Atul Gawande: Why the Uninsured Are Still Vulnerable

Tens of millions of Americans don’t have access to basic care for prevention and treatment of illness. For decades, there’s been wide support for universal health care. Finally, with the passage of Obamacare, two years ago, we did something about it. The law would provide coverage for people like those my friends told me about, either through its expansion of Medicaid eligibility or through subsidized private insurance. Yet the country has remained convulsed by battles over whether we should implement this plan—or any particular plan. Now that the Supreme Court has largely upheld Obamacare, it’s tempting to imagine that the battles will subside. There’s reason to think that they won’t. 

In 1973, two social scientists, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, defined a class of problems they called “wicked problems.” Wicked problems are messy, ill-defined, more complex than we fully grasp, and open to multiple interpretations based on one’s point of view. They are problems such as poverty, obesity, where to put a new highway—or how to make sure that people have adequate health care. 

They are the opposite of “tame problems,” which can be crisply defined, completely understood, and fixed through technical solutions. Tame problems are not necessarily simple—they include putting a man on the moon or devising a cure for diabetes. They are, however, solvable. Solutions to tame problems either work or they don’t. 

Solutions to wicked problems, by contrast, are only better or worse. Trade-offs are unavoidable. Unanticipated complications and benefits are both common. And opportunities to learn by trial and error are limited. You can’t try a new highway over here and over there; you put it where you put it. But new issues will arise. Adjustments will be required. No solution to a wicked problem is ever permanent or wholly satisfying, which leaves every solution open to easy polemical attack.

Bill Gates quote from Charlie Rose interview (or, how the world's best companies are built by fanatics)

My shortened transcription of a part of their conversation as I watched the interview. Any errors are mine.

Charlie Rose: Did you have what you now have (this fascination and love for science)...for a while? Was this something that was in you? As a kid, were you interested in science?

Bill Gates: Absolutely....In my 20's and 30's, during the creation and my hyper-focus on Microsoft, I read a little bit of science...but I had to know one thing super, super well. And so I've been able to broaden my being up-to-date on science and meet with great scientists as part of this foundation work, and that's a real pleasure.

Charlie Rose: Now that's an interesting idea, let's just stay with that for a second. You said that in order to do what you did with Microsoft, you had to what? As you once said to me, you just had to focus on that at all times and other things suffered. Is that simply the price of building a company like Microsoft?

Bill Gates: I think the world's best companies are built by fanatics. And when you're in your 20's and 30's, being fanatical comes...at least it came pretty natural to me....I wanted to let everybody have cool software. And so I didn't feel bad that that's what I was doing. [He went to say that now in his 50's, backing great scientists in different areas and not being fanatical about one thing is what now comes naturally to him.]
...
Charlie Rose: Help me understand what it takes to build a Microsoft, or to build an Apple, or to build a Facebook...in terms of what it is that you and Mark and Steve had?

Bill Gates: Well, in each of those cases, you had people who were quite fanatical about...

Charlie Rose: Now what does fanatical mean?

Bill Gates: Work day and night. Sort of don't worry about the possibility of failure. Every setback is just something to work a little bit harder at doing. And you really know what you're trying to achieve. And you're going to hire the best people. And you're going to change your strategy until you can get that to happen.

Euro Crisis Breakthrough Breakdown - Nigel Farage

Link

Jim Chanos on Opalesque TV

Link

Bill Gates on Charlie Rose

Link to: Bill Gates on Charlie Rose

Nightmare on Wall Street: This Secular Bear Has Only Just Begun - By Ed Easterling

Secular bull markets are great parties. Investors arrive from secular bears really wanting to take the edge off. As the bull proceeds, above-average returns become intoxicating. By the time it is over, the past decade or two has delivered bountiful returns. 

In contrast, secular bears seem like hangovers. They are awakenings that strip away the intoxication, leaving a sobering need for an understanding of what has happened. 

Conventional wisdom explains these periods as irrational or coincidental periods. In reality, secular bulls and bears are periods driven by longer-term trends in the inflation rate. A trend away from low inflation, whether to high inflation or deflation, drives the value of the market lower. That leaves investors with below-average returns. The return trip — when the inflation rate trends toward low inflation — drives the value of the market higher. That provides investors with above-average returns.

The ‘Busy’ Trap

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.” 

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

Joel Greenblatt quote (knowing what you don't know)

“My students sometimes ask, “What do you do for a company that is in a competitive industry, or technology is causing major changes, or new products are coming out, or some other circumstance makes it very difficult to estimate what future earnings might be?” I tell them to just skip that company and find a company that they can analyze. It is very important to know what you don’t know.” –Joel Greenblatt (as quoted in the book Hedge Fund Market Wizards)

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Anatomy of a Bear

As veteran market analyst Richard Russell has noted, investors often equate the concept of a bear market with the expectation that prices will continuously fall. Indeed, if you think back to the 2000-2002 bear, or the 2007-2009 bear, that is probably the memory that those bear markets invoke. In fact, however, those bear markets can be seen on a smaller scale as a constant process of hope and disappointment, with periods of risk-seeking abruptly punished by fresh waves of risk-aversion. This can make it very difficult to live through a bear market day-after-day with a clear sense of the larger picture.

John Mauldin: Bull’s Eye Investing (Almost) Ten Years Later

It's been almost a decade since I co-authored with Ed Easterling of Crestmont Research some research in this letter that later became chapters five and six of Bull's Eye Investing. Although the ten-year anniversary of the book is actually 2013, the current vulnerabilities in the markets encouraged us to revisit the material a bit early, to prepare you for what lies ahead. Reflecting back to yesteryear gives us the opportunity to assess the accuracy of our insights.