Leithner&Company Pty Ltd - The Leithner Letter
The Leithner Letter is a great monthly read published by some investment advisors out of Australia. They specialize in extolling the virtues of Graham, Dodd and Warren Buffett's investment styles and attempt to offer a comprehensive view of what is currently taking place in the financial markets. As always taking advantage of the idiocy of the masses is the key.
We have academics to thank for MPT, business schools to thank for academics, universities to thank for business schools and politicians to thank for universities. Mssrs Buffett and Munger have for decades and to various degrees castigated them all; and a new set of circulars to shareholders, entitled Crusoe Visits Academic Island, broadens and deepens their fusillade. It shows that living standards owe little or nothing to either institutionalised research and development or Â?educationÂ? Â? particularly the bastardised (i.e., tax-subsidised) variety imparted in contemporary universities and business schools. For individuals, education (in the proper sense of the term) is indeed priceless stuff, and in particular the private returns to self-education can be great. But what about the endlessly-trumpeted Â?returns to societyÂ? that allegedly derive from mass education in state-directed institutions? These are much lower than academics and politicians blithely and relentlessly assert. Indeed, like the results of most activities organised and financed by politicians, the returns to taxpayers are much more likely to be negative than positive.
Exacerbating the Distemper of Our Times, then, are some false, destructive and just plain crazy notions that are zealously propounded by powerful politicians and their court intellectuals. These ideas, whether expressed in their military, economic or financial variants, commandeer others� property, centralise decision-making in élites� hands and generate interventionist policies. These élites� unspoken motto is �we�re smarter than you and we know better than you do what�s good for you; so shut up, step aside and let us work our wonders.� Vastly overestimating their intelligence (and underestimating the brains of the benighted), flouting the laws of human action and lacking any meaningful feedback mechanism, this arrogant élite�s policies almost always lead to tears (see in particular Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution, Liberty Press, 1952, 1990, ISBN: 086597084; Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, Basic Books, 1981, 1995, ISBN: 0465042333; Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Basic Books, 1995, ISBN: 0465089941; and Jim Powell, FDR�s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, Crown Forum, 2003, ISBN: 0761501657).
The Leithner Letter is a great monthly read published by some investment advisors out of Australia. They specialize in extolling the virtues of Graham, Dodd and Warren Buffett's investment styles and attempt to offer a comprehensive view of what is currently taking place in the financial markets. As always taking advantage of the idiocy of the masses is the key.
We have academics to thank for MPT, business schools to thank for academics, universities to thank for business schools and politicians to thank for universities. Mssrs Buffett and Munger have for decades and to various degrees castigated them all; and a new set of circulars to shareholders, entitled Crusoe Visits Academic Island, broadens and deepens their fusillade. It shows that living standards owe little or nothing to either institutionalised research and development or Â?educationÂ? Â? particularly the bastardised (i.e., tax-subsidised) variety imparted in contemporary universities and business schools. For individuals, education (in the proper sense of the term) is indeed priceless stuff, and in particular the private returns to self-education can be great. But what about the endlessly-trumpeted Â?returns to societyÂ? that allegedly derive from mass education in state-directed institutions? These are much lower than academics and politicians blithely and relentlessly assert. Indeed, like the results of most activities organised and financed by politicians, the returns to taxpayers are much more likely to be negative than positive.
Exacerbating the Distemper of Our Times, then, are some false, destructive and just plain crazy notions that are zealously propounded by powerful politicians and their court intellectuals. These ideas, whether expressed in their military, economic or financial variants, commandeer others� property, centralise decision-making in élites� hands and generate interventionist policies. These élites� unspoken motto is �we�re smarter than you and we know better than you do what�s good for you; so shut up, step aside and let us work our wonders.� Vastly overestimating their intelligence (and underestimating the brains of the benighted), flouting the laws of human action and lacking any meaningful feedback mechanism, this arrogant élite�s policies almost always lead to tears (see in particular Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution, Liberty Press, 1952, 1990, ISBN: 086597084; Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, Basic Books, 1981, 1995, ISBN: 0465042333; Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Basic Books, 1995, ISBN: 0465089941; and Jim Powell, FDR�s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, Crown Forum, 2003, ISBN: 0761501657).
posted by Champion at 9:58 AM
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