This Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings will host the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Divisional round. By league rules, the head coach of each team must address the media at least once before the game, and despite his deep revulsion for all things media-related, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer held the obligatory press conference earlier this week. As always, Zim Tzu does not dispense his wisdom lightly or to those who are incapable of comprehending the totality of his vision. For those benighted souls, the Daily Norseman gets their only black belt Zim Tzu disciple to provide an informed and educated translation of the guru’s brilliance, appropriately interpreted for the unwashed masses:
January 12, 2018
The wisdom of Zim Tzu, pre-divisional round edition
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Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points I THE GREAT WAR WEEK 181
The Great War
Published on 11 Jan 2018In the first full week of 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlines his points for peace. In the Caucasus, the increasing instability leads to daily skirmishes between the Armenians and Ottomans. Ludendorff continues planning for an upcoming German offensive whilst his countrymen negotiate peace terms with Russia.
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President Oprah?
I didn’t watch the TV or movie awards show that Oprah used to launch her presidential campaign test balloon, but many others did. Those who watched it generally came away very impressed, based on mentions in my various social media feeds. Those who read it later include skeptics like Colby Cosh:
The Oprah for President boomlet didn’t last long, did it? Oprah Winfrey is somebody who has been discussed occasionally as a semi-serious presidential candidate since the early 1990s. The talk-show hostess accumulated so much cultural and financial capital so quickly, once she became a national television figure, that the thought has always been universal: if she really wanted to run, it is hard to see how she could be stopped.
Indeed, if the Americans elected her, she would undoubtedly turn out to have the same sort of presidential “pre-history” that Donald Trump did. People had been making “President Trump” jokes for ages, although we never noticed quite how many of those jokes there were until they all came true and weren’t jokes anymore.
On Sunday night, Oprah give an acceptance speech for a lifetime-achievement award at the Golden Globes, and people found it so stirring that it started a mini-wave of “Oprah 2020” references and remarks on social media. What was most interesting about the speech was not its intensity or its profundity, but the fact that it was, self-evidently, designed as a political candidate’s address.
[…]
If you would like a Hollywood liberal president, or any president other than the one the United States has, criticizing Oprah goes against your immediate partisan interests. (At least it probably does. Is anyone really too sure about the character of her personal core politics?) There is no sense denying it: if she did run, she probably could win. In 2016 we all got a stark lesson in just how much televisual familiarity, a large personal fortune, and control of media attention can accomplish in a presidential election.
And, of course, she has enormous charisma. Even those of us who think her influence on American culture has been baleful must acknowledge there is something magnificent and stately about her, and that she represents the American dream about as well as any individual human could. Financially, Donald Trump can only dream of having her track record — and, probably, her fortune.
It doesn’t mean she should be president. One almost suspects that the Oprah 2020 trial balloon might have enjoyed more success if it had been launched six months ago. Amid the tearful liberal trauma that followed the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the Most Qualified Presidential Candidate Of All Time, the despairing temptation to seek a television president even more familiar than Trump was bound to be more powerful. The passage of time, combined with Ms. Clinton’s obnoxious re-litigation of a strategically dumb campaign, may have helped blue America regain its senses. This is, I think, good news. And not just for the liberals.
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Investing: Why You Should Diversify
Marginal Revolution University
Published on 30 Aug 2016So far, we’ve been telling you what not to do when investing. Here’s what you should do: diversify.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Definitely, don’t put your investment money solely in your employer’s stock. That’s very loyal, but it’s a terrible strategy. Just think of Enron’s employees. They had huge chunks of their retirement funds in company stock. Upon Enron’s collapse, many employees who were once multimillionaires ended up with almost nothing.
As you can see, diversification is much safer. Diversification reduces risk by spreading your investment across different assets, doing so without reducing potential returns. Plus, modern financial markets make diversification easy. For example, our favorite investment instrument is the low-fee index fund. These funds mimic a large market basket of stocks, like the S&P 500. The sheer variety in the fund is what mitigates the risk. It’s diversification for the win.
A quick reminder, though. Choose an index fund with low fees. Fees may seem trivial, until you watch them eat away at your investment. Imagine this: take a hypothetical $10,000. Invest that in a fund with a 1% fee, and you’ll have roughly $57.5K after 25 years, assuming an average 8% return. Now, invest the same $10K, in a fund with a 0.2% fee.You’ll get roughly $70K over the same quarter-century.
Our point is — when it comes to investing, simple is best. So for example, if your employer offers a 401K, take the offer!
That being said, you might believe that the market is irrational. Anomalous, even.
No worries.
Next time, we’ll tackle behavioral finance to see if you can profit from anomalies, and irrationality.
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QotD: Gaelic
Gaelic (or anything Goidelic or Brythonic) is lost, and for a very simple reason. Once one sees it written down, one loses heart. One doubts that anyone could ever have spoken it aloud. Every word of this “mouth music” looks plainly unpronounceable; and proves unpronounceable to those unprepared from birth to speak it, not only from the centre of the mouth, like an Englishman, but from both sides, and every other part of the anatomy. (Compare: desert Arabic.)
David Warren, “Of mercy & forgiveness”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-06-02.
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