Reduce spending? No, silly, this is government!

What will be the largest sector of growth for 2009? Government spending, perchance? Could be. It seems New York faces a budget deficit. Rather than doing what private industry must do, they increase their spending (albeit by a mere 1.1%) and finance the machine with tax increases. (What did we expect?)

Once the government takes active roles in, say, people's health--they are then obliged to dictate what will and will not be deemed healthy. Coercion from above.

The idea is to discourage consumption of high-caloric beverages — health officials estimate a 5 percent drop — and to raise $404 million in fiscal year 2009-2010 toward the state's multibillion dollar budget gap. Paterson said the proposal would raise $539 million in 2010-2011.

Where do I opt out? (Colorado, I hope.)

Tangled webs woven

I don't quite know what to think of this. But the connections made between various groups and nations is interestingly spooky.

Terror in Mumbai, MI6, CIA, RAW, U.S. Navy SEALs, Abdullah Azzam. Interesting.

Time for a little humility?

I found this to be quite the interesting article, regarding Chinese banks and their stake of the U.S. debt. When taking an Asian history class at ASU, we read one of this author's books regarding Japan (Looking at the Sun). Fallows seems to know what he's talking about. I imagine Gao Xiqing, president of the China Investment Corporation, also knows what he's talking about.

Shop rights bites Bratz

Wow, an epic case regarding shop rights. We students were warned about this issue way back in ASU's College of Design. A toy designer at Mattel apparently created the concept for the successful Bratz dolls line while still working for Mattel. Apparently that violated a contract of some sort. By the article at Bloomberg, I couldn't gather whether this was from use of on-the-job time or a moonlighting project banned by non-compete agreements. I wouldn't be surprised if Carter Bryant (the Bratz designer) pitched the Bratz concept to executives while at Mattel--only to be shot down. Bad call, eh?

The success of the Bratz line really chewed into Mattel's Barbie profits, so we can clearly see why Mattel was upset. But I wonder what everyone has learned from all this. The stodgy stance by Mattel with their Barbie line is clearly lacking in appeal to this younger generation--an appeal that the Bratz line met directly and quickly. The bottom line is that Mattel never managed to compete with this new appeal. What will they do now? Are the Bratz to be shelved? Will we see some of their features migrate to the Barbie dolls--a sort of pathetic compromize between winner (Bratz) and loser (Barbie)? Sure, Mattel won the lawsuit, but that's a mere battle in the war. If they choose to fail by ignoring the success of the Bratz line, someone else will create a knock-off Bratz line and Mattel will find themselves in the same position, once again. What's to hinder Carter Bryant from using exactly that strategy? Fine, don't use the Bratz name or any names of the dolls, but this market has already been established, and could soon experience a vacuum, depending on what Mattel chooses to do now.

It will be interesting to see how Mattel handles this. Yes, I'm a bit jaded. As I see all the time, the world is not necessarily one in which the large eat the small, but in which the fast eat the slow. Why is corporate America bent on failing at every opportunity? They are not attacked by the super-large, but by the super-agile. And hence, I eat my lunch.