Worth reading

[randomwalker]

THE COMMUNITY THAT TRIED TO SELL ITSELF
'Sell a neighborhood'?
Deal falls apart; trouble follows
Residents who pooled homes face hardships
KYTJA WEIR, Charlotteobserver

"Residents of Sherbrooke Drive in south Charlotte agreed to walk away from their tightknit street, hoping to get as much as $700,000 each -- more than three times the tax value of their properties. Their 1950s-era ranch houses were modest, but they stood on a strip ripe for redevelopment in the SouthPark area."

http://www.charlotte.com/112/story/251340.html

[WynnQuon]

In Nature’s Casino

A great article.

[randomwalker]

City trader vanishes after investment collapse, prompting fears of another Nick Leeson
By COLIN FERNANDEZ AND GALEN ENGLISH
27th August 2007

"A city trader has gone missing after quitting his job, prompting fears of a financial crisis at one of Britain's biggest banks. Edward Cahill...has revived memories of the trader Nick Leeson, who infamously fled Barings Bank in 1995..."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770

[George$]

The Interval of Observation (28-page pdf paper)
An important issue that is often overlooked.

Abstract
We revisit Kendall’s (1953) conclusion that “the interval of observation may be very
important”. Contrary to his other conclusions on return predictability, this conclusion has
received hardly any attention in the literature. Return predictability tests in finance still
routinely regress daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly observations on daily, weekly,
monthly, quarterly, and yearly observations respectively. This is surprising. Not only because
several studies recently appeared that show results in other areas of finance are sensitive to
the interval of observation, but particularly because in nearly efficient markets response times
may not be instantaneous but information aggregation should not take too long either. We
show how conclusions regarding stock market return predictability vary drastically - with and
without data snooping corrections - once we deviate from the usual convention and vary the
interval of observation. Even more surprising: conclusions whether or not stock returns are
predictable fluctuate strongly for almost similar intervals of observation. In other words, had
the famous “Demon of Chance” in 1953 handed Kendall slightly different intervals of
observation, Kendall might have concluded that stock market returns were predictable.

Kendall's 1953 The Analysis of Economic Time Series - Part I: Prices in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.

[leonk]

not sure if this belongs here...


http://www.choufunds.com/pdf/SA07.pdf

General comments on the market
Despite the current turmoil in the marketplace we continue to have problems finding compelling
bargains in common stocks. We are starting, however, to see some interesting developments. The
prices of public debt securities of some companies have come down to levels that may provide
returns similar to equities. These securities also come with the added safety feature of being
senior to equities in the corporate capital structure.
While the prices of public debt securities are starting to look cheap, they are not as cheap as they
once were in the year 2000. The current yield to maturity (YTM) for some of these more
attractively priced debt securities is approaching 12%, whereas in the year 2000 they were closer
to 30%. Consider also that the bank debt (which is senior to public debt) appears to be
disproportionately large relative to public debt when compared to the historical average. As such,
the public debt may not be as safe, or have as much asset coverage as it has had in the past.
Fallout among subprime mortgage participants
In the Chou Funds Annual Report 2006 dated March 2, 2007, we wrote that “Some of the
greatest excesses of easy credit were committed by subprime mortgage lenders. Credit standards
were so lax and liberal that homeowners didn’t even need to produce verification of income to be
able to borrow up to 100% or more of the appraised value of their houses…..Some optimists
believe that the worst is over. However, they may be in for a surprise. Instead of it being the
darkest hour before the dawn, it could be the darkest hour before pitch black. It will take a while
(and maybe a long while) for the excesses to wring themselves out of the system.”
Since that document was issued, a number of fund companies involved with, or invested in,
subprime companies have reported serious problems, and each day we hear of more institutions
that have been affected. Below is a sampling of reports from various media sources:
1) Hedge fund firm Sowood Capital said it suffered losses of more than $1.5 billion in July,
halving the value of its assets, and will close its two funds. Source: Wall Street Journal,
August 3, 2007.
2) Bear Stearns Cos. filed for bankruptcy protection for two of its hedge funds in both
Cayman Islands and US courts, citing losses related to subprime lending…..Separately,
Bear Stearns said today it had halted redemptions from a third fund after investors
demanded their money back. Source: Bloomberg, July 31, 2007.
3) Macquarie Bank has warned that two of its debt funds could face losses of more than
A$300 million (Australian) but stressed the funds were not exposed to the US subprime
mortgage market. Source: Financial Times, August 1, 2007.
4) Troubles in the US mortgage market have forced bailouts of a European mutual fund and
a German Bank – signaling the risk of the mortgage situation to lenders and insurers, not
just fund investors. French insurer AXA SA’s money-management firm unit has offered
to cash out investors in a billion dollar bond fund after the fund shrank in size by about
40% last month….Separately, a German state-owned development bank, KFW, said it
assumed “expected possible losses” of as much as 1 billion Euros ($1.37 billion) from
German midsize lender IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, which also has been hit by
exposure to the US subprime market. Source: Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2007.
5) American Home Mortgage Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the latest
casualty of a mortgage industry that has plunged into distress. Source: Associated Press,
August 6, 2007.
We suspect that the repercussions associated with subprime lending will spread even further.
Gary Shilling from A. Gary Shilling & Co., Inc., Economic Consultants and Investment
Advisors (www.agaryshilling.com), wrote in a recent article, “The biggest jolt from the Bear
Bust is the realization that collateralized debt obligations -- pools of debt instruments, especially
mortgage-backed securities -- are illiquid, trade infrequently and are carried on hedge fund books
at what charitably can be called fuzzy prices. When Merrill Lynch tried to sell $850 million in
CDO collateral for loans to Bear Stearns' troubled funds, some pieces fetched bids of only 30
cents on the dollar. Highly prized on Wall Street until recently, CDOs, of which $500 billion
were issued last year, are supposed to reduce risk. But they have been vastly overvalued by
highly subjective and sometimes self-serving models. This approach is anathema to the Securities
& Exchange Commission, which is investigating CDO prices and Bear's troubled hedge funds.
Meanwhile, investors are fleeing, the CDO market is drying up, and their yields are jumping as
rating downgrades multiply.”
At this time we prefer to steer clear of all financial and housing related companies. We are an
interested observer and keen to see how subsequent events unfold – especially when some
financial products may have to be marked down – perhaps not as low as 30 cents on the dollar,
but possibly 50 cents on the dollar. The ‘mark to model’ may have to change its name to ‘mark to
mayhem.’

