I am not on Facebook and never have been so don’t go looking for me there.  The reasons why are too long to go into here; suffice it to say I find social media a great tool for certain things, but I have no need to keep up with those I do not want to know well.

So I have a disdain for the valuation that Facebook and other SocMed companies get.  I feel the assumptions about the ongoing and future value of the enterprises are vastly overstated as new means of networking are popping up each week.  Will Facebook be a significant enterprise in three years?  How do I know what alternatives may be going viral in college dorm settings this very second that could replace Facebook?  Anyone still on MySpace.com?

This 9 minute video by Veritasium is a great look into what is going on behind the scenes of the “likes” that pop up on Facebook.  Credit for finding the video goes to @hedgefundinvest

It is not often that NYT columnist and respected economist Paul Krugman and I agree.  His core assumptions about the benefits of Federal intervention in people’s lives are vastly different than my desire for more localized politics and less federal powers.  I sometimes consider his version of socio-economic policies in the context of how I interact with my children who want to use the iPad, or are demanding to wear a summertime, princess dress outside when it is winter.

I could let them have their way and stop them from crying now (to the detriment of their long-term benefit of discipline, flexible thinking, and considering consequences) as Krugman often argues.  Or I could work to help them understand that some short-term unpleasantness can benefit them in the future.  But I digress….

Krugman’s piece in the NYT today hits on many of the important points against a Comcast/ Time Warner merger;  Decreased competition in an already concentrated industry does not historically lead to lower prices for end users; Increasingly concentrated power leads to less and less innovation; near monopolistic power leads to greater economic benefit to the small set stakeholders at the top of the monopoly (aka: medi-eval warlords taxing those who pass by their castles).

Krugman is correct on all his points.   I would add that or companies that act as a utility to consumers, there should be unfettered access to the choices that are linked to the “utility”.  Could you imagine if Comcast/Time Warner controlled the interstate highway system?  What if they installed tolls at both entryways and exit ramps for drivers.  What if tolls were increased to exit at towns that Comcast did not like?  What if Comcast informed the small towns they must pay exorbitant fees just to allow drivers to exit the highway into the town?  Effecting the business district of that town and the personal lives of it’s residents?

This last question/point is already happening with the Comcast deal.  Rather than act as a neutral utility, Comcast is changing the pricing structure and availability of websites/products.  Content companies now have to pay Comcast for the right to allow subscribers to access their product!  The fact that this Comcast / Time Warner deal comes on the heels of the Net Neutrality (as exemplified by Fred Wilson of AVC.com), is no surprise.

While I do not doubt that the FCC is following the letter of the laws surrounding the Net Neutrality act and will follow the letter of the law surrounding their assessment of the Comcast/Time Warner proposed merger, it sure would be great if a Washington DC bureaucrat would, for once, state the obvious, opine that this proposed merger would not benefit consumers, and kill the deal.

The NYT reports today that there is debate inside Obama’s administration about the decision to kill an American citizen, who is actively plotting with al Queda and/or Taliban remnants on how to attack Us interests and personnel.  Full details from the NYT here  http://nyti.ms/1jsioNz

To make my stand clear: If you are a bad guy, American citizen or not, and you are working in the battlefield of war against US interests, I’d rather a drone strike on you and anyone who happens to be next to you that day, than risk American lives tracking and eliminating you.  Welcome to war in the 21st century.

Almost four months have passed since my last post.  Lots of interesting news, and lots of personal views, but no postings.  I changed my personal habits and patterns and Arhaik.com was lost in the shuffle.  A few more clients from Asia meant longer nights for me as I am based on the East Coast of the US.  And the later nights meant later wake ups in the AM.  Arhaik.com had been part of my morning routine; part of my personal “multi-media information upload” each morning.  TV on alternating between local news, BBC news, and financial news services…..going through my Twitter feed, NYT, and the blogs I follow…..and checking e-mail to help finalize my agenda for the day.

Continued growth of our company (onezero.com) has allowed us to add staff to the overnight Support desk, and my colleague in th eBusiness Development team who is based in London (but travels to Asia often) is getting set up with a Singapore-based Regus office for his increasingly longer stays in the region.  I will spend less time working with prospects and clients in Asia.

So I will work to make arhaik.com a part of my morning routine again.  Probably start slow, with more short comments and links than full blown postings, but getting re-creating the habit of posting is the first step.  Here we go……….

