Sitting in Qingdao at the FT Chinese annual forum, I am confronting at first hand the shift in the pattern of Chinese censorship towards social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

It is easy to access media sites such as the websites of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twittering or adding an entry to Facebook is, however, much harder.

Both Facebook and Twitter appear to be blocked by “the great firewall of China” so my efforts to sign on to my Twitter account have all failed.

That suggests that the Chinese authorities are now more worried about the social media than the mass media. In other words, what journalists have to say is less threatening than the spontaneous interactions of average citizens.

Although there is debate about how influential Twitter was in the protests in Iran earlier this year, some state authorities are clearly taking no chances.

Meanwhile, it seems easy enough to use Wordpress, the blogging software used by FT.com and, to judge by the advertisements thrown up on Google if you search for Twitter and Facebook, there are ways around the traffic blocks.

Several Chinese companies are offering VPN services to allow people to get through to Twitter and Facebook unimpeded. Censorship is a tricky challenge in such a rapidly developing and technologically sophisticated economy such as this.

I’ve written a piece about Rupert Murdoch’s stand-off with Google for the Weekend FT, saying he ought to stop talking about it and go ahead and charge for access to newspapers such as The Times online. You can read it and comment on it here.

Do not be quotable is probably a good motto for bankers, one that was ignored by Chuck Prince, the former chairman and chief executive of Citigroup. Now Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, appears to have fallen into the same trap.

Mr Blankfein’s wry claim that Goldman is “doing God’s work” by financing companies and investors is among the most memorable things a Wall Street banker has said since Mr Prince told the Financial Times that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”

A long profile of Goldman in the Sunday Times last weekend ended thus:

Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker “doing God’s work.”

By Wednesday, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times was getting up a fine head of steam:

As far as doing God’s work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.

I have always found Mr Blankfein a likeable, intelligent and entertaining advocate for Goldman but he has one quality that, while appealing, is risky in a chief executive. He is funny.

In good times, the fact that he is a wise-cracking sort who does not take himself too seriously is a fine thing. But in bad times it makes him very quotable, which in turns provides material for the bank’s critics.

Mr Prince never escaped that quote once Citi ran into trouble (even though he was making a perfectly decent underlying point) and he resigned four months later. I think it will take Mr Blankfein some time to live down his own bon mot.

Perhaps, sad as it is, Mr Blankfein needs to train himself to be a boring banker.

In my FT column this week, I have written about this week’s recall of 1m folding pushchairs by Maclaren, the British company - and what we can learn from how it mishandled the event. FT.com has now introduced a comment facility on all articles so please add your comments there.

Incidentally, the most confusing thing I found in researching the piece is that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission refers to all large after-market interventions - such as Maclaren’s provision of repair kits for its pushchairs - as “recalls”, even if the product is not actually called back.

It ought to change its terminology because I am definitely not the only person baffled by it.

One does not need statistics to know that a lot of media companies - music labels, film studios, newspapers etc - are facing a crisis of profitability. However, the figures do bear it out.

Some new research from Deloitte has found that, while many industries suffer from intense pricing pressures and falling return on assets, the media industry is doing worst of all. In fact, the industry now has a negative return on assets of 4.4 per cent, compared with a positive 7 per cent 40 years ago.

I wrote about the Deloitte Shift Index in a column in June but it has now been updated to break out results for individual industries. The results are gloomy from the point of view of corporate profitability, although the consumer is getting a good deal.

Interestingly, although one might think instinctively that profitability is transferring from media companies to technology companies - sparking, among other things, Rupert Murdoch’s protests at Google - the latter are themselves struggling to adapt.

John Hagel of Deloitte argues that falling return on assets results from intensifying competition, both from  deregulation and the rise of digital technology. That means that increases in labour productivity are hard to retain as profits, instead being passed on to consumers in price cuts.

That looks very like the theoretical world of freely competitive capitalism, in which prices tend to fall to the marginal cost of production. Chris Anderson wrote about this effect in his book Free.

“All other things being equal, margins tend to get competed away. In the past, all other things have not been equal but they look pretty equal right now,” says Mr Hagel.

The recalling of up to 1m Maclaren pushchairs - or strollers, as they are called in the US - must rank as one of the most sweeping ever. It affects not just a single model but all of the umbrella-folding strollers sold by the British company in the US since 1999.

Furthermore, the product recall, which comes after 12 reports of small children having their fingers amputated by the folding mechanism, affects the main selling point of the pushchairs since they were invented in 1965 - that they are easily foldable.

I have an affection for Maclaren pushchairs since I once wrote a long article about the fascinating history of the company, founded by Owen Finlay Maclaren, an inventor and former engineer who was partly responsible for the folding undercarriage of the Spitfire fighter.

However, the recall is extremely damaging for the company, which is sending out free repair kits to everyone who has bought one in the past decade. Any product that potentially causes serious injuries to children will face a battle re-establishing credibility with consumers.

Ironically, Maclaren has been among the most successful of British exporters since being revived under new ownership in the early 2000s. This product recalis a serious challenge to that achievement.

My column in the FT this week is on the Sage of Omaha:

In the annals of double-edged compliments, Warren Buffett’s description of his planned $27bn acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe as an “all-in wager on the economic future of the US” ranks highly. If the best expression of the future of the US economy is a railway operator dating back to the mid-1800s, then growth investors might be advised to look instead to China, India or Brazil.

Perhaps to balance his criticism of the US trade deficit and doubts about the dollar, Mr Buffett often eulogises the US economic system. “It has unleashed potential as no other system has and will continue to do so. America’s best days lie ahead,” he wrote in his 2008 letter to
shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway.

Actions, however, speak louder than words. The BNSF deal is the largest acquisition Berkshire Hathaway has made and comes as 79-year-old Mr Buffett has started to identify possible successors. So it may be the ultimate symbol not only of his investment style but of how he sees his country.

“When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy,” he wrote in the letter and, underneath his optimistic gloss, the deal has a downbeat moral for the US. It is a safe, predictable but somewhat dull market for the global investor with a lot of solid but ageing companies.

Please read the rest here and comment below.

For what it is worth, Carly Fiorina always struck me as having more the affect of a politician than a chief executive.

Ms Fiorina, whose troubled leadership of Hewlett-Packard ended in 2005 when she was pushed out by the board, and eventually succeeded by Mark Hurd, today revealed that she plans to run as a Republican for the California Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer.

It may prove good timing, since it comes a day after there was a swing to the right in US elections, with Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, being defeated in his bid for re-election as governor of New Jersey, and a Republican being elected governor of Virginia.

On the other hand, the fact that Mr Corzine was beaten and that Michael Bloomberg was only just re-elected as mayor of New York despite spending extremely heavily on his campaign suggests that former chief executives do not always succeed as in political life.

My memories of Ms Fiorina, even in her time at HP, are of a very polished public performer but not someone who had an impressive grasp of detail. I was struck at how like a politician she seemed at a press briefing in Davos in 2005, just before she was ousted.

She was poised and very articulate but she tended to stick firmly to her talking points and did not seem very comfortable responding to questions. Admittedly, it could be that I simply witnessed her at a particularly stressful moment.

Anyway, those qualities may serve her well in her new venture, for which she prepared by serving as an adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, in last year’s campaign.