so Google just has the brand in
search, and it’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money.
CHARLIE ROSE: And a lot of people have to say Bing was better.
Someone said to me this interesting point, that what Google sometimes
worries about if somehow Microsoft computers, PCs, wouldn’t take Google.
Does that make sense to you?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I think that Microsoft in the past has made
changes to Internet Explorer that stopped the gathering of information by
the browser -- by Web sites. The browser sort of puts up not a firewall,
but you can imagine something like that. I think that’s part of the reason
why Google decided to back Firefox so heavily and also to create their own
browser, to stop that from happening. But I think with Google...
CHARLIE ROSE: So, it wouldn’t be Explorer?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. Right. And Explorer’s market share is
dropping.
But I think Google wants to get Microsoft out of the PC entirely. And
they’re offering alternatives across the board to Microsoft software, which
makes that battle so fascinating.
CHARLIE ROSE: Speak to me about mobile phones and mobile technology
and where are we?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: We’re in an awesome place. I mean, think back. I
know you talk about the iPhone quite a bit. The iPhone changed --
absolutely changed the mobile landscape. And people said, you know, some
people said that Apple couldn’t do this, they won’t do it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because they began to see it as a computer in itself?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Well, yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s what...
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Although not just that.
CHARLIE ROSE: And it looked good and everybody wanted to have one
because they thought it was so cool.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: They also figured out Web surfing on a phone with
a small screen that’s a touch screen, but it’s small, but they figured out
the gestures to zoom in and out, and it’s actually an adequate Web surfing
experience that they figured out. No one else had done that before.
CHARLIE ROSE: And what about the Palm Pre?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It’s a great phone.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s a great phone. Why is it a great phone?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The operating system I think is as good or in some
cases better than the iPhone. The operating system is quick, you can have
lots of apps open, it’s a great operating system.
The hardware on the phone I think was a little rushed and feels a
little cheap, so for me I’m sticking with the iPhone, but I came close to
choosing the Palm Pre, partially because of the physical keyboard. I think
it’s really nice, and also because I feel like I’m getting a little bit too
tied to Apple.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Tell me what Crunchpad is.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: About a year ago -- and I really like where the
industry is going with this -- about a year ago, I realized I just want a
big iPhone. I want a computer that I can sit on the couch and surf the Web
without having a weird keyboard stuck to it that doesn’t really work when
you’re not sitting at a desk. And so we started this project on TechCrunch
just talking about it, saying we want to build this and we want help from
the community, and great things happened over the course of a year. We’ve
hired a team. We’ve had lots of people, partners come on board and
contribute their time, their resources, suggest partnerships.
CHARLIE ROSE: Did you go get venture money?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Well, you know, I’m not going to answer that
question.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why not?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Because I haven’t -- I don’t want to answer the
question.
(LAUGHTER)
CHARLIE ROSE: We have our ways, sir.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: But I’ll say this. I think that Apple -- so
there’s rumors -- forgetting the Crunchpad and the fact that I want to
build that -- Apple is talking about coming out with a tablet computer,
which is going to be a large-screen iPod, or iPhone or iPod Touch. I think
that’s a good thing. I think they’ll sell a lot of them.
Google’s new operating system, Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating
system with a browser on top, and the idea is you never see the operating
system. You never go to the desktop on the computer. It goes right to the
browser, which is what we’ve been talking about for a year. They’ve been
working on it for a long time. I’m not suggesting we had the idea first.
I have no idea. But the point is, it’s coming to market as a free
operating system. I think that’s really good, and we’re going to see
netbooks without keyboards. We’re going to see computers with other input
mechanisms besides keyboards, or alternative input mechanisms that I think
are going to -- really exciting stuff.
CHARLIE ROSE: Facebook versus Google. Is that a big competition?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: You know, last time we talked, it was Facebook
versus MySpace. And the funny thing is, that’s not the question anyone
asks anymore.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s what is Facebook becoming?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Right. And what is Google becoming. I think it’s
almost like everybody is chasing Twitter right now, and Facebook clearly
is. But when it comes down to it, the social aspect of Facebook, where
your friends are recommending things to you, which could be products or
news items, and it’s the constant sort of logging into the site 25 times a
day is something that Google needs to address. And right now they...
CHARLIE ROSE: So that’s Zuckerberg’s argument. Look, I mean, who
better to go for a search than your friends? If you know and trust.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Why not?
CHARLIE ROSE: Because they will know who you are and what you like.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Some of the startups that buy traffic on Google
search are talking about the conversion rates from those -- conversion
rates meaning a purchase or a signup that they get from that purchase
traffic from Google is good, but not nearly as good as the conversion rates
they are seeing from Facebook and Twitter. So if I just send out a link
saying, wow, I just saw this movie and it sure is good, and you click on
that, you’re more likely to go see the movie than you are if you do a
search for it and click on a paid ad from Google.
Google is very aware of that. The free stuff on Twitter and Facebook
is better than the paid ads on Google. And that has to be freaking them
out a little bit.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, what did you do? You published some internal
financial documents from Twitter?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: There’s this hacker...
CHARLIE ROSE: I know that.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: This French guy that got these documents from
Twitter because of these guest books (ph)...
