Slate Magazine - Moneybox

McKinsey predicts the future of private-equity and hedge funds.

Daniel Gross — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:05:44 EST

During 2007, there were several subtle signs that the global boom was peaking: Fortune crowned Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwartzman as the new king of Wall Street, Fox Business Channel made its debut, and we saw the first inklings of disaster in the subprime mortgage market. But in retrospect, the most obvious omen was that all too many people were assuming that the boom of the previous three years would continue for the foreseeable future. Such sentiments weren't confined to CNBC's studios. In October 2007—the precise market top—McKinsey Global Institute, a think tank nestled in the confines of the blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey & Co., issued a report documenting the stunning rise of four comparatively new pools of capital—hedge funds, private-equity firms, Asian sovereign capital (Asian central banks and sovereign wealth funds), and petroleum exporters (companies, governments, and central banks of oil producers). These new power brokers had been major beneficiaries of recent trends in the global economy. And if existing trends were to continue—and why wouldn't they?—they'd be even bigger in a few years.

[more ...]

Both Obama and his critics are wrong about the stimulus package.

Daniel Gross — Thu, 9 Jul 2009 17:43:14 EST

Even before it was signed into law, President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package was denounced as both too big (mostly by the right) and too small (mostly by the left) to succeed. Now, a mere five months later, it's being declared a failure across the political spectrum.

[more ...]

What if Paul Krugman was a Japanese woman?

Daniel Gross — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 14:28:30 EST

"Please do not believe all the talk about the green shoots of the Japanese economy, which I suspect you might have heard. We are in pretty bad shape."

[more ...]

Why does Japan, the world's most efficient economy, have so many elevator operators and gas station attendants?

Daniel Gross — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:29:58 EST

More than any other country in the world, Japan is a case study in the triumphs of human engineering. Every Japanese manufacturer prides itself on energy efficiency and zero-landfill waste policies. The train and subway stations are models of precision and the application of information technology. Late last week, I visited Toyota's astonishing Tsutsumi auto plant, near the car company's headquarters in Toyoda City. With a capacity of 400,000 vehicles per year—this is where the Prius is made—it's clean, bright, full of erector-set conveyer belts, and thinly staffed. The welding shop is like a scene from The Terminator—a thicket of robots extend their arms, moving large pieces of metal and blasting them with shots of heat. (The section where robots stamp "Obama '08" and "NPR" bumper stickers on the hybrid vehicles must have been around the corner.) On Monday, I visited a small company in Osaka that hopes its cardboard, female-shaped robot will garner a share of the mannequin market. The engineers also demonstrated a robot that can dance and act and a third that can identify whether people are men or women ("You are a beautiful lady!") and guess their ages (inaccurately, it turns out).

[more ...]

Why so many green jobs are sprouting in Colorado.

Daniel Gross — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:07:47 EST

It only seems as though every company in America is downsizing. "We're hiring three or four people every week," says Prem Nath, senior vice president at Ascent Solar, in Thornton, Colo. Spun out of a technology incubator in 2005, the company is ramping up production of thin-film energy-producing cells printed on malleable plastic, which it sells in credit-card-size patches (to power a BlackBerry) and in 15-foot strips (for roofing material). As he unfurls a coil of the ultra-lightweight material, Nath notes that National Renewable Energy Laboratory, about 20 minutes away, validated that the material converts about 10 percent of the sun's power into electricity. Ascent is installing production lines in a huge space behind the main office.

[more ...]