The Vines Keep Growing
Why Big Government Sucks, Exhibit 1,293,011: One FTC proposal to save the journalism industry would "Allow news organizations to agree jointly on a mechanism to require news aggregators and others to pay for the use of online content, perhaps through the use of copyright licenses." Link. Government determines what's collusion and what's not, government determines what constitutes a copyright infringement and what doesn't. Government can slant the table in whatever direction it (its lobbyists) want(s). It completely sucks. * * * * * * * The CPI sucks, too. Jim Rogers: "They've changed their accounting several times in the past few decades. When housing was 20% to 25% of the CPI and housing was going up, they didn't count it, saying rents weren't going up, and then when home prices started going down, they counted it. It's the same with many things. It's staggering some of the tortuous reasoning that the BLS has used over the past 25 or 30 years. When the price of gasoline goes up, they say it's not really going up because it's better gasoline, better quality, therefore you're getting more for your money. I mean, it's endless." Link. Anyone who has walked through a grocery store these past five months and seen the price increases, then reads that prices are holding steady, intuitively agrees with Rogers. For a corrective, you might try Shadow Stats. * * * * * * * Finished over the weekend: The Great Reflation: How Investors Can Profit From the New World of Money
Excellent book, but I came away with one central point: Nobody knows what the heck the next five years hold. The author then gives a handful of tips to try to monitor your investments, but it's tricky stuff. He also publishes a newsletter. I went to the cite last week and gave them my email, but I never heard anything so I don't know if it's free or salty, whether they're unprofessional or deluged with requests, incompetent or technologically-crippled. * * * * * * * I'm highly intrigued: Retail giant Wal-Mart is partnering with the online-based American Public University to help Wal-Mart employees earn associate's or bachelor's degrees. Could this somehow help beat down the accreditation process that is abused by accredited universities to keep out competition? Maybe Wal-Mart has the financial clout to push through accreditation for other potential educational partners that offer lower tuition rates. If that starts to happen, traditional colleges and universities will have to slash tuition rates to keep students. It could be big. Like I said, I'm intrigued.
