Monday, March 11, 2013

Oddly relevant Mar-11-2013


Japan presents the incredible shrinking building: [Note: spectacular, probably cost quite a bit too?]…Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_4G_8gEjng

Muniland’s changing landscape: in decline since 1Q08, munis trading (1) has its yields decline in lockstep with U.S. Treasury yields. Individual Puerto Rico bonds lead the pack in trade volume, which could be because they are triple tax-free in all 50 states. But California, Florida and Texas had much higher daily levels of trades. [Note: 2012 Fact book is worth a read]…Source: http://msrb.org/msrb1/pdfs/MSRB-FactBook-2012_WEB.pdf

Chasing the next hot market: a table that shows the annualized return for funds of that “vintage year” through today, from 1995 to 2008. In 1990s it was venture investing, in early 2000 it was buyouts. [Note: and the pressing Q is, what’s it now?]…Source: http://pragcap.com/chasing-the-next-hot-market

How to quantify the gains that the internet has brought to consumers: my favorite approach here is the opportunity cost via time saved: for example, if it takes 22 minutes to get an answer via a library, only 3.75 minutes via the internet, and assuming $22/hour (ave. wage in America), then the internet generates at least $65 - $150 bn nationally, and that’s just Google. [Note: it’s way more than that, the productivity gains afforded by the Internet are staggering, and I won’t be surprised if it is in the 10 trillion range]…Source: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21573091-how-quantify-gains-internet-has-brought-consumers-net-benefits/comments#comments

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