Chicago Boyz

There is a very good interview on the Council on Foreign Relations site with Walter Russell Mead. (Interview here.) Mead is pitching his new book entitled Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America’s Grand Strategy in a World at Risk. (Order from Amazon here.) Mead was the author of the brilliant book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, which brought us the word “ Jacksonian,” which may be the most powerful meme in all blogdom.

Another widely blogged-about meme is the Anglosphere. I notice that Mead makes a few points which are noteworthy to those of us who are interested in the present and future of the Anglosphere.

On the economic dynamism of the Anglosphere, Mead offers this:

[O]ne of the things that I think has made the English-speaking world–kept it kind of in an economic leadership role for centuries now–is that there’s a kind of the trade-off between accepting the risks and rigors of free-market capitalism on the one hand, and that causes a lot of social discomfort and unpleasant change; on the other hand, it brings you benefits in terms of new technologies, higher productivity, faster progress.

The English-speaking world, and especially the United States, has usually been pretty comfortable with pushing that trade-off in the more free-market direction, which, on the one hand, gives us historically a kind of a lead, often, compared to the rest of the world, but, on the other hand, means that our society is sometimes pulling the world in directions it doesn’t really want to go.

(I think “English-speaking world” is the way you say “Anglosphere” in polite society.)

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Presidents have little effect on the economy.

That isn’t me speaking, that’s every professional economist who’s ever remarked on the subject. At best, they can influence things like federal spending, tax policy and trade policy. That’s about it. So why did the USA enjoy an economic boom in the 90’s under Bill Clinton and a recession under George Bush?

In the 1980’s a revolution swept through American business. The following were a few key changes.

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There’s a fascinating article in the NYT about the 1940’s era, Austrian born film star Hedy Lamarr. Not only was she widely considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, she’s one of the patent holders of the idea of ‘frequency hopping’ communications. This breakthrough idea is now widely used in everything from cell phones to military satellites to jam-resistant radar.

Neither Lamarr nor her co-inventor, composer George Antheil, ever received a penny for the idea. Their patent expired before it became technologically possible to implemet it.

The Patent
Hedy Lamarr Photo Gallery

The thing with writing about politics is that statistically you’ll piss off half the people all the time. So I thought I would go to something more controversial – writing about investments. Nothing gets people going as when they have an economical stake in something. If you’re right, you’re on top of the world. If you’re wrong, you’re a bum and no one listens to you. That’s one thing I love about the markets, it cuts out all the b.s. and boils it down to what matters and what doesn’t.

Speaking with Jonathan, there aren’t many blogs about investing. Ventureblog is a good one, but it’s not very actionable unless you are also a venture investor. There are plenty of “model” portfolios out there, but they’re not very actionable either unless you have a cool million or at least $100k to throw around. To me, it always looked like a cop out since the writer can always point to the high performers in the portfolio. They can say, “Well Joe, if you had invested in ABC like I said on 1/1/95, you’d be doing pretty well.” To which, someone might say “gee thanks a-hole, I invested in XYZ like you said on 1/1/96 and lost my shirt.” Diversifying is well and good, but you gotta have enough assets to diversify in the first place. Way back when, when I first started investing, I’ve always wondered what an average Joe like me can do with a few thousand bucks scraped together.

So let’s start a little experiment. I will personally invest $5,000 in the market and keep an online journal of what happens. It represents my entire liquid net worth, so it will definitely have my undivided attention versus some academic exercise without consequence. Who knows, it may be the shortest investment journal in history – ie blow it all on one trade and call it a day. Otherwise, it’ll be a good learning experience all around.

Let’s go get’em. Ding ding ding…

My friend whom I’ll call “Carl Ortona” sent me, amidst much recent email traffic, a “mini-review” of Conrad Black’s recent biography Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. Since my occasional favorable comments about FDR on this blog have provoked so much (admittedly thoughtful, articulate) outrage, I decided to pass it on. (OK, I admit it is a little like trolling on my own blog, but what the Hell):

Black’s FDR is very good. Black can seem precious, and in places, his precocious, arrogant yet eager-to-impress schoolboy attitude comes through; e.g., he latches onto the word “pulchritudinous” and uses it throughout in place of fetching, pretty, elegant, etc. — ditto for saturnine, and latin legal phrases — when he describes FDRs sisters dress as p., I said, that’s it, make a mental note and mention it to everybody. Having said all of that, it is a good book and Black demonstrates his thesis amply, that FDR is one of the greatest, arguably the greatest American president, ever.

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