Archive for the 'Economy' Category
June 24, 2008 11:28AM
By Cody Willard
GM (GM) is either going outright bankrupt or these stocks are screaming buys right now. The biggest problem for this company isn’t their lack of fuel-efficient vehicles or the exhausted consumer… the biggest problem is the same problem the financials have — nobody believes anything on the balance sheet.
GM and Ford finance hundreds of billions of dollars to enable their customers to buy their cars. And we all know that the ratings on any debt from any ratings agency is a sham of a joke and can’t be taken seriously. And so how many write downs on the balance sheet are these guys gonna have to take over the next year? Do they have the capital sufficient to cover those losses?
If they actually disclosed their balance sheet to you, would you consider the company solvent, much less invest-able? And yes, I’m still talking about GM here, though the line of questioning can be applied to any financial institution as I’ve noted often on Happy Hour and on these pages.
The big difference between GM and those investment banks is that GM actually sells a product, a real tangible product. And the good news there is that that product’s market typically works in a pretty obvious cycle. And if the company can just stay solvent on the balance sheet side of the equation, they’re probably going to see sales improve and cash flows return to the operations side of the business. I know — that sounds outrageous! GM, seeing things improve and even profitable…you’re thinking I can’t be serious. But as always, isn’t the time to buy a stock when nobody thinks you can be serious about buying that stock?
There’s blood in the streets of Detroit. I think putting a little bit speculative capital into some GM stock and bonds and/or long-dated calls would probably pay off a bit over the next few years. I’d hedge any long positions with some long-dated puts, and if you play the position sizes and strike prices right, you’d probably end up profiting from the positive gamma in the positions even if GM went to zero.
I’ll explain positive gamma again sometime soon, but if you search the Internet hard enough, you can find lots of posts I’ve written on the topic before. Stay tuned ;).
June 24, 2008 6:43AM
By Cody Willard
Being in charge of running security for much of lower New York state isn’t all glamour and rock n roll, not even for The City CattleDog himself, lemme tell ya’. I had to spend hours on Sunday, for example, patrolling the perimeter of the Hudson Hidden Valley site…I tracked, caught, took names, and released three squirrels, two birds, and chased one of the feline members of the Evil Order of the Sphinx a good 20 feet up a tree.
It’s hard work, lemme tell ya’, and in the midst of it all, Dogi Master Cody has me training with hovering droids called Frisbees that I snatch out of the air instead of batting down with a light saber. Not that I know how to use a light saber, but I did chew the cover right off of the remote control for the stereo in Cody’s padawan pad…
People don’t seem to take firehydrant security as serious as they should. I tried to tell Cody that I needed more time on the street in front of our house in Soho tonight, as I needed to secure the area by the fire hydrant for the sixth time today — hey, it’s a busy street and I am in charge of running security for much of lower New York state and how would it look if my own neighborhood was infiltrated not just by the 20 dump trucks that drive by every night in the name of protecting our environment but also by one of the doggy-body-snatching Storm Twoofers who can only be detected by lotium olfaction (that’s Dogi Latin…what you thought pigs were the only other species with Latin…come on, you didn’t really think that, did you? ) You really do need to think about those irehydrantsfay.
Ah the pressures of such being a cattledog with so much responsibility and “spot”light. A blog post about me, a stock picking dog on a blog about mutt news? “Internet Long Tail”, indeed, roorah!
Ooh, and here’s a breaking Lobo Business Alert, the Bureaucracy of the Convoluted Pyramid Worshipers passed a vote today through a bipartisan compromise by both the DemoCats and RePelicans and we are going to be passing legislation called the New Hope Alliance that won’t do anything for the millions of homeless dogs put to death each year, but will enable, according to their best estimates, a few rich dogs to stay in their padded doghouses for a few more months…
I heard Dogi Master Cody saying something like that on my new channel on YouTube — http://www.youtube.com/LoboDogTV.
PS. Did you see Joanna Krupa wish me a happy first birthday and blow me a kiss? Rokay, rokay, so being in charge of running security for much of lower New York state does have its glamor and rock n roll to it too.
June 18, 2008 11:24AM
By Cody Willard
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it. — Bob Dylan
Last night at the delicious restaurant in NoLiTa, Peasant, I munched on six different dishes — Octopus, mozzarella, prosciutto, roasted suckling pig, and stuffed Cornish hen. I’d last been to Peasant with James Altucher and the bartender, from Boston, had recognized me as her brother’s roommate from Blinn College in Brenham Texas in 1992, and she saw me there again last night and sent over a couple complimentary deserts to finish off the meal.
