Tag Archives: Most Recent Stories

Modern Monetary Theory, aka MMT, has hit the mainstream and some Liberal politicians like AOC are giving it full-throated endorsements. I need to stop playing Mr. Politically Correct with this idea – it is dangerous and we need to start saying that outright. Now, I’ve been generally fair over the years. I was very critical of Conservative Austrian style economics for years when they were pushing the narratives about how QE would bankrupt us and cause hyperinflation. If anything, I’ve...

The 2018 Berkshire Hathaway letter to shareholders is 14 pages of the usual goodness, but I wanted to skip right to the end and all the best stuff. Over pages 13 and 14 Buffett goes through a brief history of the United States and its successes. In doing so he touches on many themes that are essential elements of this website. Namely: Okay, that’s more than three things. Actually, Buffett refers to it all as one thing – “The American Tailwind”. Whatever it is, it’s lots of good stuff so...

(I did a quick hit on Bloomberg TV yesterday discussing buybacks, but I wanted to dive in in a bit more detail. You can see my brief comments here at the 5:30 second mark.) In today’s edition of People Are Saying Stupid Things About Stock Buybacks I want to talk about the Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders proposal to ban stock buybacks. Here it is in case you want to become a little bit dumber. Snark aside, I found the op-ed kinda lazy. Their proposal can be boiled down to: “Share buybacks...

One of my favorite things to think about in investing is the theoretical investor who slept through 1987. We all know about “Black Monday”, the crash of 1987, when stocks fell 23% in one day. It was terrifying. But the craziest thing about 1987 is that the S&P 500 had a total return of 5.81% that year. The stock market was positive in a year that is known for being a terrifying crash! So, if you had checked your portfolio on January 1, 1987 and then slept through the entire year and...

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is in the news a lot lately. And that has resulted in a number of “critiques”. Most of these critiques are, to be blunt, trash. You see, the thing is, MMT is really, really confusing and most people don’t get it right at first. So we tend to see lots of “critiques” of MMT that aren’t based on a sound understanding of it. I know this because I went through a phase almost 10 years ago where I first encountered MMT, thought it was largely right and then realized...

Sometimes it feels like our world is becoming more closed off despite the fact that we’re more interconnected than we’ve ever been. This interconnectedness is new and scary in ways. I get it, but it’s also exciting and something I think we should try to embrace. Of all the investments I’ve ever made in my life travel is certainly among the very top. I was fortunate to be born to parents who loved to travel. My mom and dad would lug all 8 of us all over the USA and the world. It not only...

Jack Bogle is gone, but his impact will last forever. That’s certainly true for me. No single person had a bigger impact on my firm and career direction than Bogle did. He is, essentially, what I’ve modeled so much of my life and work around. It started with “Enough”, Bogle’s second most brilliant piece of work (behind the Little Book of Common Sense Investing). I remember reading it in the depths of the financial crisis and it shaped the way I see so much of life. The key message of the...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)…wow, like a whirlwind, she went from virtual nobody to Congressional sensation. These days it’s almost impossible to avoid hearing about her. Rightfully so, her story is a pretty amazing one. I won’t rehash that story, but she does have some bold economic views so I am going to force my unwanted opinions on you regarding that topic. AOC is a Democratic Socialist like Bernie Sanders. I’ll be honest – I don’t tend to like extremists on either end. I spend a lot...

Back in 2010 I came across Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) for the first time and found it somewhat appealing. This is the theory that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted along the way to her meteoric rise to Congress. MMT is a theory of economics that says some pretty controversial stuff – the government has a real budget constraint unlike a household, monetary policy is very ineffective and the government should run large scale Job Guarantee programs to ensure full employment. I like a lot of...

All the best stuff in life takes time – love, friendship, wealth, etc. We want all of these things to happen immediately, but the reality is that they all take a lot of work. They take discipline and patience. There really are no shortcuts. The financial markets reminded us of this in 2018. The global stock market finished down about 10% and the US stock market was down about 4.5%. Amazingly, after all the constant fear mongering about bonds, the Barclays Bond Aggregate finished…positive...