Rating Yelp as a Bellwether of the Social Media Tech Boom

Yelp’s [NYSE:YELP] successful IPO this past Friday was a modern validation of an age-old economic precept.  People migrate to better and cheaper ways to do things they like to do.  People like shopping and going to restaurants.  And technology drives those trends.  Social media is the new Mega Mall, the most effective way for retail…

Wow, Even Tom Friedman Wants to Drill Baby Drill?

Can we talk about oil?  Tom Friedman now evinces excitement about his discovery of the emergence of America as “a major oil and gas producer.”  (See his Sunday New York Times column.)  No kidding.  He was, he says, tantalized by a tongue-in-cheek idea; the U.S. could join OPEC. Some folks are late to the party. …

The Coming Tech-led Boom

WALL STREET JOURNAL In January 1912, the United States emerged from a two-year recession. Nineteen more followed—along with a century of phenomenal economic growth. Americans in real terms are 700% wealthier today. In hindsight it seems obvious that emerging technologies circa 1912—electrification, telephony, the dawn of the automobile age, the invention of stainless steel and…