No, not Wahlberg, although you should see "The Departed" if you've neglected it. No, this musing is all about real books, and how to really highlight them.
Years ago, I grew tired of the huge Marks-A-Lot type with the felt tip which broke down soon enough. I used the Pentel Data Checker for a long time, but they're harder to find in the flesh these days. I've got a supply of the yellows, if anyone's interested. I used them "upside down", using the back of the chisel to draw through the text.
I discovered that Noodlers make highlight inks (the page is for firefly yellow, which isn't called out in the swatches) for fountain pens. But two issues: only firefly is a bit fluorescent, and it fades rather quickly. The others are "just" semi-transparent inks, so far as I can see. The other thing is that the others are dark enough that the drawn line stands out enough from the page as to be distracting. I haven't found a pen/nib that I'm willing to pay for that's as wide as a traditional highlighter, so one highlights through the text, not over it. Firefly does blend well enough with white book paper that the meandering line still highlights but doesn't distract.
As to how to apply? Pelikan offers up broad nibs, but the pens are obscenely expensive, and may not ship with the broadest nib; purchase separately(!). Well, the M205 is a bit cheaper, if double broad is OK. Both way more than I wanted to spend, so I've ended up with Lamy AL-Stars with broad nib. I don't remember where I got them, but Goulet is an alternative to Amazon at about the same price.
I tired of the Noodlers firefly fading, and stumbled on Pelikan yellow. Now, that's more like it. Very bright, hasn't had a fading issue, so far.
Go read a real book. You'll feel better in the morning.
26 December 2014
Baby You Drive My Car
Once in a while, a random comment on a random post on a random thread on a random site strikes me as worthy of a post here in these endeavors. What follows is such.
IBM's (and American corps generally) problem is that they've lost their marbles. Corps managements (the CxO class) are paid those big bucks because they are supposed to be smarter allocators of fiduciary capital into physical capital, and thus earn a real return. They've all, by and large, stopped doing that. There's a reason that up to $7 trillion is sitting in corporate coffers. Buy backs and dividends only move money from one subset of the 1% to another subset of the 1%. There's no growth, which all corps need, in the general economy. It's just circling the wagons against the 99%. A Robocop world, in fact. No idea how to generate real growth yields to accounting manipulation, aka financial engineering.
The latest scheme, not one IBM is party to that I've read, is 100+% car title loans to poor people. Such a great way to build growth into an economy.
Have a nice day.
IBM's (and American corps generally) problem is that they've lost their marbles. Corps managements (the CxO class) are paid those big bucks because they are supposed to be smarter allocators of fiduciary capital into physical capital, and thus earn a real return. They've all, by and large, stopped doing that. There's a reason that up to $7 trillion is sitting in corporate coffers. Buy backs and dividends only move money from one subset of the 1% to another subset of the 1%. There's no growth, which all corps need, in the general economy. It's just circling the wagons against the 99%. A Robocop world, in fact. No idea how to generate real growth yields to accounting manipulation, aka financial engineering.
The latest scheme, not one IBM is party to that I've read, is 100+% car title loans to poor people. Such a great way to build growth into an economy.
Have a nice day.
20 December 2014
Kicked to the Curb
In some businesses, it makes sense to kick to geezers to the curb when downsizing. Newspapers isn't one of them since it takes a bit of time listening to the liars to figure out what a lie sounds like, but they do that nevertheless. This is Floyd Norris' last piece for the NYT. You should read it.
He opens with:
Of course, the Right Wingnuts will likely dismiss, and not bother to read, what follows. They're always right, of course.
And for the quants:
Naturally, they ended up polluting the global economic structure. And the cleanup Superfund comes from, in the case of Ireland, almost wholly on the backs of small taxpaying citizens. Moral hazard? Of course not, from the banks' point of view.
He opens with:
What happens when you turn over regulatory responsibilities to people who think there is really no need for regulation?
Of course, the Right Wingnuts will likely dismiss, and not bother to read, what follows. They're always right, of course.
To a significant extent, derivatives enabled risk to be shifted from those who understood it to those who did not. Securities deemed risk-free by the rating agencies turned out to be worthless. Much of the financial innovation that so impressed Mr. Greenspan had been designed to let banks find ways to reduce their capital levels without the regulators noticing.
