Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Dum Dum Girls, "Bedroom Eyes"


Sunday, December 29, 2013

Quote for the Week, December 29, 2013-January 4, 2014


Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
--Milton Friedman


Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Rolling Stones, "Paint It Black"


Sunday, December 22, 2013

Quote for the Week, December 22-28, 2013


Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.
--George Will

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Beatles, "Day Tripper"


Monday, December 16, 2013

The Comeback Kid




S.I.'s Sports Person of 2013


Sunday, December 15, 2013

Quote for the Week, December 15-21, 2013


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.


Thursday, December 12, 2013

Such a Deal




Former OMB Director David Stockman
on the bipartisan plan to delay federal spending cuts:

The can has now been kicked into "low-earth orbit."


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Silver Trees, "She"


Sunday, December 8, 2013

Quote for the Week, Dec. 8-14, 2013


Human beings, when given means and motive, have a rather poor history of eschewing the easy profit in favour of doing the right thing.
--Grant Williams


Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Paul Simon, "Gumboots" & "Whispering Bells"


Sunday, December 1, 2013

Quote for the Week, Dec. 1-7, 2013


Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
--George Carlin


Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Tift Merritt & Andrew Bird, "Drifted Apart"


Sunday, November 24, 2013

Quote for the Week, November 24-30, 2013


Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience.
--Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer, CMMS, six months before the roll-out of Healthcare.gov


Friday, November 22, 2013

RCA Sold to You




Fifty years ago today, 1:30 p.m.,
floor of the New York Stock Exchange. 
More here.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Over the Rhine, "Sacred Ground"


Monday, November 18, 2013

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Quote for the Week, November 17-23, 2013


Punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility.
--U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Heart, "Stairway to Heaven"


Sunday, November 10, 2013

Quote for the Week, November 10-16, 2013


Everybody, they just don't get it and they think it's crazy.  But I think what I was doing is crazy.
--John Moffitt on his unexpected mid-season retirement from professional football




Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Election Day 2014 Minus 364



It's official:  Paul LePage will run for re-election.
And the 38-percenters haven't gone anywhere.


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Lily & Madeleine, "In the Middle"


Monday, November 4, 2013

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Quote for the Week, November 3-9, 2013


The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
--Albert Einstein


Thursday, October 31, 2013

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Chick Corea, "Armando's Rhumba"


Sunday, October 27, 2013

Quote for the Week, October 27-November 2, 2013


Is it time to disappear?
Oh babe, can we just get out of here?
You and me love and no one near
Walk me to the edge of the world
Meet me at the edge of the world
I'm waiting at the edge of the world
--song by Over the Rhine




Wednesday, October 23, 2013

QE Is Destroying Wealth




"The failure of investors to learn from experience isn’t just an inconvenience – the constant misallocation of capital resulting from these speculative episodes is gradually destroying our nation’s economic potential for long-term growth and job creation. We measure our standard of living by the amount of output that an individual is able to command for a given amount of work. We measure our productivity by the amount that an individual is able to produce for a given amount of work. Over time, these two must go hand in hand. Policies that misallocate savings away from productive investment and toward unproductive speculation are the same policies that do long-term violence to our nation’s standard of living. Although the members of the Federal Reserve undoubtedly mean well, their actions are at the center of the assault."

--John Hussman, weekly market commentary (10-21-13)


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




André Rieu, "The Emperor Waltz"


Sunday, October 20, 2013

Quote for the Week, October 20-26, 2013


That field, never shall I forget it.  From a selfish point of view it would be so much easier to die than to see all that suffering.
--William Potwin Morgan, officer in the American Expeditionary Forces, following the Battle of Soissons, July 1918





Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Lucy Schwartz, "Gravity"


Monday, October 14, 2013

Grown Men Behaving Deliriously



Watch the dugout empty.