I’d had a morning workout and was going to ride my bike with Lobo again before the night was over…but even as good as the food on the table was, I just couldn’t eat it all. There was too much. That beautiful rosemary on those rosemary mashed potatoes…I should nibble on that more. But I couldn’t. It was too much good stuff for me to handle. The breadpudding and white chocolate ice cream? Those four bites I forced down sure were savory!
Which takes me to today’s market/economic topic in this post here (no, it’s not a post about food). Is RBS (RBS) on crack, or is a stock market crash a reasonable possibility? True story — I actually used the word, “Crash”, as in, “I think this market could crash another 15% this summer or later this year” as I nibbled on that crispy pork skin.
This economy is sorta like that table last night. We’ve produced a lot of wonderful things to consume — houses, cars, refrigerators, iPhones, search engines, networks…and did I mention houses, cars, refrigerators, iPhones, search engines, networks…and that’s exactly the point — we’ve produced more of much of this stuff than can be consumed.
The consumer is full. As housing prices continue to collapse, the consumer’s losing more of his appetite. And housing’s still collapsing, btw. And I contend that NYC’s market is the next real estate market to push away from the table and collapse to sleep off these excesses.
And, no, I don’t agree with this line of logic from Barron’s:
Signs of Softness Appear
In Manhattan Real Estate
Signs of cracks in Manhattan’s property market could mean the rest of the country is on the road to recovery, since New York tends to feel the effects of a slowing economy later than the nation does. One segment still in the stratosphere: luxury condos and co-ops in exclusive buildings.
The logic here seems to be that the good times are just around the corner when NYC finally gets hit. I think a collapse in NYC’s real estate market would probably cause yet more economic pain in the near term and take values of real estate around the country down even lower for the near term.
We remain near all time highs in the stock market in year six of what had been a steady economic boom. I continue to contend that caution is king to trading and investing right now.
In fact, I’d almost welcome a crash, so that we can finally wring out those weak handed scaredy cats in the markets and get on the road to recovery.
Don’t you just wish Ben and the Democrats and the Republicans hadn’t colluded to waste all those hundreds of billions of dollars they put into the banking system to supposedly prevent all the bad things that have happened and continue to happen anyway? We might actually be onto the sleep over part of the process instead of still trying to get away from the table.
Coffee, tea or a night cap anyone?
PS. Click here to receive the latest edition of our monthly stock market newsletter, The Cody Report, and get exclusive access to this month’s four stock picks.
June 12, 2008 1:55PM
By Cody Willard
Back in 2004 when the Fed finally decided to start fighting the the real estate bubble they’d inflated by cutting rates to artificially low levels far below the rate of inflation and the real cost of capital. That was after the tech bubble they’d created by cutting rates to bail out mindless speculators in the Long Term Capital Management crisis had popped, of course.
Well, here we are in 2008, and the Fed’s about to decide to start fighting the commodity / energy bubble they’ve inflated by taking rates to artificially low levels far below the rate of inflation and the real cost of capital.
Back in 2004, I’d argued and bet my firm’s capital that you did want to “fight the Fed” because for the last decade or so, there’s been a positive correlation between the direction of the stock market and the direction the Fed’s taking rates. That was in large part because the Fed was typically raising rates essentially to combat steady growth which they figured in turn would eventually lead to inflation.
But in 2008 when we’re talking about the Fed’s need to raise rates, it’s not because economic growth is getting too hot. It’s because inflation’s out of control, the dollar’s collapse won’t stop, the relative attractiveness of lower rates in a collapsing currency vs. the attractiveness of higher rates in a stable currency…and did I mention inflation?
The biggest problem with the latest bubble that the Fed’s reckless rate gyrations have caused is that commodity bubbles cause inflation for the silent masses, who were already caught on the wrong side of the past bubbles, but now are really feeling the pain that bubbles cause. I mean, dot com and real estate ownership bubbles didn’t exactly have the same impact on the tens of millions of Americans who make $30,000 or less a year that the $4 gasoline bubble is having on them.
