Jimmy Rogers, the bow-tie boss of Rogers Holdings and past co-founder of the successful Quantum Fund with George Soros, is no stranger to making outrageous predictions. His latest prophetic assessment is the Federal Reserve Bank is on the path of the Dodo bird to extinction:

“Don’t worry – the Fed is going to abolish itself. Between Bernanke and Greenspan, they’ve made so many mistakes that within the next few years the Fed will disappear.”

Given the shock and awe that transpired from the Lehman Brothers collapse, I can only wonder how investors might react to this scenario….hmmm. If this doozy of an outlandish call catches you off guard, please don’t be surprised – Rogers is not shy about sharing additional ones (Read other IC article on Rogers). For example, just six months ago Rogers said the Dow Jones could collapse to 5,000 (currently around 10,472) or skyrocket to 30,000, but “of course it would be in worthless money.” Oddly, the printing presses that Rogers keeps talking about have actually produced deflation (-0.2%) in the most recently reported numbers, not the same 79,600,000,000% inflation from Zimbabwe (Cato Institute), he expects.

I suppose Rogers will either point to a data conspiracy, or use the “just you wait” rebuttal. I eagerly await, with bated breath, the ultimate outcome.

Is U.S. Fed Alone?

If the U.S. Federal Reserve system is indeed about to disappear after over nine decades of operations, does that mean Rogers advocates shutting all of the other 166 global reserve banks listed  by the Bank for International Settlement? Should the 3 ½ century old Swedish Riksbank (origin in 1668) and the Bank of England (1694) central banks also be terminated? Or does the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank have a monopoly on incompetence and/or corruption?

Sidoxia’s Report Card on Fed

I must admit, I believe we would likely be in a much better situation than we are today if the Federal Reserve board let Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” self adjust short-term interest rates. Rather, we drank from punch bowls filled with low interest rates for extended periods of time. I do, however, believe the Federal Reserve gets too much attention/credit for the impact of its decisions. There is a much larger pool of global investors that are buying/selling Treasury securities daily, across a wide range of the yield curve. I think these market participants have a much larger impact on prices paid for new capital, if compared to the central bank’s decision of cutting or raising the Federal funds rate a ¼ point.

Although I believe the Fed gets too much attention for its monetary policies, I think Bernanke and the Fed get too little credit for the global Armageddon they helped avoid.  I agree with Warren Buffett that Bernanke acted “very promptly, very decisively, very big” in helping us avert a second depression while we were on the “brink of going into the abyss.”

Beyond the monetary policy of fractional rate setting, the Fed also has essential other functions:

• Supervise and regulate banking institutions.
• Maintain stability of the financial system and control systemic risk of financial markets.
• Act as a liaison with depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign institutions.
• Play a major role in operating the country’s payments system.

I will go out on a limb and say these functions play an important role, and the Fed has a good chance of being around for the 2012 London Olympic Games (despite Jimmy Rogers’ prediction).

Sidoxia’s Report Card on Rogers

As I have pointed out in the past, I do not necessarily disagree (directionally) with the main points of his arguments:

• Is inflation a risk? Yes.
• Will printing excessive money lower the value of our dollar? Yes.
• Is auditing the Federal Reserve Bank a bad idea? No.

My beef with Rogers is merely in the magnitude, bravado, and overconfidence with which he makes these outrageous forecasts. Furthermore, the U.S. actions do not happen in a vacuum. Although everything is not cheery at home, many other international rivals are in worse shape than we are.

From a media ratings and entertainment standpoint, Rogers does not disappoint. His amusing and outlandish predictions will keep me coming back for more. Since according to Rogers, Bernanke will have no job at the Fed in a few years, I look forward to their joint appearance on CNBC. Perhaps they could discuss collaboration on a new book – Extinction: Lessons Learned from the Fed and Dodo Bird.

Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®

Plan. Invest. Prosper. 

DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds (VFH) at the time of publishing, but had no direct ownership in BRKA/B. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.

I was walking up the 59th street station uptown 1 train platform when I heard the cool sounds of Lankandia Cissoko, African Griot.  Since I started this project three weeks ago, I was hoping to run into him again.

