Monday, May 05, 2003

Cinco de Cerveza A holiday particularly favored in the American Southwest, where May is warm enough to drink outdoors in complete comfort... and should you fall asleep in the park ramada you don’t wake up covered with frost. No one knows exactly when this holiday originated, but the folk story is that an itinerant Mexican-American beer distributor, Jose Tecate de Negra-Modelo, in despair over the failure of his Mary Jane Sandal Company ("If you’re on Mary Jane’s You’ll Float Like a Bird!) decided to take advantage of Joe College’s desire to fall on his knees and worship the white porcelain God, by convincing him of the hands-across-the-border nature of drinking surrounded by Mexican flags. Quick to see the advantage of this American beer makers began selling long necks with slices of lime stuck on top, and promoted the slogan "Everyone’s Mexican on Cinco de Cerveza." The slogan was so successful that on May 5, 1938 112 University of New Mexico students swam or waded back and forth across the Rio Grande…both banks of which are in New Mexico. If you have any interest at all in Cinco de Mayo you might click in here. 6:42:40 PM    comment []

Jobs, Ready To Ship Folks in the investment banking and stock breaking biz generally cheer when some working stiff’s company ships his job overseas. After all, that means a better bottom line for the company that closed down local operations. That, in turn, means higher stock prices and bigger commissions for the brokers. Everyone on the street cheers. But now an entirely different bull is being gored…their own. Consider the following from Reuters, as reported in Netscape Business News: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street research analysts have suffered rounds of layoffs, big pay cuts, and accusations that they routinely lied to the investing public. Now there's a new worry -- that their jobs are being shipped overseas. Investment banks like Morgan Stanley (MWD.N), Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N) and Citigroup Inc. (C.N) are mulling the benefits of shipping research jobs to countries like India, where salaries for business graduates are as little as 10 percent of those in New York and London, according to financial consultants and Wall Street sources. Now I’m cheering! 4:29:08 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Arthur Jacobson. Last update: 6/2/03; 5:11:14 PM.