And another worry, this one admittedly paranoid, that’s been on my mind of late as I see the EU bankers and the Saudis and the rest of the world…are they really on our side as much as those past coordinated rate cuts and taxpayer-liquidity infusions would have us think?
We are on the same side with those guys across the pond, right? Right, Google and Microsoft and Ben? Right? Anybody? Hello?
I’m staying cautious when it comes to risking capital on the broader market these days.
PS. Today we published the latest edition of my stock market newsletter, The Cody Report. Click here to subscribe and get exclusive access to this month’s four stock picks.
June 4, 2008 12:06PM
By Cody Willard
What exactly is the job of the hundreds of thousands of people employed at the investment banks here in the US? Their job is to help the rest of us manage the nuances and issues that are inherent in any economy. Their job is to help people make sure they never get brazenly levered up when times are great and that they never have to desperately scramble to sell off any assets of any value whatsoever when times are bad.
I wish it were only ironic that these investment banks were brazenly levered up when times were great and now are desperately scrambling to sell off any assets of any value whatsoever when times are bad. Instead, after pocketing hundreds of billions in profits for their shareholders and employees, they now use their Illuminati connections at the Fed and Capitol Hill to sneak your money into their pockets to assist their desperate scrambling to stay alive now that times are bad and they neglected to save for the rainy day.
Let the investment banks and anybody else who took bad risks at the top burn. Let ‘em lose their shirt like they certainly deserve too.
I mean, the very idea that saving these banks with tax dollars, thereby putting all their private losses during the bad times onto the taxpayer even though the taxpayer didn’t get to partake in the private gains during the good times is somehow good for the taxpayer IS INSULTING. Having your money stolen and given to irresponsible idiot bankers who were on the other side of your smart trades ain’t good for you or for the market place or for the economy.
It’s pretty simple, really. Everybody keeps trying to convince me that if Bear and Lehman and anyone else actually go bankrupt that the bad times will really get bad. What kind of sense does that make? Saving the idiots on the wrong side of the trade only serves to make the bad times last longer and get worse, no? Flip it!!!
Finally, anybody else notice the striking parallels of business idiocy at the investment banks and at the car companies? Ford (F) bought SUV companies for billions when gas was cheap and SUVs were hot. Now it sells Land Rover and Jaguar for 1/3 of what it paid for it. GM’s (GM) all “proud” to announce that they’re basically getting out of the SUV business and focusing on smaller cars…yup, right now AFTER oil’s up 1200% in the last few years while GM was focusing on SUVs.
Of course, we subsidize those idiot car sellers in this country with billions of your tax dollars and subsidies and breaks and other loop hole tricks.
Airline industry? Always consolidating in the bad times using billions of your tax dollars and then going nuts overexpanding in the good times.
I’d just note that companies like Intel and Apple have done a little bit better job handling their respective cycles…Intel jacked up investment on R&D in 2002 and 2003 when the tech-economy was in depression. Didn’t use billions of your tax dollars to do it, either. (And they’re not asking for billions in new subsidies or breaks right now either.)
The upshot? If you think any of these corporations are actually more deserving of your take home pay than you are…if you really think that it’s better for the economy and for you and your children in the long run that Bear’s shareholders and lenders get $30 billion of your money for no other reason than they had gambled too much and then got dealt a bad hand…if you really think Ford and GM are efficiently using your tax dollars to create better, more reliable, safer and cleaner cars than otherwise would hit the market place over the next couple decades…if you really think that Lehman and the other investment banks endless chicanery is better for the capital markets than to let the capital markets eat the losing gamblers and liars, thereby allowing new, smarter, more efficient and effective entrepreneurs create new investment banks…
Well, if you really believe all that, then I encourage you to fight to keep the status quo. Don’t just condone these actions. Vote Republican and/or Democrat so that you can actually participate in these scams. Start a fund of funds to lever up in SUVs and CDOs to get that extra 30 bps in return steady every month…oh wait, that scam’s over already. Write your representatives telling them to create more subsidies and tax credits and rate cuts and exchange windows for any investment bank that’s suffering in these hard times. Because, really, those Bear Stearns shareholders and lenders are so much more deserving of your money than you are.
