The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:30:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 Dick Joke http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/dick-joke http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/dick-joke#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:30:41 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/dick-joke Oh dear, here we go again: “Wall Street is a meritocracy, for the most part,” an irate but of course unnamed onetime Citigroup executive confides to junior father confessor Gabriel Sherman in this week’s hallucinatory New York magazine cover story, “The Emasculation of Wall Street.” “If someone has a bonus, it’s because they’ve created value for their institution.”

In the jumpy, suggestible universe of Gabe Sherman, Wall Street sleuth, things really are that simple: The beleaguered financial overclass creates value, in a rationally ordered system of maximally awarded talent. And the clueless public sector, intoxicated on post-meltdown regulatory prerogative, meddles with the primal forces of nature, skews executive compensation downward, panders to the blurry “populist” agenda of the Occupy Wall Street Crowd, generally foments market uncertainty and other forms of intolerable chaos so that presto, before you know it, we have “The End of Wall Street As They Knew It.”

In other words: To your crying towels, bankers! Correspondent Sherman is on the scene, and no howling distortion of recent financial history you care to offer is too outlandish for him to faithfully record! After duly huddling with a couple of dozen financial titans, our reporter has arrived at a chilling verdict: “what emerged is a picture of an industry afflicted by a crisis it would not be flip to call existential.”

Perhaps not—but what is exceedingly flip is brother Sherman’s account of the origins of the crisis.

Sure, there was that awkward business that sent the global finance sector to the brink of ruin, plus a devastating tsunami in Japan and whatnot—but the true culprit sending Wall Street titans back into their bedrooms to listen to Interpol on auto-repeat and cut themselves is of course the specter of government regulation. The Dodd-Frank financial reform act, a largely toothless measure lousy with loopholes and lobbying dosh, becomes in the alternate universe of Adam Moss’s New York magazine a rash bid to expropriate the expropriators. Even though the full provisions of the already anemic bill don’t go into effect until 2016, the very thought of a somewhat straitened financial playing field so terrifies Wall Street’s stout corridor of wealth creators that, well, they’re bidding farewell to the most valuable commodity of all—their big swinging dicks. “The government has strangled the financial system,” Dick Bove, an especially excitable and frequently mistaken bank analyst, tells Sherman. “We’ve basically castrated these companies. They can’t borrow as much as they used to borrow.”

You see, by force of the Volcker rule—a watered-down version of the central Glass-Steagall protections separating out commercial and investment banking that were disastrously repealed in 1999—Wall Street is re-thinking everything, from the scale of its year-end bonuses to its “core value to the economy.” And Bove, for one, preaches that all this doom-and-gloom thinking can’t help but be self-fulfilling: “These are sweeping secular changes taking place that won’t just impact the guys who won’t get their bonuses this year. We’ve made a decision as a nation to shrink the growth of the financial system under the theory that it won’t impact the growth of the nation’s economy.” Another unnamed informant tells Sherman that the financial industry is gearing up for a state of near permanent pay-austerity at the mere thought of the Volcker rule, which doesn’t kick in officially until July: “If you landed on Earth from Mars and looked at the banks, you’d see that these are institutions that need to build up capital and they’re becoming lower-margin businesses. So that means it will be hard, nearly impossible, to sustain their size and compensation structure.”

Never mind that this diagnosis is diametrically opposed to the Bove-ian school of market alarmism, which holds that banks are being starved of desperately needed leverage and credit; this unnamed fearmonger sees them in a frenzy to raise capital, and one thing the Volcker rule undeniably seeks to achieve is minimal capital requirements to prevent speculative lending from veering once more into toxic chaos.

No, for Sherman, all that’s needed to stoke the proper mood of Misean panic is to rouse the specter of frightened bankers, and a few quick-and-dirty quarterly profit reports.

From the moment Dodd-Frank passed, the banks’ financial results have tended to slide downward, in significant part because of measures taken in anticipation of its future effect. Since July 2010, Bank of America nosed down 42 percent, Morgan Stanley fell 25 percent, Goldman fell 21 percent, and Citigroup fell 16—in a period when the Dow rose 25 percent.

Other economic journalists might conclude that this downturn was a set of long-overdue market corrections, and given the broader turn around in the actual manufacturing economy, by no means an indication of worsening conditions—for investors and workers alike. Some radical others might even suggest that the shredded headcounts at the financial firms played a part in their own downturn in revenue. But while from his evidently privileged vantage in the driver’s seat of the Doc’s Time Machine, Sherman can divine all sorts of mischief arising from the yet-to-be-implemented provisions of Dodd-Frank, it does bear reminding that since 2010, BofA has been forced to eat a sizable portion of the toxic mortgage debt it acquired amid its spectacularly ill-advised purchase of Countrywide; Morgan has suffered tremendous losses in its Japanese operations and has, like most banks, been spooked by its exposure to the Euro-debt crisis (funnily enough, the firm’s US-based investment-banking operations—ie, the shop most directly affected by the dread Volcker rule, has booked profits amid all the tumult abroad); much the same general picture holds at Goldman, which as you may recall, has had more than its share of legal contretemps thrown into the bargain . As for Citigroup—the company whose very grotesque merged existence was the deregulatory excuse for repealing Glass Steagall—it’s been a basket case for so very long that a 16 percent loss in profits over the past two years seems cause for celebration, Volcker Rule or no Volcker Rule.

Indeed, for all of Sherman’s gullible huffing and puffing over the destructive reach of our new financial regulatory state, no one seems to have told the nation’s financial system this dire news, to judge by the actual behavior (as opposed to the opportunistic media rhetoric of its leaders). Yes, it’s been a rocky couple of years. And sure, Wall Street has lately shed plenty of jobs—who hasn’t? But in a report to investors inconveniently released one day ahead of Sherman’s dispatch from the existential trenches, Goldman Sachs—which continues to enjoy bullish stock performance amid its profit setbacks—announced this bit of non-emasculating news:

From a financial markets perspective, the environment looks quite friendly. The combination of better growth news and easier monetary policy is always welcome. In addition, we recently argued that corporate profit margins may still have room for further gains, despite the fact that they already stand at record levels from both a bottom-up and top-down perspective.

