Love in the Age of World Domination

Mean Street Shenanigans

These last few months my heart is with some of my friends who work on the Street, including at least a quarter of my MBA class. With more than $300 billion in write-downs and credit losses in under a year, banks are firing like nobody's business. Half of April's 23,000 layoff came from Merrill Lynch and Citi, both banks I have worked for. I know how capricious these places can be. What I am saying, though, is that we should keep some perspective. Bonuses are down by 10-25% this year but given that the average bonus is about 200K, how sorry do we need to feel?

This very funny article by the Shadow captures the spirit of the times:

Thousands of elite domestic and international MBAs with seven to 20 years of experience have been given their termination packages over the last year. They are "discovering" new teaching careers, "spending more time with their families," attempting to convince hedge funds that they have some inherent entrepreneurial spirit (NOT), or scouring the bones of smaller investment banks for a potential stepped down "rain maker" position.

This forced exodus from the financial services industry comprises more than investment bankers. It includes private bankers, fixed income salesmen and traders, equity/research sales, any and every CDS / CDO trader that can be found hiding, structuring gurus and your general overly paid, “it’s my birthright” type of slicked-back hair genius – both men and women. Though the female numbers are smaller, the fact that Morgan Stanley’s president Zoe Cruz was unceremoniously and publicly crucified by her male contemporaries, from above and below, does not bode well for the male/female ratio changing any time soon. The Shadow finds it amazing that despite the numerous class action law suits that have succeeded, chauvinism is still running rampant. The only thing that’s changed is these dinosaurs have finally learned they can’t expense lap dances.

What does this mean for our industry? Does our Wall Street microcosm really have much of an effect on Main Street and Hillary’s legion of white blue collar workers? Well, the fact is that it already has, and always will. The irony is that the ripples come from the outside in - which is counter to the natural order of things. That is, Wall Street crumbles from a speculative bubble that they created with their lemming- like clients - the latest being the credit debacle - and the hard-working stiff with a 680 FICO score in Tulsa can’t borrow money because the banks overreact with their underwriting standards. Or Joe Potato in Cleveland loses his job because the Wal-Mart cuts 25% of its work force to “contain costs” and then proceeds to immediately provide Chinese, Indian and Korean workers with new “opportunities” in their home country.

It is only many months later that the epicenter is affected with the dinosaurs attempting to sell their third homes and not finding bids, cutting back on the south of France vacations and Beaver Creek ski jaunts. They also come to the realization that the 8,200 square foot home they bought in Harrison has operating costs that they are suddenly becoming rather uncomfortable with.

So who is this dinosaur, really? Is he the legendary Theseus turned into a modern day Thersites? Probably neither. Other than wearing a bespoke suit and not really driving revenue to the extent he or she should, this individual did more process work than deal-making, interfaced with customers peripherally, and manifested hubris in its purest most unattractive form because he went to Yale, Wharton or Stanford. Sure those hallowed halls help you get jobs, but my god man; it isn’t a lifetime meal ticket!

Now many of you were ultra-hard workers and life is sometimes unfair, but the world is large and flatter than ever. Instead of searching in this corner of the world, expand the flight of your search. Dinosaurs can become eagles once more. Just not in Manhattan.

I am Going with the Best-looking

Today was the democratic primary in DC. I am now ready to officially announce my support for the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately I can't vote in this country, so it doesn't really matter, however I would still like to say for the record that I have chosen to support the best speaker, the best looking, and the most passionate of the candidates. And before you make me into some shallow, naive, no-sense girl who's drunk the cool aid, please consider the following:

The Official Barack Obama Campaign Site

Barack Obama on MySpace

Barack Obama on Facebook

Barack Obama on YouTube

Barack Obama Is My Homeboy Grassroots Campaign

Barack Obama via Twitter

Barack Obama's Congressional Voting Record

The Democratic Party

Obama Girl

A President Like my Father

Where to Put Your Money

Its crazy how much $$$$ is flowing into clean tech and clean energy companies these days, through not just VC and private equity but also through standard investment funds, green funds, mom-and-pop mutual funds, and alternative energy indexes.

