Archaic she says.....................

 

                       more fun here

More than you want to know...................

 ...............................about hedge fund managers.

My point here is more about politics than finance. Our class enemy are not evil geniuses practising some arcane magic; investing successfully requires little intellect. Instead, they are beneficiaries of emergent processes such as principal-agent failures and deference towards the rich and of the cronyism  that gives them special treatment from the state. There are no wizards, just common little humbugs.

Unfortunately, it requires being kind yourself...

 

                 via

Where is Jetboy.........................

 ...................................when we need him?

Only one question..................................

 ..................................is this a surprise to you?

On parasites and charity..................

 Up here in the High Doganate, we are reactionaries, not squishy “conservatives.” True, there is only one of us up here, but I speak for the majority. The number of politicians we trust is even smaller. We don’t think there is a political solution, to anything.

-David Warren, from this blog post

Charlie Munger teaches............

..........................the importance of learning to make fewer stupid decisions.  Morgan Housel concurs:

 Most of this industry is devoted to finding greatness, which is inevitable because it’s what captures attention. But an occasional great decision can quickly become irrelevant unless you consistently avoid the blunders that move the needle even more. It’s not exciting, but we should spend more effort on ensuring we’re capable of doing the average thing all the time before we spend a moment trying to do a great thing some of the time.

Only one question................................

 ........................................is this a surprise to you?

Resolved...........................

 “Let scholastic sophisters entangle themselves in their own cobwebs; I am resolved to take my own existence, and the existence of other things, upon trust; and to believe that snow is cold, and honey sweet, whatever they may say to the contrary. He must either be a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and senses.”

-Thomas Reid

Experimenting...................

 via

"So the conclusion is not, 'Do nothing and a great idea will come to you.'  The conclusion is, 'Do everything because you never know where the great idea will come from.'" . . . "Remember:  It's easy to experiment, but hard to change.  None of these people started with a grand vision and then worked toward it.  These people were not goal setters or planners; they were adventurers." . . . "Each quandary is a call for experimentation.  Each experiment a question put to the world.  Each answer is a journey.  Let life plan the itinerary.  Your job is to pack light and bring a camera."

Dale Dauten, The Max Strategy:  How A Businessman Got Stuck At An Airport And Learned To Make His Career Take Off

There's privilege...........................

 ........................and then there is privilege.

Expectations............................

 

             via

But not just any old idea.............................

      What is strange about the modern world, in other words, is its utter economic unpredictability.  As Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it, the Great Enrichment was a "black swan" event, deeply unpredictable, not to be reduced to a probability distribution with finite variance.  The premodern world, by contrast, was highly predictable in economic shape.  Dukes would go on collecting rents, merchants would go on making modest fortunes from trade, peasants would expect to earn what their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had earned—unless they could pull ahead by tricking neighbor Nat, the fool, into selling the Nether field for less than it was worth.

-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality:  How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions Enriched The World

On Time...................................

 Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.  It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of what controlling power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it.  Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2:4

Fifty years ago..................................

The Doors...................................................Riders On The Storm

 

One should not forget...................

 .....................that normalcy is just the psychosis of the majority.

Bet on more winter.................................

 

On listening to Mom...................

 

On perspective..................................

      If we don't understand the statistics, we're likely to be badly mistaken about the way the world is.  It is all too easy to convince ourselves that whatever we've seen with our own eyes is the whole truth; it isn't. . . .

      And yet, if we understand only the statistics, we understand little.  We need to be curious about the world we see, hear, touch, and smell as well as the world we can examine through a spreadsheet.

      My second piece of advice, then, its to try to take both perspectives—the worm's eye view as well as the bird's eye view.  They will usually show you something different, and they will sometimes pose a puzzle:  how could both views be true?  That should be the beginning of an investigation.

-Tim Harford, How To Make The World Add Up:  Ten Rules For Thinking Differently About Numbers

Uh-oh..............................

..........................now what are you  going to do?