But no such merely empirical considerations can hope to stand up against the wrath of a stable of mainly unnamed bankers! Why, just look at Goldman itself, where Sherman reports that “months before the Volcker rule is set to kick in, star traders began [sic] to leave in droves.” And Goldman has lately shuttered its proprietary hedge-fund shop—in recognition that the line of essentially free credit that the Fed has opened up to investment houses may at last be about to dry up.

This, too, might well be seen as a sign of comparative health in the broader economy—especially with Goldman itself sounding so bullish on the investment climate, with the dread implementation of the Volcker Rule a scant five months away. After all, easy credit is what creates unsustainable bubbles in the first place, as even the most cursory study of the 2008 debacle shows. But not so in Shermanland! Even breakaway hedge shops are booking fairly lackluster profits (despite the obscene tax advantages they continue to enjoy)—so you know: Panic, everybody! Only Sherman is even less clear in explicating just what the cause for alarm is supposed to be in this case—while banks' hedge-fund divisions are curtailed under the Volcker rule, hedge funds themselves need not tremble before its pending implementation. There’s the bad economy, yes—but it’s just as important, he insists, to note that the hedge sector is “as overbuilt as the housing and credit markets that drove its profits,” with the overall number of hedge funds exploding about 16-fold (610 to 9.553) from 1990 to 2011. One would assume that a slowdown in an oversupplied speculative sector is not, you know, a bad thing by itself, either—especially given that even the most diehard Randians would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that hedge funds create economic value of any kind. But Sherman nonetheless frets on behalf of hedge managers that “the easy obvious plays are oversubscribed, which shrinks margins.... Many have predicted a hedge-fund shakeout, and it seems to have started. Over 1,000 funds have closed in the last year and a half.” It’s evidently a taken-for-granted, second-nature kind of axiom in today’s American economy that an “industry” made up entirely of “easy obvious plays” is integral to our very survival.

Or at the very least, it’s a great enabling premise of lazy, overclass-osculating, dick-obsessed magazine journalism. Witness Sherman’s closing brief for the productive wonders worked by yon investment class:

It’s certainly true that Wall Street’s money played an important part in New York’s comeback, helping to transform the city from a symbol of urban decay into a gleaming leisure theme park. Consciously or not, as a city, New York made a bargain: It would tolerate the one percent’s excessive pay as long as the rising tax base funded the schools, subways, and parks for the 99 percent. “Without Wall Street, New York becomes Philadelphia” is how a friend of mine in finance explains it.

Well, Gabe, I have news for you and your friend in finance: For the vast majority of people living in the glorious and gleaming leisure theme park known as Michael Bloomberg’s New York, Philadelphia looks pretty goddamn inviting (and not just for delusional “sixth borough” hipsters). For one thing, the city’s schools have lately taken to looting state budget funds to make up for shortfalls; the city’s parks are already relying to a disproportionate degree on private donations to run themselves—except, of course, when the mayor wants to unleash city cops to displace and round up those irksome unproductive kids protesting wealth inequality. And do NOT get us started on the regressively funded, frequently inoperative subways, OK?

Then again, New York magazine is, God knows, a gleaming theme park all its own, and it’s perhaps best not to disturb the placid reveries of its well-appointed editorial brain trust. Yes, sustaining the enabling fictions of New York-style policy analysis does involve adducing sweeping assertions from the thinnest air: “The rising tide of the real-estate and credit markets lifted all boats,” Sherman burbles, apparently in reference to hedge funds, but a quick Google search for “Long Term Capital Management” will rapidly disabuse any civilian in the real economy of such a ludicrous notion. (And the ever-fallacious “rising tide” thesis is especially laughable when applied more broadly in today’s America.) Likewise, Sherman’s wind-up paragraph preposterously announces that “the strictures that are holding the banks back now are tighter than any since the thirties”—certainly news to any financial regulator of the mid-twentieth century, when off-shore mutual funds were heavily prosecuted and hedge funds were much more regulated (even without mandatory SEC registration); or to the economic policymakers of the Great Society era, who enforced corporate tax rates north of 40 percent, more than twice of today’s post-Dodd assessments. But why should we expect any other version of events from the hallowed precincts of Adam Moss’s TriBeCa wing of the great New York theme park? For as this week’s cover story plainly demonstrates, nothing can be considered real in this abject weekly’s pages unless it comes straight from the mouth of a banker.



Chris Lehmann is the co-editor of Bookforum and is the author of Rich People Things.

---

See more posts by Chris Lehmann

17 comments

]]> Oh dear, here we go again: “Wall Street is a meritocracy, for the most part,” an irate but of course unnamed onetime Citigroup executive confides to junior father confessor Gabriel Sherman in this week’s hallucinatory New York magazine cover story, “The Emasculation of Wall Street.” “If someone has a bonus, it’s because they’ve created value for their institution.”

In the jumpy, suggestible universe of Gabe Sherman, Wall Street sleuth, things really are that simple: The beleaguered financial overclass creates value, in a rationally ordered system of maximally awarded talent. And the clueless public sector, intoxicated on post-meltdown regulatory prerogative, meddles with the primal forces of nature, skews executive compensation downward, panders to the blurry “populist” agenda of the Occupy Wall Street Crowd, generally foments market uncertainty and other forms of intolerable chaos so that presto, before you know it, we have “The End of Wall Street As They Knew It.”

In other words: To your crying towels, bankers! Correspondent Sherman is on the scene, and no howling distortion of recent financial history you care to offer is too outlandish for him to faithfully record! After duly huddling with a couple of dozen financial titans, our reporter has arrived at a chilling verdict: “what emerged is a picture of an industry afflicted by a crisis it would not be flip to call existential.”

Perhaps not—but what is exceedingly flip is brother Sherman’s account of the origins of the crisis.