May 13, 2008 12:29PM
By Cody Willard
I still remember the first time I got published. I wrote an article for TheStreet.com about how the sudden constriction of capital in the telecom industry was likely to spell doom for most of the industry. I was wrong about a lot in that article (I’m pretty sure I’ve been wrong about a lot in EVERY article I’ve ever written though — that’s because I make a lot of predictions and offer a lot of analysis and opinion…and you’re always wrong even when you’re right depending on who’s reading you…so anyway, yeah, I’m wrong about a lot of stuff I write, okay? Oh, my, quite a digression about wrongness here, huh…), but one thing that I was very right about was that the credit shortage in telecom that hit at the end of a period of a glut of capital in the industry during which as I used to write, “anybody with the word ‘communications’ in their business plan could raised billions” was indeed a doomsday scenario for most of the industry.
As I’ve noted forever, one of my Jedi Masters taught me the simple principle that “all gluts are followed by shortages are followed by gluts”…and you can invest on that principle over and over again.
At the top of the glut of capital in the industry, Level 3 Communications was worth more than McDonald’s and Disney combined. Haven’t heard of Level 3? Exactly. How about 360 Networks, once headed up by billionaire former Microsoft CFO, Greg Maffei? Winstar? Enron was even in the telecom fiber route, not to mention “telecom services trading”, which was actually just mostly an accounting scam between those scumbags and their scumbaggin’ counterparts at WorldCom.
Oh yeah, WorldCom was once worth hundreds of billions. More than Bear Stearns, that’s for sure. (As an aside on that note, what’s the difference between Jimmy Cayne’s trashing of Bear with questionable accounting and bookkeeping and disclosures and Bernie Ebbers’ own trashing of his billion-dollar enterprise? I guess if you get the Federal Reserve and Capitol Hill convinced that the economy “might” collapse if you don’t bail out Jimmy and his cronies then you get free money and no jail time. Make a note for next time, Bernie.)
But all these companies are gone now. Well, LVLT’s still around, even if it’s still down 99% plus from its highs in 2000. So too is its suppliers, like Nortel and Lucent — down 99% or so from their highs of yesteryears.
And speaking of Nortel and Lucent and their 99% declines from the highs…you wanna know when the highs were hit? When they tried to keep their bubbled balls up in the air by extending cheap and easy financing to all those telecom companies that had excess capital but little prospects for near-term growth and business. That was 2000 and 2001 when they could tell that demand had collapsed by Nortel, Lucent, Cisco, et al started offering “vendor financing”.
Remember when Ford and GM got wild with their “vendor financing” back in 2003, 2004? At the top, right before they ran out of access to capital themselves and collapsed?
Why do I bring all this up today? Two parallels to watch:
1. How many times in the last year have I said, “Wall Street’s gone from a glut of capital to a shortage”? That cycle’s just turned, and it’ll take a few years at least to play out, just as telecom, the dot com bubbles did and the car bubble from 2002-2004 is still. Stay away from the financials. (And pray that the government lets those reckless scumbag investment bankers who kept their billions of gains during the glut lose their shirts and eat their own losses now that the shortage is here…socializing losses after privatized gains is evil.)
2. See this article in the USA Today about tech companies offering “vendor financing” to their ever-more-capital-constricted customer base? Careful with the tech cycle too, guys.
May 9, 2008 12:09PM
By Cody Willard
Well, well, well, here we’ve just pre-emptively spent darn near every bullet the government thinks its got in its arsenal to prop up this supposedly disastrous economy, yet AIG still has to admit to ridiculous losses and raise more than ten thousands bunches of a million dollars each.
Yeah, $12 billion is 12,000 million, you realize! Picture for a minute how stupid you’d feel if you lost $12,000 on stupid bets How about losing $1 million on a really obviously stupid bet like CDOs and Subprime crap? Now picture losing that $1 million 12,000 times! And you realize these same idiots are very same guys who your Democrats and Republicans are now bailing out. Sigh.
All this hurting the renter and the saver and giving money to speculators and landowners and Wall Streeters and bankers, all because idiot pawn Ben’s been convinced that the creative disruption that market forces always enact to keep the virtuous cycles of economics going would be a bad thing.
I still say, WHO THE HELL CARES if Wachovia, Lehman or most any other irresponsible, gambling financial entity goes under. Let ‘em burn! They got to keep their profits in the good times. Let ‘em eat their losses in the bad times. If Lehman goes away tomorrow, some other company that deserves its chance will step up in the vacuum to prosper.