Some say it is a bubble not dissimilar to the dot.com craze, but others say that investing in energy is totally different (and I tend to go with this camp) - its investment in physical infrastructure. There are physical assets involved like wind mills and power plants, and transmission cables. Clean tech company valuations are based on cash flows and regular business models.  In any event the numbers speak for themselves:

· Global biofuels market: $20.5 billion (2006) - $81 billion (projected 2016)

· Wind power market: $18 billion (2006) - $60.8 billion (projected 2016)

· Solar PV market: $15.6 billion (2006) - $69 billion (projected 2016)

· Fuel-cell and hydrogen market: $1.4 billion (2006 - $15.6 billion (projected 2016)

In total for the 4 clean energy sectors:

· $55.4 Billion (2006) will grow fourfold to more than $226 billion by 2016 

 
In 2000, the markets for solar PV and wind power represented annual global revenues of just $2.5 billion and $4 billion respectively. Six years later, these two industries combined equal more than $30 billion in annual revenues, a roughly fivefold increase. Solar PV and wind are big business.

Then there is the rapidly rising demand for Renewable Energy IPOs. Clean energy M&A activity is apparently rising by 25% to $41 billion by year end.

I am telling you - this is the new new thing.

Nobel: Big Win for Climate

You Go Goracle!

Although I really don't get why this is a peace prize per se.

Anyway, this bright and sunny morning in Washington DC, we are thrilled. Hopefully this will allow the climate debate in the US to move past "lets make more ethanol" and on to a more serious platform of technology improvements, carbon caps, expanded R&D programs, and maybe even carbon taxes (ok maybe not).

WRI's Climate Director (and one of my bosses) Jonathan Pershing was one of the lead authors for the most recent IPCC report, and has been a participant in all four of the IPCC reports since 1990. So we are doubly thrilled!

In its formal citation, the Nobel committee called Mr. Gore “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.” If not for the incredible levels of public awareness raised by Gore, his film, and now this - we would not be here today.

But parallel to the publicity, and equally important, is the science. And the awesome analysis of the IPCC -  2000 of the world's top climate scientists - have made some major inroads in creating some kind of global consensus around man-made global warming (well except for Bush and Enron).

You still think climate change is a hoax? Ok, now, thats just crazy talk.

Nice to Know my $100K was Well Spent

So apparently the best and the brightest don't bother with business school anymore. Because well, the highest paying finance jobs in hedge funds and private equity don't really require it.

Not that we didn't know that. Hedge funds and PE firms always went for the quant jocks, the PhDs in stats, over the more generalist MBA. Math and science was always preferred among this little coterie of uber-nerds.
What is new today, however, is that the $350-500K a year that these guys make is inflating the pre-MBA salaries of the competition at regular investment firms, to the point that the latter group don't see the value of going to B-school either.

And so the most talented young people at these places make so much money today that they don’t want to take two years off for business school, "even if it’s a prestigious institution like Wharton or Harvard."

Ouch. Really lovely to learn, and couldn't have come at a better time, because finally after 3 years, I just wrote a check for $108,000 paying off my b-school debt. By the way, there is something incredibly surreal about writing such a check. I kept thinking - really? like, seriously? Do I have to do this? Can't I just spent this money on a year long cruise to the tip of Africa?

I've got to say though, what I got out of my MBA wasn't really a lucrative job at a Bank (that was never the goal). It was more the experience of multi-tasking, learning teams, leadership activities, and essentially two years with highly ambitious and competitive people, some of whom I hope rubbed off on me and made me more, um, serious? :) And even though at the time I kicked and screamed, I am eternally grateful that I now have some basic finance skills. Its always useful in life, whether you are buying a house or making some other investment, to understand cash-flows.

The other thing one gets is instant credibility. Anytime I have used the Wharton name, questions of knowledge and experience are immediately dropped. To be honest it can be a tad distressing, for people suddenly expect you to know what you are talking about.. and, well, that makes me very uncomfortable.

BTW Wharton is SO much better than Harvard. At least people graduate knowing how to add two plus two and get four... yes even me.

Lankan M.I.A: She's All That

"let me share this awesome sound I have found with you."

So M.I.A. was supposed to record her new album, Kala, in New York with Timbaland but had trouble getting a US work visa. So she changed plans and went all around the world recording and synthesizing every bit of  sound she found into one big album. And Kala is the result. Named after her mom this time (Arular, the previous album, was named after her dad- linked to the LTTE).

