Links

"That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously." --Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus)

Howard Marks says the stock market rebound is not reflecting reality (LINK)

Oil Plunges Below Zero for First Time in Unprecedented Wipeout (LINK)

Less Than Zero: What Oil's Crazy Day Means ($) (LINK)

Kyle Bass on CNBC (video) (LINK)

Hin Leong Failed to Declare $800 Million Losses (LINK)

Esports and the Dangers of Serving at the Pleasure of a King - by Matthew Ball (LINK)

Book Notes: Whole Earth Discipline (LINK)

Yes, Even Introverts Can Be Lonely Right Now - by Adam Grant (LINK)

COVID-19: What’s wrong with the models? - by Peter Attia (LINK)

Links

"He who moves not forward, goes backward." --Goethe

IT'S TIME TO BUILD - by Marc Andreessen (LINK)

Dispersion and Alpha Conversion: How Dispersion Creates the Opportunity to Express Skill - by Michael J. Mauboussin & Dan Callahan (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: James Montier on Fear and Investment (LINK)

Renaissance's $10 Billion Medallion Fund Gains 24% Year to Date in Tumultuous Market ($) (LINK)

Airbnb Defied the Odds of Startup Success. How Will It Survive a Pandemic? ($) (LINK)

Calpers Unwound Hedges Just Before March’s Epic Stock Selloff ($) (LINK)

Case Study of Tidewater and The Capital Cycle by John Chew (LINK)

The Forgotten Man - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

The Day of Reckoning for Private Equity - by Ted Seides (LINK)

Bloomberg Invest Talks: A Conversation with Ray Dalio (video) (LINK)

Kyle Bass: US & China Fallout & Recovery from COVID 19; Hong Kong Looming Banking Crisis (video) (LINK)

Why Walking Matters—Now More Than Ever (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: The Cataclysm Sentence (LINK)

One day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question - a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman’s cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists - all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them, “What’s the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go.

Links

CNBC’s full interview with Liberty Media Chairman John Malone (LINK)

Disney’s Kevin Mayer | Full interview | Code Media 2019 (video) (LINK)

WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey | Full interview | Code Media 2019 (video) (LINK)

This Man Is a Junkyard Billionaire (LINK)

Lessons From 24 Years of Operating: Bowl America, Inc. (LINK)

Banking on the Future: Why our most hated institutions will become our most beloved (LINK)

The Long View Podcast: Charles de Vaulx: Why Value Investing Has Slumped but Will Rebound (LINK)

Planet Money Podcast: #953: Three Sides Of A Car Loan (LINK)

Kyle Bass: "China: The Most Reckless Financial Experiment In History" (Hedgeye Investing Summit Video) (LINK)

Health Care Lessons from Dr. Keith Smith - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

Here’s to the Crazy Ones (LINK)

The Fascination With the Skin of a Dead French Revolutionary - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

Whack 'em or nuke 'em: How to deflect a killer asteroid - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Links

"Throughout the careers Charlie and I have had in investing, there have always been hundreds of cases, or thousands of cases, of things that are ridiculously priced, and phony stock promotions, and the gullible being led to believe in things that just can’t come true. So that’s always gone on. It always will go on. And it doesn’t make any difference to us. We are not trying to predict markets. We never will try and predict markets. We’re trying to find wonderful businesses. And the fact that a part of the market is kind of screwy, that’s unimportant to us." --Warren Buffett (1996)

Integration and Monopoly - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Oaktree Insights: A Place for Real Estate Debt in Global Credit Investing (LINK)

The Greatest Money-Making Machine of All Time: On Renaissance Technologies and the Medallion Fund (LINK)

Aswath Damodaran on Aramco's IPO (Part 1, Part 2)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger – How to Build a Great Product (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care (LINK)

Hidden Forces Podcast: The Present Danger: America, China, and the Second Cold War | Kyle Bass (LINK)

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims (LINK)

Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World (LINK)

Algorithmic Blindspots - by David Perell (LINK)

The Greatest Shortcut for Leaders Is Reading Books - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

Why polio is still around—and why we can eradicate it - by Bill Gates (LINK)

What America Lost When It Lost the Bison - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

Note to readers: I'm traveling with limited internet access over the next week or two, so posting will probably be less frequent than normal.

