Andy Kessler

NAZDOG and the MOMOs

This post is part of Om Malik’s bubble-a-thon.

In late October of 1987, a week or so after the Crash, there was this great cartoon I read in the USA Today (I must have been staying at a Marriott!). Two well dressed older gentlemen were walking and one said to the other, “I know it’s only a paper loss, but I miss it anyway.”

That seems to be the prevailing opinion about the NASDAQ 5000 five years ago today. A couple of trillion in losses on paper, and yeah, we kinda miss it. But has anything really changed since then? Not really.

WSJ: Sirius Business

What do you call a media company with a million subscribers and $500 million in annual losses? A great start. Sirius Satellite Radio has set Wall Street on fire, commanding a $7.4 billion value by following in the greasy path set out long ago by the cable industry, grow first and ask questions later. But now comes the hard part for former Viacom President and now Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin – making this thing actually work. Competitor XM Satellite Radio is worth slightly less yet has 3.2 million subscribers - this isn’t going to be easy. Here is my seven step plan to media moguldom, the HBO Plus plan – just change the descriptions for any other media.

WSJ: DisneyWar book review

On my last trip to Disneyland, I found myself growing tired of hearing my sons whine about waiting in lines. So I took off running at 8 a.m. one day, hoping to grab FastPasses for Indiana Jones Adventure. Right around the Tiki Room, I was hip-checked by a guy wearing a T-shirt that read: “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead.” I pressed on manfully and passed him at Jungle Cruise, but this episode from the Darwinian struggle sort of burst my notion of “a magic kingdom where life is a fairy tale and dreams really do come true.”