Sure, there was that awkward business that sent the global finance sector to the brink of ruin, plus a devastating tsunami in Japan and whatnot—but the true culprit sending Wall Street titans back into their bedrooms to listen to Interpol on auto-repeat and cut themselves is of course the specter of government regulation. The Dodd-Frank financial reform act, a largely toothless measure lousy with loopholes and lobbying dosh, becomes in the alternate universe of Adam Moss’s New York magazine a rash bid to expropriate the expropriators. Even though the full provisions of the already anemic bill don’t go into effect until 2016, the very thought of a somewhat straitened financial playing field so terrifies Wall Street’s stout corridor of wealth creators that, well, they’re bidding farewell to the most valuable commodity of all—their big swinging dicks. “The government has strangled the financial system,” Dick Bove, an especially excitable and frequently mistaken bank analyst, tells Sherman. “We’ve basically castrated these companies. They can’t borrow as much as they used to borrow.”

You see, by force of the Volcker rule—a watered-down version of the central Glass-Steagall protections separating out commercial and investment banking that were disastrously repealed in 1999—Wall Street is re-thinking everything, from the scale of its year-end bonuses to its “core value to the economy.” And Bove, for one, preaches that all this doom-and-gloom thinking can’t help but be self-fulfilling: “These are sweeping secular changes taking place that won’t just impact the guys who won’t get their bonuses this year. We’ve made a decision as a nation to shrink the growth of the financial system under the theory that it won’t impact the growth of the nation’s economy.” Another unnamed informant tells Sherman that the financial industry is gearing up for a state of near permanent pay-austerity at the mere thought of the Volcker rule, which doesn’t kick in officially until July: “If you landed on Earth from Mars and looked at the banks, you’d see that these are institutions that need to build up capital and they’re becoming lower-margin businesses. So that means it will be hard, nearly impossible, to sustain their size and compensation structure.”

Never mind that this diagnosis is diametrically opposed to the Bove-ian school of market alarmism, which holds that banks are being starved of desperately needed leverage and credit; this unnamed fearmonger sees them in a frenzy to raise capital, and one thing the Volcker rule undeniably seeks to achieve is minimal capital requirements to prevent speculative lending from veering once more into toxic chaos.

No, for Sherman, all that’s needed to stoke the proper mood of Misean panic is to rouse the specter of frightened bankers, and a few quick-and-dirty quarterly profit reports.

From the moment Dodd-Frank passed, the banks’ financial results have tended to slide downward, in significant part because of measures taken in anticipation of its future effect. Since July 2010, Bank of America nosed down 42 percent, Morgan Stanley fell 25 percent, Goldman fell 21 percent, and Citigroup fell 16—in a period when the Dow rose 25 percent.

Other economic journalists might conclude that this downturn was a set of long-overdue market corrections, and given the broader turn around in the actual manufacturing economy, by no means an indication of worsening conditions—for investors and workers alike. Some radical others might even suggest that the shredded headcounts at the financial firms played a part in their own downturn in revenue. But while from his evidently privileged vantage in the driver’s seat of the Doc’s Time Machine, Sherman can divine all sorts of mischief arising from the yet-to-be-implemented provisions of Dodd-Frank, it does bear reminding that since 2010, BofA has been forced to eat a sizable portion of the toxic mortgage debt it acquired amid its spectacularly ill-advised purchase of Countrywide; Morgan has suffered tremendous losses in its Japanese operations and has, like most banks, been spooked by its exposure to the Euro-debt crisis (funnily enough, the firm’s US-based investment-banking operations—ie, the shop most directly affected by the dread Volcker rule, has booked profits amid all the tumult abroad); much the same general picture holds at Goldman, which as you may recall, has had more than its share of legal contretemps thrown into the bargain . As for Citigroup—the company whose very grotesque merged existence was the deregulatory excuse for repealing Glass Steagall—it’s been a basket case for so very long that a 16 percent loss in profits over the past two years seems cause for celebration, Volcker Rule or no Volcker Rule.

Indeed, for all of Sherman’s gullible huffing and puffing over the destructive reach of our new financial regulatory state, no one seems to have told the nation’s financial system this dire news, to judge by the actual behavior (as opposed to the opportunistic media rhetoric of its leaders). Yes, it’s been a rocky couple of years. And sure, Wall Street has lately shed plenty of jobs—who hasn’t? But in a report to investors inconveniently released one day ahead of Sherman’s dispatch from the existential trenches, Goldman Sachs—which continues to enjoy bullish stock performance amid its profit setbacks—announced this bit of non-emasculating news:

From a financial markets perspective, the environment looks quite friendly. The combination of better growth news and easier monetary policy is always welcome. In addition, we recently argued that corporate profit margins may still have room for further gains, despite the fact that they already stand at record levels from both a bottom-up and top-down perspective.

But no such merely empirical considerations can hope to stand up against the wrath of a stable of mainly unnamed bankers! Why, just look at Goldman itself, where Sherman reports that “months before the Volcker rule is set to kick in, star traders began [sic] to leave in droves.” And Goldman has lately shuttered its proprietary hedge-fund shop—in recognition that the line of essentially free credit that the Fed has opened up to investment houses may at last be about to dry up.

This, too, might well be seen as a sign of comparative health in the broader economy—especially with Goldman itself sounding so bullish on the investment climate, with the dread implementation of the Volcker Rule a scant five months away. After all, easy credit is what creates unsustainable bubbles in the first place, as even the most cursory study of the 2008 debacle shows. But not so in Shermanland! Even breakaway hedge shops are booking fairly lackluster profits (despite the obscene tax advantages they continue to enjoy)—so you know: Panic, everybody! Only Sherman is even less clear in explicating just what the cause for alarm is supposed to be in this case—while banks' hedge-fund divisions are curtailed under the Volcker rule, hedge funds themselves need not tremble before its pending implementation. There’s the bad economy, yes—but it’s just as important, he insists, to note that the hedge sector is “as overbuilt as the housing and credit markets that drove its profits,” with the overall number of hedge funds exploding about 16-fold (610 to 9.553) from 1990 to 2011. One would assume that a slowdown in an oversupplied speculative sector is not, you know, a bad thing by itself, either—especially given that even the most diehard Randians would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that hedge funds create economic value of any kind. But Sherman nonetheless frets on behalf of hedge managers that “the easy obvious plays are oversubscribed, which shrinks margins.... Many have predicted a hedge-fund shakeout, and it seems to have started. Over 1,000 funds have closed in the last year and a half.” It’s evidently a taken-for-granted, second-nature kind of axiom in today’s American economy that an “industry” made up entirely of “easy obvious plays” is integral to our very survival.

