Joel Greenblatt was one of the founding partners of Gotham Capital which, as I found out later, was an enormously successful investment scheme and made over 40% a year for over two decades for its investor. He has come out with a new book called "A Little Book that Beats the Market".
A one sentence review would be: The book is marvellous.
A two sentence review would be: The book is marvellous. Go buy it now.
The book fundamentally teaches that owning stocks is really owning a business. It teaches some of the most important terminology found in financial reports of a company. Best of all, it demystifies the whole account book thing by starting with a simple example and making is more and more detailed as the book progresses.
That the book actually gives a mechanical investment strategy that also beats the market is indeed a bonus. The scheme, we are told and past history is given, is wildly successful. One does need quite a lot of money to get into it to make sure that trading costs don't offset the gains.
As an aside, in an age where everything is becoming DIY (Do it yourself) and most DIY kits come with instructions. Personal finance, in my opinion, is the most important DIY project most of us will ever undertake and unfortunately it is neither taught in schools nor is there a little instruction booklet. This "Little Book" however is a good start.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Friday, December 23, 2005
Lolita (1967)
For someone who has not read Nabakov's book, the movie Lolita is a clean slate and it does not matter whether the movie is honest to the book or not.
The movie has the cast playing most of the roles to perfection. Sue Lyons as Lolita is exceptional as the fourteen year old who not entirely a child and not entirely an adult. James Mason's Humbert is suitably out of place is all sorts of situations. The scheming, multi-faceted Clare Quilty is played by Peter Sellers in a manner only Peter Sellers can.
Above all the film is about the way individuals react to or manipulate situations. Humbert is stricken by the Lolita's beauty and rendered utterly helpless. Lolita in her own way is stricken by the impending adulthood. She wants to follow her passions and be with boys. On the one hand she is manipulating Humbert to satisfy her material needs and her ego on the other hand she is chasing Quilty out of passion. Humbert is out of place in America, since he is a foreigner. He is out of place on the dance floor. He is out of place in bed with Charlotte since he does not love her. He is out of place with Lolita since he should not love her. He is out of place in Beardsley since he is afraid of gossip and he is out of place on the road since he is being chased.
Although the name Lolita evokes a sense that the movie is about paedophilia, in reality Kubrick has made a movie that lays out an entire spectrum of reactions the human mind is capable of in its varying states of purity and corruption.
The movie has the cast playing most of the roles to perfection. Sue Lyons as Lolita is exceptional as the fourteen year old who not entirely a child and not entirely an adult. James Mason's Humbert is suitably out of place is all sorts of situations. The scheming, multi-faceted Clare Quilty is played by Peter Sellers in a manner only Peter Sellers can.
Above all the film is about the way individuals react to or manipulate situations. Humbert is stricken by the Lolita's beauty and rendered utterly helpless. Lolita in her own way is stricken by the impending adulthood. She wants to follow her passions and be with boys. On the one hand she is manipulating Humbert to satisfy her material needs and her ego on the other hand she is chasing Quilty out of passion. Humbert is out of place in America, since he is a foreigner. He is out of place on the dance floor. He is out of place in bed with Charlotte since he does not love her. He is out of place with Lolita since he should not love her. He is out of place in Beardsley since he is afraid of gossip and he is out of place on the road since he is being chased.
Although the name Lolita evokes a sense that the movie is about paedophilia, in reality Kubrick has made a movie that lays out an entire spectrum of reactions the human mind is capable of in its varying states of purity and corruption.
Randomly Complex
Can randomness create complextity?
Is the richness of organic life too complex for random selection to have brought us to this stage?
Imagine a combination lock. If you have a way of randomly checking every combination and remembering the ones that don't work then, in time, the lock will be opened. A combination lock has finite combinations, however it is impossible to intelligently guess the outcome. Random testing with memory is the only way to come up with the combination to unlock it.
