Carnival of the Capitalists

Welcome to the January 10, 2005 edition of the Carnival of Capitalists! Sit back in your chair at work or home. Pour yourself some coffee in your favorite mug and enjoy these twenty-six posts. There is sure to be something for everyone!
Tsunami Related

Brian Gongol from Gongol.com posts on how he thinks it makes sense to send money to disaster-relief efforts. But that doesn't make them bulletproof. The good and the bad of humanitarian-relief campaigns examined side-by-side. Read his interesting examination here.
Evelyn Rodriguez, from Crossroads Dispatches, in her post ponders the fear and reluctance of allowing poignant feelings to wash over us. The only other option is burying tense emotions which typically tends to escalate into a worsening situation.

Mike Pechar over at Interested-Participant has a post about allocating pledged relief for disasters.
Entrepreneurship/ Small Business

Michael D. Pollock from the Small Business Branding Blog thinks it's time for us, as small business owners, to think differently about marketing. Or maybe time to stop thinking about marketing entirely. Read his Small Business Branding Manifesto.

Ankesh Kothari from the BizTactics.com blog posts about the successful and low cost campaign Penguin launched to persuade young men to read more books (and how you can use their idea to penetrate untapped markets)
Dr Cornwall at The Entrepreneurial Mind examines the role of luck in success. "It is good to be smart. It is better to be lucky. But, it is critical to know the difference." Read his post here.

Finance/ Economics
David Foster from Photon Courier poses the question…Knowing what you know now, you go back in time to 1950 with $1,000 to invest. Do you invest in Standard Oil of New Jersey or IBM? Consider this….
Timothy Sandefur from Freespace posts an entry on how people can help in the fight for economic liberty.
Byrne at Byrne’s Marketview posts a proposal that we force analysts to buy the stocks they recommend, to put them on the same side of the trade as those they advise. The title of the post is Confluence of Interest
Joshua Sharf from View From a Height posts that Index fund investing is based on both CAPM and Efficient Market Theory. Excessive investing in index funds, though, threatens to make markets more volatile and less efficient.
Martin Lindeskog from the EGO blog comments on the Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Foundation / Wall Street Journal. He questions on why America has dropped several places since last time.
Tim Worstall over at his self titled blog, claims in his post that markets may or may not be rational but that's not the important point. They are less irrational than any other method we know of…

Government/Politics
CB from Carpe Bonum responds to a Kevin Drum post, this post is a discussion of the benefit levels and general merits of a proposed Social Security privatization plan. CB’s response here.
Steve from Deinonychus Antirrhopus provides what he sees as the argument for reforming Social Security.
Cary Duke from The Comp Expert blog posts that employers are under attack in the Workers Comp system. Who is there advocate? Find out here.
E-Commerce/ Technology
David Jackson over at the The Internet Stock Blog looks at the impact of blogs and RSS on Yahoo!. Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker suggests that RSS will boost Yahoo!'s business, but this piece argues that niche Web sites will takereaders and advertising revenue from aggregators like Yahoo!. Read the rest of this interesting post here.
Yvonne DiVita over at the Lip-sticking blog, reports on e-tailing and how women rule online shopping.
Harish Keshwani from the BusinessWorks Inc blog posts that love it or hate it, RFID is here to stay. So sit back and read about RFID System Components and how they work together.
Frank Scavo at the Enterprise System Spectator has some good news for software buyers: prices for business software may finally begin to fall in the coming years. Read the good news here!

Book Review
Rob of Business Pundit fame posts a book review of Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" at the 800CEORead Blog. From the looks of the review, I will be picking up a copy myself!
Blogging
Wayne Hurlbert at the Blog Business World posts about the common misconception among non-bloggers about blogging….CELEBERITY
Rosa Say at her blog Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching posts How this coach (me) reads a blog where she discusses how she has found a wealth of knowledge in blogs.
Misc
David Masten from Catallarchy writes about how the socialist economiccalculation problem might apply to private firms. Click Here.
Warren Meyer over at the Coyote Blog posts about he thinks that many government actions can be explained by distrust of individual decision-making. Moreover, he discusses nannies, moralists, technocrats, and progressives and show how in each case, distrust of the individual are leading them to statism. See his post here.
Barry Ritholtz over at The Big Picture discusses US vs Great Britain’s CD Sales for 2004. He proposes three factors that may be contributing to
Great Britain’s growth in CD sales and the US’s stagnation.
Joe Kristan from Roth & Company Tax Update blog posts about the benefits of starting your tax planning at year-start, not year-end.
Ironman from Political Calculations has the world's first blog-based calculation tool for finding out what your post-IRS paycheck will look like in 2005.
That’s it! The Carnival is over for this week but stay tuned to for next week’s edition. It has been a pleasure.