[WishingWealth]

"Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times"
Quote from somewhere in one of the holy books.


Greenspan attacks Bush on economy
At the BBC.

The former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan has said President George W Bush pays too little attention to financial discipline.
In a book to be published next week, Mr Greenspan says Mr Bush ignored his advice to veto "out-of-control" bills that sent the US deeper into deficit.

And Mr Bush's Republicans deserved to lose control of Congress in last year's elections, he charges.

...

Even that r.. feels he must desert that ship.

WW

Added: He may not have chewed through the hull but he sure gnawed a lot on it.

[parvus]

"Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times"
Quote from somewhere in one of the holy books.

Or was it: Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s (“Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ”) , suitably re-rendered to describe the difference between POTUS and the Fed.

In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described Mr. Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless.

Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” writes Mr. Greenspan, a self-described “libertarian Republican.”

“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.

As officials leave the Bush administration, there is no shortage of criticism of this White House: Disenchanted hawks are writing that Mr. Bush has abandoned the certainties of the first term and taken too soft a line on North Korea and Iran; from the other side of the spectrum, former officials are telling tales about how the administration bent rules on torture or domestic spying.

But Mr. Greenspan, now 81, is in a different class, by dint of his fame, his economic authority and his service across party lines. His critiques are likely to have more resonance among Mr. Bush’s base.

His book was provided to The New York Times by his publisher, Penguin Press, under an agreement that nothing would be reported until its publication date, on Monday. But The Wall Street Journal, saying it had purchased a copy from a retailer, published excerpts on its Web site on Friday night, freeing other news organizations to do the same.

Much of the book concerns Mr. Greenspan’s reflections on markets, globalization and the media’s fascination with the thickness of his briefcase on the way to meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates.

He praises President Bush for letting the Fed stay independent of political pressure, saying he was scrupulous in not trying to interfere with monetary policy — which he contrasts sharply with the pressure exerted by his father, George H. W. Bush, in the early 1990s. For years, the first President Bush has blamed Mr. Greenspan for contributing to his defeat in 1992 by failing to prevent a recession by cutting interest rates.

Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.”

It was a presidency marred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he writes, but he fondly describes his alliance with two of Mr. Clinton’s Treasury secretaries, Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, in battling financial crises in Latin America and then Asia.

By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy.

The White House is clearly not eager to get into a public argument with Mr. Greenspan, whom President Bush reappointed to a fifth term in May 2004. But they pushed back at Mr. Greenspan’s central themes.