Now consider another example: Assume you can throw darts on a 1 by 1 square. Keep throwing darts perfectly randomly. After sufficient number of darts have been thrown, count the number of darts that within one unit of one of the corners. Divide this number by the number of darts and multiply by four. The answer is the number pi (3.1415...). As the number of darts increase the accuracy of computed pi increases. However, there is only one condition: the throwing must be perfectly random. (This technique is called the Monte Carlo method)
Now, everyone will agree that pi is an enormously complex number. But randomness helps us compute it.
This comes to my assertion that for increasingly complex systems statistical methods (that depend on random numbers) are proving to be the only way to describe them.
It should be noted that one has to learn to make sense out of randomness. The science of this study is called statistics. And a large amount of statistical deductions are based on probabilities. It is an area of science (and mathematics) where probability of 1 or 0 means absolute certainty of something happening or not happening. Everything in between is relative. They do not give guaranteed results, but give very good estimates of what will happen if the activity is performed a large number of times.
Statistical methods are able to figure out some of the most complex tasks and are in use everyday: random checking in airports, random testing of food articles, random checking of hygiene in day-care centers for children. If it were not for the reliability of randomness to ferret out complex information in relatively quick and easy ways, life would have come to a grinding halt.
So it is with evolution. In a relatively simple animal like the cat, see if a longer set of whiskers will help the cat. If it does the cat survive and reproduce else it dies and so go the long whiskers. Nature is trying out billions of variations all the time. The ones that stand the test of time are passed on to the subsequent generations. The ones that don't are killed away.
Randomness is perhaps the most powerful tool in the hands of a non-intelligent system to achieve complexity. Or, maybe randomness IS intelligence.
Is the richness of organic life too complex for random selection to have brought us to this stage?
Imagine a combination lock. If you have a way of randomly checking every combination and remembering the ones that don't work then, in time, the lock will be opened. A combination lock has finite combinations, however it is impossible to intelligently guess the outcome. Random testing with memory is the only way to come up with the combination to unlock it.
Now consider another example: Assume you can throw darts on a 1 by 1 square. Keep throwing darts perfectly randomly. After sufficient number of darts have been thrown, count the number of darts that within one unit of one of the corners. Divide this number by the number of darts and multiply by four. The answer is the number pi (3.1415...). As the number of darts increase the accuracy of computed pi increases. However, there is only one condition: the throwing must be perfectly random. (This technique is called the Monte Carlo method)
Now, everyone will agree that pi is an enormously complex number. But randomness helps us compute it.
This comes to my assertion that for increasingly complex systems statistical methods (that depend on random numbers) are proving to be the only way to describe them.
It should be noted that one has to learn to make sense out of randomness. The science of this study is called statistics. And a large amount of statistical deductions are based on probabilities. It is an area of science (and mathematics) where probability of 1 or 0 means absolute certainty of something happening or not happening. Everything in between is relative. They do not give guaranteed results, but give very good estimates of what will happen if the activity is performed a large number of times.
Statistical methods are able to figure out some of the most complex tasks and are in use everyday: random checking in airports, random testing of food articles, random checking of hygiene in day-care centers for children. If it were not for the reliability of randomness to ferret out complex information in relatively quick and easy ways, life would have come to a grinding halt.
So it is with evolution. In a relatively simple animal like the cat, see if a longer set of whiskers will help the cat. If it does the cat survive and reproduce else it dies and so go the long whiskers. Nature is trying out billions of variations all the time. The ones that stand the test of time are passed on to the subsequent generations. The ones that don't are killed away.
Randomness is perhaps the most powerful tool in the hands of a non-intelligent system to achieve complexity. Or, maybe randomness IS intelligence.
What is and isn't science
Does Science Overrule the Existence of God?
Is intelligent design science? Should it be taught in science classes? What is science and what is it not?
The debate over the theory of evolution as a overruling of the existence of God has been going on in America for a long time. This should not be so. The debate becomes a lot clearer if one looks at the theory of evolution as a logical progression of science. It is just one small building block in the subject that we call science. It therefore has to abide by the rules of scientific study. Which is what this article is about.
