Smart People, Big Ideas, Wild Experiences
By Barry Ritholtz - November 6th, 2009, 4:30PM
This has been a helluva week of travel — NY to Dallas to Austin to Detroit. This post is set to launch after I takeoff for San Francisco. I will return home early next week.
My mind is brimming with ideas — About asset management, travel, investing, politics, speaking engagements, food. I had many stimulating conversations this week with some intriguing people. Perhaps I will address these interesting ideas in the near future. I have seen some really cool stuff, met some clever folks. Its all fodder for the mental machinery that requires a steady diet of intellectual input.
I like to connect the dots — and I continue to find some very distant and disparate dots that require connecting.
More next week . . .
November 6th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
You ever get tracked down for an autograph during those trips?
~~~
BR: Only at a book signing!
November 6th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
It’s Bank Failure Friday, almost lost in the monthly Job Loss commotion. Had 9 last week and they were all affiliated. the week before we had the 4th largest YTD, hmmm. 6 feels like my lucky number
November 6th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Friday night (though maybe better Monday morning) music:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-straight-offa-wall-street-debuts-atop-billboard-charts
November 6th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@bergsten: “Straight outta DC, mutha-effer named Larry”………..
November 6th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
@rktbrkr — we should start a pool. Put me down for three.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
You guy’s are wild! Took me ten f#@?in’ minutes to stop laughin’ at dis sh!t.
Here’s a song i heard today, please let me know what you think/feel.
It’s called Hell and by Tegan and Sara, enjoy:
http://stereogum.com/archives/video/new_tegan_sara_video__hell_097441.html
November 6th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
@Manny — they (or perhaps we) suffer for their art!
November 6th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Straight outta Compton (lifted from ZH site)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPb4s0-QcI
November 6th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Substitute “Wall Street” for “Compton” & “Banker” for – well you know what – and it pretty much fits.
November 6th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
By the way, I think the guy who writes the following blog is pretty darn smart. You might want to read it on occasion.
http://www.escapethenewgreatdepression.com/
November 6th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
What is this?
More white jewish guys gettin’ their RAP bling on?
I thought the Beastie Boys had that covered…
November 6th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
beastie boys are jewish?
say you’re just funnin’
November 6th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
BR:
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts. Just a caveat …you are visiting two Texas cities who benefitted greatly from Bush and those folks might have had your ear…because things are not so bad there. Then you go to Detroit…the devastation there has been well documented for a decade or more about their demise…and now off to San Franscisco?
Let me ask you to do a Southern Swing State Tour! Charlotte, Raleigh, and then onto Northern and Western Florida for “another view.”
BTW: Did you ever do a book tour in NC? You would have had a lot of folks come. You gotta get out of our beloved NYSTATE …and the Texas Bush Country to get some other ideas about what’s going on.
The “Sun Belt” Explosion’s demise would give you some more “dots to connect,” as you go foward. What happened to the “Sun Belt Explosion” is a book in itself.
Anyway…look forward to your reports…..just think they are very limited. You posted you are onto Miami and then Aruba (possibley a TG Holiday respite?) and so it seems you are leaving much of the rest of the country who grew the economy after Reagan.
Please do stop in on us down here. As a transplanted New Yorker to NC….I can tell you that it’s very interesting for those dots! Also….I was a transplant from SC to Manhattan (for opportunity) way back….and now back to the South in NC (for opportunity). The story of how America evolved from the late 70’s and then on to China….is very much something that needs to be in the picture as to how America goes forward in it’s investment.
Anyway…good stuff from you ….even when you are on the road you are feeding the Blog Beast! Good on ‘ya!
November 6th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
This is encouraging….well, not really, but it isn’t surprising. I thought the banks could already fudge, I mean, lie about their numbers. I guess they now want to make it official. If everyone is OK with deluding themselves and each other forever, then I guess this won’t be much of a problem. This should do wonders to restore confidence in our system. All is well, all is well, all is well.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/civil-war-in-corporate-am_n_347704.html
November 6th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
bergsten-
thanks for the link-
funny shit
November 6th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
4 banks so far!
November 6th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
what if banks had to act the GSE have?
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/11/fannie-maes-results-oh-and-what-if-bank.html
November 6th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
what happens to the economy of the world if we don’t fix employment soon?
