Barry Ritholtz

This sums it up quite well, https://ritholtz.com/2013/07/organizational-charts-of-amazon-apple-fac… As more recent example, see the Windows desktop mess, or how they started to push Blazor Hybrid inside of MAUI, alongside the whole MAUI rewrite, mudding the waters of MAUI's purpose. How many way there are now to do Web apps in ASP.NET, classical MVC, Razor Pages, Blazor Server, Blazor Client, Blazor Fullstack,...

I acquired a finance/economics blogroll during the financial crisis. The ones I still read are: 'Naked Capitalism", "Yves Smith", https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ "The Big Picture", Barry Ritholtz, https://ritholtz.com/ "Calculated Risk", Bill McBride, https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/

Put you retirement funds in something like Vanguard. Vanguard is customer owned but any low load broad based index fund will work. https://ritholtz.com/2014/02/the-best-investment-advice-youll-never-ge…

> It’s an exciting example of people looking really hard for ways to confirm their priors on both sides. It seems like you're doing that here yourself: > The Seattle minimum wage study showed a reduction in hours and benefits and reduced likelihood of new entrants to the labor market. https://ritholtz.com/2018/10/seattle-studys-shocking-conclusion-minimu… Minimum wage may have some complexities to be played out and examined, but to go back to the parent, the net harm here seems to be minimal at best, if not helpful over harmful, quite unlike how most feel about eugenics. That comparison, while criticizing the moral compass of economists generally, is quite something.

Barry Ritholtz has a great business and finance podcast called “Masters in Business” and frequently discusses favorite books and book recommendations in context of the dialogue. “MiB was originally conceived by its creator, Barry Ritholtz, as a deep dive into the minds of the most influential, savvy and successful people in the world of business & finance. The podcast explores how these folks became the professionals they are today: Who their mentors and influences were, what their personal work history is like, what books they read, even what their daily routines and thought processes are like. A listener wrote: “The show is like eavesdropping two very smart market professionals having a deep discussion over a cup of coffee.”” https://ritholtz.com/about-masters-in-business/

>And there's a lot of weird hate towards bank on HN. I know they're not great, but it's really not helping the conversation to just say things like "woooo banks are scary!" Well, in fairness, one of the last times a bunch of banking organizations joined forces on some shiny new innovation was MERS, the Mortgage Electronic Registration System...which facilitated the fraud that helped cause the housing crisis. --------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_Electronic_Registration_Systems http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/states-fight-back-against-mers-mo…

The meme of the CRA causing the housing bubble holds little water. A simple example of why this idea has very little validity: the housing bubble was a global phenomenon. As a second example: most of the questionable sub-prime lending during the housing bubble was done by private institutions not under the CRA regulation. Some good reading on the subject: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/11/examining-the-big-lie-how-the-fac… Now if you want to talk about repealing Glass-Steagall or the lack of regulation of the derivatives market via the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (both mentioned in the article you link to), then I'm all ears.

Well, about 300 million people, but less than 100 million taxpayers. About 130 million workers in the US [1], of whom about 30% have a negative income tax rate[2]. Doesn't completely change your point, since less than half of Finland's population works as well[3], but I thought it worth mentioning. [1] http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/employed-persons-1999-2001-2003-2… [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/18/who-doesnt-… [3] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/employed-persons

As with others: values make most sense not in the abstract (how big is a stack of $1 trillion in $100 bills), but in context. How does a budget item compare with other items on the budget? How does it compare with GDP or population? How does the cost of a school compare with a hospital? Here's the US federal budget depicted graphically: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2012-budget.pn… The xkcd "money" graphic is a classic of the genre, representing values from a cup of coffee ($2) to the all human economic productivity ($2,397 trillion). http://xkcd.com/980/huge

Most of the money is passed between central banks and technically insolvent[1] banks, helping them repair their balance sheet and dispose of toxic assets. http://dailybail.com/home/chart-of-the-day-feds-balance-sheet-hits-new… Some of the money seeps into the economy and may be inflating stocks and other assets. For example, banks are given loans at zero interest[2] and they can use that money for whatever, e.g. proprietary trading, bonds/treasuries, etc. Perhaps some of that money finds its way into investment funds and eventually tech start-ups? [1] http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/fasb-sells-out-unsurprising-resul… [2] http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a75… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-data-compil…

25% is about right for indian gdp around mughal period. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/08/history-of-world-gdp/ these early wins were against muslim rulers who did not have that much support of their majority populace because of taxation issues and also suffered from lost revenues due to the new trade routes. the hardest wars were against the hindu/sikh rulers - marattas, rajputs and sikhs who were not subdued until 1850s with great effort.

