Latest Stories

• Weekend Readings: Chess, Rhodes Scholars, Trade, etc.
• Readings: Lawyers, Wealth, and Rare Earths
• Isildur1 and the Week That Changed Online Poker
• The Rise and Fall of Empires
• Everything is Viral -- Even the Things That Aren’t

 

Costco Finds Sweet Spot Selling to Survivalists

Fairly remarkable front-page special up at Costco site: One-year of dehydrated and freeze-dried food. For $799.99 you can have enough grains, fruits, veggies, meats, etc., to get you through ... whatever you think is coming up.

How popular is the survivalist special? Orders placed now won't show up until after 11/16/09. Better hope that the apocalypse doesn't come before then.

[Update] And relatedly, things that bury best in holes from a size/value/utility perspective. Darn handy.

 

Shipping to U.S. Declines in September

New Panjiva data showing a 5% decline in companies shipping and products shipped to the U.S. in September. The company's information comes directly from shipping data.

Note, of course, that September generally sees a decline, so there is almost certainly a seasonal component here in addition to any consumer weakness.

 

Up in Smoke

There a few variants of this "which American's smoke most" chart, but they all show a troubling "smoking belt" in the middle of the country. (See also here.)

[via Andy Gelman]

 

Readings: Pipelines, LHC, Fan-less Fans, etc.

• A pipeline so big it'll move the markets (The Globe and Mail)
• Economic theory and the financial crisis (Browser)
• Dyson launches the bladeless electric fan (FT)
• Goodbye, Macroeconomics (FT)
• Does Baseball Need Umpires? (WSJ)
• Gladwell on football as dog fight (New Yorker)
• The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate (NYT)

 

Readings: Hedge Funds, Wall Street Smarties, Ireland, etc.

• Hedge funds misrepresent facts, says research (FT)
• Debt monetization vs quantitative easing: They're different. Really. (Accrued Interest)
  
• Wall Street got dangerous when it got smart (NYT)
• Intel Q3 earnings transcript (SA)
  
• Ireland's slow motion fiscal crisis (afoe)
• A Long, Melancholy Roar (Judson)

 

Readings

• Oil on Ice: Greenland's quest for petro-state status (The Atlantic)
• Hawaii hotels face fewer visitors, more debt (WSJ)
• Computing Stock Data in Real Time (W|A)
• Consumers say their holiday spending won't fall as much as expected, but video games to get a trim (NPD)
• Book of Odds --an online compendium of likelihoods -- launches tomorrow (10/14) (BookofOdds)
• Whole face of Mt Rainer fell into valley (CNN)

 

Readings

• On Stimulus Spending, Deficit Hawks' Concern Is Misplaced (WashPost)
• Moneyball: Tennis with Timmy (Geithner) (TNR)
• A path to sustainable energy by 2030  (ITC)
• More musings about hedgehogs, foxes and missing polymaths (BBC)
• Good discussion of the Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio (Bogleheads)

 

Correlation, Causality and the Dollar Thing

Interesting chart from Bloomberg on the potential for declining pressure on the dollar, at least as evidenced by an increased U.S. personal savings rate and an improved trade balance. Of course, this is mostly mapping correlations with factors outside those that are worrying investors with respect to the U.S.’s unhappy financial position.

 

Venture Capital as Collateral Damage

While I’ve noisily been saying that venture capital has to shrink its way back to health, it didn’t need to listen quite so well. The third-quarter fund-raising statistics are out and they are, in a word, bleak.

The following figure shows the straight-outta-Wuthering-Heights bleak better than words. It is a parabolic rocket shot into the ground.

With the proviso that it’s possible LPs are just listening attentively to me and waiting for the signal to re-commence investing at historical levels, what is going on here?

It is a combination of things, including weak recent asset class performance, and, at least as importantly, a liquidity problem at major institutional investors. When you have to get liquid in a hurry you sell things, the most liquid things first, then the less liquid things, and all the way down. At the same time, you don’t re-commit to the less-liquid things, in large part because you’re newly petrified that you will soon need to be liquid again given how awful portfolio performance has become.

Think of it as VCs as collateral damage from the ongoing great recession, credit crisis, balance sheet collapse thing going on. They’re in the wrong place, with the wrong asset, and the wrong performance, at the wrong time – and it hurts.

 

Readings

• Musings on gold, China, etc. from Einhorn, Price, Grant and others at Dallas investor conference (Dallas Morning News)
• How to avoid greenback grief (FT)
• Iceland Shrinks 8% as Prices Increase 11% in Deepest Recession (Bloomberg)
• Hawaii hotel occupancy rates plumbing record lows again in August (HA)
• No More Joe Consumer in America (AdAge)
• The Dollar Dilemma (Foreign Affairs)
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb: A Crazier Future (Fora.tv)

 

Phase Shift in Air Travel Heat Map

Nifty heat map of the phase shift in U.S. travel pre/post 9-11. Notice how planes went from red (prone to delays) to more green (less prone) and stayed that way well into 2007-08. Now, of course, we’re back to limited delays again, thanks to the great recession.

[via stat-computing]

 

The Power of Time Off

 

Weekend Reading

A few links from my weekly weekend reading column:

• Top Judge Calls Calif. Government ‘Dysfunctional’ (NYT)
• The Red Queen problem in global oil production: Running to stand still (Hamilton)
• EIA begins tracking crude oil and natural gas futures (EIA)
• Energy crisis postponed as natgas saves the world (Telegraph)
• OPEC quota compliance falls to 62% last month (Bloomberg)
• Merger Boom Will Be Next Bubble to Shake Markets (Bloomberg)
• A sea of economic slack (Globe & Mail)
• U.S. states suffer "unbelievable" revenue shortages (Reuters)
• Simon Johnson on Bill Moyers (PBS)
• Government lotteries: Like rats in a cage? (Quinn)

 

Readings

• Stanford said to offer Sequoia & Kleiner stakes in VC yard sale (Bloomberg)
• Currency depreciation and global imbalances (Pettis)
• Norway best place to live on planet (NGA)
• Prickly oil-rich nation seeks submissive, wealthy multinational for lasting relationship (Telegraph)
• The 'Democratization of Credit' Is Over (ed., I disagree, sort of) (WSJ)
• High Speed Rail: A No-Brainer (Nelder)

 

Hot Love on the Freelove Freeway

A post by Barry reminded me that I haven’t watched The Office since it was The Office, and this classic video from the BBC original with Ricky Gervais is a great reminder why. How do you do better than this?