Lankandia, Salieu Suso and a couple other guys here in NYC are descendants from the ancient line of bards once common Sub-Saharan Africa.  For thousands of years they played their harps, told stories, shared songs, memorized family genealogies, advised kings and taught children.  Unlike the Celtic bards, they are still around to teach us the ways of our ancestors.  Whenever I see them, I feel so excited to know that these men are like the branches of an ancient tree that still stands in the forest when it’s brothers and sisters have been long ago cut down.

I sat down and listened to Lankandia play for twenty minutes.  The Kora is an interesting instrument.  It is double strung (two rows of strings), has a wooden column and a half-sphere resonator made of a gourd and animal skin.  It is definitely in the harp family, but it looks completely different than the harp we usually think of.  Also, they play the Kora with trademark African polymetrics (3/4, 6/8, 2/4 and 12/8 time signatures are all playing at once!) which makes it sound quite different from the pretty-pretty harp sounds we’re used to.

After one of his numbers, I go up to speak to him.  A 50-something African American gentleman is talking to him.  Maybe it was just my imagination, but I could see a bridge being built from Africa to its descendants living here in America.  It makes me wonder what it would be like if a Irish bard, descendant from the old country, were sitting their to tell me about my ancestry.

I finally get to speak to him and tell him I play the harp and I’m essentially looking to do what he does.  I wish I could say something terribly exciting happened, but all that really happened is that he started speaking with a very thick accent and I had no idea what he is saying.  I took his business card however.  I now have his, and Salieu Suso’s (a griot I worked with three years ago on a children show), phone number.  When I get my new harp, I play to call them and ask for some guidance.

The guidance I hope to get from them will help me re-construct the Celtic bard culture.  I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Dodo bird, but I am modeling my formula after their proposed comeback from extinction.  The Dodo bird was a very innocent bird found on an island in the Indian Ocean.  It had no predators and was therefore fearless of the European explorers (and it was flightless, making it even more vulnerable).  The European explorers however were not so kind.  They took to beating these funny looking birds to death for sport when they didn’t hunt them and their eggs for food.  This lead to their extinction in the 1700’s.

In 2007 however, the most complete dodo bird skeleton to date has been found and there’s talk of reconstructing the genome to bring it back.  This can be done by mixing it’s original DNA with that of surviving relatives.  And there’s good reason to do it too: the trees that depended on the dodo to crack it’s heavy seed-pod shell and help it populate is in danger as well.  I say let’s do it.  And I think this is a similar formula I can use.

As I collect “bones” of the Celtic bards unearthed by historians I can mix that DNA with that of living bards from other cultures.  It won’t be a perfect match, but it’ll be awfully close.  Why do it all?  Well, besides the fact that we can, it’s my personal prediction that the arts are heading back in that direction again anyway.  Books are made into films then into plays then into video games then into clothes then into theme parks then into toys then into a website and so on.  The arts are coming together; things in our culture in general are coming together.  The future is merging with the past in the present.  Let’s do it.

The problem when you’re me, is that:

People get to look at me all day, and I only get glimpses…
…LOL! (that was a quote from Hannah Montana)

Anyway, to be totally honest, when you’re a shock jock like me, you can say “been there; done that; got the tee shirt” for a lot of different things.
You see, when I was young, I drew up a “to do” list, and I basically strategically executed everything on that list!

So like I told all earlier, I was inspired from the Phineas & Ferb opening sequence:

• Building a rocket
• Fighting a mommy
• Climbing up the Eiffel tower
• Discovering something that doesn’t exist
• Giving a monkey a shower
• Surfing tidal waves
• Creating nanobots
• Locating Frankenstein’s brain
• Finding a dodo bird
• Painting a continent
• Driving your sister insane

So translating that to Jeremy language, this would mean:
(And this will be my 2010 Vision)

• Developing my educational video series
• Developing “cool” electronic devices
• Acing mathematics and physics/chemistry
• Dating a hot Christian celebrity =)
• Study medicine (ok maybe this will come later)
• Graduate law (yay!)
• Finding a cure for cancer (ok maybe a bit early lol!)