Or at the very least, it’s a great enabling premise of lazy, overclass-osculating, dick-obsessed magazine journalism. Witness Sherman’s closing brief for the productive wonders worked by yon investment class:

It’s certainly true that Wall Street’s money played an important part in New York’s comeback, helping to transform the city from a symbol of urban decay into a gleaming leisure theme park. Consciously or not, as a city, New York made a bargain: It would tolerate the one percent’s excessive pay as long as the rising tax base funded the schools, subways, and parks for the 99 percent. “Without Wall Street, New York becomes Philadelphia” is how a friend of mine in finance explains it.

Well, Gabe, I have news for you and your friend in finance: For the vast majority of people living in the glorious and gleaming leisure theme park known as Michael Bloomberg’s New York, Philadelphia looks pretty goddamn inviting (and not just for delusional “sixth borough” hipsters). For one thing, the city’s schools have lately taken to looting state budget funds to make up for shortfalls; the city’s parks are already relying to a disproportionate degree on private donations to run themselves—except, of course, when the mayor wants to unleash city cops to displace and round up those irksome unproductive kids protesting wealth inequality. And do NOT get us started on the regressively funded, frequently inoperative subways, OK?

Then again, New York magazine is, God knows, a gleaming theme park all its own, and it’s perhaps best not to disturb the placid reveries of its well-appointed editorial brain trust. Yes, sustaining the enabling fictions of New York-style policy analysis does involve adducing sweeping assertions from the thinnest air: “The rising tide of the real-estate and credit markets lifted all boats,” Sherman burbles, apparently in reference to hedge funds, but a quick Google search for “Long Term Capital Management” will rapidly disabuse any civilian in the real economy of such a ludicrous notion. (And the ever-fallacious “rising tide” thesis is especially laughable when applied more broadly in today’s America.) Likewise, Sherman’s wind-up paragraph preposterously announces that “the strictures that are holding the banks back now are tighter than any since the thirties”—certainly news to any financial regulator of the mid-twentieth century, when off-shore mutual funds were heavily prosecuted and hedge funds were much more regulated (even without mandatory SEC registration); or to the economic policymakers of the Great Society era, who enforced corporate tax rates north of 40 percent, more than twice of today’s post-Dodd assessments. But why should we expect any other version of events from the hallowed precincts of Adam Moss’s TriBeCa wing of the great New York theme park? For as this week’s cover story plainly demonstrates, nothing can be considered real in this abject weekly’s pages unless it comes straight from the mouth of a banker.



Chris Lehmann is the co-editor of Bookforum and is the author of Rich People Things.

---

See more posts by Chris Lehmann

17 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/02/dick-joke/feed 17 252 Things Our Readers Bought on Amazon This Year http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/252-things-our-readers-bought-on-amazon-this-year http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/252-things-our-readers-bought-on-amazon-this-year#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:00:05 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/252-things-our-readers-bought-on-amazon-this-year As an Amazon affiliate, we get a wee percentage of sales from people who click through from our site to Amazon. But better than that, we get a report from Amazon about what people have purchased! (Don't worry, it's all anonymous: there's no information at all passed on about the purchaser's identity.) One thing we can guarantee: you people buy things online. Here are just a few excerpts from the year 2011, here with quantity, title, media and cost.

1 Chupacabra (HD), Amazon Instant Video, $2.84

2 "Top Chef: Don't Be Tardy for the Dinner Party," Instant Video, $1.89

1 Buffalo by David Bitton Men's Bridle Strap Belt With Leather Plaque, in brown, size 38, $29.99

2 Joe's Jeans Men's Malcolm Rebel Relaxed Fit Jean, Malcolm, 38, $158.00/each

1 Honda CRV Heavy Vinyl Spare Tire Cover w/ Honda CR-V Logo, $19.95

1 Got2b Rockin' It Dry Shampoo, 4.3-Ounce, $5.61

3 1Q84, Haruki Murakami, $16.04

1 At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle L. McGuire, $17.30

6 Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, Tom Scocca, $15.66

1 Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and Their Craft, David Savage, $29.70

1 Geek Girls Unite: How Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and Other Misfits Are Taking Over the World, Leslie Simon, $11.24

13 Habibi, Craig Thompson, $20.58

1 Handbook of Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, $70.35

1 Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi, $16.46

1 Myth of Black Capitalism, Earl Ofari, $9.99

1 Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, Maria Mies, $4.78

1 Valences of the Dialectic, Fredric Jameson, $15.00

1 X-Men: The Ultimate Guide, $16.49

1 Microsoft LifeCam Studio 1080p HD Webcam, $57.69

1 "Community: The Complete Second Season," DVD, $19.99

1 "Eleanor and Franklin Double Feature (The Early Years / The White House Years)," DVD, $8.99

1 Wicker Park, DVD, $2.99

1 Readynas Pro 6 Unified Nas, $1033.14

1 Fun Size Halloween Mix Variety Pack, 157-Piece, 74.87-Ounce, $19.62

25 Miracle Frooties 600mg Miracle Fruit Berry Tablets Designer Box, $15.95

1 Traditional Medicinals Organic Pregnancy Herbal Tea, 16-Count Wrapped Tea Bags (Pack of 6), $ 21.90

1 Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor Test Sticks, 30 Count, $28.99

