me (harsh shah)
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Cold Souls is an upcoming film by the emerging director Sophie Barthes, starring Paul Giammati. If the film is anything like its trailier, it will be a delightful dark comedy. The trailer has a Kaufmanesque feeling.
The film premiered at Sundance and was nominated for the Grand Jury prize. Cold Souls comes out in August.
I haven’t learned a lot more about investing or making money since I was 25 years old. But I’ve learned a lot about human behavior. Let’s play a game. If you had to pick 1 classmate, and you would earn 10% of what they will earn for the rest of their life, what would go through your mind? Their IQ? Their grades? What school they went to? Who’s the best on the dance floor?… Or is it who’s the most effective human being. Who do people admire and love to work for. Who is able to inspire and willing to give credit to other people for their successes.
If you had to short 1 classmate 10%, who would that be? What traits turn you off?
You’ll realize that the qualities in the people you want are behavioral, not born in. You want someone who doesn’t keep score, like ‘I cleaned your room, now you clean mine.’ You want someone who people want to do things for.
Danish homeowners can actually purchase their own mortgages at a discount when the bonds linked to the mortgages are trading at a discount. Very interesting system. The Economist elaborates…
“The second feature of the Danish system is that mortgage-holders can also buy the bonds in the market and use them to redeem their mortgages. This is useful if a rise in interest rates (or a fall in house prices) causes mortgage-backed bonds to trade at a discount. Redeeming their bonds allows homeowners to reduce the amount they owe. In America, for instance, mortgage-backed securities have fallen far below their fundamental value in thinly traded markets, partly because the people who would benefit most from buying them have no mechanism to do so. “Everybody can buy that bond at a discount except that one guy who is most involved with the loan, the homeowner,” says Alan Boyce, a mortgage expert who has worked with George Soros, an investor and philanthropist, on promoting the Danish model in emerging markets. In Denmark, by contrast, a fall in the value of mortgage bonds usually encourages homeowners to snap them up to redeem their own mortgages, as is happening now.”
-The Economist
I caught this in the FT today.
Linguist says US intelligence spied on Blair
The part of the article that I want to draw attention to involves the Red Cross:
“Last month, Mr Faulk and another former NSA employee provided a rare glimpse into the veiled world of the NSA, by revealing that the spy agency had spied on journalists, soldiers, and non-governmental organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross. They told ABC that the NSA routinely spied on Americans by listening to private conversations, including pillow talk and, in some cases, phone sex.”
Post 9-11 policies driven by fear have killed privacy. We need it back.
