Archive for July, 2017
P.S.
How to write likeable characters? Make them vulnerable.
Make them have a lot of problems that are out of their control. Give them insecurities. Ultimately, if you’re really good, make people want to help them.
This assumes, of course that they are likeable in the first place. That’s the part that is sometimes referred to as “a quality.” They have to, well you just don’t want to take your eyes off them.
Another personification would be they have to be cool. They have that magic something that makes you want to follow, or put another way, get sucked-in.
To follow that even further, the worse they treat you the more you like them. No we’re not talking women and gender roles here (yet), but we could.
Some of the other adjectives are cliche’s: smart, funny, attractive, sexy.
It is especially hard for a housewife, for example, to be cool. If you can do it you’ve got a likeable character.
I’m not a film director. In fact, I know almost nothing about the technical aspects of film-making. But I did take a while to study writing and meet some writers, and many of them said writing is about people.
The Wizard of Lies
Fort Wayne
An awful lot of psychologists here. People who have given a lot but who have also said just a little too much.
“There is harm to these children that we can’t begin to imagine and maybe we will never understand,” Finley said Wednesday. “But one thing we do know is that victims of sexual trauma tend to sustain lifelong harm.”
Indiana, Ohio (Cleveland) and that whole area seem to be home to the most frequent “domestic” headlines. Add in Philly and Bucks County in particular.
Fort Wayne, Indiana is where the former IU receiver was found having committed suicide. He was found in the dam. The stories say, and he is known as, the man who played pro football for two years.
Remember the objective: financial literacy. That isn’t wording the illiterate will like. Growth stock funds. We’ll get back to the five things.
It is strange to think about how many people are employed by the stock market (and other investments) when all it is is investing in companies. There are traders, brokers, investment experts, and of course mutual fund managers.
Is it a legitimate business? There are some sleazy things that go on and regulation isn’t always the answer. More to the point, everyone has to make a cut and a buck. But that doesn’t matter so much when you are still coming out ahead–fees should be viewed as included in total return.
Mutual funds do offer a service in that they help people save and they help grow wealth. Taxable wealth. Enjoyable wealth. Inherited wealth.
There is no way almost any investor can do the things mutual funds do given the ease “of use” and low costs. There is no way.
So yes, there are reasons to say mutual funds are a legitimate business. They’re profitable, if they’re good, too, and maybe too much so. They could invest in things you don’t like–Philip Morris or Comcast.
Those are things you don’t want to know. You don’t want to look to closely. You can’t control it and you can’t predict it.
Is it a business I wish I’d worked in? The quantitative analysis and behavior-predicting is fun, as is making money. I would have gone crazy because you can’t be right all the time; very good to excellent has to be good enough. Maybe banking… It is less tense, but it is boring.
While the scrounged-up Bernie videos play in the background, let’s talk about 10% annual returns. It is boring, and you don’t have to invest with a crook to get them. It is amazing how consistent it is:
This started because I was curious, have 401k’s and IRAs driven the market up? With such easy ways to invest and a steady stream of cash, does that prop-up the market and make everybody rich? No is the simple answer. Not as many people are saving that way as “one” would hope, but more realistically some people are going to invest in stocks, some are not, and that is not going to change much.
Recently I read something about how the stock market was going to suffer because baby boomers will withdraw and die. No, not that either.
How does one get a stock market opinion piece published on a major site? The opinions and wild by-lines–the bull market has 3 more weeks–are all over the place.
Nobody knows and you can’t predict it. The “soft landing” is mutual fund managers have goals, rationale, targets, and analysis however limiting those may be. They are much better at it than I am.
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I understand the NY Times website because it is a lot like this one: plain. ‘We’d rather write,’ I hope they will tell you, and ‘we don’t care about hits.’ Nope, there are plenty of videos and pics too. It has surpassed the Washington Post, and especially on a phone it is easier and more informative. Why not take a few minutes to scan the best?
www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/us/south-carolina-police-chief-bank-robbery.html
Interesting that a former police chief would rob a bank. He thought it is something you can get away with? And he must know what jail is like.
The Washington Post, owned by Bezoz/Amazon has become a single-minded Trump smear job. I even question some of the headlines.
My approach is to read the front pages and go to Google for a different presentation of the news stories anyway. There is no need for the piddling subscriptions or the even worse log-ins and tracking, and you can clean your cookies.
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It is that snippy, trying-to-be-funny writing style that caught me on this one. If you read about Bernie Madoff you get a lot of that. This time it isn’t so bad and it seems to go away.