Did you notice how devastating the Bear Stearns collapse was to you? It wasn’t in the slightest, was it? Yet, everybody tells you that if the stock had gone out down 99.9% to zero instead of just 97% to $10 a share that would have spelled doomsday for all of us! What a crock.
And all the while, RIMM, AAPL, JPM, URBN, QCOM, MCD, and so many other stocks are indeed near their all-time and/or 52 week highs. Ignore the macro picture and fight the Republican and Democrat powers that keep sneaking money out of your pockets and into their rich cronies and landowners.
The saddest part of all this endless central money moving is that it does nothing to stop the obvious economic forces that always play out on their own anyway. Did the Fed and government stop the 75% decline in the Nasdaq from 2000 to 2002? No, of course not. And they’re not stopping the housing depression either.
Yet you still vote for these guys who steal from you.
May 1, 2008 11:40AM
By Cody Willard
As I asked repeatedly on Happy Hour last night — if the politicians really want to provide some relief for the little guy at the gas pump, then why not permanently eliminate the tax at the gas pump. See how that works? 2 + 2 = 4.
But nooo, the Republicans and Democrats in power have all these tricks they play to screw over you at home and make sure they line the pockets of the big guys. Yeah, both frat houses are guilty of it.
Even these politicians from the two main fraternity parties’ who want to limit how much money the oil companies, the so-called private sector, can make off of private property. They’re not actually trying to fight big oil. They’re in big oil’s pockets!
Hilary Clinton last night says that there’s no reason for the oil companies to make all this money because they haven’t invented anything new. I guess you have to create something if you want to generate capital that you can keep off your own assets. Where does this logic stop?
You buy an apartment building at the bottom of the real estate cycle…and once rents skyrocket, the government’s gonna come in and decide that you can’t make that much money on that investment since you didn’t “invent” anything.
Here’s the tax I’d promote were I running for president of this country already and not just setting myself up to do so in 2016 or 2020 as a true non-fraternity-party free-thinking candidate –
Let’s cap the earnings power of anybody who used to be in office at say, $1 million a year. Yeah, I mean, anybody who served his fellow man as a leader and lawmaker of the free world should feel like a “bandit” to use another of Hilary’s terms, if they’re making any more than $1 million a year.
Imagine all the problems this cap on earnings power would solve! We know off the bat that the government would raise more than $100 million off the capper herself, Hilary!
Wanna serve your fellow man by holding a public office? You cap your future earnings potential. Capping those guys’ future earnings would undermine the entire obviously corrupt lobby industry at its core.
Wanna be a private citizen who invests in corporations that own property that creates income — yes, even income off oil? You can earn as much as you want and we’ll flat tax ya’.
Think about that last point, btw — creating a simple flat tax. I mean, these same politicians who want to “cap” earnings for these oil companies then turn around and hand them tens of billions of your tax dollars every year in sneaky tax-incentives, subsidies, and what not for drilling here, not drilling there, growing this much corn, pretending to work on solar power solutions and so on.
It’s much the same scam that the banker syndicate has finally figured out — The Republicans and Democrats in power figure out all kinds convoluted ways to pretend their fighting for the little guy when the only thing they’re actually doing is helping out their lobbyists and cronies.
So in the end, they convolute the whole tax process up as much as they can. Somehow I don’t think the little guy benefits from any of it.
Just cut the damn tax as the gas pump for starters, guys.
April 30, 2008 11:53AM
By Cody Willard
Quick, guess what year these lyrics are from:
I’ve been waiting for years to buy a brand new cadillac
But now that I’ve got one I want to send it right back
I can’t afford the gas to fill my luxury limousine
But even if I had the dough no one’s got no gasoline
Who needs a car and a seven-forty-seven
When you can’t buy a gallon of gas
Who needs a highway, an airport or a jet
When you can’t get a gallon of gas
There’s no more left to buy or sell
There’s no more oil left in the well
A gallon of gas can’t be purchased anywhere
For any amount of cash
You can’t buy a gallon of gas — The Kinks
And those words were written in 1979.
One of the main reasons I’ve gotten so outright bearish on oil and have tried to call a top in oil around the $120 range is in large part because I can’t believe all these people who think this ongoing boom part of the energy cycle is somehow “different” and sustainable “this time”. It’s not, and there are so many great anecdotes and stories and histories to look back at as to why this cycle is just like all the others we’ve seen in energy for the last century and a half.
