What a day!  President Barack Obama is the 44^th President of the United States.  This will be a day that will go down in history as an inflection day.  Today is a day when the United States and the world changes course and move in a new direction.

Yes President Obama is the first African American to become President and that is a truly momentous event given the history of race in American.  There is no question that this is an event that not only moves America to the next stage of racial harmony but also signals that fact to the …

It is interesting that central to the U.S. view of the global economy is the inauguration of President Obama and the passage of a historic stimulus package by Congress.  Given that the world is awash in economic fear the potential for hope and a sense of direction has been hard to find.  Since the current economic meltdown is something we want to change, and since that word has been synonymous with Obama, there is a lot of hope for a good start to his Presidency, and in his stated desire for a $1 trillion dollar stimulus package over the next …

The economy has clearly become the primary subject today in America.  It has become so not only because of all the issues discussed in the prior column, but also because it has also become the number one issue for voters in this significant election year.

In the “Forecast for 2008” column on January 9^th of this year I wrote:

“The U.S. Economy will not go into a recession as it has been traditionally defined.  There will be a bumpy ride, particularly in the first six months of the year. The traditional conversation will be an either/or discussion:  will there be a recession …

Regular readers know that I have often written about Intellectual Property in this space. IP is increasingly important in the valuation of all enterprises. I provided a historical context to this trend here, and later talked about Ocean Tomo, one of the companies that is helping to create the IP marketplace.

As mentioned in one of the earlier columns, the percentage of the aggregate value of the S&P 500 companies that is IP has gone from 17% in 1975 to 80% in 2005. The transactional process of IP, until very recently, has largely been the same …