Quick thought: While it is true that sharing your wealth is a potential disincentive to earning it, the primary issue of socialism/communist government structures regarding productivity is that it removes the process of creative destruction. More aptly that central planning can stay on a narrative even after that view becomes obsolete. This is most easily … Read more
Random thought. A foreign nation could become the de facto monetary policy player replacing the ‘central bank’ of a nation just by owning a majority of its bonds This means that when a nation undertakes to lower the interest rate etc. Any open market monetary policy could be undermined, by countering the central banks actions, … Read more
Lots of people have speculated on the identify of SN. I have a few thoughts on it and thought to list it out here. 1. Working for corporation / government entity who would own the code. I believe SN, was a cryptographic / security expert who was working in a situation, where any work they … Read more
Allowing those companies to choose how they spend their tax dollars.. One main reason why tech companies often go south (or domicile in Ireland) is simply taxation. Very easy to understand. While any company in Canada generally pays more as a share in taxes, which is a deterrent, there may be some companies who would … Read more
Had never realized this until thinking it through now, but the beautiful yield and inverted yield curve in finance that we all know and love can be considered the same as the forward contracts concept of contango and backwardation. A yield curve that is inverted is identical to an asset in backwardation – we just … Read more
If you were to study gravity, you’d want nearly a perfect Zero-G enviroment and then introduce 2 spheres. It would give the ideal experimental result by removing all other noisy variables that you’d find in the real world. Enter the Lemon… If one were to think about how multiple items are produced and purchased. I … Read more
With the decline of both libraries and bookstores. It makes sense to consider that: 1. Lifelong learning and retraining of skills is more important than ever 2. Bookstores often are burdened by bricks and mortar (ie. rent) for an otherwise favorable public good 3. Libraries suffer from low user bases and are becoming obsolete in … Read more
Here is my loan repayment history so far on Kiva. This has all been from a $100 loan. 13/16 loans already 100% paid back, 3 loan’s in the process of being paid back. I am choosing the loans and try to lend to institutions who have a great repayment history / low risk for housing, … Read more
Congrats Janet Yellen on your appointment to the Fed as Chairwoman. Akerlof and Schiller are your inner-circle, pretty sweet. That’s a lot of Nobel laureates over for dinner at one time. I am very glad the most qualified candidate is female – that is you! Less joyous regarding the dovish stance on rates however. Being … Read more
Finance ‘storming’ here… Is living on the top of a 10 story building exactly as safe as the 2nd floor? Can you say that 100 oranges are equal to 200 christmas cards. Is paramount pictures worth as much as a mining company? Is there true fungibility. Is one slightly riskier than the other and is … Read more
Don’t have this figured out.. but what is the relationship between america’s first founders and silicon valley, when it comes to self-governance. There seems to be one, but it is across so many different ‘dimensions’ that its tough to describe. Successful self-governance between many parties is almost landing a bowling ball on a pin. The … Read more
We are just entering a time period, whereby people’s lives, songs, videos photos, documents (classified or declassified) are entering into the public record. History is much more real, when you can see and hear in film what things were like. Recently I’ve been immersed daily in both reading and watching of early 20th century american … Read more
An old article written for Wall Street Survivor reposted here. J.L. Kelly Jr. was a very interesting member of the famed Bell Labs. There is a new book published this year, 2012 about Bell Labs incidentally called: The Idea Factory, by John Gertner. Peguin 2012 | http://www.amazon.com/The-Idea-Factory-American-Innovation/dp/1594203288 Enjoy! By Alwin Tong, for Wall Street Survivor … Read more
I love this chart, which shows the sovereign debt of countries (proportional to their size). Basically corruption and misspending is rampant with the countries in trouble.
For anyone who read my post on why wine was a good investment – June 5, 2009: http://www.alwinian.net/2009/06/05/wine-better-than-bonds/ The Star has posted some pretty similar findings in their investments over the decade review. Ughemm.Ughemm.. http://www.thestar.com/business/investing/article/743128–it-was-a-decade-of-volatility-for-investors
That i’ve been holding onto for a long time. It would be simple to implement, with two usb mice. The problem is in the software, as the O/S needs to be reconfigured to either accept 2 input streams or to have the mice logically mapped from a single stream. Many applications would seem to be … Read more
Almost done moving… 3 moves in 3 months. This will be my new room in August. My friend Peemo (at PeterMohideen.com) put these up from his new shiny Ipod3GS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hkP7-RlOR0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_AA44bMkYE Enjoy :)
Why are some organizations efficient and others not? It occurred that possibly the best way of analyzing and finding inefficiencies in an organization is to use vectors. Like electricity, macro-economics and swimming, aggregate/net action is really the most important thing. Measurement of energy versus application is easily seen with vector relationships. If bureacracy brings you … Read more
Interesting to note Paul Krugman’s point on recent Chinese central bank figures (if you follow this sort of stuff). Excerpted verbatim from here his blog at the New York Times online. May 29, 2009 What you don’t know … The focus these days is on the mismatch between China’s electricity consumption and a key measure … Read more
More polemnical investing advice here. …Because of the zero rate interest policy of ‘the modern world’, if you are looking for the security of bonds, but not in this economic climate. I would highly recommend purchasing rare and expensive wines. (seriously). The reasons are several fold. A. Wines are commodities which hedge against inflation, hyperinflation … Read more