1 FertilAid for Men: Male Fertility Supplement, $28.95

1 NOW Foods Horny Goat Weed Extract 750mg, 90 Tablets, $12.24

1 Sunshine Chees-It Cheese Crackers Thirty Six 1.5 Ounce Snack Pack Bags, $18.99

1 FertileCM: for Fertile Cervical Mucus, $19.95

1 SpermCheck Fertility, $34.95

1 Waterpik Ultra Water Flosser, $46.97

41 A Tea People's History, Alex Pareene, $2.99

1 Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore, Paul Carr, $8.42

1 Bubbly on Your Budget: Live Luxuriously with What You Have, $8.79

1 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition, Jared Diamond, $9.99

1 Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, Tom Mueller, $10.39

1 The Book of Repulsive Women (Illustrated), Djuna Barnes, $0.99

1 The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1 (1931-1934), $9.99

83 The Junket (Kindle Single), Mike Albo, $1.99

1 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Online Marketing, $9.99

1 Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, Barry Estabrook, $7.69

35, Up the Down Volcano, Sloane Crosley $1.99

1 Cuisinart 77-10 Chef's Classic Stainless-Steel 10-Piece Cookware Set, $122

1 "NOW That's What I Call Music Vol. 39," $5

1 "The Complete John Peel Sessions," $9.49

1 Entertainment Weekly (1-year auto-renewal), $15

1 DC Men's Villain Vulc Skate Shoe, Armor, 11 M, $37.75

1 DiaGel Diarrhea Control Gel for Cats Over 6 lbs, 1.0cc Syringe, $13

---

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40 comments

]]> As an Amazon affiliate, we get a wee percentage of sales from people who click through from our site to Amazon. But better than that, we get a report from Amazon about what people have purchased! (Don't worry, it's all anonymous: there's no information at all passed on about the purchaser's identity.) One thing we can guarantee: you people buy things online. Here are just a few excerpts from the year 2011, here with quantity, title, media and cost.

1 Chupacabra (HD), Amazon Instant Video, $2.84

2 "Top Chef: Don't Be Tardy for the Dinner Party," Instant Video, $1.89

1 Buffalo by David Bitton Men's Bridle Strap Belt With Leather Plaque, in brown, size 38, $29.99

2 Joe's Jeans Men's Malcolm Rebel Relaxed Fit Jean, Malcolm, 38, $158.00/each

1 Honda CRV Heavy Vinyl Spare Tire Cover w/ Honda CR-V Logo, $19.95

1 Got2b Rockin' It Dry Shampoo, 4.3-Ounce, $5.61

3 1Q84, Haruki Murakami, $16.04

1 At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle L. McGuire, $17.30

6 Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future, Tom Scocca, $15.66

1 Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and Their Craft, David Savage, $29.70

1 Geek Girls Unite: How Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and Other Misfits Are Taking Over the World, Leslie Simon, $11.24

13 Habibi, Craig Thompson, $20.58

1 Handbook of Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, $70.35

1 Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi, $16.46

1 Myth of Black Capitalism, Earl Ofari, $9.99

1 Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, Maria Mies, $4.78

1 Valences of the Dialectic, Fredric Jameson, $15.00

1 X-Men: The Ultimate Guide, $16.49

1 Microsoft LifeCam Studio 1080p HD Webcam, $57.69

1 "Community: The Complete Second Season," DVD, $19.99

1 "Eleanor and Franklin Double Feature (The Early Years / The White House Years)," DVD, $8.99

1 Wicker Park, DVD, $2.99

1 Readynas Pro 6 Unified Nas, $1033.14

1 Fun Size Halloween Mix Variety Pack, 157-Piece, 74.87-Ounce, $19.62

25 Miracle Frooties 600mg Miracle Fruit Berry Tablets Designer Box, $15.95

1 Traditional Medicinals Organic Pregnancy Herbal Tea, 16-Count Wrapped Tea Bags (Pack of 6), $ 21.90

1 Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor Test Sticks, 30 Count, $28.99

1 FertilAid for Men: Male Fertility Supplement, $28.95

1 NOW Foods Horny Goat Weed Extract 750mg, 90 Tablets, $12.24

1 Sunshine Chees-It Cheese Crackers Thirty Six 1.5 Ounce Snack Pack Bags, $18.99

1 FertileCM: for Fertile Cervical Mucus, $19.95

1 SpermCheck Fertility, $34.95

1 Waterpik Ultra Water Flosser, $46.97

41 A Tea People's History, Alex Pareene, $2.99

1 Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore, Paul Carr, $8.42

1 Bubbly on Your Budget: Live Luxuriously with What You Have, $8.79

1 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition, Jared Diamond, $9.99

1 Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, Tom Mueller, $10.39

1 The Book of Repulsive Women (Illustrated), Djuna Barnes, $0.99

1 The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934: Vol. 1 (1931-1934), $9.99

83 The Junket (Kindle Single), Mike Albo, $1.99

1 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Online Marketing, $9.99

1 Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, Barry Estabrook, $7.69

35, Up the Down Volcano, Sloane Crosley $1.99

1 Cuisinart 77-10 Chef's Classic Stainless-Steel 10-Piece Cookware Set, $122

1 "NOW That's What I Call Music Vol. 39," $5

1 "The Complete John Peel Sessions," $9.49

1 Entertainment Weekly (1-year auto-renewal), $15

1 DC Men's Villain Vulc Skate Shoe, Armor, 11 M, $37.75

1 DiaGel Diarrhea Control Gel for Cats Over 6 lbs, 1.0cc Syringe, $13

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/252-things-our-readers-bought-on-amazon-this-year/feed 40 Let's Just Call it a Protest Movement http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/lets-just-call-it-a-protest-movement http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/lets-just-call-it-a-protest-movement#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:00:01 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/lets-just-call-it-a-protest-movement What did you do this weekend? Were you among the couple of thousand people protesting Bank of America in Boston? If so, YOU ARE AWESOME. (Although I have no idea why the Boston Herald referred to the 24 arrested at that protest as a "rogue's gallery." Isn't that... odd?) Bank of America should have people protesting outside every branch, every day. Also apparently there were some other protests, in New York, I guess? It only made page A18 of the Sunday New York Times national edition, where it said that only 500 people were arrested, not 700, so, must not have been that big a deal. (To be fair, they've been covering it well online.) Meanwhile, a word to the NYPD? Arresting working reporters and photographers is a real sad tactic. Also! Would you like a sense of how this is playing overseas? REAL BIG. Now the real fun begins.