***

"We think that when we make a decision, there ought to be such a margin of safety that it ought to be so attractive that you don’t have to carry it out to three decimal places." --Warren Buffett (1995)

Beachheads and Obstacles - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Bubble Yet? (The Brooklyn Investor blog) (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter - October 2019: How to invest in a low growth world (Part 1 of 2) (LINK)

Michael Bloomberg’s Answer to the U.N. General Assembly - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

Some takeaways from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (LINK)

Kyle Bass: Hong Kong Protests are Chinese Regime’s “Worst Nightmare” in US China Trade War (video) (LINK)

Odd Lots Podcast: How Financial Repression in China Helped Cause the Trade War (LINK)

Hidden Forces Podcast: Financial Fault Lines, Central Banks, and the Law of Unintended Consequences | William White (LINK)

Masters in Business Podcast: Brian Grazer Discusses Imagine Entertainment (LINK)

The James Altucher Show (podcast): 493 -- Frank Abagnale (LINK)

What Got You There Podcast: #158 Brent Beshore (LINK)

The Knowledge Project Podcast -- Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion (LINK)

Externalities: Why We Can Never Do “One Thing” (LINK)

The Messy World of Crime-Solving Genealogists - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

Links

"We don’t try to buy our businesses with thoughts much of world trends. We certainly think in terms of foreign competition. I mean, we do not want to buy into a business that has a very high labor content and that has a product that can be shipped in from abroad very easily.... You do not want to have something whose competitive position is going to erode over time." --Warren Buffett (2007)

Berkshire Hathaway Energy Presentation (LINK)

Why Complexity Sells - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Peter Barton: Oral and Video Collection Interview [H/T Sean Iddings/Intelligent Fanatics] (LINK)

Related book: Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived

Thinking aloud about bank margins - Part 2 - by John Hempton (LINK)

The WeWork IPO - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

A short extract from a 2017 presentation by Grant Williams which highlights the madness of investors buying the 100-year Argentine bond issuance (video) (LINK)

Kyle Bass on CNBC (video) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Joe McLean – How to be a Pro’s Pro (LINK)

Land of the Giants Podcast: How Amazon Charmed Wall Street (LINK)

Is nuking Mars a good idea? (No) - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Links

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." --Seneca

A Few Gentle Thoughts on Journalism - by Jason Zweig (LINK)

What You Gain—and Lose—When You Lock Money Up for the Long Run - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

America’s Public Pensions Are Stuck In The Clouds ($) (LINK)

Beyond Ridiculous (LINK)

Oaktree Insights: Structured Credit Primer & Commentary (LINK)

Paradigm Shifts - by Ray Dalio (LINK)

Kyle Bass on CNBC last week (video) (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Connecting Theory and Practice Through The 5x5x5 Student Investment Fund (LINK)

Today’s conversation is with Tom Russo, the master of consumer brand investing, and two of our best students, Jeffrey Johnson '19 and Michael Allison '19. We’re talking about the 5x5x5 Student Investment Fund and having a deep discussion about some of the specific stocks in the portfolio. The concept for the 5x5x5 fund came out of Tom’s concern that conventional investment funds for students offered limited learning potential due to their short-term nature and was made possible by a generous gift given by him and his wife, Georgina.

a16z Podcast: The Search for the Secret Metal that Powers All Our Devices (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: Dr. Rock’s Taxonomy (LINK)

Radiolab Podcast: G: Unnatural Selection (LINK)

This past fall, a scientist named Steve Hsu made headlines with a provocative announcement. He would start selling a genetic intelligence test to couples doing IVF: a sophisticated prediction tool, built on big data and machine learning, designed to help couples select the best embryo in their batch. We wondered, how does that work? What can the test really say? And do we want to live in a world where certain people can decide how smart their babies will be?

