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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Dinar said:

Second of all, when US spends 5x more per mile on building NYC subway than France and London (see the NYT article all but accusing the MTA of corruption), and the local officials saying this is because NY is an old city, you know it is not the lack of money, but mismanagement.  My kids are in public school in NYC.  The city spends $40K per each kid in public school, yet only $10K reaches the school, the rest goes where?  Meanwhile Catholic private schools charge $6-10K per kid. 

 

 

 

 Economists and similar elites never -- never -- talk about waste, inefficiencies, and corruption. All they do is wave their hand and say "well, we clearly just need to spend more on infrastructure".

 

Then the leftist environmentalists and NIMBY guys take over and regulated it to death and extract money for "environmental studies" and "consultant fees" while the unions get their pensions, NGOs get their dues, etc. And meanwhile nothing gets built. 

 

Ezra Klein has gone into this lately--when the left is in charge of government, nothing gets done, but everybody gets paid. Biden administration, Canada (Trudeau), and much of Europe are the examples.

 

That's why you got California high speed rail with no tracks laid. That's why you got Biden rural high speed with no homes connected. Ditto for Biden EV charging network. That's why you have NYC with huge taxes needing to implement "congestion tolls" to fund their subways.

 

 

Edited by Dalal.Holdings
Posted
On 4/3/2025 at 6:48 PM, villainx said:

This is the recent Business Brew pod, with Jingshu Zhang.  I only started at 36 minute mark because I was short on time and at least wanted to get the Tencent discussion in first, but from 36 minute mark to the end was interesting.  It talked a bit about big tech, Tencent, SEO, delisting fears, and so forth.  I guess for me, it seemed to be different or new perspective.

 

https://overcast.fm/+AA4pguZn3lQ

This was a really good podcast, didn't know the guy but took a chance since it was China centric and he didn't disappoint.

Posted
19 hours ago, Dinar said:

My kids are in public school in NYC.

 

What grade levels?  Have two in MS and one pre-k.  

 

I don't understand how NYC aren't much better than they are.  But my schooling was not great either.

 

Posted
16 minutes ago, villainx said:

 

What grade levels?  Have two in MS and one pre-k.  

 

I don't understand how NYC aren't much better than they are.  But my schooling was not great either.

 

Because everything in NYC that involves government is a grift. Even public transportation...they openly let people dodge fares while harming the honest folks by continuously raising rates and doing shit like the congestion tax. It's an open secret that if you want to leech off society/government, NYC is a great place to be. 

Posted
25 minutes ago, villainx said:

 

What grade levels?  Have two in MS and one pre-k.  

 

I don't understand how NYC aren't much better than they are.  But my schooling was not great either.

 

3rd grade and first grade.  I have seen standards drop in the last two years.  They used to test for reading at the beginning of first grade, and during the year, no more.  DOE decided that it lowers children's self-esteem.  Meanwhile, Louisiana went from 50th in the country in reading to 20th by testing and tutoring those who underperform.  

Posted (edited)
On 4/22/2025 at 3:11 PM, cubsfan said:

I enjoyed this interview with Steve Eisman re: his interpretation of tariffs, DOGE, etc

 

 

So tariff are going to be paid by foreigners?

 

Also, he looks at trade balances but what about the goods that American and American companies  don’t get any more. 40% of China’s exports to the US are actually components that go into US products , which now need to be sourced from elsewhere, but where?

 

On USMCA- he forgot about tariffs on Aluminum, lumber, steel, cars that were  USCMA compliant and still get tariffed

 

He also didn’t predict the escalation with China, states they can retaliate, but they did. He talks bout retaliation in services and the big gang and just states that this isn’t viable politically, why not? the US has a huge surplus in services, so targeting those are very low hanging fruit for Europe. I don’t think these guys have thought this very well through. I am also fairly that the $600B in revenues (from American tax payers) won’t be happening either.

 

If you run the math, ~20% of China’s GDP are exports but only 15% of exports go to the USA, so that’s 3% of China’s GDP. It’s a huge number, but if they can compensate for 1/3 then why can’t they take a 2%one time hit to GDP?   It could cause a stagnant year but wouldn’t be the end of the world. Then they would be decoupled and there would not be much that the US could do to China any more.I think this is the game China is going to play if they have to.

Edited by Spekulatius
Posted

This is the best non-political take of the current situation in the US and where things might be going that I have heard. In the second half of the interview he discusses his inflation outlook - he thinks it will likely trend higher than consensus currently expects… Rogoff is one smart cookie.

 

 

  • 3 weeks later...
Posted (edited)


An interesting interview with JP Morgan’s Michael Cembalest. Starts at 24:15. Some notable quotes:


Japan

“So Japan's interesting because for the first time in like 30 years, Japan is really focused on shareholder value, which is some crazy number, like 50 or 60% of the Japanese market trades below one time's book.

 

The number in the US is 4% or something. They've now said, okay, you have to do special dividends, you have to do spinoffs, and if you don't take steps to reverse that, you could be delisted. I don't think they're serious about that, but they're moving a lot of Japanese companies to do things they haven't done in a while.


One of my really informal indicators is how many colleagues of mine have been asked normally against their will to relocate to Japan, to work on corporate finance, spinoffs and M&A activity, and that number for the first time in 30 years is starting to go up. That's a sign that there are things going on in the corporate sector which are focused on shareholder value rather than the other constituencies that the Japanese equity market is usually focused on.”


The Armageddonists

“It was a brief moment earlier this year, but it was down 20%. When the markets are down 20%, there's a dynamic that takes place, which is all of a sudden, there's this metaphorical crypt that opens up, and the financial media all of a sudden, Nuriel Roubini and Albert Edwards and Soros and all kinds of negative market voices tend to reappear like ghosts whenever the market's down to tell you how it's gonna get so much worse. And I've published this thing over the years called The Armageddonists, where every time there's a correction, then they come out and tell you how much worse it's gonna get, and I plot how much money you make if you take the other side of that.”