“The Republican leadership in the House and Senate kept to our top number,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said. Veto threats worked, he said, to keep spending within caps set by the White House. “We’re not going to apologize for standing up the Department of Homeland Security and fighting terror.”

Mr. Greenspan described his own emotional journey in dealing with Mr. Bush, from an initial elation about the return of his old friends from the Ford White House — including Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense — to astonishment and then disappointment at how much they had changed.

“I indulged in a bit of fantasy, envisioning this as the government that might have existed had Gerald Ford garnered the extra 1 percent of the vote he’d needed to edge past Jimmy Carter,” Mr. Greenspan writes in his memoir. “I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets.”

Instead, Mr. Greenspan continued, “I was soon to see my old friends veer off in unexpected directions.” He expected Mr. Bush to veto spending bills, he writes, but was told that the president believed he could control J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the Republican speaker of the House, better by signing them.

“My friend,” he writes of Mr. O’Neill, “soon found himself to be the odd man out; much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.”

[WishingWealth]

From the just above quote.
'But Mr. Greenspan, now 81, is in a different class, by dint of his fame, his economic authority and his service across party lines. His critiques are likely to have more resonance among Mr. Bush’s base. '

Yes indeed he's in a different class. He's not a $28K a year secretary who'll do what the boss wants him/her to do for fear of losing his job and be called clerk non grata in town.

If what he saw was so appalling, why did he keep perpetuating the mess if not help create it in part. If he had resigned over some question of principle a couple of years ago instead of just writing another 'the boss made me do it' lame excuse of a book, guesss how much more weight this would carry.
Unless he thought that by resigning, all economic hell would break loose aka hubris excuse.

O'Neill resigned too early (W was still God) so to the majority in the US, it somewhat looked like he was a disgruntled diva who did not get his way around.

I admit I did not read everything re this new AG book so I may be barking at the wrong tree.

WW

Still very much dislikes W.
Still somewhat likes AG BUT, the only infallible person, is a German sitting on a nice throne in Rome.

[WishingWealth]

One book for Georges Xmas tree.

Review of:
Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-first Century

http://www.independent.org/publications ... icleID=662

When Adam Smith wrote that individuals acting in their self-interest are “led as if by an invisible hand” to promote the public interest, he was not suggesting that every form of private endeavor produces public good. Criminals who gain by harming others also harm the public interest. The invisible-hand thesis holds where the rules of social life protect the life, liberty, and property of individuals. This process is not the result of divine intervention or magic, but the natural outcome of human instincts and physical laws. It materializes where conditions allow voluntary exchange and fades where people are barred from exchanging or are forced into involuntary transactions, whether by armed robbers or by interfering governments. This contingent relationship is the primary lesson of economic history. Those who wish to strengthen the invisible hand must know the nature of the forces that weaken it.

...
Can the invisible hand of capitalism survive the new dirigisme, and what can be done to help its survival? Lal’s prescriptions are sprinkled throughout the book. Capitalism can be saved, and it must be saved if humanity is to prosper. His most powerful message to the United States is to abandon its trade bilateralism and to embark on unilateral free trade as the British Empire did in the nineteenth century. His second message is to give up the obsession with democracy as a panacea by appreciating that economic liberty, not political liberty, leads to prosperity. The reader is left to ponder, though, how economic liberty can be promoted without political liberty, especially in countries where entrenched oligarchies are the main obstacles to economic freedom.

'Can the invisible hand of capitalism survive the new dirigisme, and what can be done to help its survival?'

Sounds like an extreme case of paranoia; perhaps the author should make sure he keeps the lights on during the night; you never know what lurks under the beds.

WW

[ghariton]

One book for Georges Xmas tree.

It's been on my shelf for about four months, waiting until I have enough time to get around to it. Right now, during the few breaksI have, I'm deep into Braudillard, learning that reality is not what we think -- following on to my reading on social construction. Truly weird stuff. Makes quantum reality look reasonable by comparison.

Georges

[parvus]

One book for Georges Xmas tree.

It's been on my shelf for about four months, waiting until I have enough time to get around to it. Right now, during the few breaksI have, I'm deep into Braudillard, learning that reality is not what we think -- following on to my reading on social construction. Truly weird stuff. Makes quantum reality look reasonable by comparison.

Georges

Did you see this?

AT SOME point in his career—neither date nor time being important—Jean Baudrillard took a large red cloth, draped it over a chair in his apartment, and sat on it. He may have smoked or thought for a while, or scratched his nose; a large, doughlike nose, supporting glasses. He then got up, leaving an impression of his body behind. The image pleased him: so much so, that he took a photograph.