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]]> What did you do this weekend? Were you among the couple of thousand people protesting Bank of America in Boston? If so, YOU ARE AWESOME. (Although I have no idea why the Boston Herald referred to the 24 arrested at that protest as a "rogue's gallery." Isn't that... odd?) Bank of America should have people protesting outside every branch, every day. Also apparently there were some other protests, in New York, I guess? It only made page A18 of the Sunday New York Times national edition, where it said that only 500 people were arrested, not 700, so, must not have been that big a deal. (To be fair, they've been covering it well online.) Meanwhile, a word to the NYPD? Arresting working reporters and photographers is a real sad tactic. Also! Would you like a sense of how this is playing overseas? REAL BIG. Now the real fun begins.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/lets-just-call-it-a-protest-movement/feed 20 England Forced to Notice Young, Poor, Angry People http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/england-forced-to-notice-young-poor-angry-people http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/england-forced-to-notice-young-poor-angry-people#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:40:20 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/england-forced-to-notice-young-poor-angry-people And now we enter phase three of massive social unrest, in which the media wonders: who are "the looters" and why might they be "upset"? Literally: "The crowds involved in violence and looting are drawn from a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds." Oh I see. And: "Two girls who took part in Monday night's riots in Croydon have boasted that they were showing police and 'the rich' that 'we can do what we want.'" Why didn't anyone tell the media before that England was populated with a huge resentful underclass? WHY WAS THERE NOT A PRESS RELEASE ABOUT THIS?

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]]> And now we enter phase three of massive social unrest, in which the media wonders: who are "the looters" and why might they be "upset"? Literally: "The crowds involved in violence and looting are drawn from a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds." Oh I see. And: "Two girls who took part in Monday night's riots in Croydon have boasted that they were showing police and 'the rich' that 'we can do what we want.'" Why didn't anyone tell the media before that England was populated with a huge resentful underclass? WHY WAS THERE NOT A PRESS RELEASE ABOUT THIS?

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/england-forced-to-notice-young-poor-angry-people/feed 28 Actually Big Government, Foreign Intervention and Charity Saved the Miners http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/actually-big-government-and-foreign-intervention-saved-the-miners http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/actually-big-government-and-foreign-intervention-saved-the-miners#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:30:17 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/actually-big-government-and-foreign-intervention-saved-the-miners GOVERNMENT RESCUEEDaniel Henninger'sWall Street Journal op-ed column today is mind-boggling. He comes out hard, so it's easy to summarize: "It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism." His point is that the drill and the drill rig used for the miner rescue were developed by two smallish companies, right here in America. Other bits of technology were also created by companies! The free market innovates! Companies make things! So capitalism saved miners. Pretty much everything about this column is utterly undone by the facts.

The miners were also employees of a "free-market capitalist" corporation which is undergoing an (state-run!) audit and is likely going into bankruptcy. The miners were rescued by a government-sponsored intervention, supervised by Codelco, the state's copper company, and by gifts from foreign governments. What's more, the rescue seems to have convinced Chile that Codelco should remain state-run and not be privatized.

Likewise, the expertise of Nasa-the American government agency?-is credited with keeping the miners healthy.

The free-market capitalist company who ran the mine, Empresa Minera San Esteban, was an out-of-control, anti-union, government-regulation defying safety nightmare who allowed its workers to become trapped as par for the course of its worker mistreatment.

Many of the mines in Chile are actually owned by foreign entities.

So, the entire rescue was overseen and funded by the government. The president of Chile-a rightish billionaire, by the way, who now plans to raise taxes for foreign companies operating in Chile-has fired leaders who ran the government's mining regulatory agency.

He also demanded a halt to mining in Chile (shades of the much-criticized U.S. government intervention after the Gulf Oil Spill!).

In short there has been no greater misreading of the actual politics of a situation ever.

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]]> GOVERNMENT RESCUEEDaniel Henninger'sWall Street Journal op-ed column today is mind-boggling. He comes out hard, so it's easy to summarize: "It needs to be said. The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism." His point is that the drill and the drill rig used for the miner rescue were developed by two smallish companies, right here in America. Other bits of technology were also created by companies! The free market innovates! Companies make things! So capitalism saved miners. Pretty much everything about this column is utterly undone by the facts.

The miners were also employees of a "free-market capitalist" corporation which is undergoing an (state-run!) audit and is likely going into bankruptcy. The miners were rescued by a government-sponsored intervention, supervised by Codelco, the state's copper company, and by gifts from foreign governments. What's more, the rescue seems to have convinced Chile that Codelco should remain state-run and not be privatized.

Likewise, the expertise of Nasa-the American government agency?-is credited with keeping the miners healthy.

The free-market capitalist company who ran the mine, Empresa Minera San Esteban, was an out-of-control, anti-union, government-regulation defying safety nightmare who allowed its workers to become trapped as par for the course of its worker mistreatment.

Many of the mines in Chile are actually owned by foreign entities.

So, the entire rescue was overseen and funded by the government. The president of Chile-a rightish billionaire, by the way, who now plans to raise taxes for foreign companies operating in Chile-has fired leaders who ran the government's mining regulatory agency.

He also demanded a halt to mining in Chile (shades of the much-criticized U.S. government intervention after the Gulf Oil Spill!).

