The market takes a breather after several weeks of blistering recovery from last winter’s doldrums. Commodities all around saw amazing advances. Crude oil rose 8.3% last week and has more than doubled over the last year. I remember taking my first car, a Honda (HMC) Civic, out for the first time and pumping gas for about $1.18 per gallon. This was also in the notoriously gas-expensive San Francisco Bay Area. Base commodities and gold continue to follow oil’s lead in going the opposite direction of the U.S. dollar. Will the …

In highly entrepreneurial hot spots like Silicon Valley, San Francisco where I grew up, Route 128, Washington DC, Seattle, Los Angeles where an impressive raft of social networking and new media startups has sprouted, and biotechnology-focused San Diego, critical mass of entrepreneurial activity organically attracts venture capital. In other words, a rich “ecosystem” – where entrepreneurs can assemble readily available capital, talent, and relationships – can only come about when entrepreneurs first satisfy the initial criterion of creating innovation and value to a significant degree. In emerging hot spots such …

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 …