Should the Rich Be Allowed to Buy the Best Genes? - by Walter Isaacson (LINK)

What Tick Saliva Does to the Human Body - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

The Stump That Didn’t Die - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Through underground connections with its neighbors, it somehow stays alive. What does that say about the concept of a tree, or the future of forests?

Book of the day: The Bubble that Broke the World - by Garet Garrett

Audible also has some notable titles currently on sale for $5....

The Fifth Risk - by Michael Lewis

Skunk Works - by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos

The Crusades - by Thomas Asbridge

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World - by Andrea Wulf

The Sixth Extinction - by Elizabeth Kolbert

Cosmos - by Carl Sagan

Links

"The nature of the private equity activity is such that it really isn’t a bubble that bursts. Because if you’re running a large private equity fund and you lock up $20 billion for five or longer years and you buy businesses which are not priced daily, as a practical matter — even if you do a poor job, it’s going to take many years before the score is put up on the score board, and it takes many years, in most cases, for people to get out of the private equity fund even if they wished to earlier.... The investors can’t leave and the scorecard is lacking for a long time. What will slow down the activity — or what could slow down the activity — is if yields on junk bonds became much higher than yields on high-grade bonds. Right now the spread between yields on junk bonds and high-grade bonds is down to a very low level, and history has shown that periodically that spread widens quite dramatically. That will slow down the deals, but it won’t cause the investors to get their money back." --Warren Buffett (2007)

Jony Ive Leaves Apple, Ive’s Legacy, The Post-Ive Apple - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Nudgestock 2019: Gerd Gigerenzer - Less is more: Decision making under uncertainty (video) [H/T @mikedariano] (LINK)

Related book: Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions

Oaktree Insights: Are There Still Winners in a Maturing Real Estate Cycle? (LINK)

Have Power, Respect Power, and Use Power Wisely - by Ray Dalio (LINK)

The Massive ‘Pig Ebola’ Epidemic Will Give Trump Big Leverage In His Trade Standoff With China - by J. Kyle Bass and Daniel Babich (LINK)

The Attention Diet - by Mark Manson (LINK)

The side of Paul Allen I wish more people knew about - by Bill Gates (LINK)

The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast): #375: Josh Waitzkin — How to Cram 2 Months of Learning into 1 Day (LINK)

Revisionist History Podcast: The Tortoise and the Hare (LINK)

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: Investing with Curiosity [with Christopher Davis] (LINK)

Five Good Questions Podcast: Gautam Baid - The Joys of Compounding (LINK)

EdgeCast (podcast): Barbara Tversky - The Geometry of Thought (LINK)

Related book: Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought

Nature Podcast: Nature PastCast, June 1876 (LINK)

According to the fables of early explorers, the gorilla was a terrible, man-eating monster. It was also thought to be man’s closest relative in the animal kingdom. Naturally, scientists and the public alike wanted to see these fierce beasts for themselves. But in the mid-nineteenth century, as the evolution debate heated up, getting a live gorilla to Europe from Africa was extremely difficult. In 1876, the pages of Nature report the arrival in England of a young specimen.

North Atlantic Right Whales Are Dying in Horrific Ways - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Notes on the book Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (LINK) [This book is also fantastic as an audiobook.]