In short there has been no greater misreading of the actual politics of a situation ever.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/10/actually-big-government-and-foreign-intervention-saved-the-miners/feed 37 Local Newspaper Struggles With Its 'Real Housewives' Crack Habit http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/local-newspaper-struggles-with-its-real-housewives-crack-habit http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/local-newspaper-struggles-with-its-real-housewives-crack-habit#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:40:00 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/local-newspaper-struggles-with-its-real-housewives-crack-habit DRAW THOSE LINES I GUESSOnce you know that the reality TV "star" "phenomenon" is merely a set of nonsense network-packaged narratives, stories and characters deployed to capitalize on the news outlets that need "information" to sell their own products, particularly when those news outlets don't care that the information they present is actually the product being sold itself, and that the whole thing is a business ploy wherein publicity is made through various entities using other entities in a cash-funded reputation market, well then there's no point in treating reality TV as a cultural product. Sorry, Hank Stuever! You're right about reality TV, but you're just feeding the beast. Particularly since your Washington Post newspaper is running a "preview" of the "latest installment" of Real Housewives alongside your criticism. Reality television is only a capitalist product-a great one, in those terms, as it lends itself to multiple repackaging and distribution. (See also: "LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY"!) But the only way out is all the way out. We know for a fact that you can sell newspapers another way.

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]]> DRAW THOSE LINES I GUESSOnce you know that the reality TV "star" "phenomenon" is merely a set of nonsense network-packaged narratives, stories and characters deployed to capitalize on the news outlets that need "information" to sell their own products, particularly when those news outlets don't care that the information they present is actually the product being sold itself, and that the whole thing is a business ploy wherein publicity is made through various entities using other entities in a cash-funded reputation market, well then there's no point in treating reality TV as a cultural product. Sorry, Hank Stuever! You're right about reality TV, but you're just feeding the beast. Particularly since your Washington Post newspaper is running a "preview" of the "latest installment" of Real Housewives alongside your criticism. Reality television is only a capitalist product-a great one, in those terms, as it lends itself to multiple repackaging and distribution. (See also: "LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY"!) But the only way out is all the way out. We know for a fact that you can sell newspapers another way.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/local-newspaper-struggles-with-its-real-housewives-crack-habit/feed 7 Americans Less Fond Of Capitalism When It Actually Happens To Them http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/americans-less-fond-of-capitalism-when-it-actually-happens-to-them http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/americans-less-fond-of-capitalism-when-it-actually-happens-to-them#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:05:34 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/americans-less-fond-of-capitalism-when-it-actually-happens-to-them They're on to you!"We need to do a better job of explaining the economic system in the United States and how it is working. We have been looking at anecdotal information that there was a misunderstanding of capitalism."
-Stan Anderson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce discusses the results of a poll by his organization showing that only 57% of Americans have a favorable view of capitalism. It seems fairly obvious to suggest that it is just as likely that the misunderstanding is occurring on the part of those 57% who still approve, but that would be crazy socialist talk.

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]]> They're on to you!"We need to do a better job of explaining the economic system in the United States and how it is working. We have been looking at anecdotal information that there was a misunderstanding of capitalism."
-Stan Anderson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce discusses the results of a poll by his organization showing that only 57% of Americans have a favorable view of capitalism. It seems fairly obvious to suggest that it is just as likely that the misunderstanding is occurring on the part of those 57% who still approve, but that would be crazy socialist talk.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/americans-less-fond-of-capitalism-when-it-actually-happens-to-them/feed 17 The Original "The Awl," 1843: "Who Owns These Neat and Pretty Houses?" http://www.theawl.com/2010/02/the-original-the-awl-1843-who-owns-these-neat-and-pretty-houses http://www.theawl.com/2010/02/the-original-the-awl-1843-who-owns-these-neat-and-pretty-houses#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:00:53 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2010/02/the-original-the-awl-1843-who-owns-these-neat-and-pretty-houses STICK TO THY LAST!It has been brought to our attention that there is another publication called The Awl! Unfortunately, it seems to have ceased publication sometime in the mid to late 1840s, even though it was only first published in 1843. Documented in Norman Ware's fantastic The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: the reaction of American industrial society to the advance of the industrial revolution, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1924. This bit of history was brought to our attention by the widely-read Aaaron Swartz, praise his name. Let's do some reading!

First, let's let Mr. Ware set the scene of the time, the hot and bothered 1840s. This is an incredible passage.

1

IN THE MIDST OF THEIR HILARITY!

And now let us look a bit at the progress of industry and the conditions of the working person-which resulted in an outcropping of radical publications. One complaint was that the efficiency of the machines was adding vast wealth to the owners of those machines and was providing not so much for those who would now operate those machines.

2

You don't say!

And now, let us turn to this examination of the shoemakers of the time-and their exquisitely well-named publication. (This section is a condensed version of the chapter, with some omissions.) If you have the time, it is a truly great read.

3

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]]> STICK TO THY LAST!It has been brought to our attention that there is another publication called The Awl! Unfortunately, it seems to have ceased publication sometime in the mid to late 1840s, even though it was only first published in 1843. Documented in Norman Ware's fantastic The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: the reaction of American industrial society to the advance of the industrial revolution, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1924. This bit of history was brought to our attention by the widely-read Aaaron Swartz, praise his name. Let's do some reading!

First, let's let Mr. Ware set the scene of the time, the hot and bothered 1840s. This is an incredible passage.

1

IN THE MIDST OF THEIR HILARITY!

And now let us look a bit at the progress of industry and the conditions of the working person-which resulted in an outcropping of radical publications. One complaint was that the efficiency of the machines was adding vast wealth to the owners of those machines and was providing not so much for those who would now operate those machines.

2

You don't say!

And now, let us turn to this examination of the shoemakers of the time-and their exquisitely well-named publication. (This section is a condensed version of the chapter, with some omissions.) If you have the time, it is a truly great read.

