Working In A Foreign Country

If you have an adventuresome spirit, you might want to check this out:

Guides to working abroad in the database Business Source Complete

1) Hit country reports (kinda on the right side)
2) Choose your country
3) Career guides will be mixed in your results.

Once you get past some boilerplate text in the guides, there's some good specific information here.

Music Industry Books

Hey, here's some stuff about the business side of music.

The books can be found under music trade and sound recording industry.

Oh yes, there's music marketing.

Be sure to read this sobering article from The Root about the artist's portion of sales....

Tracking the Most Popular Viral Ads (and More)

Here's something interesting - a website that tracks the most popular viral ads, movie trailers, and webisodes....

Also interesting: a big viral hit does not necessarily translate into bigger sales....

Update: Despite a few naysayers, it appears that Old Spice sales (one of the most popular viral ads) have spiked recently. Of course, it's correlation not causation, but highly likely to be related to the campaign's popularity.

Still, popular ad campaigns don't always increase sales.

Book Review: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

Here's an argument for individual rights, openness and equality before the law:

Hernando de Soto: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

De Soto is a Peruvian economist that tackles one of the oldest mysteries: how can societies unlock their human potential? The answer, as he argues, lies in individual rights and a predictable, open legal system. Which the third world poor lack.

But how do you establish such a thing? De Soto's central idea is that the poor need titles for their often informally owned land and property. If you have legal title, you can get loans, and grow economically with that capital. But obtaining titles to some of these holdings would be fraught with controversy and entanglement....

This book is more of a thought piece and critics have noted De Soto's lack of empirical data in his work. But it's an interesting idea and ideas have to start somewhere.

Examples of Texas Law Forms and Find a Texas Law

We've got two books in the reference section that will help with Texas laws.... There's Texas Transaction Guide, which contains sample forms of contracts, custody, etc... and a few restatements of law.

Then there's Texas Law Finder. This book refers you to the laws you'll need given your problem.

Then you can check the actual Texas Code to read the law.

I would also suggest Lexis Nexis to find the actual text of the law.....

Outsourcing Statistics

Looking for outsourcing statistics? The official data is located at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and called Extended Mass Layoffs Associated with Domestic and Overseas Relocations

Or rather, it used to be. The above link is from 2004. Its passing as a data collection point was duly noted by many.

More recent data is mentioned in passing in this report.

Search the document for the phrase: 60,950 workers lost their jobs

Some newer information is given here, but much less prominence is given to outsourcing in these new figures and often it is not mentioned at all.

Here you have arrived at the end of the sidewalk so to speak. I suggest you search wonky news articles from ABI Inform to read other people's takes and context for these numbers.

How Not To Be Defrauded

American Greed is a highly entertaining series that profiles famous cases of investor defrauding, from publicly listed giant companies like Enron to small entrepreneurs claiming to have invented the next big thing.

Four things I noticed about the defrauded victims:

1. Naivete about the process of investing
2. Greed
3. Lack of risk control (put all their eggs in one basket)
4. Vulnerable to affinity fraud.

Affinity fraud is one of my favorite examples of how people get taken down. Affinity fraud means that the fraudster plays up similarities in ethnicity, politics, or religion in order to gain the trust of the investor. IMO, Bernie Madoff and Bernie Ebbers (of Worldcom infamy) both engaged in this strategy.

Or.....maybe don't invest with people named Bernie!