DISQUS

Blorn Flensensen · 2 years ago

Make up your mind. She's either lost her credibility and therefore what she says doesn't mean much, or she hasn't, and it might.

Richard Adhikari · 1 year ago

She lost some credibility, yes...but we all make mistakes, and she was not alone in hyping up Internet stocks. AND she did revise her FaceBook predictions - which speaks well for her. The analysts I'd really worry about are those who refuse to admit they could be wrong.
Hence, her warning makes sense. The subprime mess is one of the factors killing the U.S. economy. Now, her statement that we're lagging behind in adopting next-generation technology bears some examination. One of the reasons we're slower than Europe or Japan in adopting next-generation technology is that we're physically so much larger (more geographical area means it costs much more to penetrate the market - you could drop the entire EC into California and lose it, for example, and it costs a fortune to roll out a new technology nationwide).
Another reason we lag behind is that ours is an open market and hence there are multiple competing standards for most technologies, especially wireless ones. In Japan and Europe, PTTs (more less equivalent to our USPO) act as the sole central standards-setting body for wireless communications. We don't have anything like that here.
Remember, VHS and Betamax played out their battle here in the U.S. - no other economy in the world was large enough that the winner of that war would become the de facto standard for videotape.
So, there is no practical solution to speeding up adoption of new technologies here. Think of the U.S. market as a whale - huge and with a lot of inertia. Takes a lot of energy to shift course...but once it has shifted, its momentum is devastating.