Five Qualities Venture Capital Firms Look For in Startups | Technomix | Fast Company

# A-plus Leadership

# Large, Fast-growing, Under-served Market

# Reasonable Financings

# Sense of Urgency

# Missionaries not Mercenaries

via Five Qualities Venture Capital Firms Look For in Startups | Technomix | Fast Company.

xkcd | A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

How Do You Pull Off a Ponzi Scheme? : Stupid Regulators | Securities and Exchange Commission Files

Bernie Madoff's wild ride (Photo AP)

Don’t worry about government regulating health care, get them to regulate the financial markets:

Madoff said it was “amazing to me” that he didn’t get caught … because they specifically asked him, “Are these securities at DTC? (Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.)”  They further pressed, “What is your account number.” He replied, “646.” Madoff stated that it was “obvious they thought that something was amiss.” He went on to say that when they asked for the DTC account number, “I thought it was the end game, over. Monday morning they’ll call DTC and this will be over… and it never happened.”

Madoff stated that when … Enforcement did not follow up with DTC, “I was astonished.”

But the real question is, can the industry be regulated at all:

Madoff noted that the industry is growing incredibly complicated. He gave the example of when his firm put up a credit default swap and didn’t know how to do the books. Madoff said he didn’t know … He said he called Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros, five firms total, all of which didn’t know. He said the NASD had no clue. Madoff stated that today, lots of trades are done off the books because people don’t know what to do with them.

Read the Horror – exhibit-0104

Small business rivals band together to boost business | CNNMoney.com

When Christine Saunders saw her Southern California floral design company’s revenue dip last fall as the economy sputtered, she realized that creating products for do-it-yourself brides might spur sales. But the owner of The Spiraled Stem Floral Design didn’t want to carry the expense and burden of treading into this unfamiliar market alone.

Read Article .

Think You’re Pissed at Facebook and Twitter? | TechWatch | Fast Company

If you think the combined stuttering of Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal this morning–which has been attributed to several DDOS attacks–were rough for you, well, try dipping into the shoes of the developers who make software based on Facebook and Twitter APIs.

Read Article.

Hilarious

The Value of the “Too Big to Fail” Big Bank Subsidy | Dean Baker and Travis McArthur

‘Too Big to Fail’ banks have nearly a one percent advantage over small banks, a $34 billion dollar subsidy.
This piece deals with one of the many consequences of the bail out.

Read Article.

CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection – Yahoo! Finance

CIT is the financier for about 2,000 vendors that supply merchandise to more than 300,000 stores, many of which are gearing up for the critical holiday shopping season. They rely on the lender to cover costs ranging from paying for orders to making payroll. Any disruption caused by bankruptcy could wreak havoc on their operations, Joe Alouf, a partner with Eaglepoint Advisors, a crisis management company that is partly owned by Kurt Salmon Associates.

Read Article.

Consumer Spending Falls In September, Biggest Drop In Nine Months

By Martin Crutsinger – Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — Consumer spending plunged in September by the largest amount in nine months, reflecting the end of the government’s Cash for Clunkers auto sales program. Incomes, the fuel for future spending, were flat.

While the government reported that the overall economy grew in the July-September period, signaling the end of the worst recession in seven decades, the weakness in spending and incomes as the quarter ended underscores the fragility of the recovery.

Mark of shame for Texta-mask burglars | ninemsn

Another ad for a college education

Two accused burglars in the US who covered their faces with permanent marker as a disguise were arrested soon after an apartment robbery with their faces still blackened.

Read Hilarious Article.