Stock Options and Common Sense

By Roland Piquepaille

Accounting is not my cup of tea, but articles written by such a rich man don't come everyday.

You'll find here what Warren Buffett is saying about stock options, compensation, expenses and company earnings. Considering he's worth more than 20 billion dollars, I suppose his opinion deserves some attention.

Source: Warren Buffett, for The Washington Post, Apr. 9, 2002

Corporate Angst

This is a great -- and long -- story about an IT organization which became very dysfunctional: managing partners, vice-presidents, CIO, employees, all of them were involved in a "virtual nervous breakdown."

So this company invited a shrink. I'm sorry, an "organizational psychologist." Two years later, the IT team is delivering more with less money and less people.

Source: Stephanie Overby, CIO Magazine, Apr. 1, 2002 Issue

Le site Internet du Monde propose une édition payante

If you're fluent in french, you can get some additional services from Le Monde. For a Desk updated several times a day and some image libraries often refreshed, it will cost you 5 euros per month.

Le Monde is taking an unusual route. The online version of the Wall Street Journal has been asking for a yearly payment almost from the start. Many other newspapers, including the New York Times or Le Monde itself, have been free except for access to their archives.

This time, Le Monde is betting on a new product -- and you cannot even get a free trial. I'm not sure if it will work fine for them.

Source: Le Monde daté du 16 avril 2002 (in french)


Famous quotes containing the words common sense, stock, common and/or sense:

    “There ought to be an absolute dictatorship ... a dictatorship of painters ... a dictatorship of one painter ... to suppress all those who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all, let’s have a revolution against that!”
    —Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

    “I’d rather I were dead and gone,
    And my body laid in grave,
    Ere a rusty stock o coal-black smith
    My maidenhead should have.”
    —Unknown. The Twa Magicians (l. 17–20)

    “... there is nothing more irritating to a feminist than the average “Woman’s Page” of a newspaper, with its out-dated assumption that all women have a common trade interest in the household arts, and a common leisure interest in clothes and the doings of “high society.” Women’s interests to-day are as wide as the world.”
    —Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)

    “Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are “prefabricated” in the sense that we don’t coin new ones every time we speak.”
    —David Lodge (b. 1935)