Expect strong Ontario rebound in 2010.
Day 613
Friday news roundup
Ontario to lead 2010 economic recovery
Conference Board forecasts 3.1 per cent GDP growth for Ontario next year, 2.7 per cent nationally. Powered by service sector, especially financial services; transportation; and government stimulus. But Ontario jobless rate will climb as high as 10.2 per cent, from expected 9.7 per cent this year.
Desmarais's Power Corp. outperformed Buffett's Berkshire 1993-2008
In lengthy profile of Montreal family, Bloomberg calculates 15-year return for Power investors at 14.5 per cent, for Berkshire investors, 14.1 per cent.
In Wall Street crisis, about 5,000 traders, bankers paid $1-million-plus bonuses
“There are some real ethical questions given the bailouts and the precariousness of so many of these financial institutions,” said Jesse M. Brill, an outspoken pay critic who is the chairman of CompensationStandards.com, a research firm in California. “It’s troublesome that the old ways are so ingrained that it is very hard for them to shed them.”
Big Oil suffers huge 2Q profit plunge
Hardest hit in Canada, by far, was Petro-Canada, whose second-quarter profit fell 95 per cent to $71 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with $1.5 billion ($3.10 a share) a year ago. Others hard hit include Imperial Oil, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips. Year-over-year collapse in world prices also stalling Alberta heavy-oil projects.
Ballmer counters Street's Microsoft-Yahoo skepticism
With nearly 30 per cent of the search market, M-Y has reached same critical mass with which Microsoft's Explorer was able to become viable rival to Netscape. Search is more valuable the more people use it. "Scale is more important in this business than any other technology business I know," says Ballmer. Principle draws from Metcalfe's Law, showing phones and faxes exponentially more useful with growth of number of machines in use.
Internet use is flattening; drop in traditional media use is bottoming out
Whether online, TV, newspapers or magazines, developing specialized audiences is key to usefulness of media to audience, advertisers.
Weekend reads
* NYT: Gail Collins and David Brooks debate merits of single-payer healthcare.
* Der Spiegel: Lice, not winter, thwarted Napoleon's Russian invasion.
* Slate: In this recession, millionaires got pounded.
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Quote of the day
"Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." -Friedrich Nietzsche
For the purposes of this blog, the inception of the Great Recession in the U.S., the epicentre of the crisis, is taken as the start date for the global slump. The U.S. has been in recession since December 2007.
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