You have to like Hank Paulson. The Treasury Secretary grew up on a farm in Illinois. Many leaders in American history learned the value of hard work while planting seed and harvesting crop. George Washington was a farmer. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer and envisioned our country as a republic of farmers with a strictly limited federal government. That was when agriculture dominated the economic composition of the United States. Since then, the original federation of thirteen states has grown to fifty while the percentage of the citizenry employed in …

Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury, recently announced a plan to purchase equity stakes in large public financial institutions to stem the tide of bankruptcies and failures brought on by the credit crisis. By buying shares in big banks, the government is essentially providing much needed cash to stabilize the companies and provide for some liquidity and credit stimulus. This is just one of many actions announced in an attempt to diffuse the credit crisis. Equally busy are Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Paulson swears …

Have you ever wondered what could happen to the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) when its amazing CEO, Warren Buffett, is no longer able to captain the ship or passes away? This topic has swirled atop investors’ minds for at least a few years now and consistently keeps getting addressed by the Oracle of Omaha himself during Berkshire’s annual shareholder meetings. Last year, I sent my wife Cynthia to the shareholders’ meeting and she reported that the continuity or succession topic was one of the most widely talked about.
Let’s …

My good friend Dan and I were talking shop about our recent business challenges. He works for Omniture (OMTR), the leading Web analytics software company, and is one of the top sales guys there. As an aside, we were both at the University Venture Fund when I sourced our Omniture deal and we had the privilege to co-invest with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Scale Venture Partners in one of Utah’s shining technology successes. Every quarter, my friend handily beats his quotas and makes good money doing so. Life ought …

Even the mighty are falling. The last two major independent investment banks on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), have received permission from the Federal Reserve to convert from traditional investment banks into commercial banks or bank holding companies. Plenty of ink, digital or otherwise, has been spilled about the disappearance of investment banks so I won’t dwell much on that. We’ve seen the collapse of Lehman Brothers (LEH) and Bear Stearns. Still somehow, I’m sure there were some who sentimentally held out hope that the two …

The technology sector gets a big surprise with Microsoft (MSFT) announcing that it will cease to pursue the acquisition of Yahoo! (YHOO). Most analysts and market pundits expected Jerry Yang & Company would ultimately accept a deal, albeit at a higher price than Microsoft’s initial offer. Expect Yahoo! stock to take a precipitous plunge at the market open and the announcement of class action lawsuits from its larger shareholders. While this saga of two tech giants unwinds, plenty of news in the rest of the tech sector deserves attention.
The Nasdaq …