the onda

The latest issue of the economist argues that Obama should be wary of
thinking too much like FDR in trying to stimulate the economy via "New
Deal" like government spending programs because the fundamentals of
the economy are different now. Separately various blogs were arguing
this weekend that companies like Google and Apple represent the new
industrial order with their capital efficiency and ability to generate
loads of free cashflow very quickly. To think, just 8 years ago Apple
was almost broke and now they are sitting on a $25b cash hoarde thanks
to the iPod, the iPhone and Vista's flub.

Still I'd be interested to understand whether the fundamentals of the
economy really have changed in a structural way or whether what we see
when we look at companies like apple and google is a better, faster
implementation of high growth businesses with incredible returns to
scale that are facilitated by the network effects common in high tech.