The Consulting Biz: Trafficking in Intel

The year before [Mitt] Romney joined [Boston Consulting Group], William Bain, one of the company’s stars, had left to start his own firm, Bain & Company, which he promised would be a radical new consulting business. If B.C.G. was like an ivory tower, Bain was a trade school. The tradition best exemplified by McKinsey, one of the oldest firms, had consultants acting like pollinating bees, moving valuable information from one company to another, even within the same industry. Much of what you paid for as a C.E.O. was the expertise that McKinsey had lifted from your rivals. (Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker).

Mattel's Inconvenient Truth

“It’s like a bank robber apologizing to his accomplice instead of to the person who was robbed,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said in an interview. “They’re playing politics in China rather than doing what matters.” (The NYT in an article about Mattel seemingly apologizing about accusation its toys manufactured in China were contaminated by lead paint).

Market Jitters

"It's a very, very nervous market. Trying to predict a one-day movement is a bit like trying to forecast a shoal of fish -- where one goes, everyone will go. But the moves are essentially random on days when there's very little news to go on," said Nick Parsons, chief market strategist at nabCapital. (Reuters).

The End of 'Take My Money, Please!'

It is, in a way, the Henny Youngman Economy. Lenders pleaded: "Take my money ... please!" In recent months, harbingers of the end of the credit bubble have been popping up like shoots of yellow forsythia. (Daniel Gross writing in slate.com).

One Prognosis for The Wall St. Journal

This news is like hearing from an old friend that he has a debilitating, fatal disease. You know that things will continue as they are for awhile, but you also know that the future looks bleak. (johnsmcdaniel posting on Wall Street Journal forum about the Murdoch deal).

Debating a New Captain for the WSJ Ship

No outside board can tame any owner, a former Sunday Times investigative reporter, Bruce Page, told me. “Newspapers are like ships,” he said. “They are real-time systems. You must make your decisions. It is better to have bad decisions rather than no decisions. You can’t have the captain of the ship appointed by people onshore, and fire him when he comes back to shore.” (Ken Auletta in The New Yorker about the prospective sale of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch).

And ...

In most newsrooms, John Carroll said, “there are some leaders, but the majority are followers. The majority lines up like iron filings to a magnet.”

About Those Dancing LowerMyBills.com Banners

"The ads are like a Monty Python sketch," said Dev Ravindran, a software developer from Jersey City who created a blog to track and humorously critique the ads. "Some of them are so out of the blue they make no sense." (Article in today's New York Times).

Woozy From a Big Bucks Cocktail

The world, it seems, has become intoxicated by the steady flow of what my fellow financial writers call "liquidity." Money flows freely, like the vodka from Dennis Kozlowski's infamous ice-hewn David, filling every dark and desolate crevice of the financial world. (Alan Murray writing in the newly skinny Wall Street Journal).

Keeping It Covered at The Washington Post Co.

“He’s like a stripper who won’t take his clothes off and the audience still loves it,” said Jack Shafer, press critic for Slate, which is now owned by the Washington Post Company. (Column by David Carr in The New York Times about Donald E. Graham, CEO of The Washington Post Co., who is no fan dancer for Wall Street analysts.)