Black Swans in Holland Park?

Has anyone read the various works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb?

I just bought The Black Swan, Impact of the Highly Improbable, and retrospectively makes fascinating reading.....

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

His website is here

Can a 9 month old entain him/herself for two hours?

Interesting time lapse video:

At the edge of Victoria Falls

Some may recall Hardy's  Christmas trip and his visit to the Victoria Falls with his family.

Please note who is furthest from the edge!

Continuing the skiing theme....

Hardy and Mattias got together one evening before dinner in Lech, kindly sending me photographic evidence:

Mattias Skiing (2)

Word from Mattias and family is that the snow conditions in Lech are currently the best in living memory, so here's a short video of Mattias bashing some powder last week:

Disorder in the American Courts !

Thanks to Mattias:

 ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!

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ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

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ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.

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ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

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ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid.

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ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

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ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

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ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.

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ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

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ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

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ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

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ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

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ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

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And the best for last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law. 

Snow Forecasts for half term

Up to date snow forecasts for Lech and Cortina (others on request)

Lech:

Lech Snow Forecast | Snow Report | by E-mail

Cortina d'Ampezzo:

Cortina d`Ampezzo Snow Forecast | Snow Report | by E-mail

Giancarlo at the 2007 Champions League Final (3)

Dida waited patiently for his photo opportunity:

Giancarlo at the 2007 Champions League Final (2)

No end of Milan players and Prime Ministers queued up to have their photo taken with Giancarlo:

Berlusconi




Filippo Inzaghi:

At long last perhaps the luxury goods market will have to obey normal laws of economics.

From an economic point of view the luxury goods market has always fascinated me. I could never, and still don't understand the prices they have commanded for their goods for years, and the willingness of intelligent consumers to go along with their game.

I have argued for some time that the luxury goods market is completely unsustainable. At last I found an article that mirrors my own thoughts.




From The Wall Street Journal

When Saks Fifth Avenue slashed prices by 70% on designer clothes before the holiday season even began, shoppers stampeded. "It was like the running of the bulls," says Kathryn Finney, who says she was knocked to the floor in New York's flagship store by someone lunging for a pair of $535 Manolo Blahnik shoes going for $160.


Saks's deep, mid-November markdowns were the first tug on a thread that's now unraveling long-established rules of the luxury-goods industry. The changes are bankrupting some firms, toppling longstanding agreements on pricing and distribution, and destroying the very air of exclusivity that designers are trying to sell.

The problem Saks faced last November is one that haunts the U.S. economy as a whole: From car makers to home builders, companies are stuck with inventories that are far too fat. (See related article.)

Saks's risky price-cut strategy was to be one of the first to discount deeply, rather than one of the last. Managing high-fashion inventory is tricky. Clothing can go out of style in just months, so stores don't want to keep it around. But cut prices too soon or too deeply, and shoppers start to expect it.

Stephen I. Sadove, Saks's chief executive, says his action helped his company avoid massive losses, or worse. "These herculean things," including slashing inventories, were done to "make sure that the company survives," Mr. Sadove said in an interview.

Article


Of course, the worrying thing is that if you slash the price of a handbag by 70%, it might encourage my wife to buy three instead of one!

Giancarlo at the 2007 Champions League Final

The Milan boys and Berlusconi were invited to meet with Giancarlo after winning the Champions League Final 2-1 against Liverpool in Athens. He kindly agreed to having a couple of photographs taken.

Alessandro's wife driving!

Alessandro kindly sent this video of his wife driving the many cars they've had!

agm live

"At times the orderly conduct of the meeting was threatened"

Minutes of the 2009 AGM

1. Apologies

Apologies received and accepted from Osman, Giancarlo, Jeffrey and Romain.

2. Minutes of last meeting

Accepted as a true and accurate record.

3. Matters arising

It was noted by the current Social Secretary that the venue and facilities for this years AGM were superior to the previous.

4. Re-election of Officers

By a show of hands the President, Chairman and Social Secretary were unanimously re-elected.

5. Special Thanks

Special thanks were noted for the original support offered by Stefan who sadly was unable to attend this years meeting.

6. Any other business

Many items were discussed and at the sole discretion of the Chairman were excluded from the minutes of the meeting.

Off the record briefings to interested parties will take place on Saturday morning.

7. Note from Chairman

Once again gentlemen it has been a huge pleasure to have your company throughout the last 12 months. I look forward to the next year being equally rewarding for us all.

8. Meeting closed in a orderly fashion a little after mid-night.

At last something we can all take advantage of......

from freakanomics :

Simon Rogers moved to New York from London when he was 28 to begin his modeling career. About two years ago, he created UglyNY, a talent and modeling agency affiliated with Ugly in London, which is run by a friend. You’ll see photos of his clients throughout the rest of this post.

As Rogers once told The New York Times, UglyNY serves the market for “great-looking people, people who’ve really been hit with the ugly stick, and everything in between.” UglyNY’s recent clients include Clairol, Walmart, and Vanity Fair. Demand for “real people,” Rogers says, is growing — in part because of the influences of reality TV, MySpace, etc. Plus they are often cheaper.

Chicago Economists on the US Stimulus Package

I cut and pasted the following (from here), as I thought it was interesting, and might stimulate some further debate:

Chicago Economists on the Stimulus Package


By STEVEN D. LEVITT

A panel of Chicago economists convened to discuss their views on the stimulus package recently, and video of the event is now available online. All the speakers had something interesting to say (including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas being surprisingly sympathetic to government intervention).

Of particular interest, in my opinion, is Kevin Murphy’s discussion, which comes in the middle of the video  . (If you don’t have the patience for watching video, you can just look at Murphy’s PowerPoints.) It is vintage Kevin Murphy. He says that he can’t remember much from his macroeconomics courses, so he starts over from scratch and creates a perfect framework for thinking about how one should evaluate the case for stimulus.

What he comes up with seems totally obvious once he presents it, and yet I have never seen anyone discuss the issue in a manner even remotely similar to this. That is the mark of true genius.

I have only one thing to add to the panel’s discussion. Throughout the video, you will see that the speakers operate under the assumption that the economists who are advocating stimulus are doing so based on an economic analysis. For instance, Murphy says things like “Christina Romer [the head of the Council of Economic Advisers] must believe that the deadweight loss of taxation is very small.”

A very plausible alternative hypothesis is that the justifications being put forth for the stimulus package — even if those doing the justifying are economists — are based on politics, not economics.

The obligatory "London in the snow" pictures

It has to be done, I'm afraid, the kids had a fantastic day playing in the gardens all day long. So if you struggled all day to get to the office, only to leave early as none of your clients were in anyway, here's what South Kensington looked like this morning:





One last thought, if the same conditions prevail tomorrow, take the day off and play with the kids in the snow - the memories will last a lifetime, and the next time it happens in London maybe, our kids will be playing with their kids!