New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s public statement in response to his alleged involvement in a prostitution ring and his patronage:
Good afternoon.
For the past nine years, eight years as attorney general, and one as governor, I have tried to uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all. We sought to bring real change to New York and that will continue.
Today I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates …

Macro

Once again, Mark Zandi and his team at Moody’s Economy.com (MCO) comes through with something interesting. Click through on the image below and interact with the map to find out if your state and county is in risk of recession. My home state of California is definitely at risk, dragged down by rapidly falling housing prices. I currently spend most of my time in Utah, one of the few places that has seen strong economic expansion and even strong real estate price appreciation. Forbes recently named Salt Lake City first …

As a renter, I’ve always thought that I had the advantage of not having to worry about property taxes, home maintenance, unruly tenants, and worst of all the illiquidity that homeowners or real estate investors suffer from. The real estate boom almost shook my conviction but the delirious giggles caused by incessant price appreciation and easy credit thankfully reached an audible decible. I reasoned that something was awry when my close friend, a U.S. Postal letter carrier at the time, managed to lever up with mortgages on three …

Closers in sales are valuable. Closers in baseball are not so valuable.
Jonathan Papelbon, the closer for the Boston Red Sox pitching staff is pulling the “I’ve got to do what’s best for my family so I’m asking for a humongous raise” routine. Admittedly, he is one of the best young arms in baseball regardless of pitching role. He is also a unique talent in the world of dance. He joined the Red Sox a couple of years ago and, through unforeseen circumstances, found himself entrenched in …

Jesse Stay, my partner in SocialOptimize, just made the big time in terms of exposure. The New York Times (NYT) just referenced the book he co-authored with Jason Alba, I’m on Facebook – Now What?, in one of its career-oriented articles. Jesse’s success as an author of this timely book and a very well-written blog about social networking technology has paid dividends for our business. We have performed no advertising since founding the new media branding and development agency a few months ago, yet we get several …

Since my current work is in new media and social networking, I am keenly interested in the turbulence facing the newspaper industry. Clients, ranging from Fortune 2000 companies to small innovative startups, come to my team at SocialOptimize to gain an understanding of the new media landscape and to develop an actionable strategy for building a meaningful presence in social networks. They ask about their traditional marketing budgets and I tell them that we will see the disappearance of many old model newspaper, radio, and television companies as they struggle …