Absolutely fascinating (and somewhat humorous) information about how Arianna's Huffington as well as other websites with political content may be on the ropes. HuffPo may well be gone by late 2010/ early 2011. TFA article also names six other online publications which may hit the brick wall at about the same time.
I recall back in ancient history in 2005 when Ms. Huffinton launched her blog the same year as mine I said then in complete confidence that her $7 million initial seed money I could do the same thing for about one percent of what she received.
Fast forward four years, with five solid regular readers later and I doubt I could do it for $70 million.
From TFA:
The evidence that can be gleaned is that Arianna and her gang of 100 acolytes that "staff" the Po have a burn rate of maybe $1M/month, giving the Po about a 24 month shelf life (from last December, giving them about a year to live ... unless they get a new cash infusion).
The Po was funded, as a business, by a venture capitalist. Not an advocacy site like Center for American Progress. There is zero evidence that the Po is generating, or capable of ever generating anything like $12M a year. (Just a guess, but ... where are the ads???)
Nor is there much evidence that the Po has anything like the political clout of populist bootstrap webspaces like the much less expensive, feisty, DailyKos or the really, really smart Personal Democracy Forum. The Po -- except for the rare columns by Esther Dyson and a few others -- not only is journalistically shoddy -- parajournalism, really -- but is consistently guilty of the most unforgivable crime on the Web.
The crime of being boring. More at the link.
The crime of not having a business plan ...
I think the business plan is to write cool stuff, burn through money, and get the next sugar daddy to pony up. So far it's worked exactly as planned...
#1
It would be rather amusing if a whole bunch of the Internet's "leading 'progressive' lights" all went dark at once...just as the Donks are getting a mid-term walloping. The tinfoil-hat bunch would absolutely lose it.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/18/2009 15:43 Comments ||
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#2
It will be sweet irony, will it not, if what brings down the anti-capitalists is the lack of capital.
#10
"It would be rather amusing if a whole bunch of the Internet's "leading 'progressive' lights" all went dark at once...just as the Donks are getting a mid-term walloping. The tinfoil-hat bunch would absolutely lose it."
The really amusing part of this picture you paint, Mike, is that the 'tin-foil hat bunch' would have to lose it all by themselves; no one to console them as all their wunnerful sites are 'Sea-Ell-Oh-Ess-E-Dee.'
Thier ranting raving and whining would go un heard in great vacuum that once was PO-land....
New business links fly in the face of a Security Council resolution.
By Gordon G. Chang
Kim Jong Il hugged Wen Jiabao on the Chinese premier's arrival in Pyongyang on October 4. Analysts were surprised at the time that the reclusive North Korean supremo made the trip to the tarmac to show his affection. Now we know why: Mr. Wen came to the North Korean capital less to mark 60 years of diplomatic ties with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea--the ostensible purpose of the trip--than to sign commercial pacts with it. By doing so, China undoubtedly violated United Nations Security Resolution 1874 by giving Kim the means to keep his nuclear arsenal in the face of intense international pressure.
Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, was sparse with details on the deals. It merely stated the two communist states "signed a series of agreements on cooperation and announced that a new highway bridge over the Yalu River will be built." But reports from South Korean newspapers indicate Beijing, as a part of a comprehensive package, also agreed to provide financial assistance to Kim's destitute state. Chinese grants to the North total at least $200 million.
Never mind that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, unanimously adopted June 12, forbids many, if not most, commercial contacts with Kim's Korea. Paragraph 19 calls on U.N. member states "not to enter into new commitments for grants, financial assistance, or concessional loans to the DPRK, except for humanitarian and developmental purposes directly addressing the needs of the civilian population, or the promotion of denuclearization." Paragraph 20 calls on members "not to provide public financial support for trade with the DPRK . . . where such financial support could contribute to the DPRK's nuclear-related or ballistic missile-related or other WMD-related programs or activities."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/18/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Well, I'm certain that I speak for everyone when I say that I amshocked! shocked! to find out about this!!
#2
It's business. They actually do have trade with the Norks. Doing so, they also pay no consequences for doing so. So, what's the motivation for them to change? About the only thing that would get their attention is the Japanese going nuke and re-militarizing over North Korea. Not going to happen in their estimates.
#3
I love it, Kimmie can't do squat about it and will be reduced to an infantile squalling and waving his tiny fists in the air.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/18/2009 12:58 Comments ||
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#4
About the only thing that would get their attention is the Japanese going nuke and re-militarizing over North Korea. Not going to happen in their estimates.
Three things that could REALLY get China's attention: the Japanese requesting to build 50 "Arleigh Burke"-class destroyers under license; Japan buying the USS Kitty Hawk and two wings of F/A-18s; and the US "giving" Japan 300 PAC-3 missiles - with no strings attached. Of course, neither our current government, nor the current government of Japan, would concede to such deals.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/18/2009 18:15 Comments ||
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#5
Hell OP that would get Our attention. :)
Sadly I don't think 300 SM-3z exost (?)
