Ron Galloway is a graduate of Georgia Tech and was an investment analyst for 20 years. He produced the film "Why Wal-Mart Works," which premiered inside the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington DC. His book on virtual currencies "Social Money" will be released soon. He can be found at www.rongalloway.com

Blog Entries by Ron Galloway

Free Lou Dobbs

190 Comments | Posted August 3, 2009 | 05:38 PM (EST)


The Huffpo's lead today is about the Lou Dobbs "birther" controversy, and there are no less than 5 other headlines on the front page regarding the matter.

Having had some experience with Mr. Dobbs, I thought I might add some context to the matter. By the way, I have no...

Read Post

Getting Sued For A Tweet

3 Comments | Posted July 28, 2009 | 06:26 PM (EST)


In today's media world, little things mean a lot because of the speed that information can be disseminated in cyberspace. Take the case of Horizon Realty and Amanda Bonnen.

Amanda Bonnen tweeted to a friend in May, "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty...

Read Post

Is Verizon Getting the iPhone?

38 Comments | Posted July 6, 2009 | 04:05 PM (EST)


It cannot have escaped Verizon's notice that AT&T proclaimed in a widely circulated memo that the recent launch of the iPhone 3GS was the "largest order day in att.com history" and the "best ever sales day in our retail stores." AT&T sold a million of the new iPhones in 3...

Read Post

Wal-Mart and the Future of Healthcare

Posted March 25, 2009 | 03:02 PM (EST)


I gave a speech at a healthcare association last week, and the main topic of questions directed to me concerned the announcement that Wal-Mart will be selling an Electronic Health Records (EHR) software package to physicians at Sam's Club. Priced at $25,000 the EHR system is priced at half the...

Read Post

What The Sundance Festival Can Learn From TED

Posted February 18, 2009 | 05:58 PM (EST)


This week Geoff Gilmore, the longtime director of the Sundance Film Festival took another job in film in New York. This presents an opportune moment for the powers that be at Sundance to take a look at itself within the context of other film festivals, and other conferences in general.

...
Read Post

The Tony Montana Stimulus Plan

Posted February 12, 2009 | 05:03 PM (EST)


UN Office of Drugs and Crime director Antonio Costa told the Austrian weekly Profil this week that the world illicit drug trade is "the most important of all agricultural markets," with drug transactions totalling $320 billion.

For comparison's sake $320 billion is slightly more than the revenues of BP, and...

Read Post

We're All Wal-Mart Shoppers Now

Posted February 5, 2009 | 03:23 PM (EST)


The national employment report issued last Wednesday showed that the private sector shed 522,000 jobs last December. This is out of a total workforce of around 140 million. Circuit City is gone. Macy's is laying off. Home Depot is laying off. Microsoft is, Google is, Harley Davidson is. So are...

Read Post

Will Obama Have To Bail Out Britain?

Posted January 21, 2009 | 10:48 AM (EST)


Barak Obama had a fine day on his Inauguration Day. The British economy? Not so much.

CNBC was focused on U.S. banks stocks today, and rightly so. Citicorp dropped below $3. JP Morgan was down 21% and Bank of America down 29%. It was a bloodbath.

But in Britain it...

Read Post

Can Carol Bartz Save Yahoo?

Posted January 14, 2009 | 01:15 PM (EST)


A Reuters headline proclaims today that

New Yahoo CEO lacks Web and deal-making chops." The story then goes on to note in paragraph 5 that "(Carol Bartz) is credited with increasing Autodesk's revenue from $285 million to $1.5 billion during her 14-year tenure, as well as diversifying its business. Bartz,...

Read Post

Goodbye, Moto

Posted December 25, 2008 | 08:27 PM (EST)


Bloomberg published the following tidbit today about Motorola:

Motorola is improperly trying to prevent RIM (Blackberry) entities from hiring any Motorola employees, including the thousands of employees Motorola has already fired or will fire," Research In Motion said in a complaint.

Nice. Not only does Motorola make cellphones no one...

Read Post

Dell Tries To Call Out Apple. Fails.

Posted December 23, 2008 | 10:09 AM (EST)


This weekend a Dell VP named Bob Pearson attempted to call out Apple on it's green cred. One thinks that Dell might focus instead on making products consumers actually want to buy, but I suppose that's beside the point. Here are Mr. Pearson's thoughts on the Dell blog:

"Companies who...

Read Post

Is the Jay Leno Move A Strike Against SAG?

Posted December 9, 2008 | 01:01 PM (EST)


In the same 24-hour period as SAG held a large town hall meeting to discuss a strike authorization vote, Jeff Zucker announced a potential cutback in their primetime schedule. Then news leaked out that NBC was giving Jay Leno a 5 night per week slot at 10pm.

Are the events...

Read Post

Steve Ballmer Is Carnac The Magnificent

Posted December 7, 2008 | 07:46 PM (EST)


18 months ago in a USA Today interview, Steve Ballmer, head of Microsoft, proclaimed the following when asked about the iPhone: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of...

Read Post

Defending Sarah Palin

Posted November 6, 2008 | 05:28 PM (EST)


As noted on the HuffPo, Carl Cameron of Fox News gave a breathless report on some staffers on the McCain campaign who are now taking cheap shots at Sarah Palin. Having defended Wal-Mart, Alec Baldwin and Ann Coulter on the HuffPo, I'd like to now offer some thoughts...

Read Post

Apple's iPhone as Leviathan

Posted October 22, 2008 | 09:23 AM (EST)


In the card game Magic: The Gathering, the largest card in the game was a creature called Leviathan. Apple's earnings call yesterday proved that in the realm of handheld devices, the iPhone is the largest card in that game, and in fact, it is the Leviathan of its product line.

...
Read Post

The Supermajority and the S&P 500

Posted October 17, 2008 | 09:37 AM (EST)


It looks increasingly likely that not only will Obama will become president, but that the Democrats will attain a veto-proof majority in Congress, allowing the left to implement its wish list. Concurrent to this has been the startling decline in the stock market, which has variously been blamed on FNMA,...

Read Post

The New Meaning Of Diversification

Posted October 6, 2008 | 12:15 PM (EST)


It used to be that prudent investing always revolved around the principle of "diversification." Putting your money into different assets, you were told by your advisor, spread your risk around and prevent one stock, mutual fund, or asset class from dragging you down.

I always found this advice to be...

Read Post

The Betrayal Of John Edwards' Staffers

Posted August 8, 2008 | 11:29 PM (EST)


Right now, everyone is sending their prayers out to Elizabeth Edwards, as if they hadn't before. But she's not the only person John Edwards betrayed.

Hundreds if not thousands of volunteers, especially in Iowa, put in probably millions of man-hours working on his behalf, hours that these folks will never...

Read Post

Wal-Mart Never Saw it Coming

Posted August 1, 2008 | 05:13 PM (EST)


Today's Wall Street Journal front page article on Wal-Mart by Ann Zimmerman has caught fire worldwide in the news and in the blogosphere. Once again, just as they were enjoying a higher stock price and relatively few controversies, Wal-Mart managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Mixing...

Read Post

I've Seen The New Kindle (And It's An iPhone)

Posted July 22, 2008 | 06:49 PM (EST)


For months now I've been on the fence regarding the Amazon Kindle. The ease of downloading a book from Amazon in seconds, as well as the easy to read screen, have almost pushed me into the purchase camp. But I've held off because the design of the Kindle has all...

Read Post