And for the quants:
Bank capital rules came to allow the banks to use their own -- presumably sophisticated -- models to calculate how much capital was needed for any asset they owned. Countries like Ireland and Iceland developed large banking systems and were hailed for finding high-paying, nonpolluting jobs.
Naturally, they ended up polluting the global economic structure. And the cleanup Superfund comes from, in the case of Ireland, almost wholly on the backs of small taxpaying citizens. Moral hazard? Of course not, from the banks' point of view.
18 December 2014
I Loves Olive Oyl
The problem with being dependent on data to make decisions: what do you do when there is no data? Well, punt. Let's turn our attention to the oil patch. Crude is quoted at $61/barrel (and change) today, and the blue-eyed Arabs in the Red states are whining poor mouth. Already. Gad.
Here's the dirty secret about oil, or any extractive resource for that matter: marginal cost pricing doesn't work in the short to medium term. Depending on the resource, even long term. The reason is that marginal cost <> variable cost. The latter is what determines whether to power the pumps on existing wells, or not. It is just the cost to run the motors, keep them running, and so forth. Marginal cost is how much to bring *a new* well into production. It's clear that the second number is much higher than the other. And, it explains why the Saudis are willing to keep the pumps running; an existing well is profitable at a very low barrel price. Yes, the petro companies would like to fully amortize all the sunk costs on a well, but they have no control over sunk costs. They're sunk, after all. You're not getting the money back. You kissed it goodbye long ago. So long as you get more for the crude than it cost to get it to the surface, you're ahead. It's just second-grade arithmetic. You could shut the well, hoping that the price will rise soon enough, but so do all the other owners. Who'll blink first? Shut the well, and you lose the moolah, but the other owners don't.
How low Mr. Natural? Hard to say, since nobody seems willing to divulge the number. Easy oil comes from a fresh pipe with sufficient gas pressure to lift the crude to the surface from the deposit. All those gushers from old movies. Variable cost of a barrel from such a well: $0. Nada. Zilch. And so forth.
The Wiki explains the succession of involvement to get crude to the surface. One of the reasons Peak Oil came to be a meme was that USofA production was well (pun intended) into tertiary recovery. That costs rather more to lift. In any case, once the infrastructure to aid lift is in place, the variable cost is the electricity to run the pumps (into and out of the well) and the supply of material to inject. That's mostly water, which is ironic in the case of middle east oil, since there's so little of it nearby.
In sum then, there's money to be made from existing wells even at $50 or $60 a barrel. That's my guess, of course. And, it seems, for the Saudi's too.
Here's the dirty secret about oil, or any extractive resource for that matter: marginal cost pricing doesn't work in the short to medium term. Depending on the resource, even long term. The reason is that marginal cost <> variable cost. The latter is what determines whether to power the pumps on existing wells, or not. It is just the cost to run the motors, keep them running, and so forth. Marginal cost is how much to bring *a new* well into production. It's clear that the second number is much higher than the other. And, it explains why the Saudis are willing to keep the pumps running; an existing well is profitable at a very low barrel price. Yes, the petro companies would like to fully amortize all the sunk costs on a well, but they have no control over sunk costs. They're sunk, after all. You're not getting the money back. You kissed it goodbye long ago. So long as you get more for the crude than it cost to get it to the surface, you're ahead. It's just second-grade arithmetic. You could shut the well, hoping that the price will rise soon enough, but so do all the other owners. Who'll blink first? Shut the well, and you lose the moolah, but the other owners don't.
But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow you head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?
How low Mr. Natural? Hard to say, since nobody seems willing to divulge the number. Easy oil comes from a fresh pipe with sufficient gas pressure to lift the crude to the surface from the deposit. All those gushers from old movies. Variable cost of a barrel from such a well: $0. Nada. Zilch. And so forth.
The Wiki explains the succession of involvement to get crude to the surface. One of the reasons Peak Oil came to be a meme was that USofA production was well (pun intended) into tertiary recovery. That costs rather more to lift. In any case, once the infrastructure to aid lift is in place, the variable cost is the electricity to run the pumps (into and out of the well) and the supply of material to inject. That's mostly water, which is ironic in the case of middle east oil, since there's so little of it nearby.
In sum then, there's money to be made from existing wells even at $50 or $60 a barrel. That's my guess, of course. And, it seems, for the Saudi's too.
