Saturday, November 1, 2003

High Tech Energy Crisis. According to the San Jose Mercury News, a recent survey by Deloitte & Touche demonstrates that increased scrutiny of option issuance has resulted in a notable decrease in option use by tech companies. 73% of the public companies surveyed said that they have reduced or will reduce the number of options they issue in the coming 12 months. And two thirds anticipate overhauling their compensation plans if the accounting rules require the expensing of options. To my mind, those are devastating numbers. Stock options are the fuel upon which tech companies are propelled. They give everyone in a company the incentive to strive to make the most of that company. If those incentives are dismantled, I fear that startups will no longer achieve the same velocity that has historically been the case in the United States. And that is not an economic advantage this country can afford to lose. [VentureBlog] 7:18:25 PM

The Fiscal Problem of the 21st Century. Charles Jones, Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, writes about the fiscal challenges ahead. The fiscal problem of the 21st century, then, is this: Under current policies, the fraction of resources society devotes to health care appears likely to rise substantially over the next 50 years. Reasonable projections suggest that spending on Medicare and Medicaid as a percentage of GDP may well rise from 3.4% in 2000 to nearly 15% by 2075. [Scott Loftesness] 2:03:25 PM

© Copyright 2006 Russ Savage. Last update: 5/8/06; 9:00:19 PM.