As they Phineas & Ferb

“PHINEAS AND FERB (NOT THEM; JEREMY LOL!) IS GOING TO DO IT ALL WOOOOOOOOPEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Message me if you think I have missed anything out!

UPDATE: PLEASE do not email me “losing your virginity” since this is a very .. well weird lol, thing to say!  Particularly if you’re a girl!  It is NOT very princess like!  But I am a Christian virgin with model looks **makes a stunner Zac Efron look to get the ladies** LOL!

Ok tell me whos hotter:

Peace out suckazzz!!!

This summer, I will be… Finding my princess, fighting off the baddies, and saving her from the dragon!!!

Well, not really, I think the Phineas & Ferb opening title sequence (series from Disney XD Channel) just about sums it all up:

There’s 104 days of summer vacation
And school comes along just to end it
So the annual problem for our generation
Is finding a good way to spend it

Like maybe…

Building a rocket
Or fighting a mummy
Or climbing up the Eiffel Tower

Discovering something that doesn’t exist (Hey!)
Or giving a monkey a shower

Surfing tidal waves
Creating nanobots
Or locating Frankenstein’s brain (It’s over here!)

Finding a dodo bird
Painting a continent
Or driving your sister insane (Phineas!)

As you can see
There’s a whole lot of stuff to do
Before school starts this fall (Come on Perry)

So stick with us ’cause Phineas and Ferb
Are gonna do it all
So stick with us ’cause Phineas and Ferb are
Gonna do it all!
(Mom! Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence!)

(Lyrics courtesy of this site)

Oh, and one more thing:

Dating Ashley Tisdale

She’s so funny on the series.

Let me see a cross-comparison of me and Ashley Tisdale:

From a fashionista perspective, the blonde does really offset my black hair really well =)  And, we would have really hot kids **pouts his mouth**!

Dodo Bird

“Dead as a dodo!  These words live on as a memorial for a puddy, flightless birds no one will ever see alive for it has been extinct nearly 300 years.

The dodo, whose name comes from the Portuguese word for “simpleton,” lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Larger than a turkey, the dodo had an enormous beak, tiny wings, and a little tuft of curly feathers for a tall.  It waddled about on short legs that could scarcely support its fat body.

Unchallenged by enemies, the dodo was quite unafraid when men came to its island home.

The dodo couldn’t fly anyway.  It was too clumsy to flee.  Dodo birds were slaughtered by the thousands.

The eggs and young were easy prey for the rats and dogs the men brought with them.  By the end of the 17^th century, there were no more dodos.

Today, we know what the dodo looked like only from its bones and from 17^th century paintings of dodos. – Johnny Wonder

Visual  source:  parboork

Everybody loves a circus but when the sideshow comes to the White House then perhaps it is time we lower the Big Top and end this THREE RING circus.

It happens b/c people believe that governments and regulations are the way to stop animals from going extinct. If you look at history you would learn that governments sanctioned most of the mass killings of animals. …[More..]


11 Recently Extinct Animals Photographs – Here is a list of 11 extinct animals that were photographed while still alive. Tasmanian Tigers, Quagga, Passenger Pigeon, Golden Toad, Caribbean Monk Seal, Pyrenean Ibex, Bubal Hartebeest, …[More..]

Scientists are now directly blaming them for melting icecaps, disappearing rain forests and extinct animals. Impressive. Scientists say that these fat people consume so much more than the average person that the extra food production …[More..]

If you’re going…be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
If you’re going…you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.

I’m going to San Francisco. This summer, 2009. I still need to find a job out there, hopefully doing something with photography or arts management, but so far finding one hasn’t got me anywhere. I’m pretty confident that I’m smart and talented enough, but I get the heebee jeebees at job interviews sometimes. Wish me luck world.

I’m seeing the water I’m about to jump into as neither crystal clear nor a black lagoon. Somewhere in the middle. It’ll seem a lot clearer if I figure out how to make money.

My thing is, my inspiration…these stories of people who go to new places…people like Raymond Loewy…go to new places with little but themselves, and are crazy and smart enough to figure a dynamic to work it. To make what they’re doing work, to survive, to gamble, and make it.