Sunday, October 13, 2013

Quote for the Week, October 13-19, 2013


The future is already here--it's just not evenly distributed.
--William Gibson


Saturday, October 12, 2013

Tift Merritt Performs in Ann Arbor








Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Rachel Platten, "Nothing Ever Happens"


Sunday, October 6, 2013

Quote for the Week, October 6-12, 2013


The United States is a country of amnesia.  It is obsessed with its future, and Europe is paralyzed by its past.
--George Friedman


Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




The Byrds, "Turn, Turn, Turn"


Sunday, September 29, 2013

Quote for the Week, September 29-October 5, 2013



I don't know whether we will make history tomorrow, but we will certainly change geography.
--British General Sir Herbert Plumer, June 6, 1917, the night before setting off one million pounds of explosives under enemy trenches on the Western Front


Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Debt Cycles for Dummies




Bridgewater's Ray Dalio gives us a short, simple lesson on how the economy works.  If thirty minutes is not short enough for you, zip ahead to the 7:00 mark, where begins a four-minute explanation of debt cycles and the difference between good and bad credit.

Dalio makes the case toward the end that deleveraging can be "beautiful."  Color me skeptical.


Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




John Denver, "Annie's Song"


Sunday, September 22, 2013

Quote for the Week, September 22-28, 2013


A volatile market of gyrating currencies and grasping governments shrinks the horizons of the economy and reduces it to high frequency trading and arbitrage in a hypertrophy of finance.
--George Gilder


Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind"


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Quote for the Week, September 15-21, 2013


It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional.
--Vladimir Putin, President of Russia


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Roy Orbison, "Only the Lonely"


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Quote for the Week, September 8-14, 2013


War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.
--Benjamin Disraeli

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Traveling Wilburys, "Handle With Care"


Sunday, September 1, 2013

Quote for the Week, September 1-7, 2013


Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
--Oscar Wilde


Thursday, August 29, 2013

Focus on the Fed




Funny money: When the Laughing Stops


Tuesday Tune-up




Jay Ungar, "Ashokan Farewell


Sunday, August 25, 2013

Quote for the Week, August 25-31, 2013


There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.
--John Kenneth Galbraith


Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




The Milk Carton Kids, "Snake Eyes"


Sunday, August 18, 2013

Quote for the Week, August 18-24, 2013


This was not a tempest in a teapot but rather a perfect storm of individual misconduct and inadequate internal controls.
--U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on the failure of upper management at JPMorgan Chase to rein in rogue traders of derivatives


Wednesday, August 14, 2013

PDO Means We're SOL




Cyclical climate change over the Pacific Ocean is likely to lead to the following:
  1. write-downs of homes in some fire-prone areas;
  2. brown-outs in the Pacific Northwest;
  3. diminished irrigation in California's Central Valley;
  4. slow-downs in shipping traffic on the Great Lakes;
  5. mark-ups for property insurance along the Atlantic seaboard.
Read the whole story here.



Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Emily Wolfe, "Lion Heart"


Sunday, August 11, 2013

Quote for the Week, August 11-17, 2013


All persons who work for an unselfish purpose for little or nothing are incomprehensible to persons who never work for nothing, and who can be hired to work for anything.
--John Reed (1887-1920)



Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Leo Kottke, "Little Martha"


Sunday, August 4, 2013

Quote for the Week, August 4-10, 2013


We have a pretty smart group of guys, which is a positive.  Hopefully, they will keep being smart.
--N.E. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on this year's crop of rookies


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Escondido, "Black Roses"


Sunday, July 28, 2013

Quote for the Week, July 28-August 3, 2013


Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
--W.C. Fields



Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Bromance, Unrequited




Tom Terrific & 'friend'


Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




The Wailin' Jennys, "Beautiful Dawn"


Sunday, July 21, 2013

Quote for the Week, July 21-27, 2013


America has no functioning democracy.
--Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Mount Moriah, "White Sands"


Sunday, July 14, 2013

Quote for the Week, July 14-20, 2013


If you live in South Florida and you're not building a boat, you're not facing reality.
--Harold Wanless, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Miami


Thursday, July 11, 2013

Beijing State of Mind




rapping at the Great Wall (and other hot spots)...