17 December 2014
Putin on the Schitz [update 2]
Incentive.
Incentive.
Incentive.
As always, when there's a disruption in the process which created the time series the quant relies on to forecast future values, ignore the time series and look to the changed incentive proposal.
By now all but the most self-absorbed Fox News watcher is aware that something is going on in resource extraction economies, both foreign and domestic. Yes?
The ruble seems to have steadied from its leap off the cliff, but the flight of moolah from Russia appears unabated, and so from Brazil as well.
Why might all this be? Of course, there's the simple finances of it: lower $$$/barrel of petro means lower $$$ for Vlad. Thus, the ruble drops relative to the Buck, and the Money Men decide that Vlad isn't the savior they told him he was. Not that Vlad actually put all that petro and gas in the ground with his own two hands, of course. Lower $$$ for Vlad means he has to call on his police state to keep the lid on. "How much gasoline for that bag of carrots?"
[update]
Here's a snippet from a CBS News report today
[end update]
You read similar here not too long ago. "His" interest rate gag won't work: domestic moolah is leaving by the boatload along with foreign. With the ruble now basically a worthless domestic currency, and Russia not nearly a self-sufficient domestic economy, Vlad could well go to war someplace. Stoke, once again, the vision of Greater Russia (USSR) for Real Russians. Stay tuned.
The fundamental problem for all extraction based economies is that, by the nature of the beast, they have to be fascist. And the reason for that is simple: the value lies in the ground, so control of the ground determines control of the resource, which means control of the moolah. That fascism may be direct, as in Russia where Vlad and his buddies "own" the petro, or it may be indirect, as in the USofA where pliant government moats "private" ownership. The USofA, you say? Beacon of democracy? Not so much in the resource states. The oil, coal, and farm states have been very Red since the Founding. The few that stole the land, not always knowing what resources lie within (beyond soil and timber and rocks), from the Natives wanted to keep the value unto themselves. Pliant local and state (and, on occasion, federal) governments saw to it.
While it does cost more to get the stuff out of the ground once the easy X% has been taken, the value of the stuff is determined by the use of the stuff in production. There is no value-add to extraction; I don't care what Vern Smith bloviates. In the case of petro, cracking towers turn raw petro into various different compounds, with attendant different uses. Value-add exists for that, certainly. If folks can't afford to use, or they need bags of carrots to eat, petro price drops.
So, what does this all mean Mr. Natural? It means that interest rates here in the USofA are about to tumble from their already painful (if you're a coupon clipper) lows. How can that be? All that Russian and Brazilian and such moolah is looking for a safe haven. That'd be us. All that USofA moolah that might have gone to resource extraction also needs to find another home. Treasuries are lookin' mighty good. Expect the next auction to dip even further (the 10 Year Note is 13 January; will be interesting here's a concise report). Supply and demand, Econ 101: mo money chasing diminishing number of chairs as the music plays on.
[update 2]
And, I'll bet most readers laughed out loud when I said that the next 10-year Note auction would be instructive??
Incentive.
Incentive.
As always, when there's a disruption in the process which created the time series the quant relies on to forecast future values, ignore the time series and look to the changed incentive proposal.
By now all but the most self-absorbed Fox News watcher is aware that something is going on in resource extraction economies, both foreign and domestic. Yes?
The ruble seems to have steadied from its leap off the cliff, but the flight of moolah from Russia appears unabated, and so from Brazil as well.
Why might all this be? Of course, there's the simple finances of it: lower $$$/barrel of petro means lower $$$ for Vlad. Thus, the ruble drops relative to the Buck, and the Money Men decide that Vlad isn't the savior they told him he was. Not that Vlad actually put all that petro and gas in the ground with his own two hands, of course. Lower $$$ for Vlad means he has to call on his police state to keep the lid on. "How much gasoline for that bag of carrots?"
[update]
Here's a snippet from a CBS News report today
With the ruble hitting record lows, many Russians rushed to unload their shrinking bank accounts on high ticket items like refrigerators and dishwashers.(Remember: trade is always barter, just that "modern" economies use currency as a kind of lube job.)