 "Man has known for a long time that getting too enchanted with the trappings of power is counterproductive. The Roman emperor that’s most remembered as presiding over a period of great felicity was Marcus Aurelius, who was totally against the trappings of power even though he had them all — he had all the power. So I think all these things can be abused, and I think the best way to tackle a subject is to provide examples of contrary behavior." --Charlie Munger (2007)

Links

"Ben Graham said long ago that you’re neither right nor wrong because people agree with you or disagree with you. In other words, being contrarian has no special virtue over being a trend follower. You’re right because your facts and reasoning are right. So all you do is you try to make sure that the facts you have are correct.... And then once you have the facts, you’ve got to think through what they mean. And you don’t take a public opinion survey. You don’t pay attention to things that are unimportant. What you’re looking for [are] things that are important and knowable. If something’s important but unknowable, forget it. I mean, it may be important to know whether somebody’s going to drop a nuclear weapon tomorrow but it’s unknowable. And there are all kinds of things are that knowable but are unimportant. In focusing on business and investment decisions, you try to narrow it down to the things that are knowable and important, and then you decide whether you have information of sufficient value that—compared to price and all that—will cause you to act. What others are doing means nothing." --Warren Buffett (2006)

Unbreakable - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Fraud in the Bull Market videos [H/T @colemanrhawkins] (LINK)

Bethany McLean Has Something To Say, and You Should Listen (video) (LINK) [The first episode of McLean's new podcast is free, HERE.]

Hayman’s Kyle Bass on trouble in Hong Kong (video) (LINK)

Your Employee Health Plan Could Soon Look Like Your 401(k) ($) (LINK)

Trump to Issue Executive Order on Health-Care Price Transparency ($) (LINK)

A candid conversation with EA's Andrew Wilson at E3 2019 (LINK)

Jeff Bezos took another veiled shot at Elon Musk, arguing that reaching Mars is an 'illusion' without going via the moon (LINK)

Are millennials really growing horns from using their phones? - by John Hawks (LINK)

Links

"It’s pretty hard in a declining business to buy things cheap enough to compensate for the decline." --Warren Buffett (2006) 

What’s Warren Buffett Up to in Europe? [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Meb Faber Show (podcast): John Huber - Stock Prices Fluctuate Much More Than The Underlying Businesses (LINK)

Paul Tudor Jones on JUST Capital, U.S. Recession, and Gold (video) (LINK)

Kyle Bass Sees Hong Kong Politics 'Speeding Up' Pressure on Dollar Peg (video) (LINK)

Related letters from Bass: 1) "The Quiet Panic in Hong Kong"; 2) "Trouble in Hong Kong- Part Deux"

Leonardo da Vinci’s Huge Notebook Collections, the Codex Forster, Now Digitized in High-Resolution: Explore Them Online (LINK)

For Kindle readers, there are a couple titles of note currently on sale:

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

Links

"We don’t like having excess cash around. We like even less doing dumb deals because we do them forever. I mean, if we make a dumb deal, it just sits there. We don’t resell it three months later by having an IPO of it or something of the sort. So you’re right to say that we should be very uncomfortable about the fact that we’ve got the cash. But it’s also important that we not be so uncomfortable that we go out and do something just to be doing something.... The goal of that cash is to be translated into permanent earning power over time." --Warren Buffett (2006) 

Jeff Bezos: Big Things Start Small (LINK)

Think Before You Fish for Bargains in Chinese Stocks - by Jason Zweig ($) (LINK)

Kyle Bass: Trouble in Hong Kong- Part Deux (LINK) [Part 1 was HERE.]

Ominous Outlook for Autos & the Economy (w/ Danielle DiMartino-Booth & Daniel Ruiz) [video filmed April 11, 2019] (LINK)

David Epstein went on the EconTalk podcast as well as the Invest Like the Best podcast to discuss his new book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (released today).