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Cameraman Taken Out




Chilling video from Egypt
[story here]


Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Tift Merritt, "Sweet Spot"


Sunday, July 7, 2013

Quote for the Week, July 7-13, 2013


Preach the Gospel at all times and, when necessary, use words.
--attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi



Sunday, June 30, 2013

Quote for the Week, June 30-July 6, 2013


War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
--James Madison


Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




2Cellos, "Fields of Gold"


Sunday, June 23, 2013

More Snapshots from China



Father and son.  No, really.
Tiananmen Square, Beijing
[06-06-13]



Ceramic wall decoration,
Imperial Palace, Beijing
[06-06-13]



Cathy learned how to make dumplings.
[06-09-13]



Beachfront development in Haigang district,
Qinhuangdao
[06-10-13]



Construction boom in downtown Qinhuangdao.
[06-11-13]



Brett had a tennis buddy with connections.
Result: a gratuitous "lunch" while Wall-hopping,
Shanhaiguan district, Qinhuangdao
[06-12-13]



The Great Wall ascending Jiaoshan Mountain,
Shanhaiguan
[06-12-13]



Jiumenkou
[06-14-13]



Jiumenkou
[06-15-13]



Stop the tea party--we needed a coffee fix.
Tony [left, with Brett, Alex and Cathy] found just the right spot.
[06-17-13]



Cathy's still life by the Bohai Sea
[06-18-13]



Bird sanctuary, Beidaihe district
[06-18-13]


Quote for the Week, June 23-29, 2013


It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice.
--Julian Assange


Monday, June 17, 2013

More From Brett's Laptop



Great Wall, Jiumenkou
Qinhuangdao
[06-14-13]



Mongol tourists want photo-op with Americans,
Brett goes Genghis.
[06-14-13]


Tuesday Tune-up




Itzhak Perlman & Yo Yo Ma, Dvorak's "Humoresque"


Sunday, June 16, 2013

Quote for the Week, June 16-22


There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.
--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin


Thursday, June 13, 2013

Scenes from China, June 2013


Posting photos in anything close to real time has been difficult, as a virtual private network is required to access blogspot.com here in China.  Internet access from a hotel room just won't cut it.  Here are a few photos from Brett's laptop.



one of the Forbidden City palaces,
Beijing
[06-06-13]



Brett (top center) hosting a gaggle of girls from his English class (and his parents),
Qinhuangdao
[06-08-13]



Beach walk, Qinhuangdao
[06-10-13]


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Elton John, "Moon River"


Sunday, June 9, 2013

First Full Day in China



left-most of nine dragons, ceramic mural,
Forbidden City, Beijing
[06-06-13]


[click to enlarge]


Quote for the Week, June 9-15, 2013


All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.


Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Vanessa Paradis & Suzanne Vega, "Blowin' the the Wind"


Monday, June 3, 2013

Quote for the Week, June 2-8, 2013


Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
--James Joyce


Tuesday, May 28, 2013

QE Or Not QE




"All of us would like to observe lower unemployment, but the belief that quantitative easing will materially contribute to this outcome is unsupported in both theory and evidence. The present course of Fed policy is destabilizing the global economy by contributing to a financial environment that encourages the allocation of scarce savings toward speculative activity, not productive investment. When 'QE' and the 'Bernanke put' are the sole focus of the financial markets – not productivity, not innovation, not sound policy options, not careful intermediation of capital, and certainly not the plight of the elderly that have been starved of interest income – it should be obvious that things have gone too far.

"This experiment has played out long enough. Establishing the largest fiscal and monetary imbalance in U.S. history has certainly created a pleasant environment for speculators, but it does not create employment, and it sows the seeds of the next collapse. The Fed is stepping on a gas pedal in the hope of making the wheels go faster, and instead the gasoline is spurting out of the tank and feeding speculative flames, because a reliable transmission mechanism does not exist."


