The Merc reported (registration required) that circulation dropped 1.9% in the past year, but wait the silver lining – Its not as bad as the other guys. Yes, I said the same – whatever.

“As of Sept. 30, the
Mercury News beat the national average with a daily circulation of
224,199, down 1.9 percent from a year ago. About 1.1 million people
read the paper every week, along with about a million unique users
online, according to a new report.

For the same period, 507
daily newspapers reported a 4.6 percent average drop in daily
circulation, to 38.17 million, down from 40.02 million a year ago.”

“The Bay Area News Group —
which operates the Mercury News and Contra Costa Times — reported
711,309 in daily circulation, down 6.3 percent from the previous year.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s daily circulation dropped 7 percent, to
339,430; on Sundays, it dropped 7.4 percent, to 398,116.”

Great graphic from CNNFN on who pays what portion of the federal and local taxes across all income categories. File it under “I love data of all sorts” and their visualization.

Flush with cash and a booming 8% YoY growth-based economy, the festival of lights or Diwali has changed dramatically from the years I was a kid. The basics of celebration remain, but depending on who you speak to its either muted or redefined. So, how has it changed:

1. Fireworks: when we were kids “loudest” was a proud badge we had to own in our neighborhood. Everyone competed for the “bombs” that shattered even a small piece of glass. It was not the politically correct days. The runner up had to settle for the “longest” prize. Small, but bright dazzling displays were for “kids”.

These days every celebrity, kids on the street are going for the “clean, green” Diwali. Reduce noise pollution, smoke, and accidents that cause injuries and in some cases death. Its for the better, but the festivities are muted no doubt.

2. Sweets: Next to fireworks more money is spent on boxes of sweets that are both the norm of corporate and family gifting. Not any more. I mostly miss the very nicely decorated “regular sweets” like Cashew
cake, Almond cake that were “colored” and “dressed up” for the
occasion.

Thanks to increasing awareness of the ills of obesity, the corporate norm is changed to dried fruits & nuts – cashews, almonds, and the like. Again, this is another trend that’s for the better, is the philosophical view I take.

3. Clothes. The 3rd leg in the Diwali spend. New clothes were the norm. Most times in India, you’d get only 3 unique opportunities to get new clothes each year – your birthday, Diwali and back-to-school (which was mostly a uniform, so there). The new clothes I got at Diwali were proudly worn on weekends each time we went visiting friends and family. Very treasured, we’d spend an entire month selecting, re-selecting, getting them tailored and finally trying them out several times before they “fit” just right.

The new trend to buy clothes during a “40% off sale” makes buying new clothes for Diwali a quaint traditional experience. I do see many folks still shopping before the Diwali season, but the “Diwali sale” has been replaced by the “Year round sale”. This trend is clearly a borrowed one, so I am on the fence on this.

4. The rituals: Getting up in the morning at 4 am, followed by a hot shower and distribution of sweets to everyone near your home was a very traditional experience. In fact we’d fight over who got up earlier “I got up at 345, atleast 15 min before you” or “I am not going to sleep all night so I can get the fireworks started earlier”.

The new norm is “sleep in”, spend a little time with the family, get some breakfast and get some rest from the daily commute. I dont get this trend, but hey its changed so you gotta keep up with the times.

5. Decorating your home: It was the Indian equivalent of “spring cleaning”. You’d buy new furniture, clean the home (most cases repaint it), throw away old books, magazines (or actually recycle them) and make way for one new piece of furniture every year. Just a month before Diwali the hectic pace of activity would be overwhelming. My mom would actually get no time for anything else since she was busy getting everything “ready for Diwali”.

This has changed in a more subtle way – you can see the hesitation this year more profoundly with the question marks around the economy. New purchases are being put off, corporate gifting has taken a hit and the “home cleaning” bit has waned off.

So if you are in America, and want to relate to this, think of a Christmas without gifts, without the trip back home to meet friends and family, no Christmas tree to decorate and no lights to put up. Its probably for the better – fewer Christmas trees get felled, we reduce our “consumption” and reduce our usage of gasoline (since we dont drive to meet friends, family), but it would be very different wont it?