CHARLIE ROSE: Right, and so what did you do?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I’ll get to it. He -- so what he did was, he
wanted to warn Twitter that, you know, your security is awful. And also he
wanted to get credit for doing this as hackers and crackers do. So, he
went to the French media, and a French journalist -- he was told about it,
this French journalist went to Twitter and said what happened, Twitter
wouldn’t respond. So he dropped it, came to us and said...
CHARLIE ROSE: Who came to you?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: This hacker, anonymously, and said, here are all
the documents and sent us all these documents. Started this fascinating
discussion about...
CHARLIE ROSE: What was in the documents?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It was hundreds of documents taken from Twitter’s
employees’ attachments to e-mail accounts. And it included interview
schedules, people they interviewed in Silicon Valley, prominent people that
work in other companies that didn’t end up at Twitter. So very
embarrassing stuff. Credit card information for many of the employees. E-
mails, inbox screen shots, executive meeting notes, financial projections,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just the whole sort of thing. And we
looked at that and said, we’re going to post some of this. Some of it
we’re not. But we said...
CHARLIE ROSE: Like credit card numbers, you’re not going to post
that.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: We’re not going to post the credit card numbers or
things that would embarrass people, but some of this was -- we thought was
pretty darn newsworthy, particularly the financial projections and the
executive meeting notes from the last few months. And so we engaged in a
dialogue with our readers, where we said, look, we have got these
documents. We haven’t decided yet what we’re going to post, we think a
couple of documents. We talked to Twitter, sent them all documents, so
they knew what was going on. Talked to our lawyer...
CHARLIE ROSE: So, what did they say, go ahead and post them?
(LAUGHTER)
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: They said...
CHARLIE ROSE: We have no problem with this?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The ultimate answer was, we know you’re going to
post a couple of these, and that’s OK, but for most of these, we’d really
rather you not, and so that’s not a problem, we absolutely won’t. And we
worked with Twitter on the back end to make sure they closed up some of the
security holes that they had. But the interesting thing to me wasn’t the -
- the documents were fascinating. The interesting thing to me was the
discussion that was generated around whether we should publish them or not.
And there are people that have come out, major journalists who have
come out said it was unethical for us to do this. And there were
journalists who had come out and said it was absolutely fine and ethical
for them to do this. In fact, their readers deserve that kind of access.
And obviously I have an opinion because I’m in the middle of the
story, but just taking myself out of it, I think it’s a fascinating
discussion, because I know in the old days, when "The New York Times" or
"The Wall Street Journal" got documents like this, they weren’t -- they
didn’t have that discussion with the readers.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s interesting how you did it, you know, engaging
your community.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I engaged them, and I would say that 80 percent of
my readers disagreed with me. And let me know about it.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, why did you do it?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Because I think -- well, you know, it’s funny.
When I make decisions with TechCrunch on whether to publish or what
position to take, often I’ll look back after everything is played out and
say, would I do things differently with the benefit of hindsight? And
there are a couple of instances in the past where I would have probably
done things differently. In this case, I think I absolutely did the right
thing, and I wouldn’t do things any differently. So.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you know the site called Looped (ph)? It’s amazing.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: It’s this mobile social networking. And it’s all
about location.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wherever you are, you know everybody in your block.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Yes. I can turn mine on -- I mean, I don’t have
my phone with me, but I can turn it on when I get out of here and see
everyone around me who’s a friend. Actually, mine is set up a little
differently, so I’ll see everyone who wants me to see them. And it’s a
different way of networking socially.
I love it. In fact, I’ve written about this, where you can imagine a
time where you walk into a bar and you pull out your phone and you see --
for everyone that wants you to see it, you see -- and you laugh and it’s
funny, but it’s also big business. Everyone’s picture who’s the opposite
sex or whatever your sexual preferences are, who is single and maybe wants
to -- you can see all of them. And that way you know, you know, you can go
and flirt with them on the phone and it sort of helps you meet people in a
bar.
Or you go into a business cocktail setting, and you see people on your
phone that you’ve met before and maybe it helps you with their first name
or to remember things. I think that’s the kind of thing that Looped (ph)
and others are doing that is going to change social networking.
CHARLIE ROSE: So, tell me how you see the future of social
networking? I mean, is it...
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I don’t know what it is. I mean, it’s hard to
define. It’s -- if you look at Facebook, it’s really the plumbing behind
the interactions online between people and helping them map to the real
world. It’s clear that people love interacting with each other on Web
sites. And it’s clear that Facebook has been able to get third parties to
build applications on their platform that leverage you having your friends
sort of seeing what you’re doing. And it’s clear also that they can then
take that -- if you saw what they did with CNN around the elections, and
then you can comment and your friends can see you comment, you know, what’s
going on during the election.
That’s all -- it’s sort of really fascinating. What’s unclear is
whether it can really become profitable over the long run. Because
Facebook has these massive expenses, and the revenues are growing rapidly,
but it’s unclear if in the long run, they can make that vastly profitable
like Google has.
CHARLIE ROSE: What about the Kindle space?
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: The ebook reader space is very interesting, and I
wouldn’t expect Apple to stay out of it for much longer, to be honest, but
Amazon has been successful in selling the Kindles. I think they -- the
estimates are they might sell a million or so this year. They sell lots of
books on top of it and subscriptions, so it’s a great revenue stream for
them.
