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For those of you tempted to do some Atlas Shrugged inspired gift giving:
Detroit Free Press
…But there’s another gift-giving option that looks appealing this year, when everyone is trying to stretch their budgets: dining discount certificates.
The best-known ones come from a Chicago company called restaurant.com. Its offers sound terrific – $50 gift certificates for $20, for example, or $25 certificates for $10 – or even $5 or less, if you catch a special. But read the fine print before you buy.
Continue reading The Gift that Keeps on Costing
I just finished an excellent novel set in India, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and this NY Times Article about Indians from America returning the motherland. Both provide a great counter point to the popular narrative of the opportunity in India. While there is great potential for growth, inefficient government, crippling poverty, and rampant corruption are an often glossed over part of the story. Its one reason I am hesitant to invest in China and India – I don’t have enough local knowledge to account for the corroption and regulation that play such a huge part in picking winners and losers.
But I guess you could make that argument about the US too…
 I'm Sold
A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit. Here is one taste:
The Obama administration tells us that the government deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion a year for at least ten years. And that does not take into account the outlier years in the 2020s when the really heavy lifting of Social Security and Medicare kicks in.
There is a truism that goes a little like, “If something can’t happen, then it won’t.” Let me make a prediction. We won’t have a trillion-dollar deficit in ten years. Why? Because it can’t happen. The market will simply not allow it.
via Thoughts from the Frontline.
Continue reading If something can’t happen, will it?
On whether a New York City District Attorney panders to the Orthodox Jewish community.
Mr. Hynes walks a fine line. He has cultivated ties with Orthodox leaders since he was first elected in 1989. In an interview, he said he did so partly because they represent a major constituency, and partly to address jurisdictional tensions between his authority and theirs. In an editorial last year, The Jewish Week said those relationships had hampered abuse prosecutions, describing the district attorney’s approach until recently as “ranging from passive to weak-willed.” Yet no prosecutor in the country has as many sexual abuse investigations and pending cases against haredi [Hasidic/Orthodox Jewish] suspects. [emphasis added]
via Pursuit of Sex Abuse Cases Grows Among Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews – NYTimes.com.
Maybe that’s becuase New York has WAY MORE orthodox Jews than anywhere in the country. It doesn’t matter that this DA has more cases than any other, because there are few other jurisdictions in the nation that have enough Orthodox for the comparison to be meaningful. The only reason to include this line is to add a bit of positve spin for balance.
Continue reading Stop Spinning
I am getting sick of hearing this sort of thing:
Legislation passed this year will require that when banks issue a credit card to someone under 21, a parent or guardian must co-sign and have joint liability.
via The ‘Democratization of Credit’ Is Over — Now It’s Payback Time – WSJ.com.
As a society, we are expecting less and less of young adults until a later and later age. This behavior creates so many problems. In this specfic case, what happens when you don’t have a parent or guardian( in f act, I thought that after you turn 18, you are legally responsible for yourself, but i guess I was wrong)? Many 18 year olds live alone, and this law will prevent them from accessing credit. As I have mentioned before, appropriately managed credit can make a huge different in your financial life.
Continue reading Age of Responsibility
Time to start reading science fiction, because the future is here. Now, eye surgeons are getting more requests to customize patient’s eyes based on their life or lifestyles.
Julian Stevens, of Moorfields Eye Hospital, is an expert on laser refractive surgery. He has, in the past, offered tailored treatment for members of the special forces. “They require 1,000-metre vision at night,” he said. “It is the same for fighter pilots.”
Surgeons offer eyesight tailored to an individual’s life and career – Times Online.
Continue reading CustomEyes
Statistics are one of the most used and abused analytical tools in today’s world, and this article gives a good overview of a very common problem. When calculating the effect of a policy, behavior, or in this case, a medication, should you report the total effect or absolute percentage, or should you consider the likelihood of a change over a time period of use?
There is no right answer, you have to apply logic to determine which calculation is more appropriate – see below for more.
Continue reading Time for Statistics
Why isn’t financial analysis more probabilistic? We make all these assumptions and predictions in making a financial analysis or forecast, but for all the thought that goes into that, those assumptions get buried in the model, hidden behind single value variables. We don’t build ranges right into the model (except in a sensitivity analysis, which is practically an afterthought).
Why don’t we build models to output an expected range of values with a confidence interval (rather than a single value)? Yes it’s more complex, but not much more than the multivariate models used throughout the business world today. It makes the uncertainty much more transparent than anything widely used today.
Maybe the convention of using single values is a big part in much of the bad risk taking going on.
Is this the end of the American Dream?
Many have lived beyond their incomes simply because incomes have been outstripped by the costs of middle-class life. By the fall of 2008, most American workers were bringing home roughly the same weekly wages they had earned in 1983, after accounting for inflation.
via As Jobs Are Lost in Recession, So Is the Middle Class – NYTimes.com.
So with the current social engineering our system provides, we can’t all live “middle class lives” because what is now considered middle class is actually quite upper class. The end result of the degree of income inequality in this country is that middle class is the old upper class, and the old upper class is something newer and far wealthier than anything since the days of the “robber barrons” at the turn of the century
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