Good Sunday morn. Settle in for the last of our weekend reads:
• How the Bloomberg Terminal Made History–And Stays Ever Relevant (Fast Company)
• Challenging Private Equity Fees Tucked in Footnotes (NYT)
• Donald Trump’s Blustery 1990 Campaign Against a Wall Street Analyst (Barron’s)
• Financial Advice for My New Son (Motley Fool)
• Nine Things Successful People Do Differently (Harvard Business Review)
• One Year Returns Don’t Tell You Anything (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• Inside the world of audio branding with Skype’s new pings, bounces, and pops (The Verge)
• Why Are Republicans Suddenly Fixated With Urban Failure? (NY Mag)
• Bristol, You Ignorant Slut: Once Again You’ve Missed The Point Entirely (Wonkette) see also Bristol Palin Outraged Other Girls Won’t Get Knocked Up In High School Like She Did (Wonkette)
• Most gun owners don’t belong to the NRA — and they don’t agree with it either (Wonkblog)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jeremy Siegel professor at University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and author of the classic book Stocks for the Long Run.
Shanghai Composite: Last 12 Months (USD)
Source: Bespoke Investment Group
Netanyahu refuses to cut taxes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-18/u-a-e-stocks-advance-after-brent-crude-climbs-above-50
Democrats should invite him to scream at Congress, maybe to a forty-five second stare down.
“…Conservatism’s urban fixation is a search for vindication in a non-apocalyptic world…” from NYMAG.
but, THE WORLD’S ON FIRE!!!
Deadly shooting sparks panic at ZombiCon event in Fort Myers, Florida
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/18/us/zombicon-shooting-fort-myers-florida/
Ben Carson Where were you? Why didn’t they run at the shooter? What cultural problems have manifested in cushy party scene people by Florida’s something for nothing tax culture? Is this Rubio’s fault? Jeb’s? Doesn’t Trump have a nexus to the state?
If guns don’t kill people, how come they are always at the shootings?
Florida needs a program to train visiting tourists to “Stand their Ground.”
Pay for it with a user fee on labor unions, single moms, and students.
A whole bunch of commercial planes fell out of the sky yesterday because of too much government regulation…
Oh. That didn’t happen.
No one pays full price anymore — and it’s terrifying companies
http://www.businessinsider.com/consumers-wont-pay-full-price-anymore-2015-10
Those STUPID Millennials! Don’t they know they need brand image!?
What about that feeling you get from seeing the jealous retail sales clerks made famous in the techno thriller, Pretty Women? Where the lovely whore gets the sensitive investment banker. You need to watch that one again and understand the power of branding on your binge-watching mind.
Famous quotes, the way a woman would have to say them during a meeting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2015/10/13/jennifer-lawrence-has-a-point-famous-quotes-the-way-a-woman-would-have-to-say-them-during-a-meeting/
Rupert Murdoch’s Ownership Society Subprime Mortgage is Underwater!
WALLACE: “The Wall Street Journal says that you are running as, quote, ‘the most anti-trade candidate since Herbert Hoover.'”
TRUMP: “OK, so here’s the deal. First of all, The Wall Street Journal was bought for $5 billion [in 2007]. It’s now worth $500 million, OK? They don’t have to tell me what to do.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/trump-immigration-terror-attacks-214905
Private business valuations are President Donald’s specialty. Unicorns beware, if you lose esteem in the markets eyes, your arguments are fallacious. Theranos, you’re fired!
That 4.5 billion loss – couldn’t have happened to a better man.
I don’t know much about Skype’s branding but their UI is one big mess. Not only is their overall design deficient but the UI on the PC desktop is entirely different from the UI on my Android phone. The UI is where they should focus some of their energies.
Japan Is Showing the Rest of the World How to Deal With Gun Violence
By Zeeshan Aleem
October 16, 2015
Gunshots set the tempo for one of the most draining rhythms of American life.
Mass shootings, which have been about as consistent as the rise of the sun this year, are a constant source of tragedy and anxiety across the country. Again and again, the United States reacts to mass shootings with a ritualized bout of mourning as critics of the country’s gun policies slide into a well-worn cycle of horror, sadness and anger.
One established feature of this cycle is a chart that circulates across the Internet showing how exceptional the U.S. is in the developed world for the frequency of its gun deaths. The chart below shows the rate of homicides by firearms in developed nations. With the exception of Mexico, which is in the midst of a civil war over its illicit drug trade, the U.S. is without rival among its peers:
Japan Has Shown the Rest of the World How to Eliminate Shooting Deaths
Source: United Nations/The Guardian
That chart captures how serious this problem is in the U.S. but it also shows alternatives. Almost all the way at that bottom lies another major country that’s almost entirely extinguished gun deaths. It’s a highly populated country with a bloody history of warfare, extraordinary technological sophistication and a population that enjoys shooting for sport. Yet in all of 2013, merely 12 people were killed by guns, according to the Washington Post, a number lower than the victim count of a number of recent mass shootings in the U.S.
That country is Japan. Largely because of its very strict gun laws and low gun ownership rate, gun-related homicides are an extreme rarity. On the occasion that there is a spike in homicides — in 2007, the death of 22 people in gun attacks caused great alarm — more rules are often instituted in response to make such gun deaths even more unlikely.
….
http://mic.com/articles/126573/japan-has-shown-the-rest-of-the-world-how-to-eliminate-shooting-deaths
The Financial Crisis: Lessons for the Next One
The massive and multifaceted policy responses to the financial crisis and Great Recession — ranging from traditional fiscal stimulus to tools that policymakers invented on the fly — dramatically reduced the severity and length of the meltdown that began in 2008; its effects on jobs, unemployment, and budget deficits; and its lasting impact on today’s economy.
Without the policy responses of late 2008 and early 2009, we estimate that:
. The peak-to-trough decline in real gross domestic product (GDP), which was barely over 4%, would have been close to a stunning 14%;
. The economy would have contracted for more than three years, more than twice as long as it did;
. More than 17 million jobs would have been lost, about twice the actual number.
. Unemployment would have peaked at just under 16%, rather than the actual 10%;
. The budget deficit would have grown to more than 20 percent of GDP, about double its actual peak of 10 percent, topping off at $2.8 trillion in fiscal 2011.
. Today’s economy might be far weaker than it is — with real GDP in the second quarter of 2015 about $800 billion lower than its actual level, 3.6 million fewer jobs, and unemployment at a still-dizzying 7.6%.
…
ok, but was it necessary for the stimulus to be so heavily top-down? Mightn’t the results have been better if the money had been put directly into the hands of people with a higher MPC? (I didn’t read the linked article…perhaps my question is answered).