the_unlettered_tellurian

A round conference table hampers decisions; a thin, long one encourages informal cliques; and a U – shaped conference table is the perfect recipe for a showdown. Ruth Haag, President and CEO of Haag Environmental Company, thinks a one-ended rectangular table is the perfect solution. Read it here…

Everyone knows it’s tough to maintain sanity and democracy at the same time in an online ecosystem, but it’s still amusing to read about how this guy cracked open the malicious practices of some of the “sophisticated” diggers using good old “talking”

Alpha has this news about Third Point LLC’s outspoken and brash CEO Daniel Loeb writting a letter to his investors indicating it’s losses resulting from a sharp reversal in energy and financial stocks in the first three weeks of July have wiped out all profits made in the quarter.
To add to the firms woes, the SEC has apparently begun a formal investigation into Third Point’s communications with portfolio managers at other hedge funds.
Wall Street’s poison pen lived up to his reputation as he wrote “As a friend said to me, ‘Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.’” in the letter.

Loeb was listed in the “Bad Boys – The Meanest” category in this 2007 New York Magazine special feature ranking some of the best hedge-fund managers.

Found this article on hedge fund manager Peter Thiel from Clarium Capital Management. It appeared in the January 2007 ‘Hedge Fund’ special issue of Bloomberg Marketsmagazine.
Apart from giving brief details of Peter’s background and a glimpse into his personality, the article gives a perspective on his investment strategies and a broad overview of the bets he’s placed.

Peter was listed in the “Whippersnappers – Legends in the making” category in this 2007 New York Magazine special feature ranking some of the best hedge-fund managers.

On interesting bit of info I found in the article is that Peter Thiel happens to have executive produced of the 2005 movie Thank You for Smoking. Didn’t know about that before!

stockerblog has this post stating that three of their celebrity stock indexes have outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last six months.

The concerned celebrities are Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, German supermodel Heidi Klum, and actor Angelina Jolie.

According to the blog, the celebrity indexes are based on the companies that the stars are connected to in some way, such as acting as celebrity spokesperson.

While the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 10.3% in the past six months, the indexes of the individual stars performed better. The stocks considered in each of the celebrity indexes, as given on the blog, are listed below…

Gisele Bundchen (up 1.6% in six months)
Volkswagon (VLKAY.PK)
Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. (RL)
Vivo Participacoes (VIV)
News Corp. (NWS-A)
Sony (SNE)
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Disney (DIS)

Heidi Klum (down 0.6% in six months)
Limited (LTD)
McDonalds (MCD)
Volkswagon (VLKAY.PK)
Target (TGT)
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Nike (NKE)
Jones Apparel Group Inc. (JNY)
Hennes & Mauritz AB (HNNMY.PK)

Angelina Jolie (down 10% in six months)
Sony (SNE)
Viacom (VIA-B)
Time Warner (TWX)
News Corp. (NWS-A)
General Electric (GE)
Disney (DIS)
Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Comcast (CMCSA)

You can getting a better idea of stockerblog’s indexes here.

Here is The New York Times attempt at putting Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain’s views on a few issues.

As someone who has not been following the candidates (or the American elections) regularly, I found this page very helpful.

But there’s one thing that has been bugging me a lot…even a  casual glance at the so called “Issues” gives the impression that America is, in fact, a nation full of people who can’t see beyond themselves…just like  ordinary people in any other country in the world.

For all the preaching that the US government does about international issues, not to mention all their interference in international affairs, their politicians appear to be pretty “homegrown”, restricting their opinions to “issues” that are more “local” than “global”.

Goes a long way in reinforcing views expressed by many in the past that it is the US “machinery” that runs the game…the US politicians are only as “enlightened” as their counterparts in any other country.

Or is it that the NYTimes has restricted its choice of “issues” listed on the page to those that are merely national in scope?

Decided to stay offline for almost 3 days in spite of sitting in front of the computer…no checking emails, no surfing the net…  feels so much better when you spend less time rummaging through information and more time inferring from what you already know!

