• March 26, 2010

What Does Greece Mean to You?

"To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown - the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none... The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear..." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Any explanation is better than none." And the simpler, it seems in the investment game, the better....

• March 20, 2010

The Threat to Muddle Through

If the Chinese allowed the renminbi to rise, would that make the USA better off? That is the contention of a cabal of critics from Senators to Nobel laureates. Paul Krugman wants to see a 25% tariff on Chinese goods. Today we examine that idea, and look at the real problems that we face. If only it were so easy. The numbers just don't add up. The fault, dear Brutus...

But first, and quickly, and in keeping with the spirit of the recent Olympics in Canada, I want to let my Canadian readers know...

• March 12, 2010

The Implications of Velocity

This week we do some review on a very important topic, the velocity of money. If we don't understand the basics, it is hard to make sense of the hash that our world economy is in, much less understand where we are headed.

But before we jump into that, I want to let my Conversations subscribers know that we have posted a recent conversation with two hedge-fund managers, Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors [and his staff] here in Dallas and Hugh Hendry of the Eclectica Fund in London. Our discussions...

• March 6, 2010

Welcome to the Future

We are in an era of accelerating change, moving toward a future that will be profoundly different from the past we grew up in. But what will the nature of that change be? What will the future look like? For the last 7 days I have been in an executive program designed by Singularity University (www.singularityu.org) to give some insight into that complex question. We looked at a number of technological fields, lectured by experts assembled to give us some idea as to where current research is and...