This rant names and shames the French journalist who railed around a story they knew to be false to protect a friend.
Rant of the Week: 7/6/08-7/12/08
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Author Archives: the editor
Essay of the Week: 7/6/08-7/12/08
Bringing Down Bear Stearns is an essay that claims to tell the story of Bear Stearns last days. Some parts of it are a little dubious, like the repeated hints that Bear Stearns demise was all due to the work of some evil short sellers. Once you read the article all the way through, you get a sense of a how fragile Bear Stearn’s position was and it makes you doubt that anyone would have had to deliberately do it in.
Nonetheless, the article makes for a great read once you get past the rather slow beginning. Some of the anecdotes in the article will fill you will unholy glee such as when you read about the Bear Stearns traders grousing about the risk adverse nature of Warren Buffett. Other anecdotes will make you wonder how independent the Federal Reserve really is. One gets the impression that Paulson was calling a lot of the shots for the Fed.
What a way to rob a truck
The men, all Romanians, raided trucks driving down motorways by climbing into the back from the bonnet of a car driven to within inches of the vehicles, at night, with their headlights off, and at speeds of 80 to 90 kilometers (50 to 60 miles) an hour.
“One of them climbed out of the side window of the car onto the bonnet, climbed onto the truck, broke the lock, stole goods such as laptops and mobile phones out of the back and got back in the car, all while they were driving,” Manfred Radecke, spokesman for the police in the western city of Dortmund, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
For those that don’t know, the bonnet is what we in America call the hood of the car.
A reminder….
A lot of people get antsy leaving their money in savings accounts. They act as if there is some kind of moral imperative to seek out higher returns. Just remember though, you would have done better leaving your money in a good savings account over the last 10 years then you would have done by investing that money in the stock market. From a comment on Calculated Risk from Average Joe……
10 years ago today the S&P500 was at 1157
Today it’s at 1263.
That my friends is a .87% return. If you add in dividends, you’re up to a 2.7% average annual return.
This is before we even get into the bubble years of 99 and 2000. The ten year window of positive returns in closing fast.
(Note: this is lump sum, all-in investing returns…not the horrendous dollar-cost-averaging returns you get by buying through the dotcom era and last summer as the stocks stayed significantly above the trendline for much longer than it was below during this decade)
Never invest any money in the stock market that you think you will need in the foreseeable future. And never invest in anything that you don’t understand for yourself. If you can’t explain why you think a stock might have a good return using actual numbers, don’t buy.
One thing to remember….
Now that the stock market has officially turned into a bear market, a lot of people are starting to get excited. But that is premature. There will be no real excitement as long at the US government can sell bonds at will without effecting the interest rates. As Brad Setser reminds us….
The scale of growth in central bank foreign assets is hard to overstate, as is the extent to which central banks are now central to the financing of the US deficit. The US capital flows data significantly understate official purchases of US assets.
One for the history books…..
Lots of hostages have been rescued by men in black crashing through the doors. But not many hostages have been rescued by tricking their captors into thinking there rescuers were part of the gang. From BBC….
The infiltrators then herded the 15 still-bound captives, as well as two of the rebels – including the notorious Cesar – onto the chopper.
It was only once the aircraft was airborne that the rescuers – some wearing T-shirts bearing the portrait of legendary revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara – revealed their true identities.
The rebels were disarmed, stripped naked and tied up as the liberated hostages celebrated so jubilantly that, in the words of Ms Betancourt, “the helicopter nearly fell from the sky”.
The Belmont Club and SPIEGEL have more details.
The Cure for Global Warming?
Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. Minimum activity generally occurs as the cycles change. Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions. Together, they create the weather than can disrupt satellites in space and technology on earth.
The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today’s sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure why.
“It’s a dead face,” Tsuneta said of the sun’s appearance.
Tsuneta said solar physicists aren’t like weather forecasters; They can’t predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700.
I would like to know how they know that there where no sunspots from 1650 to 1700. Where they looking at the sun back then?
A new milk jug design is coming to a store near you
From the New York Times….
A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.
What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.
The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.
Regardless if people like this new design or not, I think all stores are going to be using it soon if oil prices stay high. The old design is just to inefficient to keep.
Poem of the Week: 6/29/08-7/5/08
Johny Cash did not write the words to the song Hurt (although he did change them some to suit his own beliefs). But you would never know that from watching the music video. It has got to be one of the most artistic and well done music videos ever produced. Embedding for this clip has been disabled, so you will have to follow the link.
Rant of the Week: 6/29/08-7/5/08
Bill Gates complains about Microsoft products in this week’s rant of the week.