Best Business Commentary

Tricks for treats

As Halloween nears, you might consider exorcising your “financial demons,” says Erin Burt in Kiplinger.com. If you’re “haunted” by procrastination, make a firm goal—saving for retirement, paying off debt—“and make it publicly.” Also, don’t let “your sense-of-entitlement devil confuse your angelic rational self”—if you think you “need” something you might merely “want,” then “sleep on it.” If “you’re paralyzed by fear” when it comes to money management, “start small” and build skills and confidence. And beware the “specter” of coveting your neighbor’s apparent wealth. It won’t do you any good, and besides, “he could be in debt up to his ears.”

California dreaming

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Why have none of the aspiring “new Silicon Valleys” overtaken Silicon Valley? says Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post. Mark Zuckerberg, who started the newly-valued-at-$15-billion Facebook, left Boston to make his fortune in California, and he wasn’t alone. Why? Silicon Valley’s “insular, at times incestuous business elite” excels “in attracting and nurturing young talent,” while also “recycling the talent and companies” already there. And these players then “feed off each other’s energy, money, and ideas.” But the secret ingredient may be that while venture capitalists elsewhere insist on viable “business plans,” Silicon Valley nurtures risk and dreams and honors failure.