And I wouldn't saddle France with the Shitty Kittuah - I expect the IJN self-defense force to have it's own ideas on force projection - they has a history of some ability in dis area.
#6
.5MT- please provide bsis for the Shitty Kitty remark. old, yes. oilburner, yes. still afloat and dependable, yes. of the 11 CVs i served on, CVA-63 (at the time) was the best. and yeah i know that was a few years ago, but there had to be a reason why CV-66 was chosen as a target for deliberate sinking over one several years older.
#7
I expect the IJN self-defense force to have it's own ideas on force projection - they has a history of some ability in dis area.
To amplify somewhat what .5mt says, even people who understand military history in WWII fail to understand just how large a chunk of Asia the Imperial Japanese Army swallowed up during WWII.
Or how great an impact Japanese imperialism still has to this day on modern diplomacy. The Chinese won't move to clamp down on the Norks because, frankly, the old man as a guerrilla fought the IJA during WWII.
#8
USN I'm mainly thinking of the steam plant. Running it likes it's used to would reaquire folks who've lived on it for years. Now, perhaps the IJN self defense force would contract to do that -- but I'm not sure it would be wise. The IJN self defense force of Japan has a long history of carrier operations, construction and maintenence. I expect they would want to build their own and not be stuck with an Admirals Revolt hull.
Americans should be hoping that the Chinese will be kinder to us than we were to the Brits after the second world war. Readers of a certain age will remember, and the younger ones who study history will have learnt, what creditor Uncle Sam did to debtor John Bull when Britain sent John Maynard Keynes to Washington to negotiate a loan from us.
Britain had spent blood and treasure to beat the Nazis, and was hoping for a gift of $3 billion, a credit line of $5 billion, and other generosity. But President Harry Truman, advised by communist spies such as Harry Dexter White, insisted on terms so onerous that the pound was supplanted by the dollar and Britain was, in the view of some, expelled from the first rank of economic powers for decades, until Margaret Thatcher decided that her governments job was not to manage decline.
Fast forward to today, and the plunging dollar. The Obama administration may mouth support for a strong dollar, but traders know better. In the short run, the White House hopes that a combination of protectionism and a cheap dollar will reduce the flow of imports and increase the volume of exports. That will create jobs right here in America as the Wal-Marts of the country switch to domestic suppliers.
In the longer run, the administration knows that it will somehow have to repay the huge debts it is incurring as it attempts to stimulate the economy, throws another trillion at healthcare reform, and prepares to lumber the energy economy with billions, or even trillions, in new costs to satisfy the green lobby. Of course, it could take a lesson from Argentina, which defaulted on its debts eight years ago but is now heading back to the market to borrow money from lenders eager to increase their returns and afflicted with memory loss. PT Barnum, the great circus impresario, said, Theres a sucker born every minute, although it is not certain that he had international bankers in mind.
Default is unbecoming a great power, especially one that hopes to maintain the dollar as a reserve currency if indeed American still does. The administrations critics, among them the Pulitzer prize winning commentator Charles Krauthammer (read his article Decline is a choice: the new liberalism and the end of American ascendancy at Weeklystandard.com), believe the president wants to make America less of a hegemon and more of an ordinary nation, much like others in the international organisations of which he is so fond. That effort includes an increase in the American contribution to the International Monetary Funds ability to issue drawing rights, which the Russian, Chinese and other regimes hostile to America want to see replace the dollar as the currency in which the world does business.
But even the Chinese do not see the dollars role being so diminished in the near-or medium-term future. Instead, they see themselves in the position that America was in vis-à-vis Britain in 1946. America is deeply in debt and digging itself in deeper every day. China, Americas principal creditor, is worried that Obama and his successors will attempt to pay back the more than $1 trillion they owe in wildly depreciated dollars. So it wants to see some plan coming out of the White House that will begin to reduce the deficit and, eventually, the national debt.
No such plan exists. Obama, who styles himself a transformational president, intends to keep the spending taps wide open. Unfortunately the old adage that if you owe your banker a huge sum you have him where you want him is not true not if the Chinese are your creditor. So it should be no surprise that Obama is the first president to refuse to receive the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader, despite the urgings of the celebrity luvvies who helped fund the presidents election campaign. Or that America no longer presses the Chinese regime on human rights. All in an effort to keep the Chinese happy, and lending.