I read a lot about social security disability payments which is linked to opiods, etc. If this man had a brain tumor and was disabled, and fired for it, isn’t that what disability payments are for?
Bernie
I’m really glad I spent about a week looking at Bernie Madoff as part of my investment savings opus. Maybe you have known people like that. I know I have.
The television movies are great. And now–the bottom fell out in late 2008–with all that time there is plenty out there in the way of books, documentaries, and interviews. The truth has probably surfaced as much as it will given everyone involved has either told their story or died like Madoff himself.
It is very likely it wouldn’t have ended like it did if not for the economy and stock market. It is called the Great Recession because it was deeper and more severe than most, having a lot to do with subprime mortgages, real estate values, and banks. The stock market, as judged by the S&P 500, was down by half.
The FBI agent turned TV commentator has a name for it but the description, the characterization, is what really counts. He did do it virtually all by himself. He is a person who, try as you may, just didn’t care.
There is a tie to Judaism–the Holocaust, Armageddon, call it what you will. Have you ever known someone like that? Madoff said it himself, he thought it would be like 9/11.
Someone somewhere compared him to Charles Manson and there was some kind of response from Madoff in jail. He reminds me of Aaron Hernandez. You are judged by the number of people dead, in jail, or otherwise hurt as a result of your life.
There’s also a link to the very rich. Some got away with it and got richer; others took a hit including the ultimate one, suicide. Others too were greedy, bad investors, or who knows. To think you are going to ride out that kind of recession and cut your losses is pretty dumb. My late husband insisted Bernie would take care of me is really dumb.
Some people were given and may have been happy with 10-12% per year which is obtainable over the long run (not during 2007-2009). Others were given or were expecting 15-20% which is not realistic. It is extraordinarily uncommon and if that is what you anticipate you are more than likely going to get burned. There is quite a bit of truth to the notion that you deserve it.
Put another way, you’re expecting to live off your money. You’re expecting to live show-off, I don’t care, I’m better than you rich off your money. That is fueled by greed and, in this case, crime.
The money, or savings, should be to live on. After that it is up to you to find something more.
Bernie
OK, Guru Swami, so what is this investment literacy?
We’re boiling it down: stay invested, 401k/IRA, information (as simple as an app) you are comfortable with and can understand, funds that triple in 10 years.
But first a digression. The other side, if you will.
The story and the crime has a way of ringing true. My mother put my father in “jail” and proved she could not live her life at all; the rest of the family could be any one of the Madoffs. I had a very similar SEC/FBI revelation very similar when I left Nextel. That was a time when the tech bubble was bursting and, well, it was a different time. And I was personally affected, not just a competitor.
The TV movies or dramas are great. I thought Wizard of Lies was amazing and Richard Dreyfus as Madoff was pretty good too. But reading some reviews I agree: while excellent they still fall short.
Madoff and everyone around him had a completely whacked view of their role. It’s not their money. There is no such thing as a “redemption.” He always viewed it as his asset.
It was always a crime in progress. You can’t print false statements and mail them.
It is an interesting take on “responsibility to know.” Should the brother or sons, and others, have known? Are they responsible?
They didn’t seem to have lives of their own. Are they responsible?
They didn’t know. Are they still responsible?
The family disintegrated.
“Fuck my victims,” he said, loud enough for other inmates to hear. “I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.” In an e-mail written on Jan. 13, he observed that many long-term clients made more in legitimate profits from him in the years before the fraud than they could have elsewhere.
IRAs and 401ks are better because of taxes (every year). Or you could start a charity. Lesson #5: stick to legitimate funds at good companies with (public) track records. There is plenty of information available.
Anger management
Manny Pacquiano (age 38) is a boxer and politician who wants to be president of the Philippines. He has a God Complex in that his entourage and indeed the whole country need him. The stats are something like in a 12 round fight he took 200 punches to the head. If he ever makes it to president he will not have a brain left. That is not funny. He will be pathetic as hell. With what is now known there is no excuse.
The physics teacher at the University of Illinois who kidnapped and probably killed the Chinese student–international incident/FBI–is all kinds of weird.
The woman in Redding, California was abducted while jogging by two Latin women, tortured for three weeks, then dumped on the side of the road.
Dr. Bello lived in homeless shelters. Loner only begins to describe him.
Liability society: Fyre Bahamas festival. Cancellation insurance? “The cause of that was not outside of their control.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/06/truths-revealed-by-the-case-of-bijan-ebrahimi
Our word for today is hypochondriac.