james22

I'm uninterested in anything callable, TwoCitiesCapital. What was your purpose in buying the preferreds, drzola? CorpRaider? Happy with how they've performed? You'd buy them again?

Anyone ever consider BAC-L and WFC-L as a bond (or annuity) alternative? https://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2017/03/a-value-opportunity-in-preferred-stocks/ Yielding 6.34% and 6.38% today.

Many of the countries now proposing the bric have common interests, not least a dislike of U.S. hegemony. But while the enemy of my enemy may be my friend, a successful BRICS needs more than that. It needs genuine aims, rules and commitment. No amount of backslapping and fist-pumping will change that. India sees China as a strategic rival. It is aggressively positioning itself as a palatable alternative to China for manufacturing. Meanwhile, the skirmishes between India and China on the Tibetan plateau have turned more deadly. If China is promoting a BRICS concept as cover for Chinese hegemony, India is determined to use that same organization to block Chinese influence. Saudi Arabia and Iran feel the same way about each other. South Africa is rapidly becoming a failed state. Its power crisis threatens value-added exports. How can the country possibly lead any alliance? Mexico? Every Mexican company I talk to tells me how it is expanding in the United States. Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, recently lamented, “Every night, I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar.” Simple answer: Brazilian mining giant Vale SA can sell iron ore to China in Chinese yuan, or renminbi (RMB), all it wants, but what would it do with those RMB afterwards? Vale’s debts are all in U.S. dollars. The heavy construction equipment the company uses is often built by Caterpillar Inc. or Japan’s Komatsu Ltd., so Vale needs dollars and yen to buy it. RMB is valueless for Vale’s operations in Sudbury or Sulawesi (part of Indonesia). Meanwhile, China has bought considerable influence outside of BRICS via its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which invests in more than 150 countries. Why would China give that influence away to others via BRICS? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-russia-china-brics-west/

Xi Jinping failed to show up for a planned speech. Did anything extraordinary happen yesterday that might have unavoidably pulled Xi away from his duties? Maybe? https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/08/23/what-happened-to-xi-jinping-at-the-brics-summit-n573100

You don't remember when Bezos was disappeared?

The eight habits are: being physically active, being free from opioid addiction, not smoking, managing stress, having a good diet, not regularly binge drinking, having good sleep hygiene, and having positive social relationships. . . . Overall, the results showed that low physical activity, opioid use, and smoking had the biggest impact on lifespan; these factors were associated with around a 30-45% higher risk of death during the study period. Stress, binge drinking, poor diet, and poor sleep hygiene were each associated with around a 20% increase in the risk of death, and a lack of positive social relationships was associated with a 5% increased risk of death. https://nutrition.org/these-eight-habits-could-lengthen-your-life-by-decades/ Actually kind of encouraging. Stress, poor sleep hygiene, and a lack of positive social relationships aren't fun, opioid use and smoking might be, but not once addictive, and low physical activity isn't any more fun than being physically active. Needn't make any compromise when addressing them. Binge drinking and a poor diet are the only things that really have a fun cost.

Only Apple exposure via BRK and VITAX. Not significant enough to hurt.

For decades, China powered its economy by investing in factories, skyscrapers and roads. The model sparked an extraordinary period of growth that lifted China out of poverty and turned it into a global giant whose export prowess washed across the globe. Now the model is broken. What worked when China was playing catch-up makes less sense now that the country is drowning in debt and running out of things to build. . . . The most obvious solution, economists say, would be for China to shift toward promoting consumer spending and service industries, which would help create a more balanced economy that more resembles those of the U.S. and Western Europe. . . . Instead, guided by a desire to strengthen political control, Xi’s leadership has doubled down on state intervention to make China an even bigger industrial power, strong in government-favored industries such as semiconductors, EVs and AI. https://archive.ph/HES9y#selection-639.0-653.36 With the old model reaching its end, it would make sense for China to pursue another phase of liberalization, evolving toward a freer economy with a focus on consumer spending and service industries. But that clashes with President Xi Jinping's vision. Instead, the government is scaling up another round of industrial policy focused on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and direct government spending on cultural items such as sporting events. "The leadership also worries that empowering individuals to make more decisions over how they spend their money could undermine state authority, without generating the kind of growth Beijing desires," the Journal reports. That line does a pretty great job of summing up what's at stake in China. There's no doubt that governmental stimulus spending can drive economic growth higher over the short term, but the bill eventually comes due in the form of higher debt and wasted resources. Sustainable, long-term economic growth doesn't come from officials issuing edicts. It comes from the individuals' power to pursue their own needs and desires in the marketplace—even if some of those desires aren't aligned with what the government wants. https://reason.com/2023/08/21/chinas-industrial-policy-is-failing-will-american-politicians-take-notice/

Ha. When I think healthy, I think the ability to recover from a hangover.

Sure, just curious. Certainly depicting the slope as horizontal until 40 is more intuitive and less distracting.

And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire

Are we really less healthy until 30-40? Does that reflect infant mortality and the like? It shouldn't.

Fun or not, some things seem a good investment. Regular exercise, quitting smoking, drinking in moderation, watching your weight and eating plenty of fruit and veg are all simple things that make a huge difference to your biological age. There's a roughly 15-year difference in life expectancy between a person who does four of these five things and someone who does none of them. https://www.sciencealert.com/your-body-can-be-younger-than-you-are-heres-how-thats-possible

The shame of it! Mississippi has found itself in the humiliating position of being compared disobligingly with the United Kingdom. https://archive.ph/0Eg6T#selection-639.0-643.39

Without being political, I expect the next 5 to 10 years will be interesting times (Fourth Turning?). Retired, it makes planning a withdrawal rate difficult. Just have to plan to be flexible, I guess.

One danger of inequality today: it needs expression. Given mass affluence, elites can no longer demonstrate status with luxury goods. They now do so with luxury beliefs which, by definition, need be silly. Silly beliefs lead to bad public policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_beliefs https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for

I was going to bow out, but this is too funny. "Fine tune"?!? LOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_knowledge_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” https://archive.ph/DCsMq#selection-835.35-835.179

“Luxury beliefs” have to be somewhat crazy to fill their role — if they were obviously true and practical, everyone would believe them and they wouldn’t be elite signifiers. Glenn Reynolds

Never suggested that. And for those with existing networks, it'd probably be silly to leave them for elsewhere.

Sure. But one's chance of success is greater in the US than elsewhere (easier access to networks, money, talent, customers).

That's pretty discouraging to capital formation, yeah? Easy to make progress when starting from zero (because of the previous central planning policies).

In 2019-2020; I had the chance to be in Silicon Valley for a year. Working for startup accelerator, biotech incubator and go to around 130 conferences / meetup. I met VCs, Academics from Stanford, Berkeley, Serial Entrepreneurs, Tech Workers working for Google, IBM, Amazon, Scientists working for Genentech, Pfizer, Bayer, Merck and more. I could clearly see the insane difference in terms of culture and what success looks like. Being an entrepreneur there and building company is everything while is Europe it is just starting. . . . The 2022 StartupBlink report reveals that the US maintains its dominance in the startup economy with a score four times greater than that of the UK, the second-ranked country. Sweden tops the list of successful startup ecosystems in Europe, followed by Germany and France. Despite being ranked as the 9th best startup ecosystem globally, France’s output is only 1/10 that of the US. https://mikelmangold.com/usa-vs-europe/

Where would you HQ your start-up?