Blog Posts by Chris Nichols

(Updated from 3 hours ago)

Goldman Sachs (GS) is making a very interesting negative call on the market today, and Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) at Business Insider summed it up nicely.

Here's what he offered from the firm:

"We are recommending a short position in the S&P 500 (^GSPC) index with a target of 1285 (roughly 5% below current levels) and a stop on a close above 1390. This morning, the Philly Fed print of -16.6, down sequentially and worse than expected, provides further evidence that weakness has extended into June."

The Philadelphia Fed noted that its current activity index dropped from negative 5.8 in May, for its second straight underwater reading. On the plus side, the Philly Fed said indicators of future activity "remained positive and improved slightly."

Until this month, the last time the index had consecutive negative numbers was August and September of last year. October through this past April were positive.

Back to BI. They've got a pretty compelling chart that

What a week display technology is having. Yes, high-tech glass is stirring the imaginations of web and device users and signaling a future in which this transparent everyday object will be smarter and more useful than ever.

Two of the best-known names in technology are responsible for the buzz, glass constructor Corning (GLW) and software giant Microsoft (MSFT). It is the week of the E3 and Display Week conferences, so if there's a better time to be talking about new glass-related inventions, I don't know when it would be.

First, Corning, which is rolling out a physical product. The Corning, N.Y., company said this week it's launching what it calls Willow Glass -- essentially a flexible glass. Why would you want it? Corning says the product is "an ultra-slim flexible glass, which could revolutionize the shape and form of next-generation consumer electronic technologies."

Willow Glass, Corning said, will be beneficial to creating thin and light displays for current and future

Greece's upcoming elections will allow it to remain part of the euro zone, and the common currency will stay intact because a split would be "devastating" for smaller, weaker nations as well as European economic powerhouse Germany, George Soros predicted in a speech over the weekend.

Speaking in Italy at the Festival of Economics, the financier offered a variety of comments on economics but spent the bulk of his time on the current situation in Europe. In a fairly lengthy talk, Soros covered Greece, Germany and the reasons why he believes the fiscal union will survive and that necessary compromises among EU governments will be made. But it's not going to be an easy path. At one point, he discussed bubbles and in fact described the EU as one.

"I contend that the European Union itself is like a bubble. In the boom phase the EU was what the psychoanalyst David Tuckett calls a 'fantastic object' -- unreal but immensely attractive," he said. "The EU was the embodiment of an open society —-

Anyone who's ever worked for a company of just about any size, and with any other people, has likely come across things they would change about the organization if they could. But for some places, the problem is deep, systemic and difficult to overcome.

Today, the blog Leadership Freak takes a look at some of the factors that lead to "sick" organizations and offers suggestions for identifying the deficiencies and turning the ship around. How can you recognize whether you're working for an ill outfit? A few things seem to be regularly found, the blog says. Among them, the organization tends to:

• Struggle to learn new things.
• Dwell on the past.
• Become top-heavy.

"Organizational culture is like air, you don't notice it," the blog states. "Even polluted air becomes invisible as time passes. Sick organizations don't know they're sick till things start going bad."

Too many times, sick organizations aren't able to self-diagnose. However, people on the outside are quicker to see the problem or