Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Links

Bill and Melinda Gates' 2016 Annual Letter (LINK)

Bill Gates on Charlie Rose (video) (LINK)

There are also news reports all over the place this morning that Bill Gates supports the FBI in the case with Apple. But that isn't exactly correct, which Gates discusses in THIS Bloomberg video from this morning. 

Apple, the FBI, and Security - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

The Knowledge Project podcast: Julia Galef on Becoming More Rational, Changing Minds, and Filtering Information (LINK)

Nate Silver in conversation with Tyler Cowen (LINK)

Exclusive Insights from Jeff Gramm (videos) (LINK)
Related book (released today): Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism
The video of the 60 Minutes Australia segment on Australian house prices (LINK)

An Accident Waiting to Happen (LINK)
I don’t waste tons of time on macro analysis, but I think it’s folly to ignore macroeconomic data as well. As the most junior component in a corporation’s capital structure, equity has to be paranoid. Every level of a corporation’s capital structure is a derivative of the fundamentals of the corporation and a corporation’s fundamentals are to some degree a derivative of macroeconomic conditions. Therefore, I think it’s just doctrinaire and received wisdom to ignore macro factors. 
There is a massive accumulation of inventory in the economy that has been underway for a few years. That’s fine coming out of recession, once the liquidation event has passed, but we’re seven years removed from entering the crisis and inventories are at their highest level since 2000, according to the inventory / sales ratio on Census Bureau[i] data.
Books of the day:

Innovation and Entrepreneurship - By Peter F. Drucker

The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy