ironist15

Delusions of Debt

Bbzz24, I suggest you read Friedrich von Hayek, who proved convincingly that socialism cannot work, even in theory. The idea that the problem is that we have "dumb" politicians and that everything would be OK if we only had "smart" politicians is ridiculous. The problem is allowing politicians to continually expand their power over the economy. That is what the author is showing by graphing the value of the dollar since the Fed was created. What government does will always be done badly. Ron Paul is right: starve government, don't feed it.

The Humble Arithmetic of Portfolio Management

A very intelligent article – thank you, Geoff. My own experience is that I have been able to beat the S&P 500 index handily for years now by investing in individual stocks and, recently, ETFs. I cannot say what my risk-adjusted return has been, but I suspect I have done better on this basis as well. IMHO, what it takes is constant attention to the portfolio and many sources of ideas, advice, and analysis. While I stay fully invested for the most part, I have used short index ETFs to stabilize my portfolio during this US down market, with some success. Otherwise, I have tried to identify longer term sector trends, e.g. energy for the past few years, base metals up until a year ago, agriculture this year, etc., in order to guide my stock selection. For those without the interest or temperament for investing, finding a good, fee-only advisor can certainly be worth the expense.

Recession? I've Got a Solution

Thanks for your article, Saul. I agree with your thesis - substitution is the key to solving many of our energy problems. Unfortunately, the press has been totally irresponsible and alarmed the public about global warming and nuclear power, among other subjects. If we can overcome these prejudices, there are many applications for nuclear process heat in the production of liquid fuels. Such process heat can be used to extract and refine bitumen from oil sands and shales, to produce CLEAR product, etc. Of course, I also agree that plug-in vehicles make lots of sense, and they could be charged by nuclear-produced electricity. As vboring and DougM note, breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing could stretch our fissile fuel supplies indefinitely while reducing waste volumes. I am not a fan of Pigovian taxes to reduce demand since feeding the government monster always results in lower productivity and standards of living.