I’ve argued that Amazon should not be building a hardware device
specifically. They should be building the software or the device and let
anyone build a Kindle if they want. These are forcing Sony and Barnes &
Noble and Apple and others to come up with their competing sort of closed-
off ebook systems. And so I think that Amazon should really say, look,
we’re going to do the books, we’re going to do the software for the Kindle,
but other people build the hardware.
CHARLIE ROSE: You take care of the hardware. Yes. TechCrunch, thank
you.
MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Thanks very much.
CHARLIE ROSE: Michael Arrington.
Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
END
Monday, December 07, 2009
Great Resource: On the Job Hunt: Public libraries help unemployed search for work
Great Resource: On the Job Hunt: Public libraries help unemployed search for work
US 'Carbon Is Danger To Public Health'
Saving the planet... in less than a fortnight. As the Copenhagen climate summit gets underway the US says carbon emissions are a risk to public health while others seize upon alleged leaked emails as evidence global warming is not happening.
Islands Disappearing Beneath The Waves
Jonathan Samuels reports from the Kiribati Islands in the Pacific, where the effects of climate change have already had a drastic impact on the inhabitants.
Road To Retirement, Part 2: Advice on planning for retirement, including Social Security, annuities and reverse mortgages
Road To Retirement, Part 2: Advice on planning for retirement, including Social Security, annuities and reverse mortgages
Blair Told UK Was Entering Iraq Unprepared
A senior British officer tells the Iraq war inquiry that two days before the invasion Tony Blair was urged to delay the offensive because Britain was not prepared for the aftermath. Sky's Mark Stone reports.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Tales From the Toilet:
Tales From the Toilet: Dr. Manny talks about a new book overflowing with information about the inner workings of the body and the mysteries that it holds
Friday, November 27, 2009
Welcome Home: Space shuttle Atlantis lands safely at Kennedy Space Center
Space shuttle Atlantis lands safely at Kennedy Space Center
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The White House shows off place settings and silverware for the big fete.
The White House shows off place settings and silverware for the big fete.
'Success Story': Rep. Weiner says Medicare is holding down costs better than private plan
'Success Story': Rep. Weiner says Medicare is holding down costs better than private plan
Rep. Weiner says Medicare is holding down costs better than private plans
Tax havens & currency speculation Pt.4
November 24, 2009
Tax havens & currency speculation Pt.4
Sony Kapoor on the rise of Goldman Sachs and the need to democratize the economy
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And we're talking to Sony Kapoor. Sony is the managing director of Re-Define, Rethinking Development, Finance & Environment, international think tank. Used to work for Lehman Brothers and some of the other institutions on Wall Street. Thanks for joining us again, Sony.
SONY KAPOOR, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RE-DEFINE: Thank you for having me.
JAY: Our conversation has brought us to the big G, Goldman Sachs, which is becoming such a massive entity unto itself. It's really, especially out of this most recent crisis, emerged no longer one of many financial institutions but clearly more than the gorilla on the block. Goldman not only controls—or its people are allies, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve. But it's a ridiculous thing even to talk about insider trading when you talk to Goldman. They have people connected to them, probably, on every important board of most of the major companies in the world. They have board-level information when they decide what to trade and not to trade. Talk about the rise of Goldman and what that means in terms of the democratization of the economy.
KAPOOR: Well, there are two aspects to this. One, there was this perception, even before the crisis actually happened, that Goldman was somehow first amongst equals. One reason behind that was, unlike most of its other competitors, such as Lehman, etc., Goldman stayed having a partnership structure for much longer. It was only recently—I think it's in the past decade or so—that the partnership was dissolved and it became a public holding company. What that meant was that it was much more closely knit than other financial institutions. What it also probably did was it helped Goldman weather the crisis better than the other financial institutions, because if you're a partnership, your capital and money's tied up with everybody else's, and you stand to lose personally, which employees of Lehman and some of the other banks didn't. The worst that would happen to them would be that they wouldn't get their salary or bonus—they didn't actually actively lose any money. And what that meant was that the risk-management practices within Goldman, where everybody was peeking over everybody else's shoulder, still had some residual footprint from those partnership days, even though the structure had changed. And I think it helped Goldman be more vigilant going into the crisis. The second aspect is—.
JAY: Let me just interrupt for a sec. But that vigilance also meant they were betting against their own advice to their own clients. As we know, they were insuring with AIG on investment properties on the downside that they were selling to their clients without disclosing this, so that risk management had very little to do with any kind of responsibility other than their own quick profit.
KAPOOR: That is true. And I think there's shades of gray between what is legally permissible and what is ethical or not. And to my judgment, this was all above board and legal, but not necessarily ethical. The important thing is that in many of these big banks—there were parts of Lehman Brothers which seriously recognized the gravity of the situation and which were asking the management of the firm to get out of this real estate business and to try and reduce their exposure and to try and buy insurance the way Goldman did. But there were other parts of Lehman Brothers which were making so much money out of this that they wanted the party to continue. And we know which side won. And I think that this aspect of thinking of these big financial institutions as one cohesive-whole entity is a little bit mistaken. So it is quite possible, actually, that different parts of Goldman were pulling in different directions. And it's not to say that the people dealing with the customers and selling them those products were not aware of what the other side was doing.