Two other financial blogs I follow: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/

Paul: There is probably more than a single article's worth in terms of explaining how to prevent, but you could start with Barry Ritholtz' blog http://www.ritholtz.com/blog -- he also has a book coming out that will probably be very illuminating: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470520388/thebigpictu09-20 . You might also try nakedcapitalism.com, another well respected blog.

Whenever I hear someone in a privileged job, such as a software engineer, complain about unions or collective bargaining or in fact any form of collectivism, I have to suppress my rage because every concession to the working class, such as weekends, safety standards, overtime pay, PTO, sick leave and so on was paid for in blood by your forebears. The biggest changes came shortly after Henry Ford conceded the weekend when the ultra-wealthy wrecked the economy (ie the Great Depression) and FDR was elected and, despite being a capitalist, realized he needed to address the very real issues to stave off the perceived threat of Communism. That's where Social Security, the right to join a union and a bunch of other things came from. There was even an attempted coup by the wealthy to avoid all this (ie the Business Plot [1]). After WW2, the US (in particular) saw this as an opportunity to claw back these concessions. The Soviet Union became the Great Enemy. Former Naxis were recruited to fight Communism, both inside and outside the US. NASA, the FBI, the CIA, NATO, etc all filled with former Nazis despite their "morale lapses" [2] under the Third Reich. Domestically, we got the Red Scare and McCarthyism. This really went into overdrive in the 1980s when Baby Boomers, whose fears of crime were fuelled by intentional propaganda as well as CIA efforts such as the crack epidemic, voted for Reagan in record numbers. Reagan won 49 states in 1984 (all but Wyoming). One of the things I…

This idea goes back several years, and Barry Ritholtz had thoughts on it back in 2015: > Back to quarterly earnings. Why do we even require them in the first place? The answer is that thanks to the transparency provided by regularly reported earnings and profits, investors can make informed decisions about which stocks to own or avoid. Owners of public companies have hired managers to run the businesses for them, and they want to see with some consistency how healthy the companies that they own actually are. If there are issues with how the business is being managed by the hired corporate executives, the owners want to know sooner rather than later -- and to have a chance to make course corrections. Quarterly numbers allow that to happen. * https://web.archive.org/web/20151008083649/http://www.bloombergview.co… * Via: https://ritholtz.com/2015/08/worst-idea-ever/ And in 2018 he suggested going in the opposite direction—more frequent—to even daily reporting: > This is exactly backward: More frequent reporting makes the data less significant. In the real world, human behavior emphasizes what occurs less often—meaning doing something less frequently gives it an even greater significance than something that becomes routine or common. > That is the difference between a New Year’s Eve celebration and a married couple’s weekly date night. > Twice-a-year earnings reporting will make the event so momentous, with…

> Limit gives you value, adding more devalue currency. One of reasons of inflation. Another way of creating value is through innovation, which often needs easy(er) access to capital to research, develop, and produce it: > But Inflation is not inevitable. There are numerous countervailing forces that have been at work for much of the past 50 years. The three big Deflation drivers: 1) Technology, which creates massive economies of scale, especially in digital products (e.g., Software); 2) Robotics/Automation, which efficiently create more physical goods at lower prices; and 3) Globalization and Labor Arbitrage, which sends work to lower cost regions, making goods and services less expensive. * https://ritholtz.com/2021/02/stop-stressing-about-inflation/ A fixed money supply often leads to economic stagnation due to a lack of access to capital: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine The stagnation was sometimes only stopped through lucky discovery of gold deposits: > Monetarists believe that the 1873 depression was caused by shortages of gold that undermined the gold standard, and that the 1848 California Gold Rush, 1886 Witwatersrand Gold Rush in South Africa and the 1896–99 Klondike Gold Rush helped alleviate such crises. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression Do you want economic growth and innovation to be dependent on the amount of shiny rocks we happen to find lying about?

Not OP but I'm a Canadian who follows the news so I'll pitch in. Canada is suffering a few things right now. Definitely a housing crisis, which seems to be everywhere in the Anglosphere but I'm pretty sure we have it the worst. Couple charts. Disposable income vs house costs, USA then Canada. https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/s/SIRo14xudI Relatedly, debt to income ratios, Canada vs USA. https://ritholtz.com/2013/10/household-debt-to-income-ratio-usa-vs-can… So Canadians like to spend too much for housing, live credit and thus don't invest. Why do they do that and does that matter? Well, we do that mainly because house appreciation isn't taxed as income (risk aversion in action) and it does matter because it crowds out investment in things businesses use to make money. WSJ has argued that this is the second leg of the crisis: we can't earn our way out of it, because our productivity is poorer than the USA, at 71%. https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadas-poor-productivity-has-reached-eme… Thirdly, Canada is cold and as a result we need a lot of energy to exist. Are energy prices declining? https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumption-per-ca… Forthly, I'm sure you're aware that the USA is deeply in debt and that the higher interest rates to combat inflation are pinching the ability of governments to operate. What you may…