--John Hussman, Ph.D., in his weekly market comment (includes an open letter to the Federal Open Market Committee)


Tuesday Tune-up




Ludovico Einaudi, "Walk"


Monday, May 27, 2013

Do the Math



[48:45]

Or let Grant Williams do it for you.

Your assignment:  watch this video.  But if you are ADD-constrained, at the very least watch Grant's Problem #1, the disconnect between equity valuations in the U.S. and macro-economic reality, a 9-minute piece starting at the 7:30 mark.  Now class, begin.

Takeaway #1:

"Massive central bank intervention makes traditional value investing virtually impossible."

which leads to Takeaway #2:

"Beware suppressed volatility."

[n.b.--"suppressed volatility" is econo-speak for "mindless herd-like behavior."]


Sunday, May 26, 2013

Abenomics: A High-Risk Wager




Lower liquidity, higher volatility.
Get ready for massive market dislocations.





Quote for the Week, May 26-June 1, 2013


Oh, I gotta get rid of my goddamn Halliburton stock.
--Lyndon Johnson on the phone from the Parkland Hospital to his tax lawyer, just after JFK was pronounced dead


Thursday, May 23, 2013

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




The Piano Guys, "Rockelbel's Canon"


Monday, May 20, 2013

Getting the Lead Out


[click to enlarge]


Maine Legislature to vote on LD 730:
An Act to Protect Maine's Loons By
Banning Lead Sinkers and Jigs

Act now.


Sunday, May 19, 2013

Quote for the Week, May 19-25, 2013


Certainly, European imperialism brought misery to the world.  But the world was making itself miserable before, and has since.
--George Friedman


Thursday, May 16, 2013

David Stockman's Latest



David Stockman,
author of The Great Deformation


"The combination of free markets and freely printed money gave rise to a toxic financial deformation; namely, the vast financialization of the world economy and the rise of endless carry trades, massive arrangements of speculative hedging, and monumental daisy chains of debts, owned by debts, owned by still more debts."


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




The Doors, "Riders on the Storm"


Sunday, May 12, 2013

Quote for the Week, May 12-18, 2013


Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
--Dave Barry


Thursday, May 9, 2013

QE a Double-Edged Sword



[9:32]


Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher points to the risk of "overkill" in the Federal Open Market Committee's current policy of QE∞.  Trimming a $4 trillion balance sheet, when the time comes, may be nigh impossible.  Fisher likens the challenge to that facing the Hunt Brothers when they tried (unsuccessfully) to exit the silver market in 1980.  When you are the market, to whom can you sell?  Meanwhile, the U.S. economy pokes along, unresponsive to all that quantitative easing.  Fisher calls it "the best-looking horse in the glue factory."  Faint praise, indeed.



Wednesday, May 8, 2013

It's a Mad, Mad World


[click to enlarge]

The S&P 500 over the last twenty years.

Think  of all that dough under the Big W:





Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Robert Caro Visits Colbert




Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks about LBJ's legacy.
(And reveals who "Jumbo" is.)


Tuesday Tune-up




George Harrison, "Let It Be Me"


Sunday, May 5, 2013

Quote for the Week, May 5-11, 2013


People.
--Grace Coolidge, First Lady, when asked what her favorite books were.




Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up




Eva Cassidy, "Songbird"


Sunday, April 28, 2013

Quote for the Week, April 28-May 4, 2013


Stop feeling sorry for yourself, find the silver lining and get to work with the same belief, same drive and same conviction as ever.
--Kobe Bryant, hours after rupturing his Achilles tendon in an NBA game


Friday, April 26, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013

China's Mississippi River



[2:25]

Forget what you learned as a child about the Yangtze River being a remote backwater serving snails to that cute little duck Ping from the boat with the two wise eyes.  Continued economic development--and Chinese unification itself--depends on the world's third-longest river.

The Strategic Importance of the Yangtze River is republished with permission of Stratfor.


Full report here.