Since he made no comment on the event (beyond the fact that the chair was later broken), the exact details are conjectural. But by putting the cloth on the chair, and sitting on it, Mr Baudrillard added to the plethora of signs, objects and symbolic acts that made up, in his philosophical system, the whole woof and warp of the 20th century. By getting up, he left behind a “simulacrum” of himself: the truth, as he teasingly put it, that hid the fact that there was no truth there. And by photographing the chair he made it “hyperreal”: an image, which could be reproduced unendingly, of an object that claimed to have meaning and, in fact, had none.

Then he went to lunch.

Pourquoi pas? When a simulacrum is also a French philosophe, perhaps the most popular of recent decades, he needs a bottle of Merlot from time to time. And since he spent his days considering the seductive power of images and objects, it was fun to observe that he himself had such a power over the woman in the butcher's who wrapped up his foie de veau, just because she had seen him on television.

I stopped reading Baudrillard around 1991. Among the terrible French B's, I prefer Bourdieu — a challenge I'm still working through, but perhaps someone with an elective affinity to Gellner, or perhaps not. It's been awhile since I read him.

(I wish I were in Talcott Parsons' position; every summer he reread some classic author in the human sciences.)

[ghariton]

I prefer Bourdieu — a challenge I'm still working through.

I read an article by him some years ago in Le Monde Diplomatique. He was quite incensed by the "new" tendency of management to involve workers in production decisions. He thought that this would erode class distinctions, and blunt workers' revolutionary fervour (or something like that).

Georges

[parvus]

Wonder if he uttered that before or after Andre Gorz'sAdieux au prolétariat?

The conclusion I drew at the time was to look at broader social movements; alas, by the end of the 1980s, that had degenerated into identity politics: a perfect theme for Bourdieu, given the multiple fields of social conflict organized around functional domains not immediately reducible to economic place or status.

I'm not as cognizant of the French because much of my interest was in the interrelation of contemporary German and American thought. Against that, the French post-structuralists (as they were considered at the time), after an initial, invigorating period of epistemological critique (which it turned out, was already implied in American pragmatism) seemed simply a throwback to, by turns, romantic or cynical anti-Enlightenment thinking, leading to an extreme libertarianism as a solution, like a French R.D. Laing with similar hippy-dippy overtones. (Did you ever hear the witticism: What do you get when you cross a mafioso with a deconstructionist? An offer you don't understand.)

Here's an obiter dicta: the French, amongst the world's cultures, are remarkably closed, often ignorant of the work of contemporaneous scholars in other nations in the human sciences (as Foucault acknowledged belatedly in regard to the Germans). I will promptly contradict myself with an odd factoid; it has been said that just as French post-structuralism was penetrating the American university, it had been abandoned in France in favour of Arendt and Strauss. (I wish I remembered which periodical I picked that up from: not to worry, more reading projects — such are my versions of the simple pleasures of life. )

[Norbert Schlenker]

Program of the annual meeting of the Northern Finance Association, this weekend in Tronna. Look through the program and click on links that look interesting. I thought Performance Persistence of Individual Investors and Conservative Traders, Natural Selection, and Market Efficiency were worth more than a quick glance. (I expect to hear a wee bit of "See, I told you so" on the first one. )

Hat tip to Jon Chevreau for the pointer to the program.

[George$]

Tom Bradley's - "We know they're mistakes, so why keep making them?" - in Today's Globe and mail.

A bit ...

We chase past performance.

We expect high returns without taking any risk.

We are ill-prepared for the down drafts.

We overdiversify our portfolios.

And the final one I'll mention is a biggie.
We evaluate long-term investments based on their short-term results. We buy for the right reasons, but aren't patient enough to let the scenario play out. This happens with stocks and mutual funds. In both cases, management might be making all the right moves, but the strategy is taking time to gain traction. By the time the payday comes, however, we have sold the stock or redeemed the fund.

[gyrfalcon]

I thought Performance Persistence of Individual Investors and ... were worth more than a quick glance. (I expect to hear a wee bit of "See, I told you so" on the first one. )

What could you possibly be thinking about ??
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Date: 26-May-2003 - 10:33 AM
Subject:You Can't, You Won't, & You Didn't
From: gyrfalcon

With regard to investor returns, investor success, and investor skills, one wonders at times whether the resident gurus actually recognize that there is an upper half to any Bell curve, and there's even an upper tail. To ascribe everything above the median as luck, evidence of nothing, willful misrepresentation, & so forth, can be a bit depressing and ignores human variance.

