10 Friday AM Reads

December 4, 2015 8:30am by

My end of the week, post office holiday party,  not too late morning train reads:

• Prof. Britt Harris and His Army of Investing Titans: Texas Teachers’ CIO imparts wisdom, grooming talent from the ground up. (Chief Investment Officer)
• Few hours, soaring pay for corporate board members (Boston Globe)
• What Happens When There Are Fewer Suckers at the Poker Table? (Wealth of Common Sense) see also Hedge Funds: Does money flow to where it is treated best? (Reformed Broker)
• Housing Is In Demand (Gadfly)  see also The world’s tallest building will be one kilometer high (The Verge)
• Reagan, Bush 41 memos reveal sharp contrast with today’s GOP on climate and the environment (Washington Post) see also The GOP is the world’s only major climate-denialist party. But why? (Vox)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Roger Lowenstein, author of When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. His new book is America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.

 

Continues here

 

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  1. VennData commented on Dec 4

    I love watching CNBC right after the job number when the guests laugh at Rick Santelli ranting while Joe Kernan seethes that his intellectual leader Santelli, goes off the rails.

    Joe Kernan can’t tell the data not to show up on CNBC the way he does guests that don’t talk Tea Party talking points that have no bearing on reality. So he changes the subject and finds some stock that’s down.

    CNBC, what are you going to do after Obama creates ten million jobs, America leads the economy out of the Bush recession and everyone finally realizes listening to Joe Kernan and RIck Santelli lost them lots of money throughout the Obama rally?

    You going to keep Joe Kernan and Rick Santelli? ROFL!

  2. VennData commented on Dec 4

    Hey Texas how’s the that gold repatriation doing?

    http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/jun/26/greg-abbott/greg-abbott-says-1-billion-gold-bullion-headed-tex/

    Maybe you should send some of your football cheerleaders to Saudi to “convince” them to set their cartel price back up so you can get your Islamo-cartel profits.

    Hey Drunckenmiller, how’s your gold buy?

    http://www.businessinsider.com/druckenmiller-buys-gld-shares-2015-8

    Where is Peter Schiff?

    Hold on to those bonds GOPers!

  3. Molesworth commented on Dec 4

    From Vox article, best quote of the day. Now it all makes sense:
    “Put more simply: There are lots of Republicans who take climate change seriously and want to do something about it, but they have virtually no representation among elected Republicans at the national level. The climate-denialist tail is wagging the GOP dog. As David Brooks laments in his latest column:

    [O]n this issue the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.”

    • RW commented on Dec 4

      I think people are slowing beginning to understand just how strict the Republican version of political correctness is. We seem to have gotten to a point where even a very large cash donation or a liberal espousing compatible policy can’t override its iron constraints.

  4. VennData commented on Dec 4

    Republicans say no to new gun control legislation after San Bernardino

    ​”…Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday there are still too many unknowns about the San Bernardino shootings,..”​

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/12/03/ryan-urges-caution-on-gun-legislation/76714608/

    And he wants to change the GOP spin from “Gloom” to “hope”

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-paul-ryan-speech-20151203-story.html

    Republicans are a comical spin zone.

  5. ilsm commented on Dec 4

    Shorter Reagan: We have an $18T debt because we spent $28T on war.

    Mass shooting casualties are about 5% of US unregulated militia related casualties.

  7. VennData commented on Dec 4

    Beer Drinkers Sue to Stop AB InBev’s $110 Billion SABMiller Deal

    ​http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-04/beer-drinkers-sue-to-stop-ab-inbev-s-110-billion-sabmiller-deal

    ​Free pints settlement? Take your little class action post card to the local bar​ and get sloshed?

    • VennData commented on Dec 4

      Steve Leisman should lay off his bet with Santelli

      Always ALWAYS do the opposite of what Rick Santelli says.

  9. RW commented on Dec 4

    November jobs report: truly a mixed report, but enough for the Fed
    The positives, in addition to the headline jobs number, included substantial upward revisions in hours and jobs to last month. Those not in the labor force, but who want a job now, dropped by over 400,000 to a new post-recession low, more than outweighing the increase in involuntary part time workers. …

    The negatives were first and foremost, wages, which after inflation, probably declined in November. The YoY change in wages for non-supervisory personnel is back to +2.0%. …The YoY change in job growth continues to decelerate from its peak a year ago, continuing to signal that we are later in the economic expansion.

    NB: Raising rates even by a measly 25 bips is a marginal call IMO but it looks like the Fed will go for it if only to stop the Confidence Fairy freaks from completely crapping up the house. The next raise, if there is one, will probably be a long time coming regardless.

    • rd commented on Dec 4

      How is this different from being located in the US? We lost New Orleans to flooding a decade ago, Sandy devastated low areas in NYC-NJ, Houston and Miami flood regularly, California is either in drought with wildfires or flooded with landslides, we have bridges closed due to lack of maintenance and replacement requiring re-routes of dozens or hundreds of miles, Toledo goes without city water supply due to algae blooms, etc.

      Resilience and robustness is a state of mind. You either prepare to have it, or you don’t. Preparing to be resilient requires some money, but more than that it requires planning and imagination which are in more short supply than money.

    • willid3 commented on Dec 4

      well if you had disaster in the US (and like you said that has happened more than few times), there are many places that set up to deal with it. but they are usually just for the hardware. in this case its probably not that, but the people that know your systems are now unavailable, and there is no planning to try and relocate them to some place where they would be able to work. that could actually happen in the US. we just dont plan for it. so we could actually see this happen here when climate change hits location with staff only. no hardware. but most data centers in the US arent just staff. course I dont know of any companies that have planned for the loss of say a plant, head quarters, regional offices etc. they just dont do that.

    • Jojo commented on Dec 5

      Most corps have disaster recovery plans with backup data centers.

      I assume that American corps outsourcing to India would require the Indians to have disaster recovery plans also. I guess we will find out.

  17. rd commented on Dec 4

    The expectation from service companies in the US that virtually all of their employees will receive a significant percentage of their compensation from guests tipping is, to my mind, unreasonable and bad public policy: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/must-i-tip-the-hotel-concierge-and-pool-attendant-on-vacation-2015-12-04?dist=afterbell

    I understand that the US (unlike many other countries) has a wage structure in place for restaurant servers that expects they will receive tips, so they can get less than the standard minimum wage. However, that is not the law for pretty much every other position, although the minimum wage is too low in general in any areas.

    From a public policy standpoint, cash tips are often under the table income. That means they are not captured for payroll tax purposes which leaves Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, workers compensation etc. underfunded and reduces future benefits for the workers since many of the benefits are tied to past recorded earnings. It also means that the corporations do not have to pay their share of these payroll taxes, which is probably a primary reason why they are excited at the prospect that their guests will pay their staff directly using tips.

  18. romerjt commented on Dec 4

    So as I’ve mentioned before here, the climate where I live, near Albany NY has changed, the normal average annual temperature is nearly 2 degrees warmer than it was in the early 1900s and the average annual precip has increased by a whopping 8 inches (25%).

    With only a month to go the average for this year is consistent with this new normal,……… but here’s the odd thing; Feb was the 2nd coldest on record (1895) while May, Sept. and Nov are the warmest in that record. Five months of summer, that’s kinda weird..

    • Jojo commented on Dec 5

      I read today that for the first time sine 1899, Buffalo has not had any measurable snow greater than 0.10 inch as of December 3rd.

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