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Beware Bulls on Pogo Sticks




Rule o' Thumb:  When the cover of a major financial magazine features a cartoon of a bull leaping through the air on a pogo stick, it's probably about time to cash in the chips...[T]he endgame of overvalued, overbought, overbullish, overleveraged markets is forced liquidation.
--John Hussman, in his weekly market comment


Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Tuesday Tune-up



David Choi & Kina Grannis, "The Way You Are"


Monday, April 22, 2013

The Week That Was


...starting one week ago:



[courtesy Boston Globe]


Sunday, April 21, 2013

Quote for the Week, April 21-27, 2013


The quickest way to extreme wealth in this world is to attach oneself to giant piles of institutional money like public pension funds...[you] don't actually do anything, other than shave cuts off of other people's money.
--Matt Taibbi


Saturday, April 20, 2013

Like Thoreau, But More So




"Walden Pond:  Part Deux"


Mismatch



Dzhokhar tries to ram this with a dry-docked motor boat.
And loses.




Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Euroskeptic Channels Lady Thatcher



[3:02]

Margaret Thatcher said it wouldn't work.

Now Nigel Farage says that it hasn't worked:

"This European Union is the new communism.  It is power without limits.  It is creating a tide of human misery, and the sooner it is swept away the better."

Farage, a member of the European Parliament and the leader of the UK Independence Party, is "looking plausibly like the heir to Thatcher."


Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Monday, April 15, 2013

Scream Tunnel 2013


No, not the one at Wellesley College.



Finish line on Boylston Street, Boston Marathon, earlier today.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Quote for the Week, April 14-20, 2013


For decades the U.S. economic growth engine that we all love to brag about has really just been an exercise in consuming stuff we didn't need with money we didn't have.  This generational trend is now in reverse and potentially so massive that it transcends monetary and fiscal policy.
--Vince Foster


Saturday, April 13, 2013

Doctor's Rx For What Ails Us




Dr. Ben Carson's keynote address,
61st annual National Prayer Breakfast


Friday, April 12, 2013

Bank Q1 "Earnings" Start to Roll In




JPMorgan Chase has kicked off earnings season this morning with its announcement that it "made" $6.5 billion in the first quarter of 2013.  Looking under the hood, $1.2 billion of that consisted of "old" earnings retrieved from the firm's loan-loss reserve. The earning's presentation can be found at the company's website here.  Some quick observations:

  • Total revenue was down $900 million (over 3%) from the year-earlier quarter (page 2).
  • The Consumer and Community Banking division had revenue that was down 6% from both the prior quarter and 1Q2012 (page 4).
  • The Net Interest Margin dropped another 3 basis points  from 4Q2012 (page 13).
  • Net Interest Income for the fiscal year is expected to drop 1% from 2012 (page 14).
  • Over $5 billion of "profits" from the last four quarters have come from the loan-loss reserve (page 19).
In sum, organic business is growing more slowly than JPM's stock price (which is down half a buck in early pre-market trading).  And how about this:  JPM's own analysts have just issued a report saying that Tier I investment banks are "un-investable"--not what the boss wants to hear.

ZeroHedge has a chart showing how our two-tier economy works these days.  Loans from JPMorgan Chase to the real economy are flat-to-declining.  Loans from depositors to JPM are burgeoning.  JPM invests the difference in the canyons of Wall Street, hidden from the light of day.  Money, like manure, works best when it is spread around--and stinks when it is piled up in one place.


[click here to enlarge]


Wells Fargo also released quarterly earnings today (summary here).  Same story as JPM:  nice bottom line, but total revenue was down $300 million year-over-year and twice that from the quarter just prior (page 2); net interest margin was down 8 bps from 4Q2012 (page 3); and in the Community Banking segment (which includes mortgage lending) revenue was down 4% YoY and 6% from the prior quarter.

In this short video [5:06] Christopher Whalen explains to Jeff Macke of Yahoo Finance why banks must shrink their businesses and why some might be getting out of mortgage lending altogether.