Wise words from the Dalai Lama. I need to read this every day.
Hugh Hendry has written his first market review for 2 years for his Eclectica fund (which has been making strong returns)
He’s pretty contrarian, notably long USA and short China
“There is a near consensus that China will supplant America this decade. We do not believe this. We are more bullish on US growth than most. The momentous nature of recent advances in shale oil and gas extraction and America’s acceptance of the unpleasantness of debt and labour price restructuring looks to us as if it is creating yet another historic turning point. By embracing his inadequacies and leaping on his luck, the strong man may have finally broken the binds that had previously held him back. We are also more pessimistic on Chinese growth than ever. …… On the plus side we also believe that we are much closer than before to the beginning of a bull market of perhaps 1982, if not 1932, proportions. We just need the last shoe to drop.”
My favourite bit his is note on detachment. ”I cannot be reached by telephone” - no daily chat with bankers, no buddies, no phone calls, no IM’s.
I was lucky enough to spend a few days at the Economists Tech Frontiers conferences last week. A fascinating lineup of speakers introduced where they thought things were going.
Recurring themes:
Iterate Iterate Iterate - don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
We are all story telling machines - telling stories is what we want, what we respond to, and what we do best, regardless of the medium.It’s only just begun - Moores law has a long while yet to run, and we’re just at the beginning of the tech revolution.
My highlights
Bran Ferren opened with
“We borrow from China to pay the Arabs for oil, and then burn it”
- not necessarily a reliable business model!
Bran’s main view was ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ and that we’re only at the very beginning of a massive rise in technology. His graph showing traditional business failing as tech rose went down well.
“If someone says a rhinoceros is coming in two seconds, we worry. But if you say a rhinoceros is coming in 20 years, nobody moves.” — A Buddhist monk said this to Christopher Dickey on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, last week. (via newsweek)
(via newsweek)
[video]
inspired by the lovely idea here http://weknowmemes.com/2011/12/the-us-budget-explained-in-simple-english/ I wanted to show the UK budget in household terms. Somehow getting rid of those zeros make it much easier to see the ratios.
I got most of these figures from the sources below. I took the cuts from the Department expenditure limits from the Treasury, which say DEL is set to fall from £375.170 billion in 10/11 to £331.900 in 15/16, a cut of £43.27 billion or 11.53%. So thats 43bn over 5 years, or £8.6bn/year.
Let me know if you spot any mistakes!
sources
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/tax-receipts-1963
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100119735/new-statesmans-political-editor-is-wrong-about-the-debt-crisis/
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/total_spending_2010UKbn
uk government, defecit, spending, debt.
[video]
“There’s no such thing as a poor urbanized country; there’s no such thing as a rich rural country.” — Edward Glaeser, cited by Robert Kunzig in The City Solution via National Geographic Magazine (via stoweboyd)
Funny, I thought most urbanised countries were bankrupt, or going that way pretty quick.
(via emergentfutures)
‘Downloading’ new skills into our brains like characters on The Matrix set to become a reality, say scientists
They have been studying how a functional magnetic resonance machine (FMRI) can ‘induce’ knowledge in someone through their visual cortex by sending signals that change their brain activity pattern.
Full Story: MailOnline
In case you missed it, Microsoft opened a can of worms in June when they were the first US company to finally admit that they would release data from any of their global datacentres if requested by the US goverment under the patriot act. This contravenes European data privacy regulations, and when you consider the kinds of data US companies hold (Lockheed Martin and the UK Census data for example!) it’s worrying.
The EC’s justice commissioner Viviane Reding met with German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner last month, and it sounded promising.
We both believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market. This also applies to social networks with users in the EU. We have to make sure that they comply with EU law and that EU law is enforced, even if it is based in a third country and even if its data are stored in a ‘cloud’.
Now ZD Net have published the draft documents, due to be released in January 2012. They look good, and comprehensive.
If the new act is broken, member states’ data protection authorities will be able to impose sanctions, which can range up to a maximum of 5 percent of a company’s annual worldwide turnover.
More from zdnet here http://www.zdnet.com/blog/london/european-data-protection-law-proposals-revealed/1365?tag=search-results-rivers;item5
(Source: europa.eu)
“
For first time in 20 years, TV ownership declines. And households watch a record 59 hours 28 minutes of TV per week! Yes, PER WEEK!
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/30/3294024/for-1st-time-in-history-tv-ownership.html#ixzz1fgFSvRsO
Full Story: Kansas City Star
Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns - Telegraph -
As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.
Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.
The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.
(Source: futuramb, via emergentfutures)
(via kushandwizdom)
I do this every 6 months or so for a quick ready reckoner of EC2 prices.
Heres the standard on demand pricing
And here’s the price if you pay a reservation fee up front
