The Big Picture Café
If you have been reading the Big Picture for any length of time, you know I have a pretty good eye for spotting insightful writers, talented analysts, and smart commentators. Many of you have written me to say that a number of your regular blog reads were first discovered at the Big Picture.
I always wondered, wouldn’t it be great if I could pull together a group of very talented people all in one place? Mind you, not 100s of random authors you don’t know anything about, or 1000s of anonymous people you have to sift thru — but simply a small, concentrated group of extreme talent. The goal was to separate the wheat from the chaff, and offer you the Crème de la Crème of financial writers and bloggers.
Hence, the Big Picture Café.
I think we’ve accomplished that. We’ve put together a fantastic list of guest writers, some of whom are going to be regular weekly contributors to the site. I am going to keep this a tight list of contributors, all of whom I have personally selected and whose work I have been fond of for a long while.
Every Saturday, John Mauldin’s weekly piece will appear here. This week’s Electing the Janitor-in-Chief was posted yesterday morning. And on Sunday, the terrific weekly wrap up from my South African friend, Prieur du Plessis’s Words from the (investment) Wise will show up. The week that was (Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2008) is already available for your reading pleasure.
You will also meet Chris Whalen, a former NY Federal Reserve trader, who was an investment banker (years ago) for Bear Stearns. He now runs Institutional Risk Analytics, and has been one of the few voices of sanity warning about the coming Banking crisis for the past few years. Wanna talk about inside baseball? Chris’ dad was a senior policy advisor for the Nixon and Reagan adminsitrations, and was instrumental in getting Paul Volcker appointed as Fed chairman. Be sure to read his Roundtable: Fed Chairmen and Presidents.
One other regular who you will become familiar with is Marion Maneker. He is the Managing Partner at Colle, Hochberg and Grey, publishers of the Art Market Monitor. He is also a former editor at New York Magazine, and the Publisher at the HarperCollins business imprint. Marion has been observing the political and economic scene from a vantage point within the financial press for many years. Marion is going to be our Financial Media critic, covering the various print and electronic journalists that cover the markets. Be sure to read his post Mayor Mike Bloomberg for Treasury Secretary, as well as the sequal, Department of Follow-Up Dept.
Lastly, I wanted to take this a step further. Not just bloggers, but several wall street pros who don’t regularly publish for the public — and who are not allowed to publish/blog by their firms. They are all well known to me, and their work product is excellent. They will be also contributing here, some in their own name, and some anonymously. Talk about the unvarnished, straight dope — we’ve had to meet with attorneys to decide our response for if and when we get sued by either their firms or the companies they cover.
I want the Café to evolve into a special place. What it won’t become is a Seeking Alpha or a TheStreet.com — they are very different sites, far more comprehensive and encompassing than I want the Café to be. They have a specific purpose in the world, and I am not seeking to compete with them. Instead, I want to serve a different purpose, more like a tiny winery: Limited production, carefully grown and mixed, hand selected, delightfully refreshing.
I hope you find the writers here and their work as thoughtful and stimulating as I do.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Nice work Barry. I have been reading some of Mauldin and du Plessis’ pieces off and on for some time, and have seen some of Whalen too. Good luck with any potential legal issues regarding contributors and thanks for sticking your neck out in that regard to provide this material.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Fantastic Barry!!
I am very excited about your Blog Redux. Thanks so much for what you provide here.
Continue to blow away the smoke and let the sun shine in!
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am
Dear Barry: thanks for stealing our business model. Sincerely, Scarsdale Equities.
Just kidding.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Certainly an excellent “moving on” for one of the best – Thanks!
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Rather than calling it the “Cafe,” consider “The Monetarist Monkey Cage.”
If you think Paul Volcker was hated for jacking rates in the early ’80s, driving countless businesses into the ground, you can be sure the world will absolutely LOATHE him as Obama-lama-ding-dong’s Treasury Secretary.
NEWSFLASH! Derivatives-based, structured finance securities cannot be saved. There simply is not enough wealth being generated by the physical economy. Try as monetarist monkeys may to squeeze another drop of blood from a middle class turned into stones under the extraordinary pressure of a mountain of debt, these stones are on the verge of rolling into an explosion of rage brought on by chaos caused in this attempt to salvage the unsalvageable.
… And those who think present circumstances can somehow be managed with this or that “adjustment” are bound to find their views the laughing stock judged harshly by history soon enough.
The name of the game continues to be “Inflate of Die.” Save a benevolent alien life form willing to back government Treasuries once their backstop fades, next up is the death of present arrangement…
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Are the Cafe posts going to go out on RSS? I don’t see them in TBP feed, are you considering a separate feed for the BP Cafe? I love the idea of the Cafe and have read a few of the post when checking out the site new but I get most of my info from feeds and click through when I want to read comments. I think that I will miss some of the good gets post if you do not set up a feed for them.
Andrew
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
That’s the plan — but I have yet to figure out how.
This evening, I am going to post some of the changes I plan to make — and see if anyone has any insight as to how to do these.
The separate RSS feeds for the Cafe and Video are on the short list!
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
BR,
new website seems to be breaking in really well. as another noted, the new design is one of the best sites around, on top of the content, which, even if inscribed on clay tablets, would make it one of the best, by itself..
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
How about adding Jacki Zehner?
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Barry,
I’m sure your erudite picks for the Coffee shop will shed light on our economic situation. I looked at some of the names you listed (e.g Mauldin) and I note they have something in common; they are all high net worth individuals. Won’t that bias their comments towards a false hope for a continuation of the status quo? Don’t you think today’s pig can be tomorrow’s bacon? By not having an eclectic type who could be rich but is not by choice you are negelcting to represent an outlook which has less bias because it’s not pushing a personal money making strategy. You are wrong to not have someone representative of the less than $250,000 a year crowd. Track all those gurus you picked for a year and see how accurate their forecasts are. Do you remember what Mauldin was writing a year ago? The guy is a joke! He doesn’t want to deal with people that have less than $2,000,000 to invest. All I can say is when he comes to FusionIQ asking for a loan, watch out.
November 2nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
love the idea
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Barry,
If you publish all the Cafe articles under their own category, you can create an RSS feed just for that category.
I don’t want to spam the blog with links but just do a search on “wordpress new rss feed”. You have my email, drop me a note if you need any help.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Never mind last comment, I see you already gave it it’s own category. So we can already access the cafe feed at:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/category/bp-cafe/feed
This bypasses feedburner though, so you’ll just need to create a new feed at Feedburner with that URL as the source from your blog then name it whatever you want on Feedburner. Add the RSS icon on the cafe page itself with the Feedburner name.
Hope that makes sense, it’s exactly what you did for the main feed, but using that URL as the source.