Tuesday, May 25

A man who's used 1991 book sells for a minimum of $1,850 on Amazon

Agora Financial's recent 5 Minute Forecast highlighted a talk Seth Klarman, head of the $22 billion Baupost Group, gave to the CFA Institute in Boston. From "The 5":

"The government is now in the business of giving bad advice. By holding interest rates at zero, the government is basically tricking the population into going long on just about every kind of security except cash, at the price of almost certainly not getting an adequate return for the risks they are running. People can't stand earning 0% on their money, so the government is forcing everyone in the investing public to speculate."

"For our parents or grandparents,” Klarman contends “it was awful to have had a Great Depression. But it was in some ways helpful to carry a Depression mentality throughout their later lives, because it meant they were thrifty with their money and prudent in their investment decisions. All we got out of this crisis was a ‘Really Bad Couple of Weeks’ mentality."

Klarman says he is “more worried about the world, more broadly, than I ever have been in my career. Will money be worth anything if governments keep intervening anytime there's a crisis to prop things up?"
I really don't have anything to add to Klarman's sentiment beyond my resounding agreement, but I do a have thought I'd like to share with my librarian readers. And I should preface the following by saying that I have the utmost respect and appreciation for the library sciences. And as Mr. Klarman speaks of grandparents, I should add that my beloved Grandma Erma Hileman was not only a librarian but also had a healthy Great Depression forged world view. However, librarians everywhere should take note that in some cases your LINK+ $125 library fine for not returning a book is proving to be an insufficient deterrent. I confirmed that while a few libraries still list Karman's book in their catalog that all copies of his $1,850 treatise are missing.

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