Science seeks to explain the world through theories and hypotheses. By its very nature science allows itself to the refuted. It is through conjecture and refutation science progresses. In fact, refutation is such a fundamental tenet of science that irrefutable theories cannot be science. This is why God cannot be a part of
science. One cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.
Science typically proceeds in small steps. Little theories explain little observations and these theories are attached through further observations and the body of observations that can be explained grows.
A simple example is given here:
Consider the observations:
1. An apple falls from a tree
2. A hot air balloon rises
Explanations:
1. Earth pulls the apple down
2. Sky pulls the balloon up.
Counter questions:
1. Why does the sky not pull up the apple
2. Why does the earth not pull the balloon.
Second attempt.
1. Earth pulls apple down but air pushes it up.
However the pull wins.
2. Earth pull the balloon down but the air pushes it up.
In this case the push wins.
Second set of counter questions:
1. Why does the pull win
2. Why does the push win
Third attempt
1. The apple occupies a certain volume. The weight of the same volume of air is lighter than the apple hence it cannot be held up.
2. The balloon occupies a certain volume. The weight of the same volume of air is heavier than the balloon hence it goes up.
Test in the lab.
1. Measure the weights of equal volumes of apple and air and compare. Test if the explanation holds
2. Measure the weights of equal volumes of air and balloon and compare. Test if the explanation holds
Now, following these experiments we have a theory. This is roughly how science progresses. (What I made up here has had an incredibly rich history in science and includes work from masters such as Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo and Newton.)
It is important to note that at every step the explanation (or theory) is open to refutation. Even today someone could come and refute the latest (accepted) explanations. However this person has to refute it in a manner that allows itself to be tested and possibly refuted again. If his explanation cannot be tested or cannot be proved then it is not science anymore.
Why is proof so important to science? Without proof we don't know what is rigorously correct (within a certain parameter space). More importantly we cannot predict what will happen next. For example, from the above explanations we can figure out what will float and what will sink. (Archimedes used it to test the purity of gold!) Objectivity is fundamental to science. It is this objectivity that gives us predictability.
Theory of evolution can give us pointers to where living things are headed. It may not be possible to see or observe the effects of evolution on humans or our pets. However it is quite clear in the way it works on bacteria and viruses. Rampant misuse of antibiotics has caused bacteria to evolve so that they are immune
to medicines. In the absence of anything better,the theory of evolution the the only way we can study the effect of this and how to prevent it from happening further. Intelligent design, while offering an attractive explanation for the current state of the world cannot help us in preventing the potential epistemological disaster.
Theory of evolution is by no means a closed subject. For that matter nothing is science is closed. Even solidly accepted theories fail in certain situations. Well understood and universally taught Newtons laws of motion are found deficient when explaining very small or very fast moving bodies.
A good science education must always teach the student of science to conjecture and to refute. It should teach the student to listen to others' conjectures and refutations. Most important of all that there is nothing sacred about science.
Science does not demand that it be understood and respected. There are any number of people in this world who barely understand the science behind everyday events and activities. It is just another field that some people find interesting to study and offer theories.
This raises the question why is there such a push to pass intelligent design as science? There are many other classes and forums in which these notions can be introduced to children. Teach them everything, religion,
philosophy and science. Teach them to respect everything, religion, philosophy and science.
Is intelligent design science? Should it be taught in science classes? What is science and what is it not?
The debate over the theory of evolution as a overruling of the existence of God has been going on in America for a long time. This should not be so. The debate becomes a lot clearer if one looks at the theory of evolution as a logical progression of science. It is just one small building block in the subject that we call science. It therefore has to abide by the rules of scientific study. Which is what this article is about.
Science seeks to explain the world through theories and hypotheses. By its very nature science allows itself to the refuted. It is through conjecture and refutation science progresses. In fact, refutation is such a fundamental tenet of science that irrefutable theories cannot be science. This is why God cannot be a part of
science. One cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.
Science typically proceeds in small steps. Little theories explain little observations and these theories are attached through further observations and the body of observations that can be explained grows.
