I’ve been looking forward to reading Ray Dalio’s Big Debt Crises ever since I slowly gave up on Principles. Dalio runs Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund notable for two things: 1. It’s an extraordinarily large fund with a track record that’s either solid (in terms of
One of the things I struggle with as a parent is instilling kids with the right values, as opposed to the values that are popular right now. Weirdly, I hear parents talk about their concerns in the opposite direction: that their kids won’t be quite socialized enough to believe
Attention conservation notice. This jeremiad is all about financial policy, which I know is not a topic all of my readers are interested in. This piece is only relevant to you if you own a home in the US (because mortgage rates matter) if you rent in the US (because
The Alchian-Allen Effect is one of my favorite economics party tricks. The theory is that whenever there are two versions of a product, one of which is more expensive, any increase in the fixed cost of the products will cause consumers to substitute for the most expensive one. To take
It’s the last day of the year, so it’s time for the tradition of trying not to think about how you failed at your New Years resolutions. The making of New Years resolutions is a durable tradition, but not because it works at its stated goal: New Years
M. King Hubbert has a rare distinction among prophets: first they ignored him, then they laughed at him, then they fought him, then he won. And then he lost. From 1860 through the mid-50s, US oil production followed a smooth exponential curve. (I don’t mean “exponential” as in “growing
“Don’t immanentize the eschaton!” I felt a tinge of envy every time I heard this catchphrase. It’s a double-barreled term — you’ve got your fussy Latinate “Immanetize” and your stately Greek “eskhatos,” and you get to dismiss something as both woolly utopianism and a threat to civilization as
Buybacks by quarter, courtesy of S&P by way of Yardeni Research. One of the classic tropes of lazy financial journalists goes like this: XYZ Co spent half of their free cash flow on buybacks this year, but the stock dropped! They lost their shareholders billions of dollars! What
One upon a time, in the early 2000s, a small company had a little HR issue: one of their employees was a bit of a weirdo. He was, more to the point, really weirding out one of his coworkers, and she said she felt uncomfortable coming in to work. HR
A common theme I’ve mentioned — in pieces on mortgages, industry demographics, energy, and bubbles generally — is the idea that the perception of lower risk creates the reality of higher risk. This theme is hardly original to me; Hyman Minsky wrote about it, and anybody can intuit it from thinking
A few weeks ago, the CEO of a Chinese company got in some legal trouble. They had her dead to rights: a camera had seen her crossing a street against the light, facial recognition software had matched her image to a database, and so she was promptly issued a ticket.
One of the best business parables goes like this: A man walks into a bar, and he tells the bartender “I bet you $10 I can bite my eye.” The bartender says “You’re on.” He pops out his glass eye, puts it in his mouth, and bites down. The