The stock brokerage business was one of the first industries that was fundamentally disintermediated by the Internet. In an earlier post I both wrote about the history of the stock brokerage business and about William Yeh, the Chairman of Sogo Invest. Yeh was the man who, by launching SogoInvest where active traders could take advantage of $1.00 trades, completed the 30 year history of the deregulation and disintermediation of the stock brokerage business.

In an interview Yeh gave to fellow blogger Grant Wittenborn, he made it clear that he felt the day trader and the average investor …

Disintermediation is a favorite subject here. Regular readers know that I believe that we are in one of those historical eras when the world gets reorganized. As I have defined it in earlier posts, disintermediation always occurs during these significant periods and there is usually a dominant agent of disintermediation that forces the reorganization. In this period of course it is the Internet.

I have also written about the fact that while the effects the Internet has had on such businesses as the travel industry and stock brokerage are obvious, there are business sectors that are just at the …

So, today we are now a country of 300 million people facing an uncertain future together.  What are the issues that we will have to deal with as a country as our population grows from this number, and what can we anticipate as we look at global population growth?

The United States currently has an average of 86 people per square mile, which is much lower than many other developed countries.  Even when we absorb another 100 million, which is projected to be around 2043-45 our population density will be lower than some European countries are now.  Where this statistic is …

Tomorrow, October 17, 2006 will be the day when the population of the United States of America will become 300 million.  It will most likely get a lot of coverage, as round, big numbers always have a fascination for the media.  In and of itself it is a non-event, as why is the 300 millionth birth more significant than the 301millionth birth?  But it is a significant number relative to the history of this country and as it fits into the population growth of the world.

First here is some historical perspective on this event.  The U.S. took 126 years to …