Search Results for: palo alto

Streetwise

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University Avenue in Palo Alto sparkles at night with trees illuminated with carefully-placed lights by the thousands. The street has been around as long as the town, and in the year 2017, it is a veritable Rodeo Drive, lined with expensive retail stores, wealthy citizens, and dreams of avarice. You hardly ever see anyone wearing business clothes here – – anyone so doing would be rightly perceived as an out-of-town rube – – but it is on this street that companies such as Google and Paypal got their start and the recipients of technology riches shop, eat, and gather.

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Civil Servants

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I really should know better by now, but I still get amazed when I see the obscene salaries that bureaucrats and civic employees get. I can’t imagine anyone less motivated, industrious, or clever than a government employee, and yet thanks to their unions, they get salaries that far exceed the average compensation at Goldman Sachs (or Apple or Google, for that matter). The truth value of these employees is, I am highly confident, about 66% less than they are paid.

There’s a crummy little town near Palo Alto called Redwood City – – it’s a real shithole, except for a few good taco joints – – that spends over $100 million for its government. This is a “city” of 82,000 people, and one glance will show you the largesse that they’ve granted themselves…..

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Gappers Gonna Gap

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Just a quick post to point out that stocks that tend to have huge surprise gaps in the past tend to do so in the future. An organization like lululemon can’t seem to avoid shocking analysts in both directions. Here in Palo Alto, their main problem is the same group of obese women keep strolling in and stealing thousands of dollars worth of their merchandise before their open-minded security guard dares to challenge them. Anyway.

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