Wealth Tax

“But I'm very concerned about some of those wealth and equality issues. And the dam will break at some point and we will have a wealth tax in the United States. It's just a question of the level that it will be set at.”

 

Drawdowns
“Something happened to the psyche of investors, because I've been doing this long enough to have seen it. The Great Depression was this kind of distant thing, like the Civil War or the fall of the Roman Empire. And then all of a sudden, within one 10-year period, we had two 40 percent declines in the equity market.

 

It's something that hadn't happened since the Great Depression. The first one was 2001, 2002, and then 2009 when we hit like 666, the mark of the devil in March of 2009. Because that happened and because so many of the fundamental drivers, particularly of the second one, were obscured and not understood until after the fact, investors ever since have lived with this sense of, is the next one the big one?

 

I live on a seismic fault. And I think that's one of the mistakes that some of the Armageddonists make, is having lived through that experience, they can't shed the notion that I have to prepare for another 40% decline in the equity market. Whereas the kind of standard recession is more kind of a 12 to 20% decline both in equity markets and in earnings.”

 

 

Edited by nwoodman
Posted
On 4/24/2025 at 1:03 AM, Viking said:

This is the best non-political take of the current situation in the US and where things might be going that I have heard. In the second half of the interview he discusses his inflation outlook - he thinks it will likely trend higher than consensus currently expects… Rogoff is one smart cookie.

 

 



I started to listen to this podcast episode until I got to this statement 

 

surely someone with a PhD (self declared intellectual) is aware the near impossibility of penguins ever meeting polar bears, as they are located in different continents literally on either side of world. 
 

 

IMG_3925.thumb.jpeg.edaa8a58467aeadad13cb94c1e8a0438.jpeg

 


perhaps he is fond of this Coca Cola commercial from 20 years ago 

 

 

IMG_3926.thumb.jpeg.8fb063f7fa87997ac687ded3764d2638.jpeg

 

Posted
On 5/9/2025 at 11:45 AM, Xerxes said:



I started to listen to this podcast episode until I got to this statement 

 

surely someone with a PhD (self declared intellectual) is aware the near impossibility of penguins ever meeting polar bears, as they are located in different continents literally on either side of world. 
 

 

IMG_3925.thumb.jpeg.edaa8a58467aeadad13cb94c1e8a0438.jpeg

 


perhaps he is fond of this Coca Cola commercial from 20 years ago 

 

 

IMG_3926.thumb.jpeg.8fb063f7fa87997ac687ded3764d2638.jpeg

 

 

Funny. I noticed the same comment and couldn't believe it. Smart guy clearly so funny oversight.

Something similar, Steve Levitt was interviewing John Green about tuberculous and volunteered that he had never heard of Danaher before. Smart well-read guy, but I realized still doesn't have a perfect expansive view from the Ivory Tower. What are our own blind spots? 

Posted
14 minutes ago, handycap5 said:

 

Funny. I noticed the same comment and couldn't believe it. Smart guy clearly so funny oversight.

Something similar, Steve Levitt was interviewing John Green about tuberculous and volunteered that he had never heard of Danaher before. Smart well-read guy, but I realized still doesn't have a perfect expansive view from the Ivory Tower. What are our own blind spots? 


plenty for sure. 
 

But I (me anyways) don’t do podcast. So my blind spots remain unknown to me and I don’t get exposed to the full fury of the market for the truth.   
 

That said I do post on this forum (I don’t have or use any other forum). So hopefully folks will continue to do correction on my wrong statement. 

Posted
On 5/9/2025 at 10:45 AM, Xerxes said:



I started to listen to this podcast episode until I got to this statement 

 

surely someone with a PhD (self declared intellectual) is aware the near impossibility of penguins ever meeting polar bears, as they are located in different continents literally on either side of world. 
 

 

IMG_3925.thumb.jpeg.edaa8a58467aeadad13cb94c1e8a0438.jpeg

 


perhaps he is fond of this Coca Cola commercial from 20 years ago 

 

 

IMG_3926.thumb.jpeg.8fb063f7fa87997ac687ded3764d2638.jpeg

 

I’ve encountered many people who didn’t know that there are no penguins in the arctic. Or that there are no polar bears in the Antarctic. In fact, I’d guess that most people who I’ve talked to where the topic has come up were surprised about penguins not being in the arctic.
 

I think for some people, when they hear or read the words arctic and Antarctic, it just kind blends together unless they really stop and think about the difference.
 

Also, I don’t think a lot of people don’t visualize a map/globe in their heads when they are talking about locations. 
 

The ignorance may also have to do with your home location. Like if you live in the southern US, northern Canada is about as foreign to you as Antarctica is (unless you travel to northern Canada).

Posted

It is private. I used to work for them.


My favourite part of the business is that they rented a huge building beside FedEx in the primary FedEx hub airport. Then, if someone needed a replacement phone, it could be easily shipped overnight. It was a major competitive advantage when competing with other potential phone insurers, that they could get a phone to people in hours while others took days.

Posted
1 hour ago, Xerxes said:

Cole Smead on opportunities in Canadian oil sands 

 

He covers MEG, Imperial Oil, Strathcona,  talks about Fairfax, The Waterous Funds, even Couche Tard. 

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/in-the-money-with-amber-kanwar/id1790432796?i=1000699626644

 

I think @SafetyinNumbers will like this one. This was before the Strathcona offer for MEG 


Thanks! I did listen to it when it came out. 

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