Venture Stories Podcast: Mental Models with Scott Page (LINK)

Related book: The Model Thinker

The Knowledge Project Podcast: Following Intellectual Curiosity (with Entrepreneur and Investor Thomas Tull) (LINK)

Acquired Podcast: The Electronic Arts IPO (with Trip Hawkins) (LINK)

HBR IdeaCast: 684: Understanding the Space Economy (LINK)

The Peter Attia Drive Podcast: #55 - Jocko Willink (Part I of II) (LINK)

Links

"Charlie and I have circles of competence that extend to evaluating a number of types of businesses, and there are a whole lot of businesses that we won’t be able to evaluate.... We are best at the businesses where we can come to a judgment that they’re going to look a good bit like they do now five years from now, ten years from now. They’ll be bigger. They’ll be doing different things, but the fundamentals will be the same." --Warren Buffett (2006) 

Transcript of Jason Zweig on the North Star podcast (LINK)

Kyle Bass' full letter: "The Quiet Panic in Hong Kong" (LINK)

Global imbalances and the international footprint of firms: what role for exchange rates? [H/T @Trinhnomics] (LINK)

David Tepper is reportedly converting hedge fund into a family office, returning outside capital (LINK)

Daniel Kahneman's forward to the latest Edge Annual Question book (LINK)

The Investing City Podcast: 22 - Bluegrass Capital: Securities Analysis (LINK)

The Wright Show (podcast): Completing the Darwinian Revolution (Robert Wright & David Sloan Wilson) (LINK)

Related book: This View of Life

The Secret of Coral Reefs: Tiny Fish That Are Great at Dying - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"The job of the board is to get the right CEO, to prevent that CEO from overreaching. Because sometimes you have some people that are very able, but they still want to take it all for themselves. But if they take nothing and they’re the wrong CEO, they’re still a disaster. So low pay itself is not the criteria. So you want the right CEO. You do not want them overreaching. And then I think the board needs to exercise independent judgment on important acquisitions, because I think CEOs — even smart CEOs — are motivated, frequently, in acquisitions by other than rational reasons." --Warren Buffett (2006) 

Value Investing with Legends Podcast: The All-Important Power of Consumer Brands (with Tom Russo) (LINK)

Kyle Bass on Bloomberg (video) (LINK)

My Way or the Huawei - by Peter Zeihan (LINK)

Dan Rasmussen talks small, cheap and levered stocks with Tobias Carlisle on The Acquirers Podcast (LINK)

The World According to Boyar Podcast: Howard Lorber (LINK)

Five Good Questions Podcast: Mark Moffett - The Human Swarm (LINK)

Recode Media with Peter Kafka: Eugene Wei explains why we’re all ‘status monkeys’ on social media (LINK)

A Waste of 1,000 Research Papers - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

“People get smarter but they don’t get wiser. They don’t get more emotionally stable. All the conditions for extreme overvaluation or undervaluation absolutely exist, the way they did 50 years ago. You can teach all you want to the people, you can tell them to read Ben Graham’s book, you can send them to graduate school, but when they’re scared, they’re scared.” --Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett: ‘I’m having more fun than any 88-year-old in the world’ ($) (LINK)

How We Spend Our Money, Part II - by Phil Ordway (LINK)

You Played Yourself - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Kyle Bass Is Ready to Rumble on Hong Kong 'Time Bomb' ($) (LINK)

Having a Printing Press Doesn't Mean Money is Infinite - by Cullen Roche (LINK)

The World According To Boyar Podcast Episode 9: Mario Gabelli (LINK)

Living With Money Podcast: Brent Beshore (LINK)

Business Wars Podcast: Ferrari vs. Lamborghini (Part 3, Part 4)

Edge #536: How to Create an Institution That Lasts 10,000 Years - A Conversation with Alexander Rose (LINK) [Also available as a podcast.]