JAY: Sony, you worked with these people on Wall Street. This idea of "too big to fail", that if this whole house of cards comes falling down, that the state is going to have to come in and bail us out, were they betting on that all along?
KAPOOR: Not explicitly, especially if you look at the institutions that failed. The two institutions, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, they were actually out of the big Wall Street banks, the institutions which had the highest amount of employee ownership. So if you look at it from the incentive perspective, that these are the people who are running the bank who actually own 50 percent or 40 percent of the bank, they knew that in the event of any failure it's the bondholders who mostly get bailed out, but the shareholders mostly were going to lose a lot of money, and they were aware of that.
JAY: But Lehman must have been in shock that they didn't get bailed out. I mean, Paulson and others were trying to get the Brits to bail out Lehman. They must have been a little surprised, in fact. But it's an ex-Goldman guy that kind of decides whether they live or die. I mean, Goldman must have been betting they weren't going to go down.
KAPOOR: At one level, perhaps. But, again, if you look at the individual employees, the calculations they make are very simple. So if you're an employee of Lehman Brothers and you own maybe, you know, 0.5 percent of Lehman Brothers or something, if you're a senior employee, but the amount of bonuses that you can get by betting the bank every year, year after year, are probably significantly higher than the amount you would lose if the whole bank failed. So, from an individual perspective, it is still rational to bet the bank without counting on government bailouts. But collectively it's disastrous, and what you had is a failure of this decision-making. So, yes, the awareness that these banks would be bailed out was really important. And the way it works is that these banks would not have been able to raise the financing through bonds that they did at fairly cheap rates if the bondholders who were investing in these banks, who were lending these banks money, did not think that these banks would be bailed out. So it's not within the institution that this decision-making happens, but it's the awareness of the possibility or the likelihood of bailout means that these institutions can take much more risks than they would otherwise be able to do, 'cause otherwise bondholders would penalize them.
JAY: Right. Now, there's two kind of proposals that have been talked about as possible reforms. One is, if it's too big to fail, break it up into something smaller. Is breaking up of Goldman—I know it's not being seriously talked about, but is it something that should be being talked about?
KAPOOR: I think absolutely, yes. If you look back in the United States to when, for example, Standard Oil was broken up, there was a lot of controversy at that point of time about whether this was the right thing to do, and this was a successful business, etc. But in retrospect it proved to be a good decision, and the sum of parts was greater than the whole. And I think that if Goldman and some of the other big, large, too-big-to-fail banks were broken down, either by geography or, more likely, by function, what you would have is a sounder financial system, a financial system where the society will not be forced to bear the risks of profits being privatized by these institutions, where they would be politically less powerful. And even investors in these institutions would benefit, because the sum of parts would be bigger than the whole.
JAY: Now, the other option, or maybe an option that goes with this, is—the logic goes like this: if the public option is necessary and useful for keeping the health-insurance business in line, then why not the public option for the finance sector?
KAPOOR: There is a possible role for the public sector. And in the United States, what you have is already a significant public-sector presence, for example Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And in many developing countries, you have development banks. And there was a tradition for that here: you had banks dedicated to agriculture lending, dedicated to small and medium sector. The most important thing we need to think about is to build up a diverse financial system and a competitive financial system. What we had was increasing uniformity in the financial system, where every bank was chasing the exact same kind of investments, lending to the exact same people, and not lending to the exact same group. A good bank is one which lends to someone that nobody else lends to, but does not lend to someone that everybody else is lending to. And what we've had over the years is exact reversal of this doctrine, where those who have a good credit score, for example, get twenty envelopes through their door offering them credit, and those who actually need the credit are not able to access it. What you need to do is integrate this social goal of providing credit, enabling financial services which allow people to participate in society and grow, and combine that with the idea of having diverse financial institutions fulfilling real sector needs. And this combination is more stable.
JAY: And what we're seeing is probably the opposite. We're seeing increased concentration of ownership on Wall Street, the rise of the monolith, Goldman, and in the public sector we're seeing the strengthening of the role of the Federal Reserve, which also strengthens the hand of the big banks. So we're not seeing more diversity; we're seeing more concentration of control.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. And this is why when we're discussing the changes we need to do. We need to not just reverse what has happened in the past one or two years of this increasing concentration, but go much further than that, in actively fostering diversity, in actively imposing a more competitive landscape. And that is why breaking up these too-big-to-fail institutions is extremely crucial to this idea of building up a stable financial system and a prosperous society.
JAY: So maybe one thing people watching might do when they choose who they're going to vote for is vote for people who aren't getting any money from the finance sector. They might be a little more likely to have a little backbone on these issues, 'cause most people in Congress are getting some kind of money from the finance sector, and certainly President Obama was one of the more bigger recipients of that.
KAPOOR: I'm not familiar enough with the landscape, but I think that the whole concept of lobbying and of campaign contributions from the sector that you are being elected to regulate and oversee is a flawed concept, and there might need to be a broader governance reform around public funding of election campaigns on much smaller budgets.
JAY: And you also might want to have some rules about people stepping out of Goldman right into public office. There could at least be, like, a five-year moratorium or something between going back and forth between so-called private sector and public sector.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. This whole revolving-door concept is—you know, it begs questions around possible conflicts of interest. That's a very serious problem.
