So, I was trying to keep the posts this week to a minimum. It being a holiday week, I figure a bunch of folks are just phoning it in, but with so many things just jumping out at me, some of these just write themselves.
This past weekend Reverend Billy, from the Church of Stop Shopping was arrested at the Critical Mass bike ride that ended at Union Square…
Wait for it…
I hope Mike Bloomberg does run for President, because then we’ll get a full accounting of his progress as Mayor. It really just holds academic interest for me, but I don’t think Mike can lay claim to very much in the end. It took a true authoritarian like Rudy Giuliani to turn Times Square into Disney World. Bloomberg has been more adept at polishing the edges.
He’s stopped smoking in restaurants and bars, raised taxes on housing, raised the cost of riding in a cab, tried to foist an unwanted stadium on us, and presided over an extremely benign set of circumstances: a glut of cheap credit powering Wall Street and bringing in mammoth tax revenues, a residential real estate boom arising from said credit, and the emergence of hedge funds as a major force (helping to bump up midtown office prices as the largest aggregation of hedge fund assets are in midtown Manhattan).
I’m probably leaving out some other beneficial factors that were outside Mike’s control.
In the world of hedge funds, about which I write (and should be writing about now instead of posting this!), a good money manager is one who beats the return of the market and does so while taking on less risk than the market. In a regatta, you sail with the wind, and the boat that runs faster than the other boats, and also rocks less, is one to be emulated.
I’m not certain what Mike’s accomplishments have been outside of those we might have witnessed under any decent administrator. But maybe that’s Mike’s claim to fame: that he was decent. I just have trouble feeling a swell of pride over the competence of a billionaire who came to office with practically unlimited resources. Seems like the least he could do…
I got all excited, the NY Times had an article titled “What to Do About Wonderlust” which examined the question of jumping from a career where you have established yourself to a totally new career.
My excitement waned a bit when after reading the first question (should you even consider such a change?) the answer was “Making a 180-degree change in midcareer can be a big financial and professional risk, but sometimes it is a risk worth taking.”
No shit.
(Continued after the jump, also, I’ll explain the picture after the jump)