And it looks like everybody loves it, from the Rolling Stones to the New York Times, which raves that "the issues she raises are far more complex and discomfiting than pop’s usual calls for peace and recycling." And given the dearth of outspoken young female stars, she’s a rarity."  Go M.I.A.!

Washington Post: "It's M.I.A.'s world-music revolution, and we're just dancing to it. Didgeridoo and all."

The Fader: "Every song has a layer of some other country on it. It’s like making a big old marble cake with lots of different countries and influences."

Vulture: "Kala is a delirious, dance-inducing amalgamation of Sri Lankan folk music, Bollywood caricature, and didgeridoo flatulence. In short: It's awesome."

Pitchfork: M.I.A. Confronts the Haters

popmatters: "The most obvious (and perhaps only) unifying factor is M.I.A.'s own disaffected voice and her constant wide-eyed wonder." 

M.I.A's myspace page.

The Next 4 Billion

Developing countries are no longer just factories for goods destined for rich countries; they are themselves emerging as a massive and powerful consumer segment worth a whopping $5 trillion annually.. much bigger than previously thought, and largely unserved by business and enterprise.

Remember when the "base of the pyramid" idea (BOP) first came out it was pretty controversial right? It took years for BOP pioneers C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart to find a publisher for their The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Wharton School Publishing eventually published it.

Five years later, BOP thinking has arrived. Prahalad and Hart are both best-selling authors, and their work has been used by many major corporations and development agencies. Still though the problem is, if you read Fortune, you know that most of it is stories and anecdotes. Hmm .. if only someone would do some strong quantitative evidence in support if BOP strategies..

And along comes..  The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid. The joint World Resources Institute/IFC report is based on household income and consumption survey data, allowing WRI researchers to measure BOP size and scope for the first time.

The Next 4 Billion presents data from household surveys in 110 countries. Supporting data are available on WRI's EarthTrends environmental information portal, and a BOP discussion on NextBillion.net has been going since 2005.

Missing Hair-raising Sanjaya Already

America may have voted, but I just don't get all the Sanjaya hate?

Seriously - he’s a just a kid. A kid with great locks, a fun attitude, and serious guts. Imagine the panache it takes to go out there in those kooky head-dos, knowing that people think you are a lousy singer. Also he showed grace under fire when asked about his thoughts on Mean Simon, and he replied that he thought MS was amazing, and that he had learnt alot from him.

And so what if he can't sing well? Big deal. As far as I know there are as many talentless people on that show as there are talented. Not that I can tell - I am 150% tone deaf, and wouldn’t know the difference anyway.. maybe that’s why I sympathize with Sanjana.

I know Simon keeps repeating (more like pleading) that AI is a singing competition but seriously who’s he kidding? This is America. Prime-time TV. AI is at least as much about performance and entertainment as it is about singing. And Sanjaya’s hair (the perm, the straight do, the faux-hawk) has been more entertainment each episode than anybody on that show.

I was sad watching him being voted off.. his tears were touching. The 17-year-old showed boys do cry a little, but he recovered by the time he sang Bonnie Raitt's "Something to Talk About," and that he did – by changing the lyrics to "Let's give 'em something to talk about – other than hair."

A Goodbye to Sanjaya
Sanjaya's First post-Idol Interview
Sanjaya Original Audition
Shyamali Malakar is Hot

Kissing-gate

Usually the Daily Show has at least one segment that is very funny. But some days the show outdoes itself. Tonight was one of those times. It was all side-splitting hilarious. I was watching while eating dinner, and split  pasta sauce all over the sofa as I was ROTFLOL.

First there was my former boss's girlfriend's salary debacle. As you may or may not know the scandal revolves  around Wolfowitz's girlfriend Shaha Riza who was seconded from the Bank to the US DoS, and there she received a pay rise that was "grossly out of line" with WB rules. Of all the things that can trip up a WB President..  and of all the things that the WB does that can make the front page of the NY Times (note that hardly anything the World Bank does makes the front pages of the American Press), it had to be this??

Second, there was the RichardGere-ShilpaShetty kissing-gate. I am watching this and thinking, jeeeeeeeeeez - thats Richard Gere? The man who was once married to Cindy Crawford? Is it me, or has he seriously aged? Anyway the story is that Gere was in India to promote safe sex among lorry drivers, apparently a big problem because they have unprotected sex with prostitutes on their long journeys. What he says in Hindi at the end of the video is "no condom, no sex". 