I think Google was all over the place until roughly covid, but for the past few years the mission has solidly crystallized. Ads (dragging Search along), Youtube, "Platforms & Ecosystems" (Android, Assistant, Play & Chrome), Hardware (Nest, Fitbit, Pixel), Cloud. That's not really a very broad or convoluted set of priorities at the top level. The problem is the culture. Google is an exceptionally poorly managed company as a rule I claim this is by design from the beginning: as an engineering meritocracy, the technically best ideas won (over time) and employees voted with their feet. That doesn't scale. I'd argue that it began to fail pretty dramatically around the time Diane Greene took over Cloud and Prabhakar moved over (you could probably also argue that those org changes were lagging indicators, and the real start to the "problems" began when Ruth was hired) to run Ads/Search. As the board became increasingly business focused, the lack of solid management or even strategic leadership became more problematic. What's rule #1 of B2B? Being responsive to your customers' needs and acting predictably. The lack of top-to-bottom management combined with the legacy meritocratic culture have not lent themselves to the same sort of command-and-control hierarchy you see at places like Apple & Microsoft, both of which have been almost entirely market driven for decades. If you look at this[1] org chart cartoon from about ten years ago, you see what things looked like then.…

I’ve developed a heuristic where anytime I hear phrases like “affordable housing”, “make college affordable”, “affordable healthcare” I simply translate it to “unaffordable”. Inevitably when these become government programs, they simply throw money at the problem without addressing fundamental supply and demand issues and accomplish very little except drive up prices. Then, when investors see prices going up and to the left, they rationally throw money at it in a way to make even more money, which drives up prices even more. There’s so many charts like https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pricechanges.png that clearly show the trend. It’s insane. There’s a really good book I recommend called “Systems Bible” [https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/dp/09618251… that beautifully articulates this phenomenon in a way that applies to government policy, software systems, management, org structures, or any complex system of people or machines.

I love this question. Mostly because what seems like should be a simple thing to answer, isn't. There are certainly strong opinions and much data that support both sides, however. Neoclassical microeconomics (mostly like what one sees in mid-level undergraduate courses) suggests a minimum wage gives a kink point in individual's budget constraints--implying people may prefer to stay at minimum wage jobs rather than trade time for higher wage jobs, based on preferences. Additionally, if minimum wages rise too high producers will choose to replace labor (people) with capital (machines)--Stigler's argument. Neoclassical macroeconomics suggests that minimum wage increases may result in inflation (more dollars chasing same number of items), black markets (e.g. hiring illegal immigrants or paying wages under the table), and so on. It is seen as a market distortion. Labor economics and other sub-fields grant more nuance to these simplistic views. In the simple assessments above, minimum wage policies are at best set up as policies generating economic inefficiencies, at worst painted as immoral policies to support lazy people. However, we do not live in a neoclassical world. Debates about the economic consequences of minimum wages are still hot topics, decades after they were first engaged, with supporting and detracting evidence. Wikipedia's coverage is a good entry point.[0] For myself, I tend to come near "Bleeding Heart"/Arizona school libertarian when it comes to social…

> There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. Although I agree with you, it's worth noting that this sentiment is not a new one. There were plenty of people who believed that WWI marked the end of war, at least in Europe. Even after WWII, Pax Americana (in Western Europe) was not an inevitability. Today's relative stability in that part of the world was the result of enormous investments in intentional policy. As well as a fair bit of luck. > Military might today is usually directed from superpowers to third-world countries, but that's a topic for another day This sentence is a bit of a tautology [1]. But in any case, it's worth remembering that those incursions always find their way back home. Consider the most recent wars. The European migrant crisis has its roots in the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, the USA will eventually feel the economic impact of those two wars. The fact that [2] could happen while the USA ran up enormous deficits (completely unrelated to that growth) is deeply worrying; what will happen in even a slightly less dynamic domestic economy? > China's influence and dominance will happen through the private sector, ironically. This view of the world also has a time-honored tradition. Thomas Jefferson was an early proponent of the view that national power flows from economic might rather than hard power. It's worth noting that the…