I believe that You Can IF YOU have the Time, the Personal Interest, the Commitment, the Analytical Skills, the Patience, and the Self-Confidence.

While that may be a rather long list, to assume that it does not occur, and specifically to assume it does not occur in the type of individual who would post at TWB, seems insulting at best."

And BTW:

[Bylo Selhi]

Can We Turn Off Our Emotions When Investing?

It turns out that there is a new discipline called neuroeconomics, which combines biology, psychology and economics and tries to understand why we make the often foolish financial decisions we make... Virtually every mistake investors make has to do, in one way or another, with the way our brain has evolved.

[Norbert Schlenker]

Motley Fool's Orwellian Moment

[h/t subrosa at raddr's]

[Bylo Selhi]

Black Monday and Black Swans

Changes in the nature and structure of our financial markets—and a radical shift in its participants—are making shocking and unexpected market aberrations ever more probable. The amazing market swings we’ve witnessed in the past few months tend to confirm that likelihood. While the daily changes in the level of stock prices typically exceed two percent only three or four times per year, in just one recent month we’ve seen 8 such moves. Ironically, 4 were up, and 4 were down. Based on past experience, the probability of that scenario was . . . zero. So the first—and most basic—point I wish to make today is that the application of the laws of probability to our financial markets is badly misguided.

[NOVICE99]

Am I Going to Be Ok: Achieving Financial Comfort in Today's World

by Francis D'andrade.

Has anyone read this, would you recommend? I guess I'm one that gets rather emotional about my finances! It was suggested in a Financial Forum email ...

[Norbert Schlenker]

The Adjusted Earnings Yield

[brucecohen]

Am I Going to Be Ok: Achieving Financial Comfort in Today's World

by Francis D'andrade.

Has anyone read this, would you recommend? I guess I'm one that gets rather emotional about my finances! It was suggested in a Financial Forum email ...

I read a pre-publication copy. If you've been reading FWF for a while, I doubt there's anything in the book that would be new for you.

[Bylo Selhi]

Today a twofer...

The 10 commandments

When The Globe's investment columnist Rob Carrick wants clarity in confusing times, he turns to the investment lessons he's learned from legends in the field.

One and done

The 'retired' barber on the danger of data, the one deal he would do over and the reason he's never written another book.

[Bylo Selhi]

Another fascinating piece by Michael Lewis, The Evolution of an Investor. It starts out as a sort of real-life Boiler Room but where the protagonist gets religion and becomes a convert to indexing and DFA.

It wasn't exactly the career he’d hoped for. Once, he confessed to his boss his misgivings about the performance of his customers' portfolios. His boss told him point-blank, "Blaine, you're confused about your job." A fellow broker added, "Your job is to turn your clients' net worth into your own." Blaine wrote that down in his journal...

One day, someone may look back and ask: At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, how did so many take up financial careers on Wall Street that were of such little social value?...

[WishingWealth]

I was cleaning up (again) my HDD and ended up on a pdf which Brix had mentionned earlier.

Here's the html version. I went through a few pages* and although written in 1946, you could stick a First Published in 2007 label - and fool many.

Economics in One Lesson
by Henry Hazlitt
http://jim.com/econ/contents.html

While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

In this lies the whole difference between good economics and bad. The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.

The distinction may seem obvious. The precaution of looking for all the consequences of a given policy to everyone may seem elementary. Doesn't everybody know, in his personal life, that there are all sorts of indulgences delightful at the moment but disastrous in the end? Doesn't every little boy know that if he eats enough candy he will get sick? Doesn't the fellow who gets drunk know that he will wake up next morning with a ghastly stomach and a horrible head? Doesn't the dipsomaniac know that he is ruining his liver and shortening his life? Doesn't the Don Juan know that he is letting himself in for every sort of risk, from blackmail to disease? Finally, to bring it to the economic though still personal realm, do not the idler and the spendthrift know, even in the midst of their glorious fling, that they are heading for a future of debt and poverty?

Yet when we enter the field of public economics, these elementary truths are ignored. There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: “In the long run we are all dead.” And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

But the tragedy is that, on the contrary, we are already suffering the long-run consequences of the policies of the remote or recent past. Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore. The long-run consequences of some economic policies may become evident in a few months. Others may not become evident for several years. Still others may not become evident for decades. But in every case those long-run consequences are contained in the policy as surely as the hen was in the egg, the flower in the seed.

WW

* I know; not the most efficient way of cleaning up.