No, gamble is a bad word to use. These are talented people after all. They work the odds but don’t let it all to fate, they don’t go into the poker game with no cards at all. Perhaps they just test themselves and score well.

Yeah, i’m young, and maybe naive about the whole thing. But let me be young and naive! I’m not hurting anyone. Besides, as I see it, it’s the dream chasers, the tightrope walkers crazy enough to be the only ones to attempt to leap across as chasm and expect to make it, who get the farthest. Yea, they may fall in more than a few times. What is to be learned from playing it safe? Falling in the chasm- these are learning experiences, and if anything, that’s what San Francisco will be for me.

BHAG- the most successful companies, I hear, are the ones with Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals. Corporations aren’t that different from people, they’re run by a head that makes decisions, connections, has an image, etc. While I’m young and experimenting, I’m gonna keep chasing the buffalo. And maybe even the dodo birds also, if only to prove to the world against their pessimistic odds that somewhere today, there is still a dodo bird riding the wilderness.

-Milo

One great thing about countless hours of studying is countless hours of shuffling iPod. Discovered and rediscovered a few gems:

My most important rediscovery was Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film)”. I forgot how amazing it was. I played that song on repeat (but I was very careful not to listen tooo much, because who wants to associate such an epic song with studying for finals?) and found myself wanting to scream in the library: “You guys have NO IDEA what music even is right now!!!!!!!!!”

but, I did not.

My friend Lily gave me some CDs by The Dodos (formerly known as Dodo Bird) weeks ago and I heard them and gave them a good rating. But last night I LISTENED to them!

Their song “Beards” made me laugh aloud in the quiet library. Check out the lyrics:

“Beards” by Dodo Bird

You can hide behind it
You can subtly pose it
You can wear it how you like, I know you will
They are taking over
It’s on every other
It will tell a story like the ones you read

I will never have one
I will never have one
It would grow in sparse and light
It would be an ugly sight, so please
Don’t look upon my face
Don’t look upon my face

And grow it out until it comes to standing still
Join the crowd of aging beards a’many

They are looking at me
They are looking at me
Through those beady eyes
They’re thinking what they will
They will keep them safe and warm
From the cold of other’s charm, I warn
Don’t look upon that face
Don’t look upon that face

And grow it out until you’ve found your inner peace
Join the crowd of aging beards a’many

Ah! I just love that! I think it so perfectly describes how much males fixate on their facial hair. “Grow it out until you’ve found your inner peace”…”you can hide behind it”…”they are taking over”…Ha! I never knew how much beards affected one’s psyche! But I certainly think beards deserve their own song. And the song itself is sad and gloomy sounding, but I thought the lyrics were hilarious…

The other Dodos song I especially appreciated was “Neighbors” (don’t you love how to-the-point and simple their song titles are?).

“Neighbors” by Dodo Bird

Ruby’s out there on the block
Chasing down her little dog
Calling out but he won’t stop
‘Cause he’s sick of feeling stuck
Can’t provide the things she wants
She won’t handle when he’s gone
He’s getting free, he’s going long
Feeling further as he runs
I hope he does

Neighbor’s out there in the yard
Doing pull-ups on his bar
Getting stronger, working hard
Gonna have a head start
Gonna look just like a star
Gonna go out stealing hearts
I hope he falls

I know them
They know me
They’re the ones
That I see
Everyday
Probably
We don’t smile
We don’t speak

Sammy’s out there painting trees
Covering up the graffiti
Mumbling something through his teeth
About the kids out on the street
He won’t leave it, let it be
Maybe they’ll come back and see
Painted over permanently
He’ll go mad, he’ll go crazy
I hope he does

I know them
They know me
They’re the ones
That I see
Everyday
Probably
We don’t smile
We don’t speak

Don’t smile, don’t speak

Now this one isn’t funny (though the topic is, to me at least), but it’s so honest. I’ve always noticed how people blatantly ignore each other, but it’s regarded as the norm. People will really go out of their way not to interact with strangers. They’d rather stand than sit next to you on the bus. When I’m running, I say hello to everyone and it’s surprising how many people pretend I don’t exist…! Dude! I saw you look at me from the corner of my eye! You and I both know that I’m running right by you! You don’t have to pretend you don’t know I’m here!