JAY: So I guess what we're really saying, to all of us, we'd better understand this stuff—it isn't that complicated—because we're being taken to the cleaners in the name—this looks so complicated you can't really take a stand on it. But once you dig into it, it isn't rocket science. It's fairly Ponzi scheme-ish.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. The whole concept where, throughout the years, the banks, the bankers, and the regulators, everybody said this is too complicated and this is rocket science, you won't understand it, don't tinker with it or the whole system, the whole financial system, will go bust. And the fact of the matter is we actually haven't touched it, and it's gone bust anyways. And it's really, really, really not complicated. And this complexity was used as an example to reduce accountability. What we need to do as individual citizens, as unions, as consumer associations, as civil society, is to understand that this is not rocket science, make an effort to participate in the reforms and try and get our voice heard. The only voices you're hearing in the financial regulation discussion are the big investment banks, the big commercial banks, some hedge funds, and some private equity voices. It's not just that the individuals, the consumers, are missing from the debate and the taxpayers are missing from the debate, but also the big pension funds, the big reinsurance firms, the savings banks, the community banks, all these parts of the financial sector.
JAY: Well, that's a whole 'nother story, because why the union pension funds, which are enormous and big, big players in the economy, why the unions don't use the clout of their pension funds is beyond me, but they don't.
KAPOOR: This is one of those problems we've revisited this interview series of collective action. Now, if you're an individual pension fund, CalPERS [California Public Employees' Retirement System] or one of the others, you need to make a decision: okay, how much realistic return can I expect on my investment? Most US pension funds have been factoring in returns of 9 or 10 percent. Now, if you're a small investor in a big economy growing at 2 percent, you can generate 9 or 10 percent year after year. But if you're the whole financial system, if you're a big pension fund, if you are the financial system, you cannot generate returns of 10 percent or 9 percent. And we need to recognize that that is not a sustainable thing to do. And the way these pension funds have been thinking is that, well, we think we're smarter than the others and we will be able to choose the right hedge fund investments, the right private equity investments, the right derivatives or commodity investments which will earn us a higher return. Individually everybody is thinking this, but collectively it's impossible. That is why there is a very important need for the unions and the pension funds and the bigger investment community and the government to start this honest discussion of what is possible and what isn't. We actually have a massive pension black hole, and it's time to recognize that and take that into account in the discussions on reforming the financial system.
JAY: Thank you again, Sony, for joining us. Sony Kapoor from Re-Define. And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And don't forget our financial reform, which is the donate button. It's here. I'm pointing here. Or there. Somewhere on this page is a donate button. And if you want us to keep doing economic news—and, I think, uncompromisingly—then you got to hit "donate". Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.
Tax havens & currency speculation Pt.4
Sony Kapoor on the rise of Goldman Sachs and the need to democratize the economy
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And we're talking to Sony Kapoor. Sony is the managing director of Re-Define, Rethinking Development, Finance & Environment, international think tank. Used to work for Lehman Brothers and some of the other institutions on Wall Street. Thanks for joining us again, Sony.
SONY KAPOOR, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RE-DEFINE: Thank you for having me.
JAY: Our conversation has brought us to the big G, Goldman Sachs, which is becoming such a massive entity unto itself. It's really, especially out of this most recent crisis, emerged no longer one of many financial institutions but clearly more than the gorilla on the block. Goldman not only controls—or its people are allies, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve. But it's a ridiculous thing even to talk about insider trading when you talk to Goldman. They have people connected to them, probably, on every important board of most of the major companies in the world. They have board-level information when they decide what to trade and not to trade. Talk about the rise of Goldman and what that means in terms of the democratization of the economy.
KAPOOR: Well, there are two aspects to this. One, there was this perception, even before the crisis actually happened, that Goldman was somehow first amongst equals. One reason behind that was, unlike most of its other competitors, such as Lehman, etc., Goldman stayed having a partnership structure for much longer. It was only recently—I think it's in the past decade or so—that the partnership was dissolved and it became a public holding company. What that meant was that it was much more closely knit than other financial institutions. What it also probably did was it helped Goldman weather the crisis better than the other financial institutions, because if you're a partnership, your capital and money's tied up with everybody else's, and you stand to lose personally, which employees of Lehman and some of the other banks didn't. The worst that would happen to them would be that they wouldn't get their salary or bonus—they didn't actually actively lose any money. And what that meant was that the risk-management practices within Goldman, where everybody was peeking over everybody else's shoulder, still had some residual footprint from those partnership days, even though the structure had changed. And I think it helped Goldman be more vigilant going into the crisis. The second aspect is—.
JAY: Let me just interrupt for a sec. But that vigilance also meant they were betting against their own advice to their own clients. As we know, they were insuring with AIG on investment properties on the downside that they were selling to their clients without disclosing this, so that risk management had very little to do with any kind of responsibility other than their own quick profit.