If you celebrate Diwali, a very happy & safe Diwali to you. Look around, there are a lot more things that have changed with Diwali than when you were a kid. What’s the biggest change you see?

Just realized this is a 2007 graph. Here’s a 2008 layoff picture.

The Financial services industry employs about 867,400 people (directly) in the US. This is according to SIFMA (securities industry association).

From the beginning of the credit crisis (March 2007) starting with smaller layoffs and then Countrywide and Citi, there have been a total of 111,201 layoffs or 12%.

Challenger now predicts job losses to hit about 251,000 workers or 28%.

Of the 111,201 jobs lost, only 7800 or 7% of displaced have landed new jobs.

So where to look for jobs?

1. Wealth management and retirement services – businesses with long time
horizons – are strong possibilities, as are private equity firms

2. Back in the ’80s, Wall Street had a lot of smallish specialist firms like boutique broker-traders.

3. Uncle Sam may be hiring, too. (See Chart above).

4. The consulting business is eager to take on investment banker. (See Chart above)

5. Your best bet, though, might be to look beyond U.S. borders. “We’re
seeing tremendous demand for banking and finance expertise in Dubai,
and also in every Asian country except Japan.”

Trust the super optimistic Silicon Valley folks to talk about Web 3.0 as the next big thing, even before Web 2.0 is dead. Oh well, expect more cliches and also many companies changing their positioning to be “relevant advertising” ready. Color me skeptic.

The Way of the Future: Semantic Advertising

Successful advertising means showing the right product to the right
person at the right time. The semantic Web puts data into semantic
formats on the fly, and targets ads based on the meaning of data with a
high degree of accuracy.

The sub $1100 market for laptop is larger than the over $1100, which from the graphic below is what Apple’s going after with their new product announcement.

I can only think of the Classmates, OLPC and NComputing under the $200 range, which is going to be the leader going forward in terms of numbers.

Thanks to Larry for the graphic.

Why not have some fun while you’re at it.

1. Home Mortgage: Negotiate with your mortgage lender, they will definitely be more willing to listen now if you have been paying on time. The key is to prepare in advance. Go to BankRate and look up the best possible rates for your size of loan now. Renegotiate your loan with no points, no closing costs and nothing added to your new loan.

2. Home Insurance. Talk to your broker. Since the value of your home has fallen about 30-40% (most likely), you can shop around for a lower rate.

3. Food: Reconsider your coffee in the morning at Starbucks and look at new ways to spice up your home made coffee.

4. Food: Brown bag your lunch and setup a meeting every day with another coworker and eat out in the sun.

5. Reduce watering your lawn (both # of days and amount of time) to save on your water bill.

6. Cut your cable bill: With YouTube offering full length CBS, Hulu doing the same for NBC and the Daily Show already online, you can effectively eliminate your Cable or Digital cable.

7. Carpool or take the muni – no brainer. If you must drive, use the cheapest gasoline – its not that much different, regadless of what the Oil and car companies tell you.

8. Cut your cell phone plan to the minimum and make most calls with friends on Skype.

9. Eliminate your land line phone and along with it, voice mail or other services that your phone company has been charging for but you never use.

10. Shop around for lowest plan on Internet. Its 14.99 at Sunnyvale for the cheapest plan. If you have a broadband connection that offers metered access, check your usage and tier down to the lowest plan.

11. Consider home-made gifts for toddlers and kids if you have to attend a lot of parties for other kids.

12. Go Bald – its less expensive on shampoo, uses less water during bathing and you save time.

13. Replace your old car with a new scooter or trade in your SUV for a bike.

14. Try vacationing at your backyard.

15. Drain your swimming pool of the water, and use it as a basketball or tennis court.

If politicians were trains.

Actually my son would take offense to Sarah Palin being compared to Thomas the tank engine. But hey.

I have read close to about 1200+ articles, blog posts, news stories and
analysis on the mortgage meltdown. I think these are the best set of
slides you will get to understand the root of the problem. It does not
give any recommendations, but is a very objective view of the numbers
behind the mess.

Read about it.

Money quote
“The proposal would yield a net saving of $1 trillion by 2030 and slash
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 48 percent, according to Google, which
said it had been busy “crunching the numbers.”