I spent the last few days in two truly amazing countries – Bahrain and Qatar …

The first thing one notices is how nice the people are … the people are incredibly friendly – always wanting to help … and how quickly one’s stereotypes about the region quickly disappear …

Off the coast of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain sits in the Persian Gulf like a large jewel. It is connect to Saudi by a long, 20+ kilometer causeway/bridge. Bahrain has a very diverse economy, extremely educated population, and lots of people eager to work. A country of only 400K Bahrainis and 300K ex-pats, it contains a hodge-podge of diverse cultures which interact with one another on a regular basis. I spent some time at Bahrain University which has 20,000 students and increasing academic standards – especially in computer science.

Flying into Qatar (just a 30 minute plane ride from Bahrain) one sees tremendous building in the capital city of Doha. Also a country of less than 800K (with about 200K Qataris), one finds incredible buildings and highways – all built in the last few years. While there I visited University City – a new project sponsored by the Emir of Qatar to educate the entire gulf region. Here we saw mini-campus run by Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell University, and others springing up. Also – Doha’s beaches are gorgeous and the hotels are all brand new and opulent.

I was there in late June – and though the heat was crushing, it was tolerable (though I recommend skipping July and August in the gulf).

Though security is a problem given the proximity of both these countries to Saudi Arabia, I actually felt incredibly safe. Taking precautions is certainly advisable, but I wouldn’t avoid the region (remember – I was there during an extreme rash of kidnappings and killings in Saudi but still felt very safe).

Unfortunately, I missed a chance to go to Dubai as I had a meeting in San Francisco that I could not get out of. But I hear Dubai – though much more over-the-top (like Vegas or Disneyland) – is also a site to see.

I was there for business – but I hope to have an opportunity to go back as a tourist and spend more time talking with the locals. Doha, especially, seems like a wonderful winter get-a-way.

I was at a foreign policy conference over the weekend and one of the biggest concerns expressed was the rapid decline in support of free trade in America. Surprisingly, this decline in support is falling fastest among richer Americans:

poll shows that among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for actively promoting more free trade collapsed from 57% to less than half that, 28%

Very scary. this is a big cause of concern as it will hamper the variety of free trade deals in the works.

See the article and Poll: Free trade loses backers

My friend Tim Kane, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, launched EconomyWatch.org. I specifically like the section on outsourcing — worth a look.

The avg person in America today is better off than the richest people were in 1900. true.

Regardless of whether you are pro-choice or pro-life — have you thought about where life begins? Does it begin at conception? The first trimester? At birth?

Why do stock markets have a closing bell? Why are they not 24/7?

If you are a white person who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Los Angeles, are you African-American?

How likely is it that a large asteroid will hit earth in the next 50 years? If the chance was great than 0.1%, would you be for spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build a space colony on the moon to hedge our bets?

Do people today know more than people than they did 40 years ago?

Can we learn from computer viruses when attacking real life viruses? Network Manifold Associates (NMA) (www.nma.com), small company in San Francisco, attacks computer viruses by first eliminating as many targets as possible. By shrinking the target for a virus, you can form better protection around other vital information. There are billions of possibilities — maybe we can shrink the number of permutations

Why is it called the “West Bank”? it is actually east of Israel. could it be because it is west of Jordan and because the Arab world has shrunk from their responsibility of helping the Palestinians?

great quote: “The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do for themselves.” — Abraham Lincoln

There are hundreds of Mario Monti wanna-bes. And most do not even live in Europe.

Monti is the European Competition Minister who was the thorn in General Electric’s side and is now reeking havoc on Microsoft. He represents the EU’s will and no major companies can merge without his blessing.

After Monti there are American regulatory bodies (DOJ, FTC, FCC, etc) that often have to sign off on a merger. But basically, that’s it. Any company really has to only worry about the EU and the US.

But that’s changing.

As we increase the number of actors on the world stage that approve the merger process or that can investigate/enforce anti-trust issues, we are going to create a regulatory log-jam.