I do not often write many motivational statements or inspirational statements.  I actively seek them out, I say them to myself each day, and I think they are of great benefit.  But rarely to I write my own or re-post those that I have heard.  But for some reason, today I will.

1) Discipline is really quite simple.  Doing what I should do each day.  And not doing the things I shouldn’t do.  – Ethan Frey

2) The only easy day was yesterday – Navy SEALS

3) A good plan violently executed right now is better than a perfect plan executed next week – Gen. George Patton

4) Life’s journey is not to arrive a the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting….”What a ride!”

5) Leadership is action, not position. – Donald H McGannon

6) If your habits don’t support your dreams, one of them has to change. – Anonymous

7) Love is Love’s reward – John Dryden

8) There is no remedy for Love but to Love more – Henry David Thoreau

Finally, my personal favorite, a small clip from Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech…….

9) It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I admit I have not paid too much attention to the implementation of Obamacare.  I was building and growing CMAP, selling the company to oneZero, raising three kids, yada, yada, yada…..

But I have started to pay attention now that the healthcare exchanges have opened for business.  I have a basic understanding and am learning more each day.  The launch of the exchanges has been a technology nightmare with some reports stating that the insurance companies are receiving just 1% of the applications that are started online via the exchanges.  I am sure there are issues with the technology rollout.  There usually is.  But it is just bad management to roll-out such a massive offering without having better testing.  Any project of this scale with have issues, but it should have been done in a limited fashion to start, learn, and resolve the issues.

The real purpose of this post is that I am an “exchange” guy.  Been working on the transactional side of the financial services industry for a long time now.  Exchange traded assets, OTC-traded assets, clearing, margin, credit, platforms, connectivity.  So when I hear the term, “healthcare exchange”, I get interested.

I have a lot to learn about the rules of the exchanges.  And I am sure I will be aghast at some of the rules and policies that will be implemented by the exchange managers.  I will have to remind myself that any government run entity is not seeking max efficiency, but that there are other considerations involved.  However, at some point the operators will get involved.  You know, the private concerns that search for opportunity.  Who discover what users want, cobble together the resources to have a try at making it happen, recruit others to join the cause, launch a product or service, then evangelicalicise the concept to all who will listen.

That is when “healthcare exchanges” will start to work more efficiently and really deliver all that they are capable of delivering.

I work in the Margin Trading Products industry, and have for years.  Recently there have been a number of M&A deals, and I like to keep track of who is who, what are the prices, and why deals make sense (or don’t).

Gain Capital (ticker: GCAP) announced the completion of it’s acquisition of privately-held GFT yesterday and they broke out some numbers:

GFT ownership gave up $73 mio in cash. Got $40 mio plus a $33 mio 5 year note at 8.5%.   Means the cash is flat.

GFT ownership got 3.6 mio shs of Gain (now at $13 per share) for a value of almost $47 mio. GFT turned over client assets of $208 mio.

Seems like Gain paid a price of better than 21% of client assets. Lots of brokers out there would love to sell for a price tag that is 20% of client assets.

I wonder if the 3.6 mio shares was locked in when the deal was announced. Gain was at approx $5 per share then. If the amount of shares was locked in at the time of the announcement, it means GFT was willing to accept $18 mio for the $208 mio of client assets (less than 9% price tag). Now with the price of GCAP at $13, GFT ownership struck a winning trade.

If instead the value of $47 mio was locked in at the announcement, then Gain shareholders win as there is a lot less dilution handing over 3.6 mio shares at $13 each compared to handing over just over 8 mio shares if they were still at $5.

For a company like GFT, who had recently been shut out of the US market by the regulators…….it looks like this was the deal of the decade.

I think many Americans are like me when it comes to the Middle East; it is too tough to keep track of which faction is which, who hates who, which alliances are in place at the moment, and the whole region remains in a state of perpetual hatred that has no foreseeable end.  So I tend to gloss over news from the Middle East.  I know it is important, but it is too confusing and nothing ever gets resolved.

So thank goodness for Tom Friedman of The New York Times.  He knows the facts, understands the situations, and puts out analysis that helps me keep track it that region of the world.

Here is his column from yesterday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/opinion/friedman-the-man-with-pink-hair.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A good follow up to my post from about a month ago….

Here is the NYT article:  http://nyti.ms/15x7UVI