“Mark Twain was right One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.” – Thomas Sowell The best thing about being old is I have gotten to experience cycles repeating themselves. With leap year upon …
Bygone Relics
“Optimism is the madness of insisting all is well when we are miserable” Voltaire During World War II the Japanese fighters were extremely honorable and they didn’t give up, ever. They were bound to die with honor rather than surrender. This is not a normal situation among the descendants of Anglo-Saxons. It is true of …
Relax and leave your volume as is, there will be no F-bombs this week. Cussing is for emphasis and if you overuse it then it loses its effectiveness. No today will be expletive free, but my goodness we got a lesson in pragmatism from one Mr. Putin this week. Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin, I’m …
I discussed New York Community Bank on Looking Backwards Looking Forwards this week and I was all set to write about a different topic, but when the facts change sometimes you have to change your mind and that is what happened to me today. Last Wednesday NYCB was down 38% after posting a huge 4th …
This is called the Wendy Peffercorn allegory- There was a movie set in 1962 Los Angeles about a group of young kids playing neighborhood baseball called the Sandlot. This movie captured the innocence of childhood, how great baseball used to be before the analytics made it a bore, and it taught us the power of …
The NBER, National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee, dating committee? is the official organization that calls recessions and here is how they define recessions “A recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.” The definition used to be 2 …
“Do you know, one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas. “ Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady I was flipping through the Forbes magazine recently and I came across an article that I want to …
We often talk high finance or economics or even look into the activities or habits of people that we think we can learn from but today I would like to veer from the straight and narrow to discuss something that I didn’t expect needing to talk about- safety. I can’t believe that we have to …
Welcome to 2024! Today is our second annual forecast where I say things that will not happen in the future. This is a very popular tradition this time of year amongst sports bettors, market analysts, economists, and astrologers. Oh boy, I think I just lost our Capricorn crowd, but we must push on. In preparation …
I apologize about the double header, but it is the holiday week and I know none of you are actually doing any work anyway so you have plenty of time to listen to our conclusion to the mystery of the magical Christmas rally of 2023. “China has its route to Europe on the Silk Road …