And it’s so true–people really don’t interact with their neighbors much, aside from an occasional hello. It’s a pretty convenient person to get to know, too. I have new neighbors and I’m gonna try to get to know those bros next quarter…and, try not to be such a stranger to everyone.

En nyligen publicerad holländsk studie pekar på nytt på små skillnader i effektivitet mellan olika terapiformer. Cuijpers, van Straten, Andersson och van Oppen har i sin “meta-metaanalys” undersökt sju olika större psykoterapeutiska behandlingar mot depression (kognitiv beteendeterapi, ickedirektiv stödjande terapi, beteendeaktivering, psykodynamisk terapi, lösningsfokuserad terapi, interpersonell terapi och social färdighetsträning). Författarna genomförde sju metaanalyser och totalt ingick 54 studier. Behandlingarna jämförs mot andra psykologiska behandlingar. Underlaget för var och en av de större behandlingsformerna var åtminstone fem jämförande studier. Endast vuxna individer har ingått i studien.

Resultaten visar att det inte fanns någon indikation på att någon av de större terapiformerna var mer eller mindre effektiv än de andra, med undantag för interpersonell terapi som var lite mer effektiv (d=0.20) och ickedirektiv stödjande terapi som var något mindre effektiv (d=-0.13). I förtid avslutad terapi (drop-out rate) var signifikant högre i kognitiv beteendeterapi jämfört med de andra terapiformerna och signifikant lägre i lösningsfokuserad terapi.

Författarna drar slutsatsen att inga större skillnader finns mellan olika större psykoterapiformer mot mild till moderat depression.

Referens:

Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., Andersson, G., van Oppen, P. (2008). Psychotherapy for depression in adults: a meta-analysis of comparative outcome studies. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 76(6), 909-922.

 11:56 pm

Geezus Not Another George Bush- Is it true?  Will John McCain usher in the new era of Republican failure by walking in the footsteps of our current boy-president Little Georgie Bush?  According to Barack Obaman, no, er, wait a minute, let’s hope the hell not.  Obama portrayed Republican rival John McCain as a weak imitation of President George W. Bush on Sunday and warned a McCain White House would mean four more years of failed policies and broken politics.  The Illinois senator, concluding a two-day campaign swing through the crucial Western battlegrounds of Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, once again hit his favorite theme — that Americans cannot afford four more years of failed Republican leadership.  “We’re not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain.  Just this morning, Senator McCain said that he and President Bush ’share a common philosophy,’” Obama said. “I guess that was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk” (Politics:  Geezus Not Another George Bush).  He also feels “the Bush-McCain philosophy” benefited the rich and promised the wealth would trickle down to everyone else.  He concluded by saying that McCain was cranking up his negative attacks in the race’s final days in a desperate effort to catch up.  Obama leads McCain in national opinion polls nine days before the November 4 election, and is hoping to put waffling states like Colorado’s nine electoral votes in his column.  Colorado is one of about a dozen states won by Bush in 2004 that McCain is struggling to defend.  Of course he’s struggling to defend those states.  Despite Republican rule, most members of their own party are fed up with W’s tomfoolery and downright stupidity.  They also know that McCain is a Bush clone and will most certainly f*$k up as much as, if not more than, W himself.  McCain is the last of the tight-assed die hards and like Georgie Bush, he never admits defeat, even when he is defeated.  He’ll keep the middle-class in the middle, the less than fortunate on the bottom, and the rich and famous on top.  There’s also the distinc possibility he’ll continue to blow billions of our tax dollars on a war that we’ll never win, and Iran could be next.  That’s all we need in the White House:  Another jackass, with military control, who doesn’t listen to reason.  Birds of a feather flock together, and Bush and McCain are certainly a couple of dodos who are too dumb to fly, and too old and out of shape to run.

There are probably several people out there who click on the domain www.christopher.mu and get greeted with a cold `SITE UNAVAILABLE’ and are probably assuming that Christopher has disappeared off the internet. Only detritus of myspace profiles and reviews going to dead ends remain of this misadventurous artist.