A simple example is given here:
Consider the observations:
1. An apple falls from a tree
2. A hot air balloon rises
Explanations:
1. Earth pulls the apple down
2. Sky pulls the balloon up.
Counter questions:
1. Why does the sky not pull up the apple
2. Why does the earth not pull the balloon.
Second attempt.
1. Earth pulls apple down but air pushes it up.
However the pull wins.
2. Earth pull the balloon down but the air pushes it up.
In this case the push wins.
Second set of counter questions:
1. Why does the pull win
2. Why does the push win
Third attempt
1. The apple occupies a certain volume. The weight of the same volume of air is lighter than the apple hence it cannot be held up.
2. The balloon occupies a certain volume. The weight of the same volume of air is heavier than the balloon hence it goes up.
Test in the lab.
1. Measure the weights of equal volumes of apple and air and compare. Test if the explanation holds
2. Measure the weights of equal volumes of air and balloon and compare. Test if the explanation holds
Now, following these experiments we have a theory. This is roughly how science progresses. (What I made up here has had an incredibly rich history in science and includes work from masters such as Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo and Newton.)
It is important to note that at every step the explanation (or theory) is open to refutation. Even today someone could come and refute the latest (accepted) explanations. However this person has to refute it in a manner that allows itself to be tested and possibly refuted again. If his explanation cannot be tested or cannot be proved then it is not science anymore.
Why is proof so important to science? Without proof we don't know what is rigorously correct (within a certain parameter space). More importantly we cannot predict what will happen next. For example, from the above explanations we can figure out what will float and what will sink. (Archimedes used it to test the purity of gold!) Objectivity is fundamental to science. It is this objectivity that gives us predictability.
Theory of evolution can give us pointers to where living things are headed. It may not be possible to see or observe the effects of evolution on humans or our pets. However it is quite clear in the way it works on bacteria and viruses. Rampant misuse of antibiotics has caused bacteria to evolve so that they are immune
to medicines. In the absence of anything better,the theory of evolution the the only way we can study the effect of this and how to prevent it from happening further. Intelligent design, while offering an attractive explanation for the current state of the world cannot help us in preventing the potential epistemological disaster.
Theory of evolution is by no means a closed subject. For that matter nothing is science is closed. Even solidly accepted theories fail in certain situations. Well understood and universally taught Newtons laws of motion are found deficient when explaining very small or very fast moving bodies.
A good science education must always teach the student of science to conjecture and to refute. It should teach the student to listen to others' conjectures and refutations. Most important of all that there is nothing sacred about science.
Science does not demand that it be understood and respected. There are any number of people in this world who barely understand the science behind everyday events and activities. It is just another field that some people find interesting to study and offer theories.
This raises the question why is there such a push to pass intelligent design as science? There are many other classes and forums in which these notions can be introduced to children. Teach them everything, religion,
philosophy and science. Teach them to respect everything, religion, philosophy and science.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Cheaper always better?
Ten years ago, circa 1995, as a cash strapped graduate student in California, I bought a pair of trousers from Costco for $28. This seemed a perfectly reasonable price to pay. In the last month or so, with a reasonably well paying job, I bought three pairs of trousers for about $30.
So what happened?
Trousers, unlike my area of expertise - semiconductors, are not getting cheaper because we have better designs, or that we can make more trousers from the same amount of cotton or wool.
The answer to the question "So what happened" is not that easy. But once it is analyzed, it explains many other seemingly unrelated issues.
The foremost is productivity: people in the US are working more efficiently therefore producing more in the same amount of time. Whether it is stitching buttons or making trousers fly off the shelves, we are doing more in the same amount of time.
Next is average wages: for the amount of work produced people are getting paid less. So the cost per pair of pants has gone down. This gets even more stark when we look at the countries that are making these trousers. Earlier it used to be the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, countries that are cheaper than the US but not by much. Today it is Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The same dollar gets many more trousers made in these countries. The search for cheaper places will continue. It will not be long before the
Republic of Congo or Rwanda will become stable for business and they will be cheaper than India.