[end update]
You read similar here not too long ago. "His" interest rate gag won't work: domestic moolah is leaving by the boatload along with foreign. With the ruble now basically a worthless domestic currency, and Russia not nearly a self-sufficient domestic economy, Vlad could well go to war someplace. Stoke, once again, the vision of Greater Russia (USSR) for Real Russians. Stay tuned.
The fundamental problem for all extraction based economies is that, by the nature of the beast, they have to be fascist. And the reason for that is simple: the value lies in the ground, so control of the ground determines control of the resource, which means control of the moolah. That fascism may be direct, as in Russia where Vlad and his buddies "own" the petro, or it may be indirect, as in the USofA where pliant government moats "private" ownership. The USofA, you say? Beacon of democracy? Not so much in the resource states. The oil, coal, and farm states have been very Red since the Founding. The few that stole the land, not always knowing what resources lie within (beyond soil and timber and rocks), from the Natives wanted to keep the value unto themselves. Pliant local and state (and, on occasion, federal) governments saw to it.
While it does cost more to get the stuff out of the ground once the easy X% has been taken, the value of the stuff is determined by the use of the stuff in production. There is no value-add to extraction; I don't care what Vern Smith bloviates. In the case of petro, cracking towers turn raw petro into various different compounds, with attendant different uses. Value-add exists for that, certainly. If folks can't afford to use, or they need bags of carrots to eat, petro price drops.
So, what does this all mean Mr. Natural? It means that interest rates here in the USofA are about to tumble from their already painful (if you're a coupon clipper) lows. How can that be? All that Russian and Brazilian and such moolah is looking for a safe haven. That'd be us. All that USofA moolah that might have gone to resource extraction also needs to find another home. Treasuries are lookin' mighty good. Expect the next auction to dip even further (the 10 Year Note is 13 January; will be interesting here's a concise report). Supply and demand, Econ 101: mo money chasing diminishing number of chairs as the music plays on.
[update 2]
In a stunning analysis this week, Goldman Sachs found almost $1 trillion in investments in future oil projects at risk. They looked at 400 of the world's largest new oil and gas fields -- excluding U.S. shale -- and found projects representing $930 billion of future investment that are no longer profitable with Brent crude at $70. In the U.S., the shale-oil party isn't over yet, but zombies are beginning to crash it.
And, I'll bet most readers laughed out loud when I said that the next 10-year Note auction would be instructive??
15 December 2014
14 December 2014
Matter Over Mind
It's deep into sports season. NFL is winding down to the last few games, Heisman is today along with the Army-Navy game, NBA is at the ¼ mark. Johnny Manziel is described as a midget. Adrian Peterson doesn't get off Scott free for beating his kid. Baseball teams swap players at multiple tens of millions of moolah a pop; having had some for just a few months. All these obscenely paid walking meat sticks get that money in large part because taxpayers foot the bill for the venues in which they play. Said venues being the only real capital needed to field said teams; the other costs are the franchise fee levied by the other owners (one step removed for Ballmer, but it's the same thing) and the payments to the aforementioned walking meat sticks. Free market? The NFL, as organization, is arranged as a non-profit. That's the truth.
And I, not for the first time, wonder why it is that adolescent males (and, increasingly, females) are willing to spend many hours in the gym/weight room/track getting big muscles, but not a nanosecond in the lib to build a big brain. The odds of finding employment as an NBA player? Well there are 30 NBA teams of 12 (15 if you count inactives) players each. Discounting foreigners (which one could do in years past...) that yields, at best, 450 slots. On a population basis of 319 million, with about 80 million of basketball age, and a 50/50 split in sex for that age cohort, we end up with 40 million candidates. The odds: .001% of being a NBA player; and that assumes all positions are available all the time, which, of course, they're not. For a absurdly detailed analysis of the NBA, go here.
Yet, these walking meat sticks will spend mind numbing time making big muscles, fast muscles, and so forth. In basketball there is the age-old wheeze, "you can't coach height", which limits the odds still further. Not so much in football (unless you're a midget quarterback in an era of tall ones) and baseball. The fact remains: "working" toward a career (typically measured, on average, in single digit years across all of them) in professional sports is as probable, at best, as winning Lotto. This is one case, even if the arithmetic says so, that expected value may not be a rational driver of decision. One need only remember the issue with airplane travel: there's not much chance of a crash, but if you're in one, there's a majority probability of not living through a crash.
