Gyroscopic Investing

moda "Enough freedom and liberty and property control and opportunity and safety nets and externality consideration and regulation where most people see the game that's set up as being worth playing."

I think that that is the crucial balance you make. If 100 John Galts owned all of the USA, then much of the potential of the other 250M US citizens might go to waste.

stone,

Thanks for supporting that statement.  It really sums up what I'm getting at.

Keep in mind, if I had to put my finger on the one, single most important aspect that a government recognizes, it's private property.  Does this mean they don't tax, regulate, redistribute or administer certain programs?  No (in my opinion).

The oft-neglected step-brother to private property is externality recognition, and talk about a fickle b!tch that is... trying to "price in" unkown costs with unkown future magnitudes to products of the private sector.  I think this is one area where looking at private property as a social construct vs a fundamental attachment to man is extremely important.  This is where government has to be extremely creative, transparent, interactive, intelligent, and honest... basically just "good government."  Does this kind of government happen naturally?  Not in the least... it takes a very active, intelligent, fair-minded public.  Something we don't have.

I think private property is best described as a very important (nay, the most important) but necessarily flexible pillar to a fair society.  As such, it should be viewed somewhat as coercion, much like reasonable speed limits or a good regulatory framework, that allow people or government to exert force ("Get off my land") over others.  Some forms of coercion are simply "better" than others.... usually based on how much prosperity is derived from an effort to organize society differently. 

moda "This is where government has to be extremely creative, transparent, interactive, intelligent, and honest... basically just "good government."  Does this kind of government happen naturally?  Not in the least... it takes a very active, intelligent, fair-minded public.  Something we don't have."

As Medium Tex keeps pointing out, the founding documents of the American state suggest that people then had a clear grasp of what they wanted and they ring true even today. I think one problem today might be that propaganda has so much money behind it. I'm hoping the the Murdoch fiasco in the UK might open things up a bit. I also think a very big problem is that the economic system now is more complex than it was then. That complexity makes it very hard to question what we are told without spending a lot of time delving into it all. Most people have more sense than to get embroiled with trying to understand what is going on. That makes it very easy for the public to be misled. Personally I think a lot of the complexity is actually counter productive. It almost seems like encryption created so as to create an exploitable information advantage for those in the know.

LGrand85 wrote: 30 yr bond not stopping, rogers must be in some pain

For the life of me, I can't understand why he would short LTTs. Anyone who knows how LTTs react to the market knows that with the solid inverse relationship between stocks and LTTs (especially during a crisis), he's essentially making a bet that the stock market will go up. Which makes no sense since he doesn't even like stocks to begin with.

I suspect his motive in shorting LTTs (at least over the short term) is nothing more than a political statement. He probably takes a small short position on LTTs and it gives him the ammo he needs to rant about government spending on TV. There's no other rational explanation for it.

Has anyone seen Jim Rogers on TV explaining what went wrong with his short treasury call?

I am really baffled how someone who seems to smart can make such dumb public pronouncements.

The 30 year rate is at 3.32% right now.

Perhaps he was hoping to start a stampede out of LTT so that he could then get back in once yields were 8% or whatever and enjoy a few decades of them falling back to 3%:) Didn't Soros say that the markets have a great way of predicting the future- by creating it. Perhaps he was thinking that he personally could create the future by prompting copycat LTT aversion. The wonderful thing was that so few people copied him so he was left looking stupid.

Jim Rogers says a lot of stupid things. He once said China was the future because it was more business friendly, so he moved there with his daughter. The pollution started affecting his health so he moved away to Singapore where he currently lives.

MediumTex wrote:The 30 year rate is at 3.32% right now.

It's amazing watching what is going on. Shorting anything is usually a bad idea, but shorting the guys printing the money seems like an especially bad idea.

For all the VP's out there, the 10 year treasury yield is about the same as VTI dividend yield.

I don't like using dividends as more than an "ok" indicator, but for what it's worth, it's maybe a nice decision-making benchmark regarding stocks being cheap.

Indices wrote: Jim Rogers says a lot of stupid things. He once said China was the future because it was more business friendly, so he moved there with his daughter. The pollution started affecting his health so he moved away to Singapore where he currently lives.

I think a lot of smart people can say an awful lot of stupid things, but Rogers' Investment Biker is one of the best books I've ever read. 

Whatever your thoughts about Jim are, I recommend the book.

craigr wrote:

MediumTex wrote:The 30 year rate is at 3.32% right now.

It's amazing watching what is going on. Shorting anything is usually a bad idea, but shorting the guys printing the money seems like an especially bad idea.

Now 3%.


P.S. I liked Jim Roger's Adventure Capitalist book.