In case you have been thinking of getting “offline” these days, or alternatively, wondering how anyone can survive being offline, Donald Knuth should provide enough inspiration. Please read his Knuth versus Email for more details…

Georgia just cropped up in my radar because of the extensive media reports about its ongoing skirmishes with Russia. Very interesting events happening out there, but I was in a bit of a quandary because of my lack of understanding of the history and politics (yes, there is a difference between the two) of the country.

I needed something that is not-too-recent yet not-too-old. Got a bunch of pages on BBC that were put up starting 2005, and seem to have been updated regularly (wherever necessary) after that.

1. A profile of the country.
2. A fairly comprehensive timeline describing key events in Georgia’s history.
3. Kind of an FAQ on Georgia-Russia tensions posted on 10th May 2005.
4. Another FAQ-style article on Georgia-Russia ties posted on 30th April 2008.
5. A very brief article on how the Rose revolution happened.
6. An article, Power games in the Caucasus, posted on the BBC news site on 7th May 2006.
7. A news article, dated 22nd Dec 2006, on Georgia agreeing to pay more money for Russian gas.

These were enough to give me a basic idea of the country and its historic relations with Russia…hope it helps other uninformed souls too.

Just finished watching Thank You For Smoking…again for the nth time…and again the predictability of the frames helped my mind waver off to something else…remotely connected to the movie…rather remotely connected to  the main character in the movie…sorry…remotely connected to the class of professionals symbolized by the main character in the movie.

I love the way Nick Naylor, the spokesperson for Big Tobacco in the movie, wards off any danger – no matter how remote – that could cause the slightest irritation to his benefactors. His arguments seem to bring down the sanest of reasons put forth by the smartest of people. He can complicate even the simplest of conversations, and make the most complicated of issues sound like they are the smallest of problems…”humanity should not even be worried about them!” is what you feel when dearest Nick replies using deceptively simple, yet carefully crafted, sentences to everybody’s “serious” questions.

His character suddenly reminded me of something written by Arundhati Roy in one of her essays (or was it a book?) titled Power Politics.

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought. ‘Language is the skin on my thought,’ I remember saying to someone who once asked what language meant to me. At the Hague I stumbled on a denomination, a sub-world, whose life’s endeavour was to mask intent. They earn their abundant livings by converting bar graphs that plot their companies’ profits into consummately written, politically exemplary, socially just, policy documents that are impossible to implement and designed to remain forever on paper, secret even (especially) from the people they’re written for. They breed and prosper in the space that lies between what they say and what they sell.

This lady has some style…look how elegantly she describes these corporate creatures who make a killing by shoving us ordinary peoples as far away from reality as possible!

I just made a futile attempt at reading How a bubble stayed under the radar published on March 2, 2008 in the New York Times…very boring…

One great puzzle about the recent housing bubble is why even most experts didn’t recognize the bubble as it was forming.

This is not true. There were ample voices talking about the bubble. Just that enough people were not ready to examine the problem back then. Apparently a few hedge fund managers who understood it (Peter Thiel??) made a lot of money betting against the bubble too.

“I’d come to realize that we’d never be able to identify irrational exuberance with certainty, much less act on it, until after the fact.”

Excellent!!! If this is what the great Alan Greenspan has to say, we at least now know we don’t need “serious students of the markets” to hold such “responsible” positions. We just need someone who can communicate the problem “after” it has happened…err…sorry…make that “before”

If people do not see any risk, and see only the prospect of outsized investment returns, they will pursue those returns with disregard for the risks.

Now, that is something worth believing…we will continue investing in any future bubble (just like we did this time) until our dear business reporters decide to finally write a story on it. Unfortunately, all this writing happened way too late.

We have so many theories that explain the bubbles – information cascades, mimetic desire, bigger fool theory – we have enough of these. what seems to be clearly lacking is our ability to use these to control the bubble.

This is so boring…isn’t there anything better to write about “bubbles”, especially when the author’s credentials indicate he is a very enlightened being!