Finally, no show is complete without making fun of climate change. Unprecedented levels of April showers will result in a devastating increase in.. may flowers. Jon Stewart - Ya gotta love him!

The Art of Modern Art

I've seen some really nice modern art recently. First, in South Beach, at the Wolfsonian, which had some interesting collections of industrial design and political propaganda. I love the furniture and household item designs from the 1950s (I swear I remember a radio that my grandmother had that looked just like that!). 

Second, at the MoMA in New York. Last week I started the new job (more on that later) and I was in New York for an event we did with Goldman Sachs on new environmental markets. I spent 2 hours at the MoMA before catching my train back to DC, and seriously - it was like the best couple of hours I have spent in a museum in a long time!

Lately I have really taken a liking to modern art.  Perhaps due to being dragged around as a child to too many museums in Paris Vienna, London, and other Europeans cities we visited on family holidays, I never much cared for the old stuff much - ie. everything up to 18th century, incl. the Renaissance, and the likes of da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and later Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer etc. I find their work so ornate, opulent, a little OTT for me. 

I started liking art around the time that I visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, when I was in my early 20s.  Thus, unsurprisingly, it is artists like Gogh and his contemporaries that resonate with me the most. MoMA had some works by Monet, Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Cezanne, most of which I have seen before, which I managed to take some really good shots of (even though I had to manage without the flash).

And I love the 20th century stuff - Picasso, Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Andy Warhol - class modern art.  I am even more curious about what artists are doing today, in our time, this century. For example, the Jeff Wall photography exhibition, which is covered here (no photos were allowed). I am curious to know what my contemporaries are creating and think of as art right now.

Dreamy Al in Action

From the WSJ Energy Blog:

Al Gore is enlisting major musical performers, from Bon Jovi to Madonna, to play in Live Earth, a massive concert series to help raise funding to combat climate change. There have been rumors of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin getting back together for the show, which Gore has called “the largest musical event in world history.”

Using the model (and some of the same organizers) of previous benefit mega-concerts such as Live Aid and Live 8, Live Earth will be held on 7/7/07 at seven locations around the world: Johannesburg, London, New Jersey, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. The venues will reportedly use on-site power generation and other methods to minimize environmental impact. 

The concert has not been without controversy; the U.S. site was only named Tuesday. Mr. Gore and concert organizers had wanted to hold the event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., but holding the show on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol was opposed by some Republicans in Congress. Not surprisingly, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has called global warming a “hoax,” was the most outspoken against Live Earth.

Trying to do her part, Sheryl Crow – in addition to playing in Live Earth — is taking a biofuel-powered bus on a college tour to raise awareness of global warming.  Crow launched her 13-day “Stop Global Warming College Tour” this week with Laurie David, one of the producers of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

On the other hand, some people are calling for a boycott of the climate concerts because of the potential  carbon footprint of the event and the climate-unfriendly lifestyles of the stars involved.

Invading a Country by Accident

Like, who does that??  The Swiss, of course.

Apparently it was raining and all, and really really dark out there.

The fact that our infantry units lost their bearings will hardly surprise anyone familiar with the Swiss Army. Nor should it come as a shock that although the invaders were armed with rifles, they had no ammunition. As a rule, the assault rifles (every soldier keeps his weapon at home) are used only for suicides and the occasional violent crime. In the service, they mostly function as ballast for long marches — one of the Swiss Army’s most popular pastimes.

Switzerland has been neutral for 500 years. Over the course of the past several decades the army has acquired an increasingly quaint character. Carrier pigeons were used until 1994, and the bicycle units were disbanded only four years ago. And it wasn’t until the 1990s that the high command realized that two-thirds of the more than 20,000 fortifications scattered throughout the country were unnecessary and could be closed.

Nowadays, the Swiss Army tries to legitimize its existence by offering emergency relief and auxiliary support at sporting events. But compulsory military service remains as inviolable in Switzerland as the monarchy is in Liechtenstein, and so the only way to decrease the number of troops has been to shorten the time of service or declare as many draftees as possible unfit for service.

Here's the best part:

Invading Liechtenstein was admittedly a foolish thing to do, but at least the Swiss Army has shown it knows how to bring a failed military action to a happy conclusion. You just turn around and sneak back home as quickly and quietly as you can before anybody notices.

And the next day you call on the head of the foreign territory and offer a formal apology.