John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, has published a new book called Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life … download the first chapter here… he writes…
~~~~ “The rules under which our system works — which I call, after Justice Louis Brandeis, “ The Relentless Rules of Humble Arithmetic ” — are ironclad:
The gross return generated in the financial [...]
Openness… the power of transparency…
Is transparency the new engine of economic productivity?
Think about the following…
~~~ “The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development….” ~~~~
The use of the term open source is generally applied to the development of [...]
What is the biggest challenge facing our nation?
You might not guess that it is the national debt… oh yeah… really…
This is a 30 minute version of the movie (I.O.U.S.A) was made to highlight a very serious problem looming ahead… how big is this problem? About $53 trillion dollars… or put more personally about $175,000 per [...]
~~~~ Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — California, the biggest U.S. state borrower, raised $5 billion to avert a cash shortage by turning to the bedrock of the municipal bond market: its own taxpayers.
California, a bellwether for state and local government debt, was able to boost its offering of short-term notes this week by 25 percent from [...]
Brilliant…
From the New York Times… ~~~~ ” And all it took was a global financial meltdown.
There it is, a little driblet of encouragement to ride a bike to work — way, way down in House Resolution 1424, also known as the bailout bill:
SEC. 211. TRANSPORTATION FRINGE BENEFIT TO BICYCLE COMMUTERS.
(a) In General- Paragraph (1) of section [...]
“Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.”
Francis Bacon, Sr. (English lawyer and philosopher 1561- 1626)
~~~~~~
Our beloved nation… struck low… fearful… confused…Yes… our economic condition is a disaster… this period may be marked as one of the worst the country will endure… historians will look [...]
The bottom of Jupiter…
When the world’s largest bond fund raises $ 5 billion dollars to buy senior tranches of asset backed securities does that signal a bottom? From BBG…
~~ “… The new Pimco fund, dubbed Disco, will focus on commercial loans as well as residential debt that doesn’t carry explicit government guarantees or the implied [...]
Prosper, the peer-to-peer lending platform is going mainstream…
The Washington Post has a lengthy article about the service and how the experience is for borrowers and lenders…
Seems to be making slow and steady traction…
On the borrowers side it offers a potentially lower cost of funds…
And the lender side has a particurly good profile… lenders can make much higher returns [...]
I.O.U.S.A .. An alarming primer on America’s off-the-charts debt morass … opening Aug 22nd
The American economy is all geared to consuming more… quantity is what we measure… and quantity is the benechmark for evaluating economic conditions… and surely we are a “big” nation… in many ways… but maybe there are more interesting measures…
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator based on modeling of customer evaluations [...]