IIRC, after 911, buses carrying seniors to see Broadway plays where pulled over after cross a bridge to get into Manhattan. Officially, the policy never said why, but it was implied that radiation used in medical procedures were to blame. So, I don’t think a single person would kick out enough radiation, but a whole group could.

Network effect. It your counter-parties use BBM and not Skype, you use BBM and not Skype. (Until there is a critical mass on Skype, and then the networking effect goes into reverse.)

It’s not “Tablets” taking over, it is the Thin Client model that is taking over. High internet speeds make this possible but tablets make it portable.

Could you say again what you want? I am not following you.

For context, most of the world uses a “source” standard of income. If you earned X dollars in country Y you pay Country Y’s tax on those X dollars. America (and a few other small countries) uses a domicile test – If you are a American corporation you will pay American taxes on that income no matter where it was earned. (This at times has led to a tax rate over 100% - so America put in a lot of fudges, exemptions, etc. which makes our tax code very inefficient.)

So, to you – should small companies (under X people) pay corporate tax and not big ones? Why would they move to America if they still had to pay profit on their overseas operations? (I am assuming that if a company were operating oversea that their market would remain there while they were physically here?)

(FYI, I am all for dropping the corporate tax rate to near zero – assuming is is coupled with the closer of some loopholes. And, I think part of America’s future is being an international hub, where bright people from around the world come and mix to create new things – so nix the non-citizen part – welcome almost everybody.)

It partly about addressing a power imbalance, it is partly setting up norms so it is easier to set up the contracts but even then there can be some interesting court cases.

Normally what happens is that you have a long established franchise and the parent company decides to sack them. The will franchise operations just outside the exclusive zone in the contract – or try selling the product via mail order or the internet. Most contracts state that the franchise must keep up to certain standards, so the parent company starts reviewing every dotted i and crossed t. Or they will crank up the cost of goods sold to the franchise which they have to buy – such as logoed cups and such. Or maybe you have a franchise which is being run by a grandson and is doing the bare minimum (or less), ridding on the parent's coattails.

NASCAR has a policy of keeping their contracts to under a page – if partner’s can't trust each other and need massive contracts, why bother? I don't think we could extend that to everybody, but it is an important factor to remember, good will and trust are just as important as a good contract.

I thought you were talking about Tesla in general - where they do have showrooms (dozens) and a sales force - not about N.C. specifically.

All states, as far as I know, have a host of franchise and bad faith laws that would limit a company from coming in a competing with its own franchises, which I think is the important point.

So, for example, Ford could not go into NC and compete with their indie franchises – that would be unfair to the franchises who had spent all of that time and effort to build up Ford’s brand and market. All major car companies operate this way.

Until Tesla, who has no franchises and want none – tipping over the old apple cart if you know what I mean – and the current powers that be don’t like apple carts to be tipped over.

Heck, I am fine with Tesla not having a franchise system – just explaining how things are.

I am also o.k. with legislation that redresses the balance of power in theory – but it does tend to entrench the existing powers against upstarts – and I do think system is skewed towards the auto dealer’s today.

They have showrooms so people can take a look and have a test drive. I assume they would also help you fill out the paperwork to buy one. (Except for Texas, according to the article.) I would also assume they have some type of repair shop – based on the assumption that the comer garage does not know how to work on these cars yet.

So, yes, they have overhead costs. Probably a lot lower than the majors, but still.

Here’s a link to a good story.http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes

It auto makers were being launched today we might see something different, but you have 80 years’ worth of entrenched law that needs to be changed.

The short answer is politics. Back when cars were first being introduced, there was a big power difference between the auto makers and the auto dealers. Auto makers would bully, threaten, and coheres the small business owners, so they struck back, and wrote state laws that tipped the power balance back to the auto dealers.

Auto dealers are a lot like Real Estate agents, small family owned companies deeply embedded in the community and thus in politics. To get the laws changed you are going to need to convince the entrenched power that be to give up their power.

There is a big differance between Microsoft and Appl.e

Microsoft gave deadlines on when things would ship sometimes vauge - but they would annouce what they where doing.

Apple will not even say that it has a working product until launch.

IIRC, California passed the mark for spending more on prison then post-secondary education about 2 years ago – so I don’t think it’s true for America as a whole – but it is still a sad fact.

No, it's two different groups at the same company.

You have the terminal side, whose job is to generate research for portfolio managers.

You have the news side, whose job is to generate research / journalism for the general public.

There is overlap between the two – they both do research - and, as the article points out, this can cause a huge conflict of interest. If portfolio manager's don't expect Bloomberg to keep their information confidential they would drop the terminal service (at least 20k a year for a striped down terminal) like a hot potato.

This surprises me.

The Bloomberg terminal can be used as a trading platform and used to analyze your portfolio (in particular, for big money managers) – so it has a lot of material non-public information. The contracts that you sign with Bloomberg covers that non-public information will not be used by Bloomberg.

I wonder exactly Bloomberg reporters had. From the article it sound like the only info they had was who had a terminal and when the last time they logged on – but I wonder if it was more?

It's only a direct hit to the taxpayers if the bank fails. If not, it would be come combination of lower profits and thus lower dividends to the shareholders, or higher fees to the customer.