Juggling Dynamite

Oaktree Capital’s Howard Marks on the importance of understanding and accepting that present conditions present a low return environment: “the market is not an accommodating machine,” it cannot just give us what we want or feel we need to earn on our capital. Insisting on higher returns when prices and conditions are as unfavorable as present, is a recipe for losses. Impatience and willful blindness are well-worn paths to capital evaporation. Buy and holders beware. Here is a direct link.

While many individuals, cities, states and some countries, have repeatedly opted to extend and pretend the financial reckoning of too much spending and too little revenue over the past 6 years, Detroit has finally cried uncle. This will be a painful adjustment process and unfortunately it will hit many of those who can afford it the least. But the truth about poor financial management is that it always runs to the same conclusion eventually: that which can’t be paid, will not, regardless of how much people want to believe otherwise. On the upside, the first step to better health is to admit mistakes. Detroit has now done that. The next steps out of crisis after admit are: repent, reform and then finally, recover.

What does bankruptcy mean for Detroit? How bad is the situation in terms of city services? How did Motor City get into this position?

Here is a direct link.

Obesity is not just a personal issue. At today’s unprecedented levels, it is one of our largest societal problems and it costs us all through decreased productivity and resource efficiency along with exponential and unnecessary financial costs for decades to come.

“The question I want to pose this week is: should we pay people to lose weight? This idea might seem a little over the top, but studies in the US reveal the surest way to coax people to lose weight is to give them an incentive to do so – and the most persuasive incentive is filthy lucre.”

Here is a direct audio link.

See also David McWilliams’s recent Sydney talk on the economics of food. Here is a direct video link.