Globalfinancialcrisis
A rare but always welcome interview by Charlie Munger embedded inside, courtesy of Stanford University’s Law School. Some highlights inside as well. The main theme is the economic/ financial crisis (what else?).
We worried about implied expectations for 2010 in our Q4 2009 report and said that we were increasing the percentage of cash in our funds. Enter Greece and other European peripheral countries. Macro issues are not our core by any measure, and our point is just that volatility, that friend of the long-term investor holding a lot of cash, is on the rise. The post collects, as food for thought, interesting FT articles on Greece’s and Europe’s woes.
Prof. Joe Stiglitz has been on a tear recently, first describing 5 lessons we should learn from the crisis and later presenting a tough message at the American Economic Association. The bulk of the messages: Wall Street ain’t that smart, and it failed miserably to perform on its purpose. Before the reader thinks “well academe didn’t do much better”, he also blames economists for continuing to rely on “rational player” models.