Adam's Ideas

I remember when I was still in high school when the major banks of Canada were screaming for the opportunity to go international in ways they weren’t allowed. At the time I was thinking that the banks were just really greedy (greedy banks – shocking ) and were planting the seeds of their own destruction. The rule change would allow the banks to invest in crazy foreign schemes and be bought out by larger international banks.

That would’ve been the end of Canadian economic sovereignty, and luckily, Paul Martin (as finance minister) said a big fat NO to the banks.

Now, there’s an educated analysis of what was going on at the Progressive Economics Blog called the Left was Right:

My personal theory as to why the Canadian banking system survived the great global financial crisis relatively unscathed is that calls by the big Canadian banks in the late 1990s to allow mergers were successfully resisted. Had the big banks been allowed to merge to pursue their global ambitions, they would have ramped up their US and high risk foreign operations considerably, and the cozy, profitable, risk-averse Canadian banking oligopoly would have been broken up by the quid pro quo for mergers – allowing foreign takeovers of Canadian banks. The Liberal Government decision to effectively prohibit bank mergers – despite massive pressure from the big banks – effectively maintained a national financial system under widespread Canadian ownership, and thus subject to national regulatory oversight and control. Much of the credit goes to the popular movements which fought for bank regulation, not to the government regulators who largely bought into the financial sector arguments for deregulation.

People have been saying for some time that Blockbuster is going bankrupt and today is no exception. The Street points out that Blockbuster is losing a fare bit of market share to Netflix and other online movie services.

So if people are watching their movies via iTunes or Netflix or whatever than there is no need for video stores right? Kind of. I think in areas of low population density blockbusters will fail, whereas stores like Rogers that sell real products will be able to stick around. Video stores that only rent entertainment will fail because it’s now possible to get content elsewhere. Plus, Rogers will be able to sustain itself because they need those stores to reach their wireless customers.

In more urban centers, where there are more people and more culture-demanding people, I think that Blockbuster will start to falter there too. The independent video stores with large and eccentric collections will keep chugging along because of their uniqueness and how they cater to local culture. 

Just a poorly thought out thought. How fast will the death occur? I have no idea, but it will happen unless Blockbuster starts expanding into other consumer goods (something that’s hard to do when people don’t have cash).

I’m going to turn this blog into a place where I put some of my ideas. I’m going to post at least one idea a day every day until the end of 2008. 2009 is smart enough as it is.

If anybody wants to pursue any of these ideas feel free but please let me know Any of the ideas that I will post I’ll be happy to work on!

I’ll start posting ideas soon, but once I start there will be no going back! (and no the idea to do this is not the first idea that would be cheating).

First I’m going to do some WordPress stuff and revamp the site – exciting!