Modern portfolio theory has a fair amount to offer: Combining investments with different properties really can outperform a concentrated portfolio ( Read more... )

Beth, Amber & I stopped by a different piano store on the way back from a trip to the mall.

This time, the salesman didn't seem unduly interested in selling me a piano right now, though he did point out several times that renting a piano was a good deal ( Read more... )

(Thanks to coldtortuga for the pointer)

It's at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908, written by Michael Lewis (also wrote Liar's Poker and Moneyball).

It's an interesting look at what things were like inside the financial products group at AIG, and (as you'd expect), the mainstream reporting has missed some important subtleties.

I was looking at pianos (and piano-like objects) recently, against the somewhat long-term possibility that the children might need something more traditional than my synthesizer.

It was kind of strange: The guy in the store seemed almost terrified at the prospect of my leaving without buying a piano. He offered what seemed like a perfectly ( Read more... )

Beth and I played two games of Dominion with the following card set ( Read more... )

A question to ask: If you had to stop taking new loans, how long until a financial crisis ( Read more... )

Last night's final dream involved managing an investment portfolio. An uninteresting one, even.

A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Andrew W. Lo & A. Craig MacKinlay ( Read more... )

Banking represents a surprisingly large fraction of GDP, and (except when it implodes spectacularly) a disproportionate fraction of the profits as well.

On reflection (with insights from corpsefairy: thanks for an enlightening discussion and a view that differs from mine), this is substantially due to a side effect of deposit insurance ( Read more... )

My laptop is again convinced that I have a printer attached to /dev/null. Also, to configure this printer (say, remove the bogus configuration), it helpfully points my web browser to /dev/null as well.

Fortunately stopping the print system, rm /var/cache/cups/remote.cache, and restarting fixes it.