Letters to The President

It's that time again.  If you'd like to send a comment to President Obama you can do so through the whitehouse.gov website, or click the link here.

Dear President Obama -

I hope that you can honestly say that did not know about what was going on with the IRS, but if you did, you should be ashamed of yourself.  For a free thinker it's easy to understand that one man cannot possibly control the actions of millions of government employees.  Anyone that has ever been a part of a corporate bureaucracy can understand that fact if they are being truthful to themselves.  I think that if most folks considered reality they would realize that your contingent is as zealous as any superstar's.  For that you can be thankful, but the fallout from the dark side of this dichotomy cannot be excused.

Additionally, I implore you to gather the Council of Economic Advisors and come to whatever agreement must be struck behind closed doors with respect to corporate taxation.  These congressional roasts of corporate executives are divisive and tired.  Dragging a company in decline before a group of polarizing figures runs completely counter to the innumerable fiscal initiatives our country presently executes.

If in the course of study genuine underhandedness has arisen then the company should be notified so they can plan the [repercussions] accordingly.  Otherwise, it appears as though you'd like the public to turn against corporations and that will not advance our country or civilization.

On Water.

The hardest working and most voracious reader I know, @smallcapanalyst, sent me an article called Water is becoming a more precious resource.  Quote following, emphasis mine:

Viewed from space, Earth appears to be a watery planet and in fact it is, with water covering 70% of the planet's surface.

But in a cruel irony, most of the water is not the kind people or animals can drink. We require fresh water, which makes up only about 1% of the earth's water, while the vast oceans are filled with undrinkable salt water.

Recall the ridiculous overcapacity in dry bulk shippers accumulated during the middle of the last decade and pictures of those ships anchored in Far Eastern bays during 2010.  To ease the glut some ships were scrapped while others were converted into LNG tankers.  Now that the US looks to become petroleum independent, a wise consideration might be for crude tankers to consider how water will be refined and how they could serve those in need.  Whether tankers carry refining equipment aboard, or move water from refineries at sea or between nations something must meet this implicit demand.

Also considering the demographic and economic gulf facing Japan, they must soon address an abundance of power capacity.  I propose they consider deploying nuclear to distill sea water for export.

NNTaleb on Heuristics

Heuristics on Wikipedia

See what he did there?

One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans.  All you need is one single (and, I am told, quite ugly) black bird.

Nicholas Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan - prologue, paragraph 1 

The association of "ugly" with black swan primes readers to spend the rest of the book in fear of the rhetorically imbued negative implications of not knowing an outcome with certainty.  No thanks.

Unknowing is the heart of possibility.  Unknowing is a source of adventure.  Unknowing is infinity - certainty, zero.

Centaur Capital on Investing Dumb and Dumber

Yardeni Chart

Current Themes

• water
• quality IPOs
• inflation resonating from farms
• organic produce
• micro caps
• space