Money Archives - Page 19 of 27 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

C. P. Snow titled his last book, written shortly before he died, “A Coat of Varnish.” What he meant, as he put it, was that “Civilization is hideously fragile.” Civilization, that is to say, is like a thin coat of varnish spread on top of human savagery. The varnish looks terrific, but scratch it and what …

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Innovation

Exploring Millennial Romance and the Brave New World of Dating Apps

by Emily Brindley

You can find articles, video clips and nearly every type of media content deriding dating apps as the death of romance and the downfall of traditional dating. For some, that translates and escalates to a belief that millennials—the primary users of dating apps—have killed romance. A hefty claim, to be sure, but not entirely unfounded. …

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Creative Capital

Europe Fails to Build the New Man

by Greg Curtis

Since human beings settled into communities—that is, since most of us stopped being hunter-gatherers—a primary goal of mankind has been to improve how we are governed. We wanted governments that were more representative, fair, and efficient, governments that could improve our economic circumstances and defend themselves (and us) from outside influence or destruction. We wanted …

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Creative Capital

The Instability of Europe

by Greg Curtis

Between the first and second world wars, most of the European governments—Britain and, to a lesser extent, France, being exceptions—lived lives that were, to paraphrase Hobbes, weak, unstable, and short. The Weimar Republic in Germany faced existential issues from the beginning. Germany had been humiliated in World War I. It had been burdened with impossibly …

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Creative Capital

On Populism

by Greg Curtis

Civilization is like a very fine suit of clothes that is just slightly too small for us. The term “populism” derives from the Latin, populus, meaning “people.” It doesn’t mean “people” in the sense of “There are a lot of people who don’t read my blog.” It means “people” in the sense of a nation, a …

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Creative Capital

Investing in a Rigged Market, Part IV

by Greg Curtis

If we care about the health of free market economies, then we need to care about how efficiently capital is allocated in those economies. And if we care about efficient capital allocation, then we need to care about the health and efficiency of capital markets, because those markets are the principal instruments we have for …

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Money

Seek, and You Shall Find… Conflicting Investment Advice

by Bruce Zewe

The run of this current Raging Bull of a stock market has been exceptionally long: eight-plus years. (The average bull market has lasted four years, nine months.) In response there has been great conjecture by investment firms, financial advisers, brokers, and market pundits in Pittsburgh about how much longer the market may rage. These opinions …

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Creative Capital

Squeezing out the Investment Experts

by Greg Curtis

The core problems with central bankers, which have led directly to the catastrophes of the Tech Bust, the Financial Crisis, the pathetically weak recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-09, and the near-destruction of the asset management business, are: groupthink, arising out of the fact that every central banker in the world went to the …

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Creative Capital

The Fed and Friends

by Greg Curtis

We are talking about the traumatizing events that rocked the asset management business, to say nothing of the world, beginning in 2008, a calamity brought to us courtesy of the world’s central bankers. I’ve discussed elsewhere the bizarre strategies of the U.S. Fed and its various doppelgängen at other central banks around the world. But …

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Creative Capital

Investing in a Rigged Market

by Greg Curtis

The asset management business as we know it today got started in the mid-19th century. The impetus for investment management firms separate from banks arose out of the awkward fact that banks often fail, while asset management firms hardly ever do. According to Nigel Edward Morecroft, who has studied the history of asset management, firms …

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Creative Capital

To Experts: a Few Words of Wisdom

by Greg Curtis

“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.” –William F. Buckley I began this series of posts by focusing on the annoyance ordinary people experience when they are constantly being told what to do by an ever-proliferating series of experts in almost every field …

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Creative Capital

Back to the Middle Ages: A Century of “Expertism” in America

by Greg Curtis

The vast Federal regulatory apparatus that we know and love today got its start early in the 20th century under President Woodrow Wilson. Appropriately, Wilson was the only President in U.S. history to earn a PhD–he’d been president of Princeton University. At that time the world still believed that Great Britain was the globe’s most powerful …

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Creative Capital

It was a Good Idea in Theory…

by Greg Curtis

Back in 1986 I launched a wealth management firm I conceitedly called “Greycourt”—it’s an anagram for my name. The firm met with modest success and in 1988 I incorporated it. I was probably the most hopeless, bumbling entrepreneur in the history of private enterprise, but somehow I’ve been with Greycourt for 31 years. For the …

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Creative Capital

Democracy, Populism, and the Tyranny of the Experts, Part XI

by Greg Curtis

As far as reigning in annoying experts is concerned, Congress and the judiciary are a bust, albeit with a few tiny bright spots on the distant horizon, twinkling away like dying lighthouses on a storm-tossed sea. But what about the Presidency? As noted earlier in this series, Donald Trump was the candidate of people who …

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Creative Capital

When Experts Judge the Experts

by Greg Curtis

In my last post we examined the (pathetic) attempts of Congress to control the tyranny of the experts. Fortunately, Congress isn’t the only weapon in the battle against expert oppression, even at the Federal level. Let’s take a look at the judiciary. But before we do, let’s pause to savor the delicious irony of what …

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Creative Capital

Democracy, Populism, and the Tyranny of the Experts, Part IX

by Greg Curtis

“The complexity of modern life has steadily whittled away the functions the ordinary citizen can intelligently and comprehendingly perform for himself…When he sits down to breakfast and looks at his morning paper, he reads about a whole range of vital and intricate issues and acknowledges…that he has not acquired the competence to judge most of …

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Money

Will Someone Please Tell Me What This Bitcoin/Blockchain Thing Is All About?

by Thomas L. Wentling Jr.

Everyone has heard of Bitcoin by now (by convention, it’s capitalized when used as a protocol and lower case when used as a unit of exchange, like a dollar), but very few understand the importance of the “blockchain” technology that underpins it. This article expresses no opinion one way or the other on bitcoin and …

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Creative Capital

Democracy, Populism, and the Tyranny of the Experts, Part VIII

by Greg Curtis

Freedom is better, even when it’s worse. We might think about experts the way we think about stop signs (bear with me on this…) To understand the expert-stop sign analogy let’s begin with Arthur C. Brooks, who has written (in “Foreign Affairs” and elsewhere) about what he calls “the dignity deficit,” which he believes cost Mrs. Clinton …

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Creative Capital

Democracy, Populism, and the Tyranny of the Experts, Part VII

by Greg Curtis

Viewed through the lens of “the tyranny of the experts,” it’s easy to see that in the last election Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the experts, while Donald Trump was the candidate of people who were tired of being tyrannized by them. Clinton is an expert herself—she’s a lawyer who practiced with The Rose …

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Business

The Union Project

by Lori Jakiela

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread.” –Studs Terkel When my friend Sara asks me to work a catering gig, a hipster-ish wedding in a rehabbed church called The Union Project, I say, “I am so in,” and she says, “Really?” as if she expected me to say no. …

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Retirement

“And… Action!”

by Evan Pattak

Editor’s note: Studies show that hundreds of thousands of people across southwestern Pennsylvania are nearing retirement or already have left the workforce. What the studies don’t tell us is how these new retirees will be spending their time and resources… and what impact those choices will have on the region. In this second installment of …

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Business

Examining Austin as a Boomtown—Lessons for Pittsburgh?

by Paul Scripko

Today’s high in Austin is 104 degrees, with 106 predicted for tomorrow. Even the native Texans, proud and defensive of the State’s hardships, are complaining. It has become a standard topic of conversation between strangers in elevators and in bars. And still the masses make their way here. Sit in traffic—which we do a lot of …

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