China, Japan, Latin America, India, Russia, might soon get in the game — especially if one of the merged companies has some significant interest in their country.

There are some solutions on the horizon. The ICN (International Competition Network) has a world membership that looks to resolve these disputes. But it is a nascent organization that has yet to be tested.

To overcome these jurisdictional issues, we will have to create some sort of world arbitration system that regulates anti-trust concerns. And no country will be happy with the ultimate compromise and encroachment on sovereignty.

My guess is in the mid-term, this will significantly reduce the market cap of global companies that were once thought to be acquisition targets — because acquiring them will be very difficult.

I subscribe to four American news weekly magazines: Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, and The Week. This week, two of the four — Time and US News — both had the exact same picture on the cover (an American soldier in Fallujah). The Week featured the same picture on page 4 — its most prominent news page. Only Newsweek had the foresight not to publish the same photo.

The photo is an AP photo — so it is shareable by all outlets — but it shows the lack of market differentiation in the magazine news business.

During a Passover Seder, the youngest person at the table traditionally asks four questions about “why is this night different from all other nights?” These questions are asked and answered in an elaborate ceremony.

I have four different questions to ask. These are the questions I ask people when they tell me that they want to get involved in politics. They are:

A. Who is the Speaker of the House?
B. Who is the White House Chief of Staff?
C. Who is the Senate Minority Leader?
D. What state is Vice President Dick Cheney from?

My guess:
Only 1% of DC elites do NOT know the answer to all four questions.

My other guess:
Only 1% of business elites actually know the answers to all four.

Why?

These are inside the beltway trivia — so even people in DC don’t expect the outside world to know the answers to these questions. But they won’t take you seriously UNLESS you know them.

It is like trying to do business in Silicon Valley and not knowing what Moore’s Law is … Or not knowing who John Doerr is …

Or doing business on Wall Street and not knowing what a “put” or a “call” or an “option” is …

They can understand outsiders not knowing the terms … But they will be wary of doing business with you.

To affect policy change, you need to speak the DC lingo … And you need to brush up on your four questions (answers below).

(A: Dennis Hastert (R-IL), B: Andy Card, C: Tom Daschle (D-SD), D: Wyoming)

I have a cleaning lady. She comes once a month. In fact, she’ll be cleaning my place this week…

In anticipation of her arrival, I haven’t done any dishes for days. My cloths are polluting my bedroom like collateral damage…
My pots and pans still have three day-old remnants of scrambled eggs sticking to them…
Garbage cans and recycling bins are likely to volcanically erupt they are so overflowing…

And no, I’m not normally a slob. But maybe my cleaning lady assumes I am. Because I know she is coming, I ease up on my cleaning responsibilities. I don’t mind giving her more work — that’s what I hire her for, of course …

If she came once a week would I be a slob all the time?

Maybe.

Ok. Probably.

Why not?

Often times, the rest of the world sees America as its cleaning lady…

“We don’t need to worry about cleaning up after ourselves, we can rely on America.”

“We can appease dictators. Because America will clean up if our strategy of appeasement ultimately fails. Of course, we can go to bed feeling good about ourselves — because we stand for peace (even though our placating generally leads to war).”

“We can be Western Europe and decimate our military capability. We can turn our military to a welfare system where the average age is double that of the U.S. military and where personnel are 80% of our costs. Because we know we are never going to fight. We can count on America.”

“There’s a problem in Liberia … we want America to send troops. There’s a situation in Haiti … America — can you send some of your nice troops? We’ve got to keep American troops in Germany, in South Korea, in Bosnia, in Columbia …”

“We can propose impractical treaties in Kyoto because we know America will save us by taking an unpopular stand that we do not have to take in front of our people.”