KAPOOR: That is true. And I think there's shades of gray between what is legally permissible and what is ethical or not. And to my judgment, this was all above board and legal, but not necessarily ethical. The important thing is that in many of these big banks—there were parts of Lehman Brothers which seriously recognized the gravity of the situation and which were asking the management of the firm to get out of this real estate business and to try and reduce their exposure and to try and buy insurance the way Goldman did. But there were other parts of Lehman Brothers which were making so much money out of this that they wanted the party to continue. And we know which side won. And I think that this aspect of thinking of these big financial institutions as one cohesive-whole entity is a little bit mistaken. So it is quite possible, actually, that different parts of Goldman were pulling in different directions. And it's not to say that the people dealing with the customers and selling them those products were not aware of what the other side was doing.
JAY: Sony, you worked with these people on Wall Street. This idea of "too big to fail", that if this whole house of cards comes falling down, that the state is going to have to come in and bail us out, were they betting on that all along?
KAPOOR: Not explicitly, especially if you look at the institutions that failed. The two institutions, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, they were actually out of the big Wall Street banks, the institutions which had the highest amount of employee ownership. So if you look at it from the incentive perspective, that these are the people who are running the bank who actually own 50 percent or 40 percent of the bank, they knew that in the event of any failure it's the bondholders who mostly get bailed out, but the shareholders mostly were going to lose a lot of money, and they were aware of that.
JAY: But Lehman must have been in shock that they didn't get bailed out. I mean, Paulson and others were trying to get the Brits to bail out Lehman. They must have been a little surprised, in fact. But it's an ex-Goldman guy that kind of decides whether they live or die. I mean, Goldman must have been betting they weren't going to go down.
KAPOOR: At one level, perhaps. But, again, if you look at the individual employees, the calculations they make are very simple. So if you're an employee of Lehman Brothers and you own maybe, you know, 0.5 percent of Lehman Brothers or something, if you're a senior employee, but the amount of bonuses that you can get by betting the bank every year, year after year, are probably significantly higher than the amount you would lose if the whole bank failed. So, from an individual perspective, it is still rational to bet the bank without counting on government bailouts. But collectively it's disastrous, and what you had is a failure of this decision-making. So, yes, the awareness that these banks would be bailed out was really important. And the way it works is that these banks would not have been able to raise the financing through bonds that they did at fairly cheap rates if the bondholders who were investing in these banks, who were lending these banks money, did not think that these banks would be bailed out. So it's not within the institution that this decision-making happens, but it's the awareness of the possibility or the likelihood of bailout means that these institutions can take much more risks than they would otherwise be able to do, 'cause otherwise bondholders would penalize them.
JAY: Right. Now, there's two kind of proposals that have been talked about as possible reforms. One is, if it's too big to fail, break it up into something smaller. Is breaking up of Goldman—I know it's not being seriously talked about, but is it something that should be being talked about?
KAPOOR: I think absolutely, yes. If you look back in the United States to when, for example, Standard Oil was broken up, there was a lot of controversy at that point of time about whether this was the right thing to do, and this was a successful business, etc. But in retrospect it proved to be a good decision, and the sum of parts was greater than the whole. And I think that if Goldman and some of the other big, large, too-big-to-fail banks were broken down, either by geography or, more likely, by function, what you would have is a sounder financial system, a financial system where the society will not be forced to bear the risks of profits being privatized by these institutions, where they would be politically less powerful. And even investors in these institutions would benefit, because the sum of parts would be bigger than the whole.
JAY: Now, the other option, or maybe an option that goes with this, is—the logic goes like this: if the public option is necessary and useful for keeping the health-insurance business in line, then why not the public option for the finance sector?
KAPOOR: There is a possible role for the public sector. And in the United States, what you have is already a significant public-sector presence, for example Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And in many developing countries, you have development banks. And there was a tradition for that here: you had banks dedicated to agriculture lending, dedicated to small and medium sector. The most important thing we need to think about is to build up a diverse financial system and a competitive financial system. What we had was increasing uniformity in the financial system, where every bank was chasing the exact same kind of investments, lending to the exact same people, and not lending to the exact same group. A good bank is one which lends to someone that nobody else lends to, but does not lend to someone that everybody else is lending to. And what we've had over the years is exact reversal of this doctrine, where those who have a good credit score, for example, get twenty envelopes through their door offering them credit, and those who actually need the credit are not able to access it. What you need to do is integrate this social goal of providing credit, enabling financial services which allow people to participate in society and grow, and combine that with the idea of having diverse financial institutions fulfilling real sector needs. And this combination is more stable.
JAY: And what we're seeing is probably the opposite. We're seeing increased concentration of ownership on Wall Street, the rise of the monolith, Goldman, and in the public sector we're seeing the strengthening of the role of the Federal Reserve, which also strengthens the hand of the big banks. So we're not seeing more diversity; we're seeing more concentration of control.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. And this is why when we're discussing the changes we need to do. We need to not just reverse what has happened in the past one or two years of this increasing concentration, but go much further than that, in actively fostering diversity, in actively imposing a more competitive landscape. And that is why breaking up these too-big-to-fail institutions is extremely crucial to this idea of building up a stable financial system and a prosperous society.
JAY: So maybe one thing people watching might do when they choose who they're going to vote for is vote for people who aren't getting any money from the finance sector. They might be a little more likely to have a little backbone on these issues, 'cause most people in Congress are getting some kind of money from the finance sector, and certainly President Obama was one of the more bigger recipients of that.