Depends on which expected value is of most value to you. Same, it seems, with teen age males. They see a massive carrot (the obscene payment if you play), but ignore the even larger stick (the more massive likelihood you'll be flippin' burgers with those pretty muscles). Those who prefer to not fly in tin coffins are derided as delusional, yet young males who decide to devote themselves to becoming a professional athlete are "living the dream"???
It appears to be that the mind numbing activities of muscle building are preferred just because they dull the mind. After millennia since we crawled out of the muck, we'd rather regress to lower levels of consciousness. Drink and drugs do the same thing, too. Not that Mormons are all that likeable for their temperance. It's kind of sad. Gives the Right Wingnuts ever more fodder. One might also note the increasing prominence of ruralism in entertainment. Country songs, swamp people, gold diggers (not the floozies), huntin' and fishin' shows, farmsonly.com (city folk just don't get it, of course), and so forth. As if the "simpleminded life" were the better one. Trouble with thinking that way is that all those pointy headed -ologists (over a number of centuries of study) have figured something out: it's the density of cities that leads to progress. All those low intellect bush people in Africa and peasants in South America and Asia are proof of that, right? (OK, before regular reader gets her panties in a bunch, that's sarcasm!!) Yet, here we see purposeful regression to low achievement.
And I, not for the first time, wonder why it is that adolescent males (and, increasingly, females) are willing to spend many hours in the gym/weight room/track getting big muscles, but not a nanosecond in the lib to build a big brain. The odds of finding employment as an NBA player? Well there are 30 NBA teams of 12 (15 if you count inactives) players each. Discounting foreigners (which one could do in years past...) that yields, at best, 450 slots. On a population basis of 319 million, with about 80 million of basketball age, and a 50/50 split in sex for that age cohort, we end up with 40 million candidates. The odds: .001% of being a NBA player; and that assumes all positions are available all the time, which, of course, they're not. For a absurdly detailed analysis of the NBA, go here.
Yet, these walking meat sticks will spend mind numbing time making big muscles, fast muscles, and so forth. In basketball there is the age-old wheeze, "you can't coach height", which limits the odds still further. Not so much in football (unless you're a midget quarterback in an era of tall ones) and baseball. The fact remains: "working" toward a career (typically measured, on average, in single digit years across all of them) in professional sports is as probable, at best, as winning Lotto. This is one case, even if the arithmetic says so, that expected value may not be a rational driver of decision. One need only remember the issue with airplane travel: there's not much chance of a crash, but if you're in one, there's a majority probability of not living through a crash.
According to the 2014 ICAO safety report, the total number of plane accidents in 2013 was 90 world-wide. Only 9 of these accidents were fatal accidents, that is, accidents involving fatalities. The Global Fatal Accident Review of the Civil Aviation Authority gives a total number of 0.6 fatal accidents per one million flights for the ten-year period 2002 to 2011. When expressed as per million hours flown, this number is 0.4. The corresponding number of fatalities is 22.0 fatalities per one million flights or 12.7 when expressed as per million hours flown.(Or, you can look here.)
Depends on which expected value is of most value to you. Same, it seems, with teen age males. They see a massive carrot (the obscene payment if you play), but ignore the even larger stick (the more massive likelihood you'll be flippin' burgers with those pretty muscles). Those who prefer to not fly in tin coffins are derided as delusional, yet young males who decide to devote themselves to becoming a professional athlete are "living the dream"???
It appears to be that the mind numbing activities of muscle building are preferred just because they dull the mind. After millennia since we crawled out of the muck, we'd rather regress to lower levels of consciousness. Drink and drugs do the same thing, too. Not that Mormons are all that likeable for their temperance. It's kind of sad. Gives the Right Wingnuts ever more fodder. One might also note the increasing prominence of ruralism in entertainment. Country songs, swamp people, gold diggers (not the floozies), huntin' and fishin' shows, farmsonly.com (city folk just don't get it, of course), and so forth. As if the "simpleminded life" were the better one. Trouble with thinking that way is that all those pointy headed -ologists (over a number of centuries of study) have figured something out: it's the density of cities that leads to progress. All those low intellect bush people in Africa and peasants in South America and Asia are proof of that, right? (OK, before regular reader gets her panties in a bunch, that's sarcasm!!) Yet, here we see purposeful regression to low achievement.
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