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/11/06/a-global-problem-with-no-solution/
November 6th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517303668357682.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Young companies create jobs.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
@willid3 8:03 pm
It seems to me the answer is obvious — another bailout.
But this time the money (what’s another trillion after all we’ve been through?) goes directly to the taxpayers. Divide up the bailout equally between everyone filing a tax return that pays taxes. That oughta be a check on the order of ten grand per tax payer, by my reckoning. If that doesn’t stimulate the Bananamerican consumer, we are done for.
The only problem here is that if it comes from the US goobermint, then we are borrowing our own bailout — so the generous rest of the globe has got to “give” us spendthrift Americans a trillion bucks in order to jumpstart the global economy.
We gotta be good for sumptin’, right? I mean, let’s show these furriners that we can do other stuff besides sell CMOs all over the globe.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Oh, oh … I gotta better idea — instead of begging other nations for our trillion-dollar bailout, we harvest some major financial firms. Start at Citi and BoA, and move on up the food chain until we get a trillion dollars of net assets. Call it recycling. Or trickle down. We could use the RICO statutes to accomplish this, I think.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hat tip (and we’re talking on of them big Rock Star Top Hat) to Manny for pointing this out elsewhere:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/friday-night-music-neal-fox-fed
November 6th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
>> Smart People, Big Ideas, Wild Experiences
Barry Ritholtz and Stephen Hawking Go To White Castle?
I bet Mr. CNBC-Sucks plays the role of Neil Patrick Harris…
November 6th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
I want to know if Barry had lunch with Wanger in Detroit.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Looks like. HWanger is not posting much today.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
@M&R — Don’t expect so — HW said he got to Detroit today around lunchtime, and Barry’s already left for points West.
I’m mildly troubled as to why any of use care, greatly troubled as to why I know the answer.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
@Manny + Bergsten 10:13 — this Neal Fox (F the Fed) guy is pretty good — I found his other stuff here:
http://www.myspace.com/nealfox
November 6th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
It is a well-recognized fact the folks of Austin are neither clever nor intellectual, although how one gets all of that into those white pants without ripping a seam is certainly intriguing….
November 7th, 2009 at 12:04 am
>> I’m mildly troubled as to why any of us care, greatly troubled as to why I know the answer.
LOL!
November 7th, 2009 at 12:57 am
wait. . . I thought HW was BR just f’n with us to create debate and drive traffic. Is that how it goes again? and bergsten is cnbcs, and MEH is Thomas Paine’s stuttering internet nerd reincarnate, and leftack is david beckham, and cv is . . . shit who am I?
November 7th, 2009 at 1:04 am
no offence (sic) to the proclivities of the the brit and the proxy of “an englishman” turned against” the King’s country or any others harmed in the previous post.
Who is my deranged alter ego, by the way? Actually, i’m probably the deranged one, so who is my sane alter ego?
November 7th, 2009 at 1:39 am
@DD 1:04 — Shakespeare? Your post’s language was similarly inscrutable.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:54 am
Inscrutable language is due to gross drunkeness and references to Elby’s Limey status and Thomas Paine’s biography, in light of comparison to MEH’s personality.
I fear I lack the artistry, sobriety, and Iambic pentameter of Shakespeare to articulate my thoughts well enough.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:52 am
THANK YOU BARRY RITHOLZ !!!
Mark one in the success column for the blogosphere.
Treasury Blocks the Sale of Tax Credits by Fannie
The U.S. Treasury blocked Fannie Mae’s proposed sale of nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Friday after concluding that the deal was too costly for taxpayers. The extraordinary move was the latest sign of tensions within the Obama administration over how to balance political and financial pressures resulting from the housing crisis.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125754828200334693.html
November 7th, 2009 at 9:18 am
“Barry’s already left for points West.”
Harry is setting up a face to face with his retail outlet in San Francisco Monday.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:44 am
http://english.cctv.com/program/newshour/20091107/101329.shtml
China denounces US protectionism
…this will, I think, be one of the bigger problems in 2010. Already gave my opinion about this trend months ago, but now I think we get to see protectionism with the wind at its back…
November 7th, 2009 at 11:33 am
@ B in T
About time someone in Washington grew a pair. Sick and tired of watching our political business elites sell this country out to the lowest bidder.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:36 am
And let’s not forget that great Buffett aphorism: “The class war is over and you [the middle and lower classes] lost.” At least he had the courtesy to be embarrassed about it.