You don’t mess around with smoke on a boat. Which is where Your Survival Guy found himself last Saturday preparing to bring our boat, Tom Sawyer, back to Newport after a two-week stay on a mooring I keep in Mattapoisett. (You can read here about how my yard went up in smoke). Turning the engines over, they just wouldn’t catch. I checked the safety kill switch. It was connected. Made sure I wasn’t in gear (Read here about that one from last summer.) Check. Tried the engines again. No go. But this time, I saw smoke rising through the console from down below, along with the smell of burning … [Read more...]
DIGITAL DANGERS: Does America Need a Digital Dollar?
In what seems like a relentless drive toward self-actualization, discussion of the digitalization of the dollar has been winding its way through economic and financial news and analysis. But does America need a digital dollar? And are there dangers in such a creation? Alexander William Salter, an associate professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and a senior fellow with the Sound Money Project, discusses some of the dangers of digitizing the world's reserve currency in The Wall Street Journal, writing: The Federal Reserve plans to consider the idea of … [Read more...]
HELLO: “How’s It Going? I Don’t Know Anything”
“How’s it going?” I ask. “Good,” he replies. “I don’t know anything.” And with that, I know he’s good because he’s been telling me that for twenty years now. Now, I can assure you when he says he “don’t know anything,” he knows quite a bit. Because you see, he quit a lucrative job in his 30s to go to medical school simply to try his hand at being a doctor. He, we’ll call him Doc now, is still working part-time as a doctor in his 70s. When telling me the story, his brother-in-law, also a client, tells me Doc’s the smartest guy he’s ever met. Another client, the brother-in-law’s best … [Read more...]
CANARY IN THE COVID MINE? New Zealand One of First Developed Economies to Raise Rates
New Zealand is preparing to raise interest rates after locking down hard for COVID-19. Stephen Wright reports at The Wall Street Journal: New Zealand largely kept out Covid-19 by closing to the outside world, a policy accompanied by stimulus to keep the economy moving. Now the resulting labor shortages and surging demand, notably for housing, have led it to become one of the first developed economies to raise interest rates since the pandemic began. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand lifted its benchmark rate to 0.5% from a record-low 0.25% and signaled more increases over the next year, as … [Read more...]
Why You Can’t Afford to Miss the Boat
You can’t afford to miss the boat, especially when it comes to making money. But it happens all the time with investors. They let inertia slow them down, arriving at the docks too late or deciding not to take the voyage at all. They end up doing nothing for years on end. That’s not investing. Countless studies show that simply missing the best handful of days in stocks in any given year can be detrimental to one’s portfolio. Sure, you might feel good missing the latest slide in stocks, but we’ve been in this bull market run for a long time. It’s not a bad thing for stocks to take a breather … [Read more...]
What Is Facebook Hiding?
Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, is set to tell Congress that Facebook is hiding vital information about how it works to avoid regulation. The Financial Times reports: Facebook has hidden vital information about the way it works from the public and governments around the world in an attempt to avoid being regulated more strictly, a whistleblower has told Congress. “During my time at Facebook, I came to realise a devastating truth: almost no one outside of Facebook knows what happens inside Facebook,” Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager in Facebook’s civic integrity unit … [Read more...]
SOLD OUT: Inflation, Supply Issues Limit Customer Options
Companies faced with limited supplies of raw materials and rising costs of goods are narrowing down the models of products they make to only the most profitable. That usually means that they are building the higher-end, pricier models in their product portfolios, leaving families with lower earnings unable to find cheaper alternatives. The Wall Street Journal reports: Anthony Coughlin’s appliance shop has little trouble filling orders for high-tech washing machines or designer ovens. More difficult: satisfying customers on the hunt for bare-bones, low-budget machines. “There was a day when … [Read more...]
Why Bond Mutual Funds and ETFs No Longer Work
OK, third-quarter report cards are in, and investors want to know how they did. But perhaps just as important, they want to know the WHY behind the performance. When it comes to mutual funds and ETFs, there’s a better way to go, especially when it comes to choppy markets, which have been tough as of late. Why are bond prices down? Because interest rates have risen just a tiny bit, and bond prices move in the opposite direction of rates. Over the quarter, especially the last few weeks or so, interest rates have risen enough to lower prices for bonds this quarter. But we’re talking about a … [Read more...]
Whistleblower Thinks Facebook Doesn’t Censor Enough
A former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen, has blown the whistle on some of the company's procedures, sending information to legislators, regulators, and The Wall Street Journal. Haugen believes the company doesn't do enough to limit certain kinds of content on its platform. Jeff Horwitz reports: Ms. Haugen was initially asked to build tools to study the potentially malicious targeting of information at specific communities. Her team, comprising her and four other new hires, was given three months to build a system to detect the practice, a schedule she considered implausible. She didn’t … [Read more...]
OUT OF OFFICE: Big Accounting Firm Tells 40,000 Employees to Stay Home
More companies are recognizing the benefits of having employees remain at home. Accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers has told 40,000 of its staff that they can continue to work remotely, forever if they choose. Moves like this by big companies will undoubtedly be a boon for "Zoom towns" across America. Daily Mail reports: Working from home is about to become permanent option for 40,000 client services employees at accounting and consulting firm PwC. The company will become one of the biggest employers in America to embrace permanent remote work. PwC employees who choose to work … [Read more...]
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