Which brings us back to Keynes, Truman and the post-war world. Unless there is a big change in American economic policy, and soon, our version of the great British economist White House adviser Larry Summers, Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, or Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke, or all three will head to Beijing to negotiate terms that will persuade the Chinese not to call in all their IOUs. The Chinese are likely to be less kind than we were and insist on terms that would sap our economic, and therefore military strength for years to come.
Exaggeration? Perhaps. But it is an endgame as plausible as default, and not much more difficult to imagine than a deficit-cutting programme emerging from a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Unless ... as has been true in the past, the great, resilient American economy offsets the mistakes of its masters by growing its way out of the problem.
The good news is that this deep and long recession appears to be over, and with improving credit markets, the US can return to solid growth next year without worry about inflation, Lynn Reaser, president of the National Association of Business Economists, told the groups annual gathering last week.
Retail sales are looking rather good up between 2% and 3% at an annual rate in the third quarter. Banks are coming to the end of a period of huge write-downs, even though billions in consumer and commercial property loans remain to be written off. Companies are sitting on piles of cash, waiting to be spent if the rise in consumer spending proves durable. Banks are again lending to developers of commercial properties, and house prices seem to be somewhere between stable and rising.
Add to renewed growth the stated willingness of the Fed to head off inflation, and we might not find ourselves in the position Britain was in after the second world war. Indeed, the Chinese might be so dependent on access to our markets to keep their economy growing, and their masses from revolting, that power will lie on our side of the bargaining table.
#2
No such plan exists. Obama, who styles himself a "transformational president", intends to keep the spending taps wide open.
The tale begins on Christmas Eve 2009, Three Christmas ghosts visit Scrooge Obama during the course of the night. The first, the Ghost of Christmas Americas Past, takes Scrooge Obama to the scenes of his boyhood and youth which stir the old skinflint's gentler and tenderer emotions. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Americas Present, takes Scrooge Obama to the home of his nephew Fred (of Rantburg) and to the humble dwelling of his clerk Bob Cratchit Press Secretary to observe their Christmas dinners. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas America Yet to Come, harrows Scrooge Obama with dire visions of the future if he does not learn and act upon what he has witnessed. The Crippled Tiny Tim Economy does not die as the ghost foretold and Scrooge Obama becomes a different man, treating his fellow men with kindness, generosity, and compassion, and gaining a reputation as a man who embodies the spirit of Christmas America . Scrooge's Obamas redemption underscores the conservative, individualistic, and patriarchal aspects of Dickens's 'Carol philosophy' which depended on a more fortunate individual willingly looking after a less fortunate one who had demonstrated his worthiness to receive such attention. Government or other agencies were not called upon to effect change in an economy that created extremes of wealth and poverty but personal moral conscience and individual action in a narrow interpretation of the old forms of 'noblesse oblige' were expected to do so.
#6
So increased Chinese personal purchases are offsetting decreased Chinese government purchases? Fascinating reflection on the trust the moneyed Chinese have in their own government.
#7
TW, all Chinese purchases are Government purchases. The mythical Chinese "saver" is an illusion. The Chinese middle and moneyed class are as profligate as the the US consumers. The government confiscates all US dollars by law and gives exporters Yuan instead. Those US dollars are then invested in the US as Nial Ferguson says in the article: The weakening of the dollar is terrible news for practically all of the rest of the worlds economies, except the U.S. and China, Harvard University Professor Niall Ferguson said in an Oct. 16 interview on Bloomberg Radio. China, which manages the yuans appreciation, will intervene to make sure the dollar does not weaken relative to its currency, added Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.
#1
Lets see now, the Canadian Free Press is telling the people in the United States of America the President of the United States, Barack H. Obama, is about to hand over American sovereignty to the United Nations.
Balderdash, He is the President of the United States, born in America, raised as a good God fearing Christian, Harvard educated, a lawyer, community organizer, former United States Senator; he would never do that.
#2
Then-Vice President Al Gore signed the original Kyoto treaty. But the Senate refused to vote to verify, so the treaty was not binding upon the U.S. Likewise any such climate change treaty President Obama or his representative might sign in Copenhagen. Every single Democratic senator would have to rear up on his/her hind legs to vote for the thing. Given that some of those seats are shaky, the risk/return ratio on this thing could be pretty high for just enough senators that the treaty will, like Kyoto, never make it to the floor for a vote.
#3
It actually takes 67 votes to ratify a treaty - 2/3, not a majority. There are only five RINOs in the Senate that would even CONSIDER voting for this crap, and about a dozen Dems that won't. Either way, it's dead, and the President has no way to change it.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
10/18/2009 18:20 Comments ||
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#4
Bet it makes it to the floor TW. Bet it looses 98-2.
This is ideal cover and win-win for all concerned.
#5
I stand corrected, Old Patriot. .5MT, I don't care how it happens that the stupid thing fails, so long as it does. But I would love your way, because that would make trying again more difficult.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