Third is economies of scale: With Walmart and Costco getting into the business of serving practically every aspect of human need, it is a lot easier for them to "squeeze" suppliers and transporter, and thus make it cheaper to buy and cheaper to transport goods. Net effect is that the supplier has smaller margins as do the
transporters.
Fourth is lowered services: Have you tried getting help with finding something specific in Costco or Walmart? They have adopted different approaches. Costco has very few but highly trained people
who do everything from pointing out where items are stocked, being the cash clerk and disposing off trash. Walmart hires low wage workers with little or no training to restock shelves. They may or may not
be able to help you with finding your things. Essentially you are on your own. This effect is seen everywhere: you talk to an ATM rather than a teller, a broken DSL connection takes days to fix,
it is harder to switch long-distance carriers today that it was ten years ago. In effect, the quantity and quality of services have gone down, hence cheaper.
Fifth is lowered profit margins: I have touched on this in the third point. But, Walmart is happy with a net profit of 2.7%. With sales pushing several hundred billions of dollars, it is a lot of cash. Also, expense per employee is low enough since there there are little or no incentives like profit sharing, stock options,
pensions. All this makes them work in a very lean fashion.
Sixth is comparison shopping: Pre-internet comparison shopping was restricted to physical comparison through newspapers, junk mail or actually visiting several stores. Now, wonderful tools like Bizrate.com or Dealtime.com will let you do that in a fraction of the time and compare many more stores. A great "deal" will tempt any user to pass up shopping at his local store (even if he likes the floor manager or the sales person) and buy it from an internet place or a store across the town.
So what is the fallout of all this?
Firstly, the goods are generally cheaper than ever before, even after accounting for shipping. The tax implications of buying outside the state are still unclear, but it is something that actually makes it worthwhile to buy off the internet today.
Secondly, there is a lot more variety and choice when you buy from Amazon. The Amazon apparel store is like Macys, Target, Bloomingdales, Lands End and many others in one. You can look for exactly the correct number of pleats you want in front of trousers which are the exact shade of green that you want.
Thirdly, shopping at Walmarts and Amazon will close down the last of the mom and pop stores, and even perhaps many of the medium sized players. The grocery stores vs workers union struggles of S. California in 2004 essentially highlighted the inability of Safeway and Albertsons to compete with Walmart in the business of selling groceries. The closing down of small store fronts will profoundly affect communities. By being small and a tad inefficient, they supported more workers. They also kept communities in a certain balance by not allowing the owners to treat the employees badly. Today there is effectively only the government that can twist the proverbial arm of Walmart to provide health benefits to its workers. By removing the personal touch to shopping, the shoppers have no loyalty to the shop, the owner or the product. They will happily take their business to the next cheapest vendor. This will make the system inherently unstable. Today's success story will not have enough foot traffic or "eyeballs" passing through it tomorrow and after a little struggle will go into chapter 11. The downtowns in prosperous communities will have nothing but galleries and restaurants. Restaurants will be owned by chains or will provide high-end entertainment to its rich clientele. This will similarly lead to the Walmartization of the restaurant business
too.
Fourthly, even large companies will continue to work towards cheaper goods and smaller margins. This will lead to tremendous instability in the financial health of these entities. A small delay, a small change in the price of oil, a small change in the salaries of the truck drivers, a small error in estimation of inventory etc will all lead to massive fluctuations in the stock price. With highly automated stock trading setups in place
a ten percent fall will trigger automatic sales leading to a dramatic drop in stock price quite disproportionate to the actual gap in estimated earnings and reported earnings.
Fifthly, to keep the prices low the companies cannot afford to hire trained staff or provide on job-training. The workers will work for years without maturing as employees and will remain entrenched in the lowest salary bracket. Even as their families grow their salaries will not grow. The expected upward mobility in job, salaries are expected and even necessary to have happy and stable families. In the absence of this upward mobility the families are effectively moving lower into and economic quagmire making it harder for the children to rise above it. The family issues aside, there will be a gradual deterioration of services provided. There will be more errors in processing of bank statements to filling prescriptions to putting together computers. There will me more and more people at the other end of helplines who have no idea how to fix your issues.
