I’m with Jerry. Jerry can do no wrong.

Yes, that universally and recently controversial Jerry Yang. No, it has nothing to do with whether I want to see Yahoo sold to MSFT (yes I do) nor whether I wish Yahoo would put out but not get married to Google (no I don’t). It has to do with the fact that, Jerry is an Asian-American (Taiwanese American and/or Chinese American, depending on whom you ask) transcending the silent model minority stereotype that I (and he) had grew up with.

I rarely blog about the issue of race. I found it too polarizing and too nuanced to be communicated in a one way medium. But the imminent dawn of the first African-American President, ironically, has helped push the (non) issue of race finally out of America’s sub-conscious. We have learned to treat all issues related to race finally as a conversation rather than as a platform for evangelism. Don’t ask, don’t tell . . no longer.

I’m not that into politics, so Jerry is my Obama. He is someone that has transcended his race while embracing his identity. Jerry is doggedly passionate, smart, articulate and, most importantly, fallible. He goes toe to toe with Balmer . . . another equally smart, passionate, and fallible but un-hyphenated man. He fails publicly. He takes the pains and arrows of his failures just like everyone else. No punches pulled, no skirting around the issues. Jerry sucks not because of his race, not despite of his race. He sucks cause we all suck at one time or another.

I’m with Jerry. Jerry can do no wrong.

Until this . . . (from NYT)

On Thursday night he told reporters in Orlando, Fla.: “We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.”

On Friday, in Pella, Iowa, he expanded on those remarks.

“When I say single them out I am making the observation that we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities except those immediately south of the border,” he told reporters in Pella. “And in light of what is happening in Pakistan it ought to give us pause as to why are so many illegals coming across these borders.”

In fact, far more illegal immigrants come from the Philippines, Korea, China and Vietnam, according to recent estimates from the Department of Homeland Security.

Eh . . . ? Not mentioning that 99% of Pakistanis are good people even if they are “illegal” immigrants. Sounds like a man wanting to win so bad that he is changing his ideaology in response to some voter segmentation study. (are there such a thing?) Sounds like a desperate man trying to get a word in on a hot button voter issue anyway he can . . .

As for me, its back to Barrack Obama or Ron Paul again

I held off blogging for the month cause I wanted to show my solidarity with the hollywood writers union. ok not really . . . Its mainly cause I have some reshuffling of priorities for the new years . . . anyways more posts coming this week on this . . . such as

when vertical search died and no one noticed

why pay by touch was/is destined to fail

how Revolution Money is promising but needs tweaking

and a personal update . . .

anyways. . . I find that if I promise something upfront, it helps me get off my ass and do it . . . so this is really just another way to get me back to my regular blogging schedule after being slammed at work for the past month . . .

I know I’ve been gone for a bit . . . mostly cause I’m lazy and my dog ate my keyboard (honest!). So for the past 3 days, I’ve been surfing like mad, looking for an interesting topic / news / company to blog about to keep this blog from being a splog.

I found . . .nada, zilch, nothing . . .

There was some stuff about DRM, some more stuff about 10+ different social networking site getting more funding, more stuff about Google, some more stuff about enterprise 2.0, and oh ya, lots of bitching about Skype.

The only thing remotely interesting was a social networking site for exhibitionists (found it on TechCrunch, so don’t you get to thinking I was doing some sort of shady surfing) . . . and that has nothing to do with the site being interesting . . . it just had “interesting” pictures . . .

Really though, this whole user generated content, community, and long-tail web 2.0 trend has gotten all the permutation it could have gotten for the past 2 years. (Digg for golfer, myspace for bankers, virtual world for LSD abusers etc etc).

I certainly believe that true that innovation never stops, and that we will never “run out” of new ideas or better ways of doing things . . . interesting, ground breaking companies and concepts are being launched all the time . . . even as I’m bored to death at this current moment. What I’m complaining about is that we (including me) tend to see the world in lenses . . . and the current lens is so tainted with the “2.0 mindset” that we tend to filter out people/companies that does not fit in our neat little way of viewing the world.

I’m ashamed to say that if someone showed me Myspace in 2002 I would have told them that I already got tired of Friendster and GeoCities. (and that I refuse to visit any site where black background is still encouraged). Actually this is a true story, I bounced off the site in under 60 secs after signing up.

So I’m bored, and its all our fault . . . wake me up when 3.0 happens.

P.S. I was bored before he was bored . . . (and before he was un-bored)

Marc Andreessen’s blog is surprisingly great for non-tech related topics.  Its already raised to the top 10 feed in my feed reader in short couple of months.  Anyways, with the Blackstone IPO all over CNBC this morning, it got me thinking about how LBO funds differ from traditional investments.  I have tons of useless and never applied finance/asset management education . . . so this post by Marc really resonated with me. The most important part is:

What part of the excess return over the S&P 500 index that you are expecting to generate is due to your use of leverage (debt)? Does this indicate that the public companies that you plan to buy are underleveraged? The finance theory of leverage is that a company should take on debt until its cost of that debt is greater than the returns it can generate from that debt — what happens to your model and projected investment returns if public company shareholders and CEOs figure this out and add more debt before you are able to buy them? Further, if what you are really doing is leverage arbitrage versus the S&P 500, why can’t I just buy an S&P 500 index position myself and leverage it up by purchasing call options and get the same result for a fraction of the fees?

