Don Yacktman Discussing His Investment Philosphy

Yacktman is a wonderful value investor who has built an enviable record at the Yacktman Funds, and before that at Selected Funds.

“Subterranean Homesick Blues” Hand Lettered

The original with Ginsberg in the background

Video of the Day

Some Pictures on the Way to Anchorage

The Canadian Rockies:

The Anchorage Tarmac

That's Why I Pray

The Best First Pitch of the Year

Quote of the Day: Winston Churchill

You may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of Government—for remember, Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away—you may put money in the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way.

~ Winston Churchill

Quote of the Day: Richard Rahn

The United States was known as the bastion of economic freedom for more than two centuries, and it was because of its economic freedom that the nation became the pre-eminent economic power. However, in just a few short years, the U.S. has fallen from No. 3 in 2000 (behind the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore) to No. 8 in 2005 and to No. 18 in 2010, the last year for which complete statistics are available. Worse yet, the U.S. decline continues, and in next year’s ranking, it is almost certain to be lower.

~ Richard Rahn

Grouch: The index Rahn refers to above measures the degree of economic freedom present in five major areas: [1] Size of Government; [2] Legal System and Security of property Rights; [3] Sound Money; [4] Freedom to Trade Internationally; [5] Regulation.

Cartoon of the Day: The Road Less Traveled

Lincoln

The official trailer has just been released. Whatever projects Daniel Day Lewis is involved in are worth paying attention to.

Some Useful Websites You May Never Have Heard Of

1. openculture.com - videos about cultural, scientific topics and other curiosities
2. http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/ - introduction to open source programming in python
3. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.
4. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.
5. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.
6. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.
7. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.
8. openoffice.org or libreoffice.org - open source alternatives to ms-office.
9. gimp.org - open source alternative to adobe photoshop.
10. followupthen.com – the easiest way to setup email reminders.
11. jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
12. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching.
13. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.
14. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.
15. ctrlq.org/dictation – online voice recognition in the browser itself.
16. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.
17. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – quickly determine the font name from an image.
18. google.com/webfonts – a good collection of open source fonts.
19. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs.
20. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.
21. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.
22. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.
23. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs.
24. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
25. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.
26. hundredzeros.com – the site lets you download free Kindle books.
27. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.
28. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.
29. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online
30. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.
31. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
32. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
33. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
34. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free (do people still send faxes?).
35. pipebytes.com – transfer files of any size without uploading to a third-party server.
36. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.
37. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.
38. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.
39. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.
40. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.
41. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.
42. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.
43. safeweb.norton.com – check the trust level of any website.
44. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.
45. minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.
46. youtube.com/leanback – Watch YouTube channels in TV mode.
47. builtwith.com – find the technology stack of any website.
48. mixlr.com – broadcast live audio over the web.
49. ctrlq.org/html-mail – send rich-text mails to anyone, anonymously.
50. seekingalpha.com - miscellaneous investing ideas from all styles of investors.
51. handbrake.fr - video transcoding software.
52. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - audio recording and editing software.
53. gnucash.org - opensource accounting and personal finance software.

6 Sixty Second Adventures in Economics

The Invisible Hand


The Paradox of Thrift

I'd like to see a corollary video called The Paradox of Spending. Savings and spending go together much like labor and capital, too much of either is not healthy.

The Phillips Curve


The Principle of Comparative Advantage


The Impossible Trinity


Rational Choice Theory

Getting the Schiff Treatment: Let's Ban Corporate Profits

Maybe one day it will dawn on some of these folks that someone needs to generate wealth before it can be redistributed. Without profits, wealth can only be generated by what amounts to slave labor. But let's give credit where credit is due, at least this line of thinking is consistent with the notion: "The government is the only thing we all belong to," which is troubling on so many levels. How far we have progressed from the early days of the country's founding when the fathers of our independence expressed such quaint notions as: "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread."

Markets in Everything: Indigestible Health Sensor

From Springwise.com: "Just cleared by the FDA late last month, this new ingestible sensor from California-based Proteus Digital Health is about the size of a grain of sand and can be integrated into an inert pill or medicine. Once in the stomach, it is powered solely by contact with stomach fluid and communicates a unique signal that identifies the timing of ingestion. This information is transferred through the user’s body tissue to a battery-operated patch worn on the skin that detects the signal along with physiological and behavioral metrics such as heart rate, body position and activity. That data, in turn, gets relayed by the patch to a mobile application, where it can be made accessible by caregivers and clinicians. The video above explains the premise in more detail."

Decoding The Non Farm Payroll Report

Happy Capital Day

"Capital without labor means machines with no operators, or financial resources without the manpower to invest in. Labor without capital looks like Haiti or North Korea: plenty of people working but doing it with sticks instead of bulldozers, or starting a small enterprise with pocket change instead of a bank loan."

"Like most Americans, I’ve traditionally celebrated labor on Labor Day weekend—not organized labor or compulsory labor unions, mind you, but the noble act of physical labor to produce the things we want and need. Nothing at all wrong about that!"

"But this year on Labor Day weekend, I’ll also be thinking about the remarkable achievements of inventors of labor-saving devices, the risk-taking venture capitalists who put their own money (not your tax money) on the line and the fact that nobody in America has to dig a ditch with a spoon or cut his lawn with a knife. Indeed, what could possibly be wrong about having a “Capital Day” in odd numbered years and a “Labor Day” in the even-numbered ones?"

"Labor Day and Capital Day. I know of no good reason why we should have just one and not the other."

~ Larry Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education

HT: Carpe Diem