Finally, the only way to grow profits and satisfy the insatiable demand of Wall Street to grow the bottom-line is to sell more goods. To buy those goods the customers have to spend more. However, for
all the above reasons the salaries cannot be expected to increase. So the savings rates have to fall. This is already being seen. Americans are saving less than they ever have. This will force families to have ever decreasing financial buffer to tide over lean patches. With job cuts, lay offs becoming increasingly common, the country will head to a socio-economic disaster.
So what happened?
Trousers, unlike my area of expertise - semiconductors, are not getting cheaper because we have better designs, or that we can make more trousers from the same amount of cotton or wool.
The answer to the question "So what happened" is not that easy. But once it is analyzed, it explains many other seemingly unrelated issues.
The foremost is productivity: people in the US are working more efficiently therefore producing more in the same amount of time. Whether it is stitching buttons or making trousers fly off the shelves, we are doing more in the same amount of time.
Next is average wages: for the amount of work produced people are getting paid less. So the cost per pair of pants has gone down. This gets even more stark when we look at the countries that are making these trousers. Earlier it used to be the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, countries that are cheaper than the US but not by much. Today it is Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The same dollar gets many more trousers made in these countries. The search for cheaper places will continue. It will not be long before the
Republic of Congo or Rwanda will become stable for business and they will be cheaper than India.
Third is economies of scale: With Walmart and Costco getting into the business of serving practically every aspect of human need, it is a lot easier for them to "squeeze" suppliers and transporter, and thus make it cheaper to buy and cheaper to transport goods. Net effect is that the supplier has smaller margins as do the
transporters.
Fourth is lowered services: Have you tried getting help with finding something specific in Costco or Walmart? They have adopted different approaches. Costco has very few but highly trained people
who do everything from pointing out where items are stocked, being the cash clerk and disposing off trash. Walmart hires low wage workers with little or no training to restock shelves. They may or may not
be able to help you with finding your things. Essentially you are on your own. This effect is seen everywhere: you talk to an ATM rather than a teller, a broken DSL connection takes days to fix,
it is harder to switch long-distance carriers today that it was ten years ago. In effect, the quantity and quality of services have gone down, hence cheaper.
Fifth is lowered profit margins: I have touched on this in the third point. But, Walmart is happy with a net profit of 2.7%. With sales pushing several hundred billions of dollars, it is a lot of cash. Also, expense per employee is low enough since there there are little or no incentives like profit sharing, stock options,
pensions. All this makes them work in a very lean fashion.
Sixth is comparison shopping: Pre-internet comparison shopping was restricted to physical comparison through newspapers, junk mail or actually visiting several stores. Now, wonderful tools like Bizrate.com or Dealtime.com will let you do that in a fraction of the time and compare many more stores. A great "deal" will tempt any user to pass up shopping at his local store (even if he likes the floor manager or the sales person) and buy it from an internet place or a store across the town.
So what is the fallout of all this?
Firstly, the goods are generally cheaper than ever before, even after accounting for shipping. The tax implications of buying outside the state are still unclear, but it is something that actually makes it worthwhile to buy off the internet today.
Secondly, there is a lot more variety and choice when you buy from Amazon. The Amazon apparel store is like Macys, Target, Bloomingdales, Lands End and many others in one. You can look for exactly the correct number of pleats you want in front of trousers which are the exact shade of green that you want.
Thirdly, shopping at Walmarts and Amazon will close down the last of the mom and pop stores, and even perhaps many of the medium sized players. The grocery stores vs workers union struggles of S. California in 2004 essentially highlighted the inability of Safeway and Albertsons to compete with Walmart in the business of selling groceries. The closing down of small store fronts will profoundly affect communities. By being small and a tad inefficient, they supported more workers. They also kept communities in a certain balance by not allowing the owners to treat the employees badly. Today there is effectively only the government that can twist the proverbial arm of Walmart to provide health benefits to its workers. By removing the personal touch to shopping, the shoppers have no loyalty to the shop, the owner or the product. They will happily take their business to the next cheapest vendor. This will make the system inherently unstable. Today's success story will not have enough foot traffic or "eyeballs" passing through it tomorrow and after a little struggle will go into chapter 11. The downtowns in prosperous communities will have nothing but galleries and restaurants. Restaurants will be owned by chains or will provide high-end entertainment to its rich clientele. This will similarly lead to the Walmartization of the restaurant business
too.