Here is the thing, the returns for LBO funds (like Blackstone) looks great compared to the S&P500, but its actually (somewhat of) an illusion.  A large percentage of LBO fund return is from borrowing money to purchase equity which creates an amplified return on a smaller base of actual cash investment.  (think getting a mortgage to buy a house and the price of the house goes up).  Thus you and I can actually mimic blackstone by simply borrowing money to buy the SP500 without having to pay the 30-40% "carry" on the investment profit that LBO funds ask for.  Average joes, regularly borrow money to buy houses,  the same can be done for the index. The only problem is that its (very much unrationally) much much easier to borrow against real estate than it is equity. (that is also why we have a real estate bubble right now).

So the harder question to ask is that what ever fund you buy into (including the Blackstone IPO) are they 30-40% better than what you would get through a simple margin purchase of the index? My guess is that only the top 10% of LBO funds will be worth it (including Blackstone) but most of the other funds are just juicing return by taking on more risk . . which you and I can do pretty easily without paying someone to wear

$3,000 Zegna suit, $400 Turnbull & Asser shirt, $80 Pantherella cashmere socks, $900 A Testoni alligator loafers, $5,000 Omega watch, $500 Gucci cufflinks, and $150 Hermes tie

I love wall street humor

Back in my days , as a 23 year old founder of a dot-com, I did everything I could to appear older. I lied and told everyone I was 25. (yes, I truly believed 2 years made a lot of difference.) I wore glasses. I tried eating fried food so I would gain some girth (did not work). One of our board members was so concerned that I was the youngest member of the executive staff that they asked our bankers how we can obfuscate my age in the S-1. (putting the cart before the horse aint we?)

Well, a bust, business school, some time trying to gain some “name brand business experience” later . . . . I’m all of a sudden too old. So today, to celebrate getting TOO old, I’m listing the

Top ten signs you are too old for sillicon valley.

10. You are too old to work for facebook

9. The 49ers have retiring players that are younger than you

8. Continuing the sports theme, you call your favorite Warrior player, “a kid” (your last favorite Warrior last wore a suit on TNT)

7. You don’t own a Penguin (but you have pets.com puppet)

6. You think glitter graphics give you headaches (dont know what that is? you dont even deserve to read my blog ! . . . )

5. You got teary eyed watching the Jobs-Gates love fest on you tube

4. You are still waiting for the web 2.0 bubble to bust

3. You have more friends on your friendster profile than facebook profile

2. You believe Jennifer Aniston is hotter than Olivia Munn

1. You have more free schwag T-shirts than laptop stickers

0. You dont know what to wear when you go to “90’s” parties those guys at Digg throw

(ok I snuck in an extra one, so what!)

A buddy emailed this link to me. If you are in your late 20’s / early 30’s . . . overly educated for your own good . . . trying to find meaning in life while seeing your profession as not just an extension but the main expression of that quest . . . this is for you.

A friend of mine recently met a young American woman who was studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. She already had two degrees from top US universities, had worked as a lawyer and as a social worker in the US, and somewhere along the way had acquired a black belt in kung fu. Now, however, her course at Oxford was coming to an end and she was thoroughly angst-ridden about what to do next.

Her problem was no ordinary one.

She couldn’t decide whether she should make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer/management consultant, devote herself to charity work helping battered wives in disadvantaged Communities, or go to Hollywood to work as a stunt double in kung fu films. What most struck my friend was not the disparity of this woman’s choices, but the earnestness and bad grace with which she ruminated on them. It was almost as though she begrudged her own talents, Opportunities and freedom - as though the world had treated her unkindly by forcing her to make such a hard choice.

Her case is symptomatic of our times. In recent years, there has grown up a culture of discontent among the highly educated young something that seems to flare up, especially, when people reach their late 20s and early 30s. It arises not from frustration caused by lack of opportunity, as may have been true in the past, but from an excess of possibilities.

Most theories of adult developmental psychology have a special category for those in their late 20s and early 30s.

Whereas the early to mid-20s are seen as a time to establish one’s mode of living, the late 20s to early 30s are often considered a period of reappraisal. In a society where people marry and have children young, where financial burdens accumulate early, and where job markets are inflexible, such appraisals may not last long. But when people manage to remain free of financial or family burdens, and where the perceived opportunities for alternative careers are many, the reappraisal is likely to be strong.

Among no social group is this more true than the modern, International, professional elite: that tribe of young bankers, lawyers, consultants and managers for whom financial, familial, personal, corporate and (increasingly) national ties have become irrelevant. Often they grew up in one country, were educated in another, and are now working in a third.

The article continues . . .

Put this together over the weekend. eBay Alumni Network. If you are an eBay alum, please join! We’ve got much more important people than me on the network.

I’ve actually been using ning, which the network is based on, to learn php for the last month or so. Ning is really cool, not so much the social networking thing, but the whole idea that a company can create a service oriented stack ontop of the current web app infrastructure . . .

Pills
Porn
Poker
PumpNDump

heard it today, just thought its so ironic (and funny) . . . considering that not long ago (98?) people said there are only 3 things that really made money on the net

Sports
Sex
Stocks

. . . all very much very inter-related . . . where there is money, there are spam & splogs

Been meaning to do this for a long time but Shri beat me to it. She set up a ebay blogger wiki directory where past and present ebay bloggers can list and discover each other’s blogs. I also replicated it on my side bar as a seperate blogroll so my readers can find them. In fact I encourage everyone to take a quick stroll. I’ll put the eBay lineup up against the best bloggers Yahoo, Google, or MSFT can throw together (plus many of their bloggers gets paid to blog. . . glorified PR people . . . we, instead, blog secretively between meetings, hoping not to get caught)

When I started working at eBay there were only a handfull of bloggers, now there are significantly more. . . (the wiki will prbably double in short order as the word spread) . . . I remember being scared shitless that PR might fire me or ask me to shut down my blog. In fact Shri (as my boss) was the first eBay person to ever discover it . . . and she was nice enough to keep it on the down low . . .