Here is the penultimate schedule for the Conference on Wednesday — you can register for the last few seats here. (The ultimate version will have my name spelled correctly!)
Media inquiries should contact conference producer Marion Manneker.
Conference registration is here.
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Schedule
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Vanity Fair:
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
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Video
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Source:
What Makes Us Happy?
Joshua Wolf Shenk
The ATLANTIC, JUNE 2009
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness
Just an FYI: If you post a comment amd it doesn’t show, its probably been caught by the newly amped up spam filters.
These will be manually reviewed and posted, but it may be as long as 12 or even 24 hours before hand. If you post the same thing multiple times, it just raises your Is he a spammer quotient rating.
A few suggestions to avoid getting caught in the tuna nets:
• Avoid spam words — casinos, viagra, etc.
• Short nonsense comments whose sole purpose is to generate a link back to your site or easily identified.
• Disposable email addresses are non starters. Mailinator and Hotmail are now auto rejected; Junk email addresses beyond those get sequestered.
Pay attention, 007. London-based auction house Bonhams is holding its 10th annual sale of James Bond’s favorite runarounds next month.
The Aston Martin auction at the manufacturer’s base in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, on May 9 features 46 cars, including a DB5 similar to the model in the 1964 movie “Goldfinger.” Even without any enhancements from Bond’s gadget expert “Q,” the silver coupe is estimated to fetch 160,000 pounds ($233,570) to 180,000 pounds.
Success rates at classic-car sales remain relatively high, as more works go unsold in other parts of the auction market. Still, because of the economic slump, buyers and sellers are more hesitant than they were a year ago. The Aston Martin sale is set to make between 3 million pounds and 3.5 million pounds. Last year’s Aston Martin event raised a record 4.7 million pounds from 35 vehicles.
“The Aston Martin is the ultimate British sports car of the 1950s and ‘60s,” Rob Hubbard, a Bonhams car specialist, said in an interview. “It’s quintessentially English, and combines European styling with the best of British engineering.” The marque’s James Bond connections are very important to certain collectors, while others regard them as a “distraction,” Hubbard said.
The most expensively valued lot is a Midnight Blue 1969 DB6 Mark 2 Volante convertible, at 320,000 pounds to 360,000 pounds. It is one of only nine DB6 Mk 2 Volantes fitted with a Vantage- specification engine, said Bonhams.
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Source:
Aston Martin for 007 on Sale
Scott Reyburn
Bloomberg, April 28 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601093&sid=aXI6LdDyezfU&
Interesting article about bringing “Wall Street-like analysis” to the advertising industry.
That unfortunate choice of words does not mean what it appears to at first blush. By “Wall Street-like analysis,” I do not believe the writer meant to imply that 1) the analysis was conflicted, 2) there was in inherent bias in it; 3) the parties are inappropriately compensated. Rather, the reference was to a rigorous mathematical approach, using standardized accounting to determine results (profits) via a consistent methodology.
Please pardon any confusion.
Excerpt:
“It’s putting numbers to an industry that never had numbers before,” says Mr. Herman, 27, who started and sold three media and technology companies before founding Varick last summer. “It’s nice to be able to tell your brand manager or the chief marketing officer which audience is interacting with the unit, what time of day, what day of the week, and what the response is on certain types of offers. Before, nobody could really tell you that . . .”
Where the data guys were once an afterthought in a marketing presentation, now they are at the core of the online strategy. What’s more, they can help advertisers save money in traditional media by testing different phrases or images online to see what works before producing an expensive television commercial or magazine ad . . . The shift to data-based campaigns is forcing marketers to learn new skills and drawing a new breed of worker to Madison Avenue. While most data executives now in the field came from media backgrounds, they are recruiting Wall Street math geniuses because the job requires hourly adjustments in strategy based on numbers.”
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Source:
Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.
STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
NYT, May 30, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/business/media/31ad.html
Nice thirty year chart showing the net change in interest rates, via the 30-year treasury bond.
Given the high (inverse) correlation between interest rates and stock prices, the 1982 to 2000 bull market is much less about productivity, ideology, or deficit reduction — it was about falling interest rates, plain & simple.
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via Yahoo! Finance
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Hat tip Paul
Surprisingly quiet out here — weather was gorgeous Saturday.
Our favorite restaurant was empty on Saturday night . . . and the late movie in South Hampton was also empty.
No traffic, lots of For Sale signs and For Rent signs — even this late in May.
Kinda weird, very quiet — I am trying not to draw excessive anecdotal conclusions, but . . .
Source: CXO Advisory Group
In addition to the major stock market indices rising for a third consecutive month, some of the other milestones achieved during the past week were the following:
• The S&P 500 Index rose by 5.3% in May for a three-month performance of +25.0% – the biggest three-month gain since August 1938.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Index advanced by 4.1% and 20.4% for May and the three-month period respectively – its largest three-month return since November 1998. (The last straight three-month gain was from August to October 2007, when the Index reached its bull market peak).
• The US dollar declined to a five-month low against the euro, losing 6.6% during May. The buck’s declines was even more pronounced against high-yielding currencies such as the Australian dollar (-9.4%) and the New Zealand dollar (-11.3%).
• The yield spread between two- and ten-year Treasury Notes reached a record 275 basis points on Wednesday before narrowing to 254 basis points by the close of the week.
• The Reuters-Jeffries CRB Index increased by 13.8% during May – its best monthly gain since 1974.
• The Baltic Dry Index – measuring freight rates of iron ore and bulk commodities – climbed every day in May to post its biggest monthly advance (+95.6%) on record.
• The price of West Texas Intermediate Crude recorded its largest monthly increase (+29.7%) since March 1999.
• Silver surged by 26.8% for the month – its strongest performance for 22 years. (Gold bullion advanced by 10.2% during May, and platinum by 8.2%.)
Back to long-term bonds. According to the Financial Times, Mike Lenhoff, chief market strategist at Brewin Dolphin Securities, said: “Bond markets may be telling us to expect inflation but, more importantly, I think they are telling us that policy makers the world over will succeed with their efforts to reflate the global economy.
“The trend of yields on corporate debt has been down, and that on Treasuries up, implying diminishing risk premiums – which is just what you would expect if markets are banking on recovery.”
The week’s performance of the major asset classes is summarized by the chart below.
Source: StockCharts.com
The MSCI World Index (+1.7%) and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (+6.6%) last week added to the previous week’s gains to take the year-to-date returns to +5.4% and a massive +36.3% respectively.
Although the major US indices experienced declines on Monday and Wednesday, the weekly scoreboard ended in positive territory, as seen from the movements of the indices: S&P 500 Index (+3.6%, YTD +1.8%), Dow Jones Industrial Index (+2.7%, YTD -3.1%), Nasdaq Composite Index (+4.9%, YTD +12.5%) and Russell 2000 Index (+5.0%, YTD +0.4%).
Amazing shortfilm from http://www.sorry-im-late.com
Shot with a stills camera in the ceiling.
There’s lots of making of-stuff on the website.
"I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Taylor in 1816)
After 3 quarters in a row that averaged just 1.2%, Q4 GDP grew 2.8%, a touch below expectations of 3.0% BUT Nominal GDP grew well below forecasts. Because the price deflator was up just .4% vs the estimate of 1.9%, Nominal GDP was up 3.2% vs the estimate of 4.9%. Personal Consumption rose 2.0% vs the forecast of 2.4%. Fixed Investment rose 3.3% helped by a 5.2% increase in equipment and software spending and residential construction rose by 10.9%. Trade was a slight drag on GDP growth and government spending was as well led by a 12.5% decline on national...
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