On finding something to say - by Seth Godin (LINK)

This Is the Way the Animals Arose: Not With a Bang, but With a Bunch of Bangs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"Anytime you have incentives, with people who are quite smart, to mismark things, you’re going to get mismarks, or temptations to take on risk in an inappropriate manner. Originally with derivatives, the argument was made that it would disperse risk. That, you know, the Coca-Cola Company faced foreign exchange risk, or some bank faced, you know, interest rate risk. And the theory was that you would use these derivatives to spread risk around the system. And indeed, there are many people that make that argument now. I would say that that may work in that manner a great percentage of the time. But the time that counts is when the system has intensified risk and placed enormous credit risk on very, very few institutions. Believe me, the Coca-Cola Company is in a better position to accept foreign exchange or interest rate risk in a year than some derivatives dealer who has tons of positions on. And I think, actually, there is much more risk in the system because of derivatives than the proponents of derivatives would say has been dispersed because of the activities. " --Warren Buffett (2004)

The Knowledge Project Podcast: Luck, Risk and Avoiding Losers (with Howard Marks) (LINK)

Related book: Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side

Kyle Bass talks China, markets, and the Fed (video) (LINK) [Bass also just did another longer interview on Real Vision.]

Greece Looks to Borrow Amid Buoyant Markets ($) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Peter Zeihan – The Future of Geopolitics (LINK)

Related books: 1) The Accidental Superpower; 2) The Absent Superpower

WorkLife with Adam Grant (podcast): The Creative Power of Misfits (LINK)

Edge #531: Lightning talks by thirteen "Possible Minders" at the Brattle Theatre (LINK)

Links

"Post-bubble periods, I think, depending on how big the bubble is and how many were participating in it....can produce fallout that not everyone will be terribly good at predicting." --Warren Buffett (2002 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting)

Surviving the Investing Game - by Vishal Khandelwal (LINK)

CNBC's full interview with Paul Tudor Jones (LINK)

Kyle Bass on Yahoo Finance (video) (LINK)

‘This Too Shall End’: Loews CEO Sees Oil Back at $75 in Two Years (video) (LINK)

Does It Matter Where You Go to College? - by Derek Thompson (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Bryan Krug – High Yield Credit Investing (LINK)

Adam Robinson chats with Shane Parrish on the The Knowledge Project Podcast (Part 1) (LINK)

Sam Altman on the Recode Decode Podcast (LINK)

This Single Idea Will Make You More Resilient And Successful - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

City Frogs Are the Sexiest Frogs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T Will]: Wealth and Families: Lessons from My Life Journey - by Howard Stevenson 

Links

"You may delay, but Time will not." --Ben Franklin

Berkshire invests in JPMorgan, Oracle as Buffett puts cash to work (LINK)

The GE End Game: Bataan Death March or Turnaround Play? - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

CNBC's full interview with Ray Dalio (~16 minutes) (LINK)

Short-seller Bass says China needs 'reset' as Trump talks tariffs (LINK)

Is there a financial time bomb in sight? - by Sebastian Mallaby (LINK)

Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis (LINK)

Who does Facebook fire after a bombshell New York Times investigation? (LINK)

Michael Lewis, whose books often highlight the growing role of data, sees the opportunity in trucking [H/T Linc] (LINK)

4 Strategies For Becoming a Master Persuader - by Robert Greene (LINK)

Deep freeze impact: Scientists find a huge asteroid impact crater under Greenland’s ice (LINK)

A Bold New Strategy for Stopping the Rise of Superbugs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

"A Change of Fortune hurts a wise Man no more than a Change of the Moon." --Ben Franklin

Links

Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’ (LINK)

The former Fed chairman, whose memoir will be published this month, had a feisty take on the state of politics and government during an interview.   

Related book: Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government

CNBC's full interview with Hayman Capital's Kyle Bass (video) (LINK)

CEO of Buffett-owned Brooks Running considers moving out of China with 45% tariffs looming [H/T Linc] (LINK)

The Story of John Mackay – The Bonanza King (LINK)

Related book: The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West

The City That Had Too Much Money (LINK)

Vancouver was the first place to experience the tidal wave of Chinese cash. Now the city is leading efforts to stop it.