For example, as I walked from Fox HQ to the Waldorf for the show last night, my iPod randomly brought up the song “A Gallon of Gas”. That reminded me of another song I like…so when I got home last night, I pulled it up on the iMac. Wanna guess what year these lyrics were written?
There’s only so much oil on the ground
Sooner or later there won’t be much around
Tell that to your kids while you driving downtown
That there’s only so much oil on the ground
Can’t cut loose without that juice
Can’t cut loose without that juice
If we keep on like we doing things for sure
Will not be cool - It’s a fact
We just ai’t got suffiecient fuel
There’s only so much oil in the ground
Sooner or later there won’t be none around
Alternate sources of power must be found
Cause there’s only so much oil in the ground
Sounds like that “Peak Oil” theory that everybody and their dog can cite to explain how this time, in 2008, we really are running out of oil. I hate to burst all you energy-lovers’ bubbles, but those lyrics about alternative sources of power were written by Tower of Power in the antiquated year of…1975. Yes, the 1975 that happened 32 years ago. Wonder if ToP felt silly singing about peak oil after energy prices collapsed a few years later. Ray Davies recently brought back his lyrics from the Kinks song above.
But really, maybe it REALLY IS DIFFERENT THIS TIME! Or not.
April 29, 2008 12:01AM
By Cody Willard
…Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. - Desiderata
I’d pondered during my UNM speech if our brains have a balance sheet. The more I spend thoughts thinking about it, I am convinced they do.
Opportunity cost is defined by Wikipedia the cost (sacrifice) incurred by choosing one option over an alternative one that may be equally (or more) desired. Thus, opportunity cost is the cost of pursuing one choice instead of another. Every action has an opportunity cost.
It’s not just actions, that have an opportunity cost. Thoughts have opportunity costs too. In other words, the opportunity cost is the cost (sacrifice) incurred by thinking one thought over an alternative one that may be equally or more desired.
Take for example, and yes, irony self-fulfilling, that this will be my last post about my the recent trashing I just went through in my personal life. I mean, the opportunity cost of all this pain that I’ve also been processing over the last couple months is not insignificant if I’m to be honest with myself. It’s not just that I’ve not felt much like dating or getting out there and seeing what else might come to fruition in my personal life. More to the point, those nights I spent thinking of her, reviewing the facades in my head…those mornings I awoke with my heart in my stomach and thoughts of resentment and anger in my head…those are moments that my brain’s not thinking about my job, my businesses, about the economy, the market, about how to make money, how to best plan my career. Even as I’ve been as laser-focused on my career and my job in my actions, I know my brain could be processing much more were it not paying opportunity costs of heart distraction.
Maybe that’s exactly what bad karma is. It’s when bad thoughts and feelings build on themselves, creating vicious cycles that undercut real-life productivity. Not to mention undercutting real-life trust.
And you know, the very instant she began to tell me all the ways she’d be dishonest in the beginning, I instantly saw the karma build. Her actions and then her subsequent choices of building a relationship with me on facade made my pain fait accompli. And I knew that I’d be spending weeks feeling awful and dealing with the low self-esteem issues that come when someone you’re intimate with lies. And I knew that mindset and heartset wouldn’t be conducive to my being at my best. Bad karma indeed.
And how did I bring that bad karma into my life, I might wonder. Does the fact that I’d thought from the first time I met this girl that she’d be too…wild… for me? Then why did I later go forward? Oh, perhaps it’s all just 20/20 in hindsight, but I sure feel like I foresaw almost all of exactly what then played out when we finally gave it a shot. I’m an idiot.
Really then, from the decisions I made about taking actions to get into that relationship at all to the thoughts that I’ve wasted in pain, I, as the fund manager of my life, career and mind, am accountable for these losses on my brain’s P&L. Hoohah, like I’ve said many times before — managing money is for idiots. So is managing thoughts.
Then again, maybe I outta just be gentle with myself, re-read the Desirata and go to bed.
PS. I think most economic text books would agree with the Wikipedia definition of “opportunity cost”. At least the general accuraciosness of the description of what it mostly is in truthiness, if I may Colbertitize this post at the top. In high Colbertity, I added the italicized (or more). I think it’s more accurate that way and maybe we can get Bloomberg or Reuters to poll the same economists they ask about even more benign questions like “What do you think this month’s housing starts will look like?”