The domain went offline on September 30, 2008.

The same exact day the album `Torched Laughter’ was released.

This wasn’t my choice but the domain provider’s decision. The timing could not have been worse. It took over 2 weeks to even attempt to renew the domain. By that point it was pointless. The damage was done.

Several CD’s went to the distributor, press, etc with that domain. Had to explain to them that the domain is now dead. Any content on the internet associated with me that I have control over had to be changed.

While I initially tried to renew the domain, they wanted more money and wanted me to pay for the past 2-3 years. I disagreed with having to pay for these `already paid for’ years. They disagreed with my disagreement. And here we are now. They want more money, I want a domain that works. Neither of us will get what we want, and I care not to have my career sabotaged by a stupid domain; or lack thereof.

So, with equal parts anger and stubbornness only ascribed to mythical dwarves in Forgotten Realms novels, I said goodbye to the domain which I invested a considerable amount of time into for the past 6-7 years. C’est la vie.

From a website perspective, it certainly has been ugly since the loss of the domain, but one has to soldier on. Good old www.comecloser.com is still in service thankfully.

The .mu extension was a weird one. When they first went online, Billboard magazine was touting them as the official `Music Domain.’ Artists like Janet Jackson and Sting were able to circumvent cyber squatters who owned Janet.com and Sting.com thanks to the .mu extension.

When I heard about this, I immediately grabbed up the Christopher.mu domain through a 3^rd party company called Samsdirect. I got rather tired of the emails from the owners of Christopher.com or christopherx.com etc offering to sell their domain to me for an affordable rate of $50,000.

Later on I found out .mu was not a music domain. It was reserved for the island of Mauritius. A small island off of Madagascar who housed the last dodo birds prior to their extinction.

At this time I’m not planning on finding some new variant of `Christopher’ in a domain name.

Christopher

www.comecloser.com

www.myspace.com/officialchristopher

Dodo Poem

You liked to play
And eat wild fruit
And live each day
In a plumey suit
You wouldn’t fly
You wouldn’t run
You had to die
You were just too fun…

and dumb

Celestial Obesity: A Sonnet

I know you are not a celestial vacuum
You just got too fat and supernoved
Too fat is 10 to 15 times the sun’s room
Causing you to transmorph a la Ovid
Collapsing the chair of the universe
You fell through and into the basement
When you were fat things were bad but now they’re worse
You’re gloomier than the Old Testament
You used to repel with flabby skin
Stinky bedsores and Pringles addiction
Now when life forms come near, you suck them in
And exist only in bad science fiction
‘Cause you achieved morbid obesity
And reached singular infinite density

The Dodos are incredible. They used to be called Dodo Bird.

“park song” and “the ball” are truly beautiful and brilliant.

go listen.

I have just been waiting to write about this article all day!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

He and three colleagues from the UK and US issued a statement saying there had been more studies on CBT, but that did not necessarily mean it was more effective than other types of therapy.

“It is scientifically irresponsible to continue to imply and act as though CBTs are more effective, as has been done in justifying the expenditure of £173m to train CBT therapists throughout England.

“Such claims harm the public by restricting patient choice and discourage some psychologically distressed people from seeking treatment,” he said.”

This argument reminds me of my Dr. Drew Westen grad seminar days… Everyone is using CBT because it’s the easiest to research, has the most funding, etc. etc. Can’t say that I disagree — there is definitely too much hype about CBT. However, I don’t think that most professionals follow CBT guidelines even 75% of the time — it’s just not practical! Dr. Cooper has a great explanation of this:

Every therapist is going to respond similarly to some extent… maybe one is going to focus on though restructuring more than childhood, but you’re still going to have that consoling feeling. I think that whatever this common feeling is makes up the healing component of therapy… which is why the best predictor of treatment outcome is therapeutic alliance. This common set of elements that spans the different types of therapies has been termed the ‘Dodo bird’ verdict. I’ll have to write a post on that later…

Anyway, it’s nice to see someone arguing against CBT for a change! The world (and psych field) could use a little more psychoanalysis

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