>Inflation has been 3% a year for decades and wages have stayed flat. Every time I read this claim and go looking for data, I find data that says that real wages are roughly flat, which means that they have kept pace with inflation. (That's the definition of real wages: that they are in inflation-adjusted terms.) It seems a common journalistic (and often political) talking point to say exactly what you said, which makes the math or reading comprehension challenged assume something quite different. While the author or speaker is not technically lying, they are merely misleading the reader/listener with a confusing (and sometimes confused) combination of nominal inflation and real wages. See figures 3 and 4 here: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ > Property value have skyrocketed, vehicle prices have skyrocketed This next chart is in nominal dollars (meaning, not inflation adjusted): http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pricechanges.png It shows that vehicles have not gotten more expensive (even as they've gotten much, much better, safer, more reliable, etc) and that housing and food/beverages have inflated by less than wages and by roughly the same amount as general inflation (which is no great surprise, given that they are a substantial component of the inflation calculation and that it would be difficult to sustain inflation over a long period of time in a consumer-driven economy in the absence of [nominal] wage growth for…

I liked this article's start but its finish went in a very different direction. Denmark has a ton of things right about it and it's an amazing place - but mostly due to social conditions that don't exist elsewhere in the world. Denmark was almost entirely homogeneous until the 1990s and is slowly becoming less so - but in a very racially charged way. Their fastest growing political party, the Danish People's Party, is heavily anti-immigration and anti-non-danish folks. It's also has an incredibly well educated population due to decisions made 50+ years ago that would take a massive effort and timescale to implement in the US - even if it would work. Also the definition of rich in Denmark is equivalent to lower-middle class in the US (with healthcare added). Homes are smaller, cars are fewer, people spend more of their take home salary on food and other basics... The main difference being it is less costly to screw up in Denmark. Things are overwhelmingly getting better for everyone and even the poorest in America... http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2015/09/were-living-through-the-greatest-… ...and the value of improving computers, technology, biology, space travel on a universal time scale is huge on a utilitarian scale. Things have never improved so quickly in so many ways. Finally - "be the change you wish to see" applies here more than ever. No one is stopping individuals from donating large swaths of their money to causes - in fact almost…

In this environment, it's very difficult to price IPOs "correctly". I'm no longer involved in that aspect of the business, but I was in the late 90s, and the same thing happened back then. Basically, in a "normal" market, you'd have your company A, and comparables B, C, and D. B, C and D trade for an average of 20x earnings. So you'd price A at the traditional 15% discount for general IPO risk (unknown issuer, etc.) and it would go to the initial investors at a 17x earnings multiple (let's say it had earnings per share of $1), or $17. The initial investor would have the expectation that it would trade up to $20 in the near term. In the late 90s though, when nearly all tech-related IPO'ing companies didn't make any money, most everything traded on revenue multiples. So when your comps B, C, and D were burning cash and were expected to continue to lose money for the next few years, and traded for 8x revenues, 12x revenues and 10x revenues, well the best the traditional theory had was to say you would take the discount off the mean. The problem was that traditional valuation metrics (earnings, cash flow) had no bearing on the price of the stock, so if 12x revenue for a cash-burning business was valid, why not 14x or 16x or more? Your 10x average revenue with a 15% discount could take your IPO multiple of 8.5x to more than double that. It was impossible to accurately predict the first-day pop, and I imagine the same is true today. No one wants a "failed" IPO though,…

I can at least speak about law - this link showed up on HN a few days ago - Suicide prices and the coming crisis at big law firms. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/10/suicide-prices-the-coming-crisis-… Law firms have been in crisis for at least several years from what I know. I even remember having to go through a prospectus for a legal services outsourcing firm at work a while back. Finance - I know for a fact that post 2008 a large number of firms went bust, and the recession was brutal - lots of people returned to their home countries after finding no work. And it was the financial sector that added to the STEM shortage by hoovering up those students. Science and Math types that can demonstrate good math and organizational ability are the ideal rank and file for Financial modeling and its related task set. On top of that there is no shortage of natural finance types either. S0 those two sections of the economy are almost overstaffed, and one of those sections is dying. With regards to plumbing - thats a guild oriented job and aside from the usual complaints about collusion and what not, its also expensive because its likely not that attractive. I think of all the reasons, STEM poaching by other industries was probably one of the larger issues which should be reduced now. Still, your system is strongly aimed at attracting and retaining the best talent in the world. The issues people are complaining about are because they feel job searches have…