3

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2010/02/the-original-the-awl-1843-who-owns-these-neat-and-pretty-houses/feed 21 "In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don't 'create jobs' for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people." http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/in-a-properly-functioning-capitalist-economy-rich-people-dont-create-jobs-for-workers-workers-upon-having-jobs-create-rich-people http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/in-a-properly-functioning-capitalist-economy-rich-people-dont-create-jobs-for-workers-workers-upon-having-jobs-create-rich-people#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:30:50 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/in-a-properly-functioning-capitalist-economy-rich-people-dont-create-jobs-for-workers-workers-upon-having-jobs-create-rich-people RICH PEOPLEThis is a fantastic read from Baltimore City Paper, on the "fact" that Maryland's number of millionaires dropped to 4,910 in 2008 from 7,067 in 2007. It includes a basic primer on how business works, which is so delightful we must excerpt it here.

Critics of the millionaire tax say they've never heard of a poor man hiring a worker. Only the rich do that; therefore, to render the wealthy less so by taxation is to destroy jobs.

The theory presumes that the wealthy hire people out of charity. In this model, jobs are bestowed upon lucky workers by the industrious entrepreneur, who derives his own wealth from some magical practices (having nothing to do with the workers he may hire) which are anyway unfathomable to outsiders.


To hear self-proclaimed capitalists make this argument is irritating, because it suggests they don't understand how our economic system is supposed to work. They have the process exactly backwards.


In a capitalist system, investors make money not despite hiring workers, but because they hire workers who, if they are adequately managed, create value in excess of the wages and benefits they are paid. This value is called "profit," and the business' owner gets to keep that, after paying taxes.


In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don't "create jobs" for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people.

That's how the system works, in theory.


But the reality is different from the theory. In today's marketplace, the super-rich have become richer in large part by destroying jobs.

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]]> RICH PEOPLEThis is a fantastic read from Baltimore City Paper, on the "fact" that Maryland's number of millionaires dropped to 4,910 in 2008 from 7,067 in 2007. It includes a basic primer on how business works, which is so delightful we must excerpt it here.

Critics of the millionaire tax say they've never heard of a poor man hiring a worker. Only the rich do that; therefore, to render the wealthy less so by taxation is to destroy jobs.

The theory presumes that the wealthy hire people out of charity. In this model, jobs are bestowed upon lucky workers by the industrious entrepreneur, who derives his own wealth from some magical practices (having nothing to do with the workers he may hire) which are anyway unfathomable to outsiders.


To hear self-proclaimed capitalists make this argument is irritating, because it suggests they don't understand how our economic system is supposed to work. They have the process exactly backwards.


In a capitalist system, investors make money not despite hiring workers, but because they hire workers who, if they are adequately managed, create value in excess of the wages and benefits they are paid. This value is called "profit," and the business' owner gets to keep that, after paying taxes.


In a properly functioning capitalist economy, rich people don't "create jobs" for workers; workers, upon having jobs, create rich people.

That's how the system works, in theory.


But the reality is different from the theory. In today's marketplace, the super-rich have become richer in large part by destroying jobs.

---

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/in-a-properly-functioning-capitalist-economy-rich-people-dont-create-jobs-for-workers-workers-upon-having-jobs-create-rich-people/feed 26 Chris Anderson's Third Big Idea: "Atoms & Bits" http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/chris-andersons-third-big-idea-atoms-bits http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/chris-andersons-third-big-idea-atoms-bits#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:30:43 +0000 Choire Sicha http://www.theawl.com/2009/11/chris-andersons-third-big-idea-atoms-bits CUT AND PASTEPerhaps you were wondering what Wired editor Chris Anderson is up to, after putting forward ideas called "The Long Tail" and "Free"? Well, now we know! His new idea is called "Atoms & Bits." He will be giving it away... for free. (Oh and a book deal. And some speaking gigs. Whatever.) But what is "Atoms & Bits," besides a good name for a futuristic dog food brand? You can find out at a breakfast coming soon!

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL BREAKFAST PRESENTATION

CHRIS ANDERSON, WIRED EDITOR IN CHIEF
Best-Selling Author of The Long Tail and Free

PREVIEWING HIS NEXT BIG IDEA: ATOMS & BITS

Transformative change happens when industries democratize. In recent years publishing, broadcasting and communications have undergone a cataclysmic shift, increasing the range of participants and participation in everything digital. Now the innovation models from the universe of bits are extending to the world of atoms, too. Thanks to low-cost DIY factories in China, anyone with a good idea and bit of expertise can create products for users anywhere in the world. The entrepreneurial potential of a million garage tinkerers is about to be unleashed on global markets-no tooling required. "Three guys with laptops" used to describe a web startup. Now it describes a company that makes things, too.


Friday, December 11 | 8:30-10 AM
The WIRED Store
415 West 13th St, between 9th Avenue & Washington St
RSVP to [redacted]

Sponsored by: American Airlines
This event is complimentary. Space is limited.

My mind is certainly blown.

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]]> CUT AND PASTEPerhaps you were wondering what Wired editor Chris Anderson is up to, after putting forward ideas called "The Long Tail" and "Free"? Well, now we know! His new idea is called "Atoms & Bits." He will be giving it away... for free. (Oh and a book deal. And some speaking gigs. Whatever.) But what is "Atoms & Bits," besides a good name for a futuristic dog food brand? You can find out at a breakfast coming soon!

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL BREAKFAST PRESENTATION

CHRIS ANDERSON, WIRED EDITOR IN CHIEF
Best-Selling Author of The Long Tail and Free

PREVIEWING HIS NEXT BIG IDEA: ATOMS & BITS

Transformative change happens when industries democratize. In recent years publishing, broadcasting and communications have undergone a cataclysmic shift, increasing the range of participants and participation in everything digital. Now the innovation models from the universe of bits are extending to the world of atoms, too. Thanks to low-cost DIY factories in China, anyone with a good idea and bit of expertise can create products for users anywhere in the world. The entrepreneurial potential of a million garage tinkerers is about to be unleashed on global markets-no tooling required. "Three guys with laptops" used to describe a web startup. Now it describes a company that makes things, too.


Friday, December 11 | 8:30-10 AM
The WIRED Store
415 West 13th St, between 9th Avenue & Washington St
RSVP to [redacted]

Sponsored by: American Airlines
This event is complimentary. Space is limited.

My mind is certainly blown.

---

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