patrick.net

"Forbes has gotten really thin lately. That magazine used to be as thick as a phone book prior to the dotcom bust. Went downhill from there."

So, you're saying Forbes was *slightly* more diversified than Red Herring...!

You can look at parts of the Economist online. Or at the library or benevolent employer's, I suppose ; )

Have you seen 'Outfoxed'? Well worth a look. Rupert Murdoch (News Ltd) is an Aussie who inherited one smallish regional paper, and now owns 175 newspapers worldwide, many American TV and radio stations, all of Fox operations, Harper Collins and a few sundry other things. Because of his large influential media holdings, politicians more or less answer to him in fear. Some commentators say he really makes or breaks govts. He became an American citizen in order to buy the TV and radio stations, and suddenly became more republican than republicans. Owns many significant newspapers in Oz, UK and US.

it's interesting how the accumulation of capital allows a shrewd operator to accumulate even more capital. note that another aussie, frank lowy, 'owns' or is chairman of all the westfield shopping malls, many of them in CA... went from owning one delicatessen in sydney to a $42 bn empire...

just look at the wikipedia entries for 'rupert murdoch' and 'frank lowy'...

I still do not understand how the value of a house can go up by 75K after you do an upgrade with new appliances that cost 15K. You redo the bathroom with 10K in hardware and 5K in labor but the value of the house is now 75K more. Thats ridiculous. The value of the house just went up 15K. Can someone explain this logic to me. : )

slightly dead thread, but when the housing market was booming, it was hard to disentangle the value added by renos from the boom effect, so people started saying it was the renos that did it. there is possibly a slight psychological effect to selling a nice renovated house to someone over an unrenovated one, particularly when people aren't handy or don't know the cost of a reno, or can't be bothered attempting it themselves. now that the market is turning in Oz, the bureau of stats is finding that much less is being spent on renos, because speculators doing a 'quick fix' for resale aren't sure they are going to get their money back as the market cools...