Fourthly, even large companies will continue to work towards cheaper goods and smaller margins. This will lead to tremendous instability in the financial health of these entities. A small delay, a small change in the price of oil, a small change in the salaries of the truck drivers, a small error in estimation of inventory etc will all lead to massive fluctuations in the stock price. With highly automated stock trading setups in place
a ten percent fall will trigger automatic sales leading to a dramatic drop in stock price quite disproportionate to the actual gap in estimated earnings and reported earnings.
Fifthly, to keep the prices low the companies cannot afford to hire trained staff or provide on job-training. The workers will work for years without maturing as employees and will remain entrenched in the lowest salary bracket. Even as their families grow their salaries will not grow. The expected upward mobility in job, salaries are expected and even necessary to have happy and stable families. In the absence of this upward mobility the families are effectively moving lower into and economic quagmire making it harder for the children to rise above it. The family issues aside, there will be a gradual deterioration of services provided. There will be more errors in processing of bank statements to filling prescriptions to putting together computers. There will me more and more people at the other end of helplines who have no idea how to fix your issues.
Finally, the only way to grow profits and satisfy the insatiable demand of Wall Street to grow the bottom-line is to sell more goods. To buy those goods the customers have to spend more. However, for
all the above reasons the salaries cannot be expected to increase. So the savings rates have to fall. This is already being seen. Americans are saving less than they ever have. This will force families to have ever decreasing financial buffer to tide over lean patches. With job cuts, lay offs becoming increasingly common, the country will head to a socio-economic disaster.
Top ten movies
In the spirit of Rob (John Cusack) in High Fidelity, here are my top ten movies
1. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
3. Lord of the Rings (all three)
4. Before Sunset
5. Unforgiven
6. The Treasure of Sierra Madre
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. White
9. On Golden Pond
10. Full Metal Jacket
11. Special mettion: Dogville
1. Wonderful lines for Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. They deliver the lines with all the vitriol and one can possibly summon. Keeps the drama at a high level of tension as they throw intelligent but vicious verbal darts at each other all through the movie.
2. Tennessee Williams' lesser known play again masterfully scripted and acted by Elizabeth Taylor portraying the ambitions, quarrelsome wife and Paul Newman and the drunk, depressed husband living with thoughts of his glory days.
3. For once a film takes a literary masterpiece and converts it into a cinematic masterpiece. The story is told in a manner such that the movie medium can be put to greatest effect. Amazing graphics and fabulous
acting from all the stars. All three parts of the movie were shot simultaneously giving them a sense of continuity that seems to be lacking in a lot of sequels.
4. Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke was good. But nine years hence they have grown up, the script has grown up and therefore the effect of the movie is much more substantial. They talk about more mundane, but in a way deeper, things. Things that matter to us in our relationships on a daily basis.
5. This is an "unwestern". It is so good because it takes a western movie and turns all its key ingredients inside out. Clint Eastwood is off this peak as a bounty hunter. But the core dynamics of a small town and small groups is handled is an believable (thus accurate?) way unlike most westerns.
6. A young Humphrey Bogart is plays the role of a mirror that reflects all the misplaced self-confidence, then fear and finally, paranoia that comes with money. The transition from a penniless loafer to a paranoid gold digger is a journey that we might all undertake if we find ourselves in his position.
7. A feel good movie that has a certain neatness and surehanded way in which it deals with the dynamics of the relationship between men and the ability of the movie to encourage the view to make a logical leap of faith for the sake of the pleasure of watching the movie.
