A late summer rant and a rave

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1. Let's start with a new movie called, "Dumb Money". After watching the trailer for Dumb Money and seeing a couple of ads, the experience raised a question in my mind....is it OK to criticize a film one has never seen? Logic dictates that the answer is no. Call me illogical.

What turned me off initially was the commercial touting how the film"...gives a riotous middle finger to the capitalist swine on Wall Street." My, how deliciously Populist. The film creators have obviously positioned Dumb Money as a paean to the little guy fighting against the evil asset managers, punctuated with an F-bomb per minute, until the digitally-wired counter culture decks the big money guys holding a large short position.

Yes it happened, but I'm tired of class war art. In this case, people will make a lot of money by trashing Capitalism and its adherents. Quite a paradox.

2. Let's end with a positive take on American Express's new method to redeem cardmember reward points. In the old days, if you wanted to cover a portion of your card charges with points; you had to go through this ritual of scrolling through transactions and applying points individually by transaction, in order to obtain the credit against your balance of charges. Not anymore!

One click and the entire value of your points is credited against your next bill. No more trolling and scrolling through your transactions and applying points by transaction to obtain the credit. Stupendous.

Blessed with friends on the other side

Wikipedia image This post contains excerpts from an April 10 e-mail response to a dear friend of mine (edited for emphasis and anonymity). “Dear Mortimer, I’ll say hello to the guys for you and I’ll be thinking about you this evening. As for politics, yes, we tend to gravitate toward sources that share our views. However, I also read the New York Times Op-ed pages and watch MSNBC (as hard as those tasks are for me). I suppose you watch Fox on occasion and I know you read the WSJ – so good for both of us. We try. The state-sponsored education you cite that we both benefited from, came largely from our parents' sweat equity – translated into tax dollars – that funded the University of Wisconsin system. True, my friend. But, I'm not arguing for zero taxation, or zero government involvement in our lives. When Progressives argue in favor of entitlement programs, they'll sometimes cite Social Security (under-...

Because it's not theirs to change

Freepik image This week there was controversy stemming from a publisher's decision to edit versions of children's stories written by the late Roald Dahl . The edits, whether inspired by Netflix (who according to Forbes purchased the rights to Dahl's work) or the publisher Puffin Books , sparked a public outcry and PR nightmare. The publisher curated an alternative version to the original work from Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (a story later adapted to make the film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ), ostensibly to remove insensitive terms. There are several reasons why this ill-conceived, if well-intentioned attempt at inclusiveness -- a term becoming increasingly elastic -- failed miserably. I'm not discussing the evils of censorship today. Altering original art work to appeal to others is ill advised for another reason.....it's not theirs to change (and doing so can backfire). One ...

Economics 101 for the rest of us

W arren Buffet and Carl Icahn are famous investors but fewer people may know Ray Dalio. Mr. Dalio founded an investment firm 40 years ago called Bridgewater Associates. With $160 billion under management, Bridgewater runs one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, Bridgewater website I recently discovered (among 3 million other people) a thirty minute YouTube video that Mr. Dalio produced to explain fundamentals of what he calls the economic machine . This video, which he narrates has been translated into several languages and viewed over 3,200,000 times. The content begins slowly with basic concepts but progresses to explain the primary levers that policy-makers use to manage and stimulate the economy. You can find it here . There are numerous lessons cleverly and clearly explained here. Example: I hadn't appreciated why economists seem obsessed with Wage Growth until I watched this simp...

john maddente | midwestern clarity

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