The Outrage Epidemic-II - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Howard Lindzon – Fintech and Trend Following (LINK)

Robert Greene talks to James Altucher about his new book, The Laws of Human Nature (podcast) (LINK)

5 Questions to Ask During Your Hospital Stay (LINK)

Related book: An American Sickness

A Climate Catastrophe Paved the Way for the Dinosaurs’ Reign - by Peter Brannen (LINK)

The World’s Most Valuable Parasite Is in Trouble - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"I do find that most creative people end up applying different rules to their lives—in terms of how their lives are managed—because creativity doesn't necessarily conform to more traditional boundaries; whether their hours of work, places of work, circumstances. What you have to accept with creators and creativity is that one rule doesn't apply. It's whatever works for them." --Bob Iger

Bob Iger’s Bets Are Paying Off Big Time for Disney (LINK)

Howard Marks talks with Barry Ritholtz (podcast) (LINK)

Related book: Mastering the Market Cycle

Robert Vinall with an excellent letter on the 10-year anniversary of his fund [registration required] (LINK)

A great list of Investment Resources [H/T Linc] (LINK) [It may be especially worthwhile to read THIS, 10 years after the event.]

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon doesn't think he has too much power in this economy (Corner Office podcast) (LINK)

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Investor Sentiment and the Housing Market -  by John Huber (LINK)

Risk Management - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

How Humans Get Hacked: Yuval Noah Harari & Tristan Harris Talk with WIRED (video) (LINK)

Yuval Noah Harari, historian and best-selling author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and Tristan Harris, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, speak with WIRED Editor in Chief Nicholas Thompson.

Lawrence Burns: "AUTONOMY: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Yale Is Said to Invest in Crypto Fund That Raised $400 Million (LINK)

The Fed on Unemployment and the Future - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Jim Grant on CNBC yesterday (video) (LINK)

Michael Lewis calls Trump's approach to staffing the government 'insane' (video) [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Related book: The Fifth Risk

For Real Vision subscribers, Kyle Bass sits down with Graham Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, to chat about China, geopolitics, history, and more (LINK) [If you're not a subscriber and would to join or take a free trial, you can sign up HERE.]

Human Action: A Chapter-by-Chapter Summary (LINK)

Four roads we call customer service - by Seth Godin (LINK)

On the Law of Diminishing Specialization - by Cal Newport (LINK)

Your Work Is the Only Thing That Matters - by Ryan Holiday (LINK)

A Controversial Virus Study Reveals a Critical Flaw in How Science Is Done - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Slightly More Than 100 Fantastic Articles [H/T Phil] (LINK)

A list of nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time.

Links

"Any place you can find somebody that gives you insights into things you didn't understand before—and maybe makes you a better person than you would have been before—that's very lucky and you want to make the most of it." --Warren Buffett

"If you're going to live a long time, you have to keep learning. What you formerly knew is never enough. So if you don't learn to constantly revise your earlier conclusions and get betters ones...you're like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest." --Charlie Munger

The "Warren Buffett Archive" CNBC website that features recordings of every shareholder meeting since 1994 with synchronized transcripts (LINK)

If you missed the Berkshire Hathaway 2018 Annual Shareholders Meeting, you can watch it HERE. It should also be available in podcast format soon HERE (the current podcast episodes are last year's meeting). 

Hilcorp Energy – Unlocking the Superpower of Incentives - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

How to Create An Antifragile Life, and A Stock Portfolio (A Personal Experiment) - by Vishal Khandelwal (LINK)

This Isn’t Your Grandfather’s Expansion - by Frank K. Martin (LINK)

Kyle Bass: Inflation will be a global phenomenon (video) (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 150 — Round Numbers (LINK)

Benedict Evans talks with Barry Ritholtz on the Masters in Business podcast (LINK)

Adventures in Finance podcast: Episode 65 - A Revolution is underway (LINK)

Math and Analogies (video) (LINK)

The quote that Jeff Bezos has had hanging on his fridge for years:

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded." --Ralph Waldo Emerson