Negative savings rates? China has one of the highest savings rates in the world. Did you mean negative real interest rates? Even so, still gibberish. Building see-through buildings, palatial headquarters for SEOs and vanity projects is as wasteful as anything we see in the West, if not more so. Some impressive modern architecture and engineering, though. Boom/bust economics don't apply to China because there isn't a free capital market (legitimately anyway, there is a shadow underground financial system in some parts, not sure how big). It's not really a market economy, it's selective application of market principles in a primarily top-down government-run economy. Government directs SEOs to build apartments, high-speed rail etc., banks to lend for it, and bails everyone out if it doesn't make money. Result is massive resource misallocation. (Not that the West doesn't misallocate resources, build see-through buildings, Pets.com, etc.) Another good read on China is here - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/05/a-different-way-of-looking-at-chi…

Could you cite some numbers? I'm dubious as everything I've seen shows equities winning over almost any 20-30 year period. And by equities I mean a minimal load index fund. It's well known housing pretty much follows inflation (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/case-shiller-c… On the surface, it would seem bizarre if housing could beat stocks long-term. I can't speak much for gold. 1. housing: People have to afford their houses. As long as land is not scarce, this is just going to follow (housing-part) inflation. The reasonable maximum (across the US) is median income growth. 2. Stocks: As a first (0th?) order approximation, some weighted average of US and world-wide nominal GDP growth. Should easily beat #1. 3. Gold: Pretty complicated to track. Demand will rise as world incomes go up. But suppliers respond and pump more gold out. In theory, this makes gold more expensive but advances in technology can make production cheaper. As a naive investor though, I see no reason to invest in gold as I know little about the supply-side.

What's your goal with that? Eliminating regulatory agencies and regulations? The repeal of Glass-Stengal had some repercussions, after all. Or are you looking to lodge blame with one or the other of the political parties? (There's more than enough muck to rake, of course.) Or might you be interested in looking at the data, and at details such as the "robo-signing" mess and the questionable legality of the MERS assignments underneath the mortgage securitization (with various mortgage transfers which don't look to have been legally registered) and at the data around the melt-down? And with the recent proposed banking settlement that's underway between various Attorneys General and financial entities, the behaviors probably would have landed any individual in the dock on fraud charges could well turn into a reasonable investment and a write-off for some entities, too. There's more than enough of a mess here. Look at the data. And look at what folks are telling you, and at their motivations for telling you want they're positing. (And while you're at it, have a look at the wealth distribution in the US, too, and what the trends look like for that.) Follow the money, in simplest terms. And that doesn't point to CRA. Some reading: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/05/rewriting-the-causes-of-the-credi… http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/dear-gop-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-ca…

Warning: It's by Mark Zandi. Zandi is a hack and a mouthpiece for the ratings agencies. For one example among many, see this link: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/zandi/ More seriously, the link is just a summary of what Zandi's model predicted the recent stimulus would do. It's worth noting that: 1) Pretty much every other economist on the left and right disagree with him. On the right they think all his multipliers are too high, and even on the left they think the way he ranked them is bizarre. He reckons one of the best tax cuts is a lump sum refund - despite copious theoretical and empirical backing for the proposition that it's actually one of the worst (because it's most likely to trigger Ricardian Equivalency). 2) The actual results of the stimulus are starting to become clear, and they disagree with him too, both in terms of overall magnitude and, in particular, his completely batshit rankings. He thinks aid to state governments is one of the worst ways of spending cash, but infrastructure spending is quite good. In reality the aid to state governments was one of the most effective line items, while the infrastructure spending was a black hole in terms of job creation. My advice is to go hunt up an actual respected economist (Romer or Barro are both great on this area) and read what they have to say. Zandi is neither respected nor, at the risk of being cruel, an economist.

I've been watching the housing markets in Canada (where I'm based) and the US, as it is an indicator of the economy, consumer saving and spending. What's happening to the housing market in the US is incredible, but in case anyone is interested in a foreign view, read on. In the US: - Most types of mortgages in the US are tax deductible. - Interest rates are fixed for the entire term of the mortgage. - Houses cost 2-5x average family income.* - Some states allow homeowners to walk away from mortgages. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/us-existing-house-price-median-fa… And yet with the housing market in the US is still in shambles. In Canada, we don't have the luxury of these three things. In Canada: - Canadian mortgages are not tax deductible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_mortgage_interest_deduction#Canada - The average mortgage in Canada is a 5-year fixed rate mortgage. That means you lock in your interest rate (approx. 5%) for at most 5 years, then you need to re-mortgage. Interest rates can change drastically in 5 years. - Vancouver currently has a house price to average annual income at 10x. That number is double the value of when the US peaked in 2005-6. - Homeowners cannot walk away from their mortgages. I think it's called "personal guarantee" or something. IANAL, but bankruptcy doesn't necessarily clear out a person's mortgage debt. So while the US housing market is terrible, you guys have some amazing perks for home owners. …