KAPOOR: I'm not familiar enough with the landscape, but I think that the whole concept of lobbying and of campaign contributions from the sector that you are being elected to regulate and oversee is a flawed concept, and there might need to be a broader governance reform around public funding of election campaigns on much smaller budgets.
JAY: And you also might want to have some rules about people stepping out of Goldman right into public office. There could at least be, like, a five-year moratorium or something between going back and forth between so-called private sector and public sector.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. This whole revolving-door concept is—you know, it begs questions around possible conflicts of interest. That's a very serious problem.
JAY: So I guess what we're really saying, to all of us, we'd better understand this stuff—it isn't that complicated—because we're being taken to the cleaners in the name—this looks so complicated you can't really take a stand on it. But once you dig into it, it isn't rocket science. It's fairly Ponzi scheme-ish.
KAPOOR: Absolutely. The whole concept where, throughout the years, the banks, the bankers, and the regulators, everybody said this is too complicated and this is rocket science, you won't understand it, don't tinker with it or the whole system, the whole financial system, will go bust. And the fact of the matter is we actually haven't touched it, and it's gone bust anyways. And it's really, really, really not complicated. And this complexity was used as an example to reduce accountability. What we need to do as individual citizens, as unions, as consumer associations, as civil society, is to understand that this is not rocket science, make an effort to participate in the reforms and try and get our voice heard. The only voices you're hearing in the financial regulation discussion are the big investment banks, the big commercial banks, some hedge funds, and some private equity voices. It's not just that the individuals, the consumers, are missing from the debate and the taxpayers are missing from the debate, but also the big pension funds, the big reinsurance firms, the savings banks, the community banks, all these parts of the financial sector.
JAY: Well, that's a whole 'nother story, because why the union pension funds, which are enormous and big, big players in the economy, why the unions don't use the clout of their pension funds is beyond me, but they don't.
KAPOOR: This is one of those problems we've revisited this interview series of collective action. Now, if you're an individual pension fund, CalPERS [California Public Employees' Retirement System] or one of the others, you need to make a decision: okay, how much realistic return can I expect on my investment? Most US pension funds have been factoring in returns of 9 or 10 percent. Now, if you're a small investor in a big economy growing at 2 percent, you can generate 9 or 10 percent year after year. But if you're the whole financial system, if you're a big pension fund, if you are the financial system, you cannot generate returns of 10 percent or 9 percent. And we need to recognize that that is not a sustainable thing to do. And the way these pension funds have been thinking is that, well, we think we're smarter than the others and we will be able to choose the right hedge fund investments, the right private equity investments, the right derivatives or commodity investments which will earn us a higher return. Individually everybody is thinking this, but collectively it's impossible. That is why there is a very important need for the unions and the pension funds and the bigger investment community and the government to start this honest discussion of what is possible and what isn't. We actually have a massive pension black hole, and it's time to recognize that and take that into account in the discussions on reforming the financial system.
JAY: Thank you again, Sony, for joining us. Sony Kapoor from Re-Define. And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And don't forget our financial reform, which is the donate button. It's here. I'm pointing here. Or there. Somewhere on this page is a donate button. And if you want us to keep doing economic news—and, I think, uncompromisingly—then you got to hit "donate". Thanks for joining us on The Real News Network.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Talks Josh Silver demos adjustable liquid-filled eyeglasses
Josh Silver delivers his brilliantly simple solution for correcting vision at the lowest cost possible -- adjustable, liquid-filled lenses. At TEDGlobal 2009, he demos his affordable eyeglasses and reveals his global plan to distribute them to a billion people in need by 2020.
I'm going to tell you about one of the world's largest problems and how it can be solved.
I'd like to start with a little experiment. Could you put your hand up if you wear glasses or contact lenses, or you've had laser refractive surgery? Now, unfortunately, there are too many of you for me to do the statistics properly. But it looks like -- I'm guessing -- that it'll be about 60 percent of the room because that's roughly the fraction of developed world population that have some sort of vision correction.
The World Health Organization estimates -- well, they make various estimates of the number of people who need glasses -- the lowest estimate is 150 million people. They also have an estimate of around a billion. But in fact, I would argue that we've just done an experiment here and now, which shows us that the global need for corrective eyewear is around half of any population. And the problem of poor vision, is actually not just a health problem, it's also an educational problem, and it's an economic problem, and it's a quality of life problem.
Glasses are not very expensive. They're quite plentiful. The problem is, there aren't enough eye care professionals in the world to use the model of the delivery of corrective eyewear that we have in the developed world. There are just way too few eye care professionals.
So this little slide here shows you an optometrist and the little blue person represents about 10,000 people and that's the ratio in the U.K. This is the ratio of optometrists to people in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, there are some countries in sub-Saharan Africa where there's one optometrist for eight million of the population.
How do you do this? How do you solve this problem? I came up with a solution to this problem, and I came up with a solution based on adaptive optics for this. And the idea is you make eye glasses, and you adjust them yourself and that solves the problem.
What I want to do is to show you that one can make a pair of glasses. I shall just show you how you make a pair of glasses. I shall put this in my pocket. I'm short sighted. I look at the signs at the end, I can hardly see them. So -- okay, I can now see that man running out there, and I can see that guy running out there. I've now made prescription eyewear to my prescription. Next step in my process. So, I've now made eye glasses to my prescription. Okay, so I've made these glasses and ... Okay, I've made the glasses to my prescription and ... ... I've just ... And I've now made some glasses. That's it.
