Is there any well-liquor ETF you know of? I’d like to long the piss out of that (quasi-pun quasi-unintended)

My recommendation: Long John Silver, Viagra, Scotch and Rohypnol. (Diageo – DEO – holds its value okay). Short anything that doesn’t rely on human corruption for a profit. That company that claims to be ready to turn a profit selling E-books of the bible? You may want to consider selling that… last year.

I hear there are a billion people in China and that they all want to get smarter by spending their savings on solar smartphone services.

Fair enough (esp the last paragraph).

Unfortunately (fortunately?) American consumers/businesses have been conditioned over the past 10-20 or so years to expect little in terms of service.

While the astute busines may immediately realize the business case for providing superior service (made possible by better IT, processes, etc), most firms will likely benchmark against other mediocre firms, creating a feedback loop of mediocrity.

This, of course, isn’t anything new, just saying…

JPM is actually not too bad. They have been doing systems improvements in this direction. Juniper Bank was developed with that model. ING Direct’s system is more networked servers based. MBNA was pretty far along with that as well, unfortunately when they got swallowed by BoA and the operations focus shifted. Bigger is not always better But Paul Graham is working hard to get everyone on the server side ware board, bless his soul.

On the upside. Most of the things I listed have viable, working models that we can benchmark around the world. America is sooooooo behind in many respects. But what we do best is steal or buy intelligence and models from other countries… so all hope is not lost.

We’ve been promised that nonsense for what, 10-20 years now, yet banks still close at 4 and I can’t electronically transfer funds online in real-time.

This is not so much because no-one wants to work 24/7, but because the legacy systems all run on mainframes and processes are batched overnight.

Large financial services co’s (take C, JPM, etc) would all need to spend billions upon billions in capital projects not so much on the hardware/software, but on the data migration and systems integration.

As an astute customer, the limitations of your service providers’ IT are often readily apparent, but I have seen it from the inside, and its much, much worse than I could have ever imagined.

sOOlar pOOwered smart phOOnes sOOftware
————-as a service————–

The true opportunities lie in:
- web ware and networked technology
- water and wind beyond the solar (solar primarily in storage, PV storage and conversion)
- networked technology and the touching that smart phones can do and the tracking of those
- the service aspect of things is focused on process improvements and removal of legacy systems in lieu of integrated processes and server based systems that allow for quicker and more pleasant service staff catering to the needs of the consumer NOW.

Removal or lessening of stress of the work force and recognition of the front line is vital as well, think of the Starbucks “third place” culture in the office environment.