Should B-School Finance Grads Look at Government Work?

Excerpt from The Economist interview with NY Fed President, William Dudley

Q: How has the job of managing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York changed?

A: We’re expanding, because the liquidity facilities require a lot of people to be run effectively and with appropriate safeguards. The markets group has gone from 230 in early 2007 to close to 400 people by the end of 2009. The Bank has hired more people with structured finance backgrounds and risk managers, for example, who are involved in designing the TALF [Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility] to make sure it can’t be gamed or abused.

So my question is, how come b-schools aren't suggesting that the brilliant financial minds of the future go into government service to help us get through this business cycle downturn and prep our government for the next one? I mean, I get why to a certain degree. You'd have to convince people who were expecting to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in Wall St. related jobs to take a government salary. But still, it's interesting to see how the number of positions have exploded in the last two years but I don't know of anyone who's pursuing one.

Is Conan's new 'Tonight' set from Super Mario?--The Live Feed

This is amazing. I wonder how Nintendo might use this promotionally...if they didn't secretly pay for it as some insane new evolution of product placement. And if that's the case, I for one welcome our new Nintendoverloards. Link goes to posting on The Live Feed on The Hollywood Reporter, where they have one more even more convincing comparison between the photos here.

Is Conan's new 'Tonight' set from Super Mario?--The Live Feed

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Merage Softball Team Takes Championship

Maybe I am just making up for the years in high school football, where we came in second place in the league by one loss two years in a row. But I have to say, it felt good to win the coveted blue towels that the UCI Intramural officials gave us for winning our softball league.

Good season, boys! As Max said, "We can retire from UCI IM Sports as champions. The memories will outlive the awesome championship washcloth."

Pictured above from left to right.
Back Row: Marc Rizzie, Max Brunner, Karl Ring, Ron Millar, Gregory Paules, Mike Grant, Chris Chiles, Seung Youn "Younie" Woo
Front Row: Mark Deaver, Jinsoo Bae, Vinod Vangimalla, Sancha Lekuthai, Jinyong Park

Palm Pre to Sync with iTunes?

I was just reading Matt Rosoff's Digital Noise blog over at cnet about the Palm Pre possibly working with iTunes:
Palm's music strategy: Use iTunes.

Pretty interesting strategy and I would be curious if it took off if other handset makers or mobile OS developers would consider following suit. Although I think that Matt's comment that Apple might squash these plans might be more likely than normal.

And for those who don't stay on top of the wild world of smartphone news, here's a short video demo of the Palm Pre

Interesting Safeway Generic Soda Branding

World Wide Tribe

A friend and alumni of my MBA program shared this on Facebook. It's a TED presentation from this past February by Seth Godin. His main point is that "the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so." Check it out:



Purchase Seth's books on ALL for Books and help raise money for Adele's Literacy Library!

Twondering about Twitter

So I've been playing with Twitter since starting my EDGE project with Adele's Literacy Library. So far my teammate has had more success with the account that he set up specifically for the store. But we're still trying to grow a following, and specifically a following that can help us mobilize action to get traffic moving to the ALL for Books webstore and in turn both increase donations of books and Amazon referral commissions which of course both benefit Adele's organization.

I still haven't quite figured out exactly how Twitter works or what the magic potion is to increasing your followers and in turn their help in evangelizing for you in the Twittersphere about your organization and what you are doing. Sure I've read a number of "Twitter Advice" pieces Moonlight Creative had a pretty good one earlier in April. But still, I'm (t)wondering if maybe Twitter, like many Internet (both "Web 1.0" and "Web 2.0") phenoms gets more credit for it's small amounts of success stories because it's simply new (or at least you'd think so from the mainstream media attention in the last couple of months) and since the late 90's (or further back if you count the people who never bought Amazon, Google, Apple or Microsoft stock before they became the powerhouses they are) people don't want to miss out on the "next big thing."

I'd be interested to hear what other people think. Meanwhile, enjoy a funny clip about said media frenzy, courtesy of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Twitter Frenzy
thedailyshow.com
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