In a typical Ponzi scheme, like Bernie Madoff’s, the scammer moves money between investors, to pay what he claims are dividends on an investment that doesn’t actually exist. But Galbraith didn’t have a fake investment as a front. He had birds — lots of birds, and those birds created more birds, which he, in turn, was obligated to buy, then house, feed, water and medicate at considerable cost until he could sell them off to someone else. He appeared to miss the whole point of a Ponzi: He took the hidden, fungible fictions that give the scam its power and turned them into tangible liabilities.
Author: Edouard Chazal
When a Gun Is Not a Gun
In every moment, your brain consults its vast stores of knowledge and asks, “The last time I was in a similar situation, what sensations did I encounter and how did I act?” If you’re in a produce section, your brain is already predicting that an apple is nearby. If you are in a part of town with a high crime rate, your brain may well predict a weapon. Only after the fact does your brain check the world to see if its prediction was right.
Negative Rates and Financial Intermediation
Now that negative and in almost all cases low short term rates are expected to persist, long term bonds and similar duration assets do not offer the ability to pay claims 5, 10, 30 years into the future.
TAG Heuer partners Google to develop smartwatch
Some industry analysts will see the irony of Mr Biver moving into the smartwatch business. He is largely credited with having saved the Swiss watch industry from the proliferation of quartz movements in the 1970s and 1980s by emphasising the virtues of handmade mechanical timepieces.
A 1980s campaign he launched as head of the Blancpain watchmaker he revived stated defiantly: “Since 1735 there has never been a quartz Blancpain watch. And there never will be.”
Life After Cancer: How the iPhone Helped Me Achieve a Healthier Lifestyle
Kudos to Federico Viticci, what a great man and an excellent writer. Wishing him all the best.
Stupidly enough, because I thought that “I was okay”, I fell into my old habits of careless eating, no exercise, and a sedentary lifestyle. If cancer couldn’t kill me, did McDonald’s really have a chance?
Seriously: how stupid was I – after all I had gone through, ignoring the wellness of my body just because I was done with treatments? If anything, my experiences should have taught me about the importance of taking care of myself, so I could be well and spend time with the people I love and doing the things I care about.
Abnormal Capitalist 