I read this book by Michael Lewis several years ago at the recommendation of our son who had worked as an intern at Merrill Lynch. He knew I was working hard to understand the stock market, or at least to understand it well enough to not make too many bad investment decisions. Lewis writes that the stock market is well enough regulated that it is almost fair to investors. The same was not true of the bond market. Lewis somehow bluffed his way into a Salomon Brothers training program despite his degree in art appreciation and became a bond trader making incredible amounts of money. They paid him very well indeed to pretend he knew what he was doing. “Never before had so many unskilled twenty-four-year-olds made so much money in so little time…” He says he set “…out to write this book only because I thought it would be better to tell the story than to go on living the story.” I particularly liked the statement at the end of the Preface that his parents “…are, of course, directly responsible for any errors, sins, or omissions herein.” Continue reading
Author Archives: RF_Alum
Pell-Mell
The Phrase Finder defines the term as meaning “In disorderly confusion; with reckless haste.” Another term used is to describe “…people charging about like chickens with their heads cut off.” Sir Thomas North translated “Plutarch’s Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes,” a passage that indicated “disordered confusion.” “He entered amongst them that fled their Campe pelmel, or hand overheade.” The expression is derived directly from the French. “Pel may derive from the Old French pesle, meaning to run or bolt.”
Making a Pencil
I suggest we have become complacent in expecting industry to produce exceptional products that cost very little. I recently received a message about the production of pencils. I predict anyone who decides to read the link for “I, Pencil” by Leonard E. Read will be introduced to the complexity that is involved in producing products that we accept as simple instruments we expect to be available whenever we need them. I also suggest you will be astonished that such a complicated product can be placed on the retail market at such a low cost. Continue reading
The Big Short
The subtitle of this Michael Lewis book is “Inside the Doomsday Machine.” Lewis has written several popular books, and this one is an interesting and disturbing analysis of the 2007-2008 financial crises. As the dust cover says, it is about “…the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear…” Lewis focuses the remarkably small number of smart people who recognized the insanity of situation. They often tried to warn others with very little success, perhaps because they were “socially awkward” in a variety of ways. They found a way to sell the market short so they would make incredible amounts of money when the collapse they predicted became a reality. Continue reading
Work Your Tail Off
I searched for an explanation of the origin of this expression, but found mostly explanations for the meaning. Several sites explained it referred to a person who worked diligently and usually with no obvious benefit to the worker. Ask.com had the most likely explanation for the origin, and it refers to the process of “docking” an animal’s tail. Docking is the intentional removal of the tail or sometimes ears to prepare the animal for some sort of practical function. One example was the “docking” of the tail of a horse to make it easier to use the horse for hauling. That makes sense, since the horse has part of its tail removed despite the fact the horse is working hard to achieve a work task after having part of their tails removed with no obvious value to the horse.
Resuspension of Plutonium from Rocky Flats
This web site was started to provide the book I’ve written about Rocky Flats and to publish commentaries about the now-closed site that was famous (or notorious) for producing the plutonium parts and other components for nuclear weapons. The commentaries had drifted far afield of Rocky Flats until the recent crop of negative media stories. I’ve written recent commentaries disputing that the place still is a threat to nearby residents and about the stories of health problems of workers. A common refrain of critics was or still is that “the site never researched respirable plutonium.” There is a long and well-referenced report by G. Langer that completely dispels that accusation. There was an extensive air monitoring program to collect and analyze plutonium in air at the site, near the site, and in communities. It is no surprise the critics never liked the very low results found by the extensive sampling and analysis networks. One criticism was that we were sampling at the wrong height. A sampling station was built with samplers at various heights as requested by one of our critics. As far as I know there were never any results published on the results. My guess is that the results were statistically identical at all sampling heights. Continue reading