8. Another Julie Delpy starrer with the engmatic - Monalisa's smile like ending. The story based on a simple premise of a man getting back at his girlfriend is filmed with great precision and sensitivity. The director ties the loose ends in the final movie of the series - Red.
9. Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda make a fabulous pair as they walk down the path to old age and retired life is totally different ways - the woman can still find joy in a forest and the old man needs
a little boy to make him see and feel the joys of his own younger years and get back in touch with daughter played by Jane Fonda. Going by Jane Fonda's recent book, this never happened in real life.
10. Full Metal Jacket is a layered film and present the dilemma of the rational mind. The dilemma in this movie is the Vietnam war. Kubrik essentially highlights the ambivalence that so many of us have with all aspects of life. The absence of clear cut solutions and the shallowness of achievements. The last part of the movie when the protagonist "achieves" his dream is especially poignant.
11. This film is an artistic achievement where the film medium is more like a play or a book forcing the viewer to construct an imagined place and then fill it with the characters and their interactions. The story of human frailtly is superbly the told and terrifically acted by Nicole Kidman - the Katherine Hepburn of our generation.
1. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
3. Lord of the Rings (all three)
4. Before Sunset
5. Unforgiven
6. The Treasure of Sierra Madre
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. White
9. On Golden Pond
10. Full Metal Jacket
11. Special mettion: Dogville
1. Wonderful lines for Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. They deliver the lines with all the vitriol and one can possibly summon. Keeps the drama at a high level of tension as they throw intelligent but vicious verbal darts at each other all through the movie.
2. Tennessee Williams' lesser known play again masterfully scripted and acted by Elizabeth Taylor portraying the ambitions, quarrelsome wife and Paul Newman and the drunk, depressed husband living with thoughts of his glory days.
3. For once a film takes a literary masterpiece and converts it into a cinematic masterpiece. The story is told in a manner such that the movie medium can be put to greatest effect. Amazing graphics and fabulous
acting from all the stars. All three parts of the movie were shot simultaneously giving them a sense of continuity that seems to be lacking in a lot of sequels.
4. Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke was good. But nine years hence they have grown up, the script has grown up and therefore the effect of the movie is much more substantial. They talk about more mundane, but in a way deeper, things. Things that matter to us in our relationships on a daily basis.
5. This is an "unwestern". It is so good because it takes a western movie and turns all its key ingredients inside out. Clint Eastwood is off this peak as a bounty hunter. But the core dynamics of a small town and small groups is handled is an believable (thus accurate?) way unlike most westerns.
6. A young Humphrey Bogart is plays the role of a mirror that reflects all the misplaced self-confidence, then fear and finally, paranoia that comes with money. The transition from a penniless loafer to a paranoid gold digger is a journey that we might all undertake if we find ourselves in his position.
7. A feel good movie that has a certain neatness and surehanded way in which it deals with the dynamics of the relationship between men and the ability of the movie to encourage the view to make a logical leap of faith for the sake of the pleasure of watching the movie.
8. Another Julie Delpy starrer with the engmatic - Monalisa's smile like ending. The story based on a simple premise of a man getting back at his girlfriend is filmed with great precision and sensitivity. The director ties the loose ends in the final movie of the series - Red.
9. Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda make a fabulous pair as they walk down the path to old age and retired life is totally different ways - the woman can still find joy in a forest and the old man needs
a little boy to make him see and feel the joys of his own younger years and get back in touch with daughter played by Jane Fonda. Going by Jane Fonda's recent book, this never happened in real life.
10. Full Metal Jacket is a layered film and present the dilemma of the rational mind. The dilemma in this movie is the Vietnam war. Kubrik essentially highlights the ambivalence that so many of us have with all aspects of life. The absence of clear cut solutions and the shallowness of achievements. The last part of the movie when the protagonist "achieves" his dream is especially poignant.
11. This film is an artistic achievement where the film medium is more like a play or a book forcing the viewer to construct an imagined place and then fill it with the characters and their interactions. The story of human frailtly is superbly the told and terrifically acted by Nicole Kidman - the Katherine Hepburn of our generation.
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