stylized_fact

While she probably knows about this already and I'm not sure about eligibility in this case, there is a student loan forgiveness program for people who engage in a commitment of public service employment. http://studentaid.ed.gov/sites/default/files/public-service-loan-forgiveness.pdf

GE has a program of direct unsecured borrowing from individuals with decent rates (no FDIC) http://www.gecapitalinvestdirect.com/

I would like to join any planned meeting (weekends if possible). +1 to the idea of discussing FNMA preferreds. E&Ps would also interest me, or regional companies (GVC?).

A few years back I read Ken Auletta's book Googled, and found it to be entertaining and informative. It covers the earlier history of the company and raises a series of questions about the future of the publishing industry, consumer privacy, and how the advertising industry has had to adapt. Auletta is a good storyteller and has since published some decent magazine pieces on Silicon Valley.

recently finished Finance and the Good Society by Shiller just ordered The Power Surge by Michael Levi

As was the case with standardized container shipping, I'm guessing there was a powerful status quo bias that impeded the replacement of water power with steam power during the industrial revolution. The flying shuttle was famously unpopular when it was introduced. Kahneman wrote about the status quo bias in Thinking Fast and Slow. http://johngaynardcreativity.blogspot.com/2012/03/resistance-to-change-explained-by.html

The point is that the title of this thread is "There's been no REAL innovation for the last 30 years", not that there hasn't been a rise in the standards of living over the last 250. The difference of productivity growth of 3% per year vs 1% per year compounded is a huge reduction in expectations, and has a real impact as you can see in the GDP per capita numbers. The cliche you'll hear in media discussions of this topic is, "Would you rather have running water or an iPhone?". http://www.cepr.org/pubs/PolicyInsights/PolicyInsight63.pdf

Demographics and delevering aside, some of this appears to be sentiment driven if you believe the time series reported below for ratings of quality in long term investments: http://www.gallup.com/poll/147206/stock-market-investments-lowest-1999.aspx When I look on meetup.com, I see tons of groups that gather to discus real estate investing, and a much smaller selection of folks interested in things like FX and charts/technical analysis.

Careful. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-05/splunk-big-data-means-priciest-deal-since-2008-real-m-a.html

There's a passage in the chapter on Malone that describes TCI's land-grab for cable subscribers. As they increased their market share they turned this into negotiating leverage with content providers, driving margin expansion on each subscriber. They then used this to negotiate better terms from their lenders. This sounds a lot like what Bezos is trying to do with Amazon. Developing a payment schedule to rival the reliability of cable subscriptions during the 70's and 80's seems like a bigger challenge today, though.

Or they are better prepared for it than competitors and think it can lead to a harder market over time? More than one way to make it work. I know next to nothing about any of this, really, but the worry keeps my exposure to AIG limited. Surprisingly, there seems to be plenty of appetite for cat risk: http://www.artemis.bm/blog/2013/01/31/while-2012-catastrophe-bond-issuance-was-high-it-still-didnt-satisfy-investor-demand-willis/

I guess they are planning for minimal climate change related cat payouts.

www.whalewisdom.com is my favorite way to view institutional holdings.

a little less than 10% currently, but that's because we're amid a healthy round of special situations (NXY, AXLL, and DGTC). Normally closer to 30%.

At a more technical and theoretical (scholarly?) level, there's the work of Princeton Economist Markus Brunnermeier: http://scholar.princeton.edu/markus/ whose work covers bubbles as well as financial crises and systemic risk. The writing isn't nearly as entertaining or readable as Michael Lewis or George Loewenstein, unfortunately. There's also some discussion of Soros's reflexivity idea in Andrei Shleifer's book Inefficient Markets. Animal Spirits by Akerlof and Shiller is interesting.

~30% mostly financials (AIG, SNV, RF, C, BAC, MS, GS, MBI), hurt by ESI, APOL, STRA, and MRVL. Best year yet, but still feels much too lucky, or too dependent on crises like Aug-Oct 2011 for entries.

If I read this correctly, a drawdown in equities is almost inevitable in the months ahead. Marc Lasry, perhaps the most politically connected HFM, has been raising cash recently. Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to get another bite of the AIG/BAC apple sometime in the spring of 2013.

I think that part of the moat of Office/Windows 7 applies also to Dell, and the Win7 enterprise refresh is around 50% complete. Microsoft's server products are also performing well. I question their ability to pick their spots with services. Even Cisco has managed to grow service revenue at a 20% rate. Hopefully Quest will help them turn the corner, but this is a pretty tough neighborhood (VMWare, IBM, MSFT).

Chanos is saying that Dell has plowed billions into acquisitions to end up with the same level of earnings where it was before (which looking back is basically true) - which implies that from an earnings standpoint its high M&A spend is almost equivalent to huge hidden maintenance capex rather than growth capex as its legacy business gets less and less profitable. If it needed the same level of M&A to maintain the same results forever he might have a point. I am inclined to take the other side of that view, but it's worth thinking about. Chanos has a complicated method of expressing that the PC business' contribution to earnings is declining. It also speaks to the problem of trying to normalize FCF for an innovation business. Maintenance/investment capex is difficult to delineate, but that sword swings both ways... The cynic in me (sorry for sounding cliché) says that the company has been a complete basket case when it comes to overpaying for acquisitions, and that this is probably best thought of as an operating expense associated with keeping the executive team busy. This sector and Dell in particular seems to have a real problem with institutional imperative. IBM offers a great counterexample where financial distress lead to managerial reform. Companies like Dell and Microsoft appear hopeless in this regard because of the ownership stake of founders (and their complicit boards). ... and I did buy some Dell today.