Best quote I found today about Mrs Thatcher ...

Her time was when we stopped living in societies and started living in economies.

Riffing on Mrs Thatcher’s comment that society doesn’t exist except as some kind of nanny-abstraction to coddle the irresponsible. The full text of her comments at the UK publication Woman’s Own are here: Read more... )

Early this year Congress restored payroll taxes to finance the SSI and Medicare trust funds - savings accounts in effect, where a chunk of wages from your labor is diverted each payday to sit gathering interest. Decades later, you hope, it will be doled back as an “entitlement ( Read more... )

I cannot top this poem. Or most any other poem for that matter. This is the best finance/accounting poem I have found. Links to others are always appreciated. I might pay for an original accounting poem, subject to quality audit, and you have to follow GAAP (generally accepted accounting poem) principles ( Read more... )

Now we established that savings is for the little people, might be interesting to ask what savings we got ( Read more... )

Hey I just read the big oil companies found a lot of oil and gas up in North Dakota. And they are falling all over themselves to get it out of there. Run tanker loads of this stuff 24-7 by rail down to the Gulf. Reverse the direction of midwest pipelines to send this stuff down to the Gulf. Sell it to somebody else ... NOW ( Read more... )

Portland Opera yesterday. Small venue Newmark Theater - Handel’s “Rinaldo” (1711 ( Read more... )

Sixteen minutes. With powerpoint graphs.

“Social dysfunction” -- higher rates of mental illness, lower social mobility, decreased opportunity, decreased trust, death at earlier age, higher rates of imprisonment, lower achievement.

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Inequality in America

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Still reflecting on the Orthodox wedding of Ryan and Masha. Prompted by receipt of a link to the professional photographer’s pictures (outstandingly fine work). And by receipt the day before of heirloom negatives from my cousin Marsha. Wedding photos of old relatives passed from living memory. The near rhymes and coincidences accumulate ( Read more... )

Enjoying this 2005 live concert - Trower Bruce & Husband. Easy-listening blues was my first thought, but then I began to hear how effortless and understated it all is: less is more. Really quite whimsical otherworldly and beautiful imo ( Read more... )