Just like the anticipation of my cleaning lady, the world can act like a slob because it knows that it has the vacuum-wielding, Windex-toting, bleach-carrying, duster-brandishing, Tilex-sporting America ready to pounce when needed. Yes, it is America-on-demand. The USA is like the Wolf from Pulp Fiction — we’ll be there in 10 minutes to clean up your mess … even when you mistakenly blow your friend’s brains out …

I’m not implying that there is any other alternative … only pointing out America’s situation. America certainly shouldn’t shrink from helping to make the world a better place. We owe it to our fellow man to continue to act with a kind heart and be the strong parent (and not the one that’s always letting little Tommy replace dinner with two desserts).

And as the world of terror unfortunately gets bloodier, this “us against them” will fall more and more on America’s shoulders — with the rest of the world rooting for us and against us at the same time.

Rooting against us to appease the terrorists, the dictators, and the oil hoarders. And rooting for us because … well, because … if America retracts then they will have to actually step up and take responsibility.

And who wants to take responsibility?

Not me … I have the cleaning lady coming this week.

Wow — who knew?

Top doc backs picking your nose and eating it

he pointed out that if anyone was really worried about what their neighbour was thinking, they could still enjoy picking their nose in private if they still wanted to get the benefits it offered.

Sonia Arrision of the Pacific Research Institute pens another great article on Forcing Defense Innovation Through Budget Constraints

Check out: Howard Dean Is Pets.com :: AO

Imagine a well-hyped start-up that raises $41 million and receives plaudits from the media. The start-up is going to remake the industry and change the world (and maybe even change civilization). The company markets itself and gets more hype and one of the most famous investors buys in at the very top of the stock price …

and then … all of a sudden … everyone realizes that the emperor has no clothes …

It turns out the company spent almost all of its cash on ineffective television ads and is now unable to raise more money, out of cash, laying people off, and asking the rest of the staff to work for massively reduced pay.

Is this circa 2000? Is this pets.com?

No, it’s Howard Dean for President.

But the similarities to Pets.com (formerly listed on NASDAQ as IPET) are eerie.

Joe Trippi, dot-com maven and former CEO of Howard Dean for President, literally ripped a page from Pets.com’s history. The history of the Pets.com share price almost exactly matches the rise and fall of Howard Dean’s futures price as traded on the Iowa Electronic Markets (see http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_VS.cfm). If you shorted Dean in January 11, you’d be a rich man.

And like Pets.com, which was able to attract money from some of the most famous investors even at its peak, the Howard Dean for President campaign was able to attract and endorsement from Al Gore at the precise time of its peak. According to the Iowa Electronic Markets, Gore bought Dean (IOWA: DEAN) on December 9 at 36 – and as of Feb 3, Dean was trading at only 5 – meaning DEAN lost 86% of its value in less than two months. Can you say dot-bomb?

John Kerry, by contrast, is nothing like a dot-com. He’s more like a traditionally boring, slow-moving conglomerate – like Heinz (NYSE: HNZ) for instance. He’s steady and dependable – but ultimately will not resonate with the growing Hispanic market which prefers salsa over ketchup.

Feedback Loops

Howard Dean and John Kerry are both products of a massive feedback loop. Basically, they are fads. Like any stock, they have inherent value. But much of the value of a stock lies in its perceived value. Inherently, Pets.com was never worth anything under any measurement – but at certain points of the company’s life it was worth a heck of a lot because investors thought other people would buy it (in the end, of course, it turned out to be a house of cards).

The number one reason people give for voting for John Kerry is “electability.” Voters think he’s more likely to beat President Bush in November than the other Democratic contenders. So basically, the number one reason people like Kerry is not because they like his ideas, agree with his proposals, or even because they think he’s cute — but it because they think other people will vote for Kerry. The argument, of course, is very circular.

And the same thing happened to Dean. He is just another fad (he’s not John McCain, he’s actually Ross Perot). People liked him because he reached a tipping point – kind of like why everyone orders a “Red Bull and vodka” and no one orders “Mountain Dew and whisky.” Frankly, I’m sticking with my beer, chips, and salsa.