Great letter to President Obama from Rebecca MacKinnon.

Just as you have used new technology to engage with the American electorate, your China policy can be greatly strengthened if you conduct a real conversation with the Chinese people. Listen as much as you talk; provide a much-needed platform for open discussion. The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests - from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law -- shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back. Sure there will be censorship problems on the Chinese side, but if enough Chinese find the conversation important and relevant to their lives, the censors ultimately won't be able to stop it. Nor should they want to if they're wise - because the resulting conversation would help both governments build a more stable and rational relationship that would truly benefit the people of both countries.

Dear President Obama: in Talking to China, Remember its People

Partial transcript of Susie Gharib's interview with Buffett.

SG: But there is debate about whether there should be fiscal stimulus, whether tax cuts work or not. There is all of this academic debate among economists. What do you think? Is that the right way to go with stimulus and tax cuts?

WB: The answer is nobody knows. The economists don’t know. All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it’s more effective if you’re fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You’re going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they’ve been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don’t know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don’t know how effective in the short run we don’t know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again.

A lot of people on Wall Street were paid a lot of money to "know what to do." That they didn't (look at those funds who invested 100% into Madoff) is a travesty of a size that is calculated in hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions.

PBS Interview with Warren Buffett

I'm heartened to see a Freshman Democratic Congressman, Alan Grayson of Florida, grilling Fed Vice Chair Kohn so expertly. That said, Kohn sounds like someone who should not be doing the job he is in.

Barry Ritholtz has a (3 part) 25-minute documentary by the Wall Street Journal that's worth watching.  Note that it is all Wall Street Journal reporters who are interviewed, but it's still worth a viewing.

As a New Yorker, born and raised, my one hope in this recession is that New York City becomes a more heterogeneous city.  Wall Street's influence on New York City was too large since the 1990s and into the 2000s.  I love New York City but it is not a city I wish to live in at the moment.  If New York City can emerge from the recession as a more honest city, a better place for more people to live, not just rich people, I'd like to live there again one day.

Nothing new here except that this looks to be the critical moment for Howard.  If he can really make deep cuts, literally shed 20-35% of the business that is not profitable, then he has a chance of keeping Sony relevant.  If Stringer can't make cuts that deep, he'll be replaced within a 1-2 year time frame with some lame Japanese executive who'd never make those cuts.  This is the moment for Sony to seize the fact that Howard is NOT JAPANESE, and Sony is NO LONGER PROFITABLE, and to make the necessary cuts. As a shareholder myself, I demand no less.

Koya Tabata, a Credit Suisse analyst, recently warned investors that the restructuring of Sony is perilously overdue and must be radical. Sony management needs to make a rapid shift in its business model to one driven by earnings in the content business, he said.

The focus of research and development must be on software, he said, adding: “The most important thing is that, to improve organisational strength in the areas of development, purchasing and marketing, it will be necessary to further concentrate power in the hands of [Sir Howard] and unless this is achieved we believe [Sony] will be unable to close the gap with competitors such as Apple and Nintendo.”

Sony on brink of upheaval as analysts back British chief - Times Online

If you need the most recent update to Silkypix Developer Studio, Ver.3.0.27.2, and you can't download it from Shortcut Software because of the malware they are hosting on their site, you can download it from Ichikawa Soft Laboratory, the Japanese developer of the software:

Windows:
http://www2.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/download/file/SilkypixE30272.EXE

Macintosh:
http://www2.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/download/file/SILKYPIX_DS3E_3.0.27.2.dmg

Happy new year everyone.

I plan to attend the 2009 Tokyo Bloggers New Years Meetup on Jan. 17th here in Tokyo.  If you'd like to attend, please contact TPR over at Trans-Pacific Radio.