Sublime

The elite rarely confront genuine differences of opinion. They are not asked to examine the roles they play in society and the inequities of the structure that sustains them. They are cultural philistines. The sole basis for authority is wealth. And within these self-satisfied cocoons they think of themselves as caring, good people, which they

The notion of Power (and the impact of its lack) is what underlies Warren Buffett’s view that if you combine a poor business with a good manager, it is not the business that loses its reputation. On the other hand, always the domain of Economists, I am a strong believer in the importance of leadership in the creation of value.

investors are understandably wary of investing in situations where they cannot be confident of physical security, political stability, and legal protections. My former boss at the State Department, Secretary of State Colin Powell, was fond of saying that capital is a coward. Potential investors are often scared off by widespread corruption, the

Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.

One columnist called him the “president of small things”.24 In her colourful account of Bolsonaro’s crises, Thaís Oyama notes that big – and perhaps more abstract – policy questions were of no interest to Brazil’s leader. She quotes an adviser who saw Paulo Guedes try to explain macro-economic ideas to Bolsonaro during the election campaign. “It

He is both well liked and very intelligent. He is also very rich. I consider his annual “Chairman’s Letter” (in the Berkshire annual report) to be indispensable reading for anyone wanting to do well in business.

The winners in Smart America have withdrawn from the national life of their fellow Americans. Christopher Lasch, writing in the early 1990s when this withdrawal was young, called it “the revolt of the elites.” Between meritocracy and democracy, it’s the first that dominates their waking hours, commands their unthinking devotion, and drives them,

Warren Buffett has remarked, “I look for three things in a person: intelligence, and a high energy level, and integrity. If they don’t have the latter, the first two will kill you.”

The debate about whether or not US stocks are cheap often uses a P/E valuation framework. This is misleading, inappropriate and dangerous at the macro-level. Better to understand the liability structure of investors and the direction of cross-border capital flows . These explain why momentum investing has outperformed value investing since