Webcompact

Alex Jones is known for pushing conspiracy theories, but he also spends a lot of time promoting his own products. John Oliver and a “doctor” “from” M.I.T. test out his marketing strategy.

Alex...

My its August already?  morning train reads:

• A-Rod’s Next Chapter Is a Whole New Ballgame: Business (Fortune)
• Amazon’s name pops up on 10% of U.S. earnings conference calls (Venture...

Source: Birinyi

Jeffrey Yale Rubin of Birinyi looks at the issue of low volatility. He makes two interesting observations:

In the early 1990s (top chart) the VIX was very low, and yet markets...

The Low Level of Global Real Interest Rates
Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer
Conference to Celebrate Arminio Fraga’s 60 Years
Casa das Garcas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil July 31, 2017

I am very happy to...

Rich Barton was a senior Microsoft engineer working for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the 1990s. His job required a good amount of corporate travel. Frustrated as a young traveling business...

We had to edit last week’s interview with Vanguard’s Tim Buckley (I went on too long). Here is the complete and unedited interview:

Q&A with Tim Buckley, Vanguard Group’s incoming Chief Executive...

My heading off to Maine morning train reads:

• The Great Escape: How Credit Raters Ducked Reform. After the subprime crisis, rules-tightening didn’t hit S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch as hard as the...

We love our technology, our devices, but what thrills us most is the individuals who spearhead their development. And although occasionally it’s a pair, like Larry and Sergey,...

With Gen. John Kelly set to be sworn in as Trump's new Chief of Staff, just days after the latest and most advanced North Korean ICBM test yet, one which can reportedly reach as much as half the major metro areas on the continental US, President...

That’s it. It’s the final straw. One of the alternative investing newsletters had a headline that screamed, “Bitcoin Is About to Soar, But You Must Act by August 1 to Get In”. It was missing only the call to action “call 1-800-BIT-COIN now! That...

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The polity is a social organism, of course, meaning that it adds up to more than the sum of its parts, a body of politics, if you will, just as each of us adds up to more than just our bodies....

Below looks at the Gold Futures/Silver Futures ratio over the past decade. The ratio bottomed in 2011 and started moving higher, sending a bearish message to both Gold & Silver. The ratio has rallied since the 2011 lows, where it could be...

In addition to persistent cash burn problem, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has admitted he is also bipolar.

In a series candid of tweets on Sunday, one day after delivering the first production Model 3, Musk replied to questions by other Twitter users...

In a move that is certain to prompt more allegations that Wikileaks is part of a counter-establishment push, one ostensibly supported by Russia, on Monday morning Wikileaks dumped more than 21,000 "verified" emails associated with the French...

My July-is-over-already? morning train reads:

• 30 firms earn half the total profit made by all US public companies (Quartz)
• If everyone is a robo-advisor then no one is a robo-advisor (

Washington for Beginners
Grovel to senators, be nice to civil servants, and learn how to leak
BRUCE BARTLETT
Weekly Standard, JAN 01, 2001

WASHINGTON will soon be inundated with a fresh wave of...

MAKE ART

“A great song can make the worst artist in the world a star.”

Quincy Jones

Which is why no one from the “Voice” has had any success and Bob Dylan is the most respected solo artist of the...

I wanted to point you this morning towards an excellent compendium put together by Meb Faber, titled The Best Investment Writing.

The book is a collection, smartly selected and edited, of...

My easy like Sunday morning reads:

• Your Robo-Adviser May Have a Conflict of Interest (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Big, bold … and broken: is the US shopping mall in a fatal decline? (The...

Chad Bown 05 June 2017

The Presidency of Donald J. Trump has unleashed a barrage of potential changes to US economic policymaking and the economy. This column introduces a new VoxEU eBook which...