(Applause)
Now, these aren't the only pair in the world. In fact, this technology's been evolving. I started working on it in 1985, and it's been evolving very slowly. There are about 30,000 in use now. And they're in fifteen countries. They're spread around the world.
And I have a vision, which I'll share with you. I have a global vision for vision. And that vision is to try to get a billion people wearing the glasses they need by the year 2020. To do that -- this is an early example of the technology. The technology is being further developed -- the cost has to be brought down. This pair, in fact, these currently cost about 19 dollars. But the cost has to be brought right down. It has to be brought down because we're trying to serve populations who live on a dollar a day.
How do you solve this problem? You start to get into detail. And on this slide, I'm basically explaining all the problems you have. How do you distribute? How do you work out how to fit the thing? How do you have people realizing that they have a vision problem? How do you deal with the industry? And the answer to that is research.
What we've done is to set up the Center for Vision in the Developing World here in the university. If you want to know more, just come have a look at our website. Thank you.
(Applause)
Je vais vous parler d’un des plus grands problèmes au monde et de comment le résoudre.
Je voudrais commencer avec une petite expérience. Levez la main s’il vous plaît ceux qui ont des lunettes ou des lentilles de contact, ou qui se sont fait opérer par laser. Là, malheureusement, vous être trop nombreux pour que je fasse les statistiques correctement. Mais il semble -- je suppose -- qu’il doit y en avoir environ 60% parmi vous parce que c’est grosso modo la fraction de la population du monde développé qui ont une quelconque correction visuelle.
L’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé (OMS) estime -- en fait, ils font diverses estimations du nombre de gens qui ont besoin de lunettes -- l’estimation la plus basse est de 150 millions de personnes. Il y a aussi une estimation d’un milliard. Mais en fait, je dirais que nous venons de faire une expérience à l’instant, qui nous montre que le besoin global en matière de correction visuelle se chiffre à la moitié de toute population. Le problème d’une mauvaise vue n'est pas juste un problème de santé, c’est aussi un problème pour l’éducation, pour l’économie, pour la qualité de vie.
Les lunettes ne sont pas très chères. Elles sont disponibles en quantité. Le problème est que, il n’y a pas assez de spécialistes dans le monde pour reproduire le modèle de distribution de corrections visuelles que nous avons dans le monde développé. Il y a bien trop peu de spécialistes.
Cette diapositive vous montre un optométriste et le petit personnage bleu représente 10 000 personnes, c’est le ratio au Royaume-Uni. Voici le ratio d'optométristes en Afrique sub-saharienne. En fait, il y a certains pays d'Afrique sub-saharienne où ce rapport est de 1 optométriste pour 8 millions de personnes.
Comment faire? Comment résoudre ce problème? J’ai trouvé une solution à ce problème (sur l’écran : faites le vous-même), et j’en suis arrivé à la conclusion d’une solution optique adaptative. L’idée est de fabriquer des lunettes, ensuite de les régler vous-même et le problème est résolu.
Je vais vous montrer que l’on peut fabriquer une paire de lunettes. Je vais vous montrer comment vous pouvez fabriquer une paire de lunettes. Je mets ça dans ma poche. Je suis myope. Je regarde les symboles au fond, je peux à peine les voir. Donc -- ok, maintenant je peux voir cet homme qui court de ce côté, et je peux voir cet homme qui court de ce côté. J’ai désormais des lunettes à ma vue. Prochaine étape de mon processus. Bon, maintenant j’ai des lunettes à ma vue. Ok, donc j’ai fait ces lunettes et ... Ok, j’ai fait ces lunettes à ma vue et ... ... J’ai juste ... Et maintenant j’ai fabriqué des lunettes. C’est tout.
(Applaudissements)
Maintenant, ce n’est pas la seule paire au monde. En fait, cette technologie évolue. J’ai commencé à y travailler en 1985, avec une évolution très lente. Il y en a environ 30 000 en usage à l’heure actuelle. Et ce dans 15 pays. Le tout réparti dans le monde entier.
Et j’ai une vision, et je vais la partager avec vous. J’ai une vision globale pour la vision. Et cette vision est d’essayer de parvenir à avoir un milliard de personnes portant les lunettes dont ils ont besoin d’ici à 2020. Pour ce faire -- ceci est un exemple primaire de la technologie. La technologie est développée plus avant -- le coût doit être réduit. Cette paire, en fait, coûte actuellement environ 19 dollars. Mais le coût doit être réduit. Il doit être réduit parce que nous nous adressons à des populations qui vivent avec un dollar par jour.
Comment résoudre ce problème? Vous commencez à rentrer dans le détail. Sur cette diapositive, j’explique brièvement tous les problèmes que nous avons. Comment les distribuer? Comment les ajuster? Comment faire que les gens se rendent compte qu’ils ont un problème de vue? Commet s'organiser avec l’industrie? La réponse à tout ça s’appelle la recherche.
Nous avons créé le «Center for Vision in the Developing World» (Centre pour la Vision dans le Monde en Développement) ici à l’université d’Oxford. Si vous voulez en savoir plus, allez faire un tour sur notre site. Merci.
(Applaudissements)
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