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Afternoon musings
There's no single thing grabbing my attention this afternoon. But there are some items I thought you might like to take a look at:
Welcome back, Delphi (Detroit News) After almost four years, Delphi is emerging from bankruptcy, and Delphi's CEO is talking:
Delphi's Miller on bankruptcy (WSJ blog)
Miller calls bankruptcy a "clumsy tool" that's "extremely" costly. "We spent over $100 million a year for professional fees," he said. "Nothing could have allowed us to get it done any quicker. The external environment kept changing. Our labor unions didn't want to deal with this expeditiously."
Miller, who also oversaw the restructuring of parts supplier Federal-Mogul, suggests that bankruptcy judges should have more authority to "do things in the best interest of the enterprise value of the company."
The sad emptiness at Gourmet magazine (Gawker)
The tipster who sent these pictures says, "By 1pm it is completely empty. Not a soul left on this side of the 5th floor. Security guards are standing by the elevator as the last of them trickle out. One woman was rushing to process one last invoice. Amazing how fast they cleared this place out."
Survey says: more than half of companies block all access to social media (Mashable)
Paul Krugman answers reader questions on the economy (New York Times)
The myth of the man-cession (Reuters)
Rush seeks to buy a piece of the 0-4 St. Louis Rams (NPR) Yes, as in Limbaugh.
From PBS's Nightly Business Report, the dollar is, literally, a joke:
I agree with Mr. Miller about bankruptcy being costly. I was with a company that filed for bankruptcy in July of 2008. Substantial professional fees went to no fewer than 3 different groups, and all were about as inefficient as possible. One of the groups brought in two consultants at $400/hr to spend eight weeks redoing a forecast model that ended up looking exactly like the already working forecast model. There were massive conflicts of interest all over the place as well.
