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The Perils of Fed Speak

“Our regulators are proving worse than the Bourbons: they have learnt nothing and forgotten everything.” — Martin Sandbu, Financial Times, quoting Talleyrand Previously in this series: Can the Fed be Saved?For nearly three decades the U.S. Fed has followed easy money policies regardless of economic conditions, giving birth to a series of economic crises unlike any the …

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Creative Capital

Can the Fed be Saved?

“History will give a full accounting of the grave errors committed [by the US Fed].” Kevin Warsh, former Fed board member “Decennial financial blowups aren’t the stuff of great powers – at least, not for long.” Stanley Druckenmiller Long-term readers of these essays know that I am no fan of the U.S. Fed. In my view …

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Creative Capital

The Thrilling Conclusion!

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clarke I began this series on generative AI because an irate reader had suggested that my blogs were written by a particularly doltish AI bot. Now that we know a lot more about generative AI we can decide whether my irked reader could even …

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Creative Capital

What’s All the Panic About?

“I don’t think there is a single task you can assign a junior analyst, banker, developer, teacher or lawyer that can’t be accomplished more quickly, more smartly and much more cheaply with [generative AI].” Ben Hunt “Every new technology is the Full Employment Act for ethicists and scolds.” Andy Kessler Previously in this Series: Look at What …

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Creative Capital

Look at What AI Can Do

“[Generative AI] bids to transform the human cognitive process as it has not been shaken up since the invention of printing.” Henry Kissinger et al. Previously in this series: Poems and College Essays by Chat GPT, Am I a Bot? Part IV “I don’t think anybody’s job is safe. I am so excited to be …

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Creative Capital

Poems and College Essays by Chat GPT

“LLMs [that is, large language model generative AI systems] are essentially ‘conventional wisdom’ machines.” – Bruno Massarelli Previously in this series: The Bully Effect, Am I a Bot? Part III Why is generative AI – like Chat GPT – such a threat to Google’s internet search revenue? To understand why, let’s engage in a thought …

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Creative Capital

Banks – and Reputations – Go Poof

[I’m interrupting my series on generative AI for this bulletin on Silicon Valley Bank.] “How did you go bankrupt? Bill asked. Two ways, Mike said. Gradually and then suddenly.” — Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Is it just me or was there anything about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank that wasn’t annoying in the extreme? Let’s take a …

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Creative Capital

The Bully Effect

“I love you.” Bing/ChatGPT to tech reporter It’s almost impossible to overestimate the stakes for generative AI systems like ChatGPT. Google has long dominated Internet search, holding more than a 90% market share. Microsoft’s Bing, meanwhile, has been a pathetic also-ran, holding down market shares in the single digits and being not only largely ignored but …

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Creative Capital

Am I a Bot? Part II

ChatGPT is scary good. Elon Musk Every so often a technology captures the world’s imagination. The Economist [Generative AI] is as important as the PC, as the internet. Bill Gates I think it will be the most significant technological transformation in human history. Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, the developer of ChatGPT AI relieves people of their …

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Creative Capital

Am I a Bot?

A month or so ago a reader of these pages wrote in to let me know she had concluded that my essays had been written by “a particularly dim-witted Artificial Intelligence bot.” Well! I’ve received many critical and intemperate responses to these writings over the years, but that was the first time I’d been accused …

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Creative Capital

Lord Joe Hardy

I’d assured Joe Hardy that his vision for Nemacolin was flat-out nuts. But Joe was as good as his word and over the years Nemacolin blossomed into a first-class destination resort. Joe’s hotel gained Triple A 5-Diamond status, the resort’s wine cellar grew into the largest in Pennsylvania, and his restaurant became the most expensive …

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Joe Buys the Place at Auction

“I guess that all I can hope for is that, when people think of me, they think, ‘Hey, that jackass started out with only $5,000 and made a fortune. Maybe I can, too!’” Joe Hardy to Jeff Sewald in Pittsburgh Quarterly Previously in this series: Firings All Around! The Nemacolin property was being sold at a bankruptcy …

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Creative Capital

Firings All Around!

I had no choice but to fire “Harry” on the spot – and then have him carefully escorted off the property so he wouldn’t steal the silverware – but that left me with no one to run Nemacolin and four muckety-mucks arriving in a few days. “Don,” the weird private eye I’d hired, promptly offered …

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Creative Capital Money

The Plot Thickens

I’d hired a guy named “Harry” to run Nemacolin for me, and a private eye named “Don” to check up on Harry, but I wasn’t a completely hands-off boss. As Harry began improving the ambience of the place, I got involved, changing the named from “Nemacolin” to “Nemacolin Woodlands” and sketching out a logo that …

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Creative Capital Money

Joe Hardy, Nemacolin and Me

Some years ago I became the head of a family office for one of America’s wealthiest families. Very near the top of my to-do list, which the family had unceremoniously handed me on my first day, was something that read, “Sell Nemacolin.” As far as I knew, Nemacolin had been a famous chief of the …

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Creative Capital Money

Are Happy Days Here Again?

Given two back-to-back horrific years – 2020 and 2021 – you might have supposed that a kind God would have given us a break in 2022. No such luck – The Evil Years continued. War in Ukraine On the morning of February 24, 2022, the New Year having hardly gotten started, the vaunted Russian army …

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Three Years to Forget

In my view we can take 2020, 2021, and 2022 and stick them where the sun don’t shine. I know, I know, I need to keep matters in perspective. Those three years weren’t actually as bad as, say, the Black Death (200 million dead), the Great Depression, World War II (120 million dead). They weren’t …

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Final Thoughts on Cuba and Ukraine

“Never in history has Russia made such stupid decisions.” — Russian General Leonid Ivashov What can we learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis way back in 1962 that might be useful in navigating Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats today? Here are some thoughts. Previously in this series: Too Who Blinked, Pt VI Don’t panic Although the …

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Who Blinked?

As we noted last week, several days into the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy began to receive almost bizarre letters from Nikita Khrushchev – long, disjointed missives that seemed to be almost steam-of-conscious ramblings. One letter offered to remove the missiles if the US would promise publicly not to invade Cuba. But very shortly after …

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Creative Capital Money

The Khrushchev Conundrum

“President Kennedy will] make a fuss, make more of a fuss, and then agree.” — Nikita Khrushchev, predicting how JFK would respond to the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Previously in this series:Too Close For Comfort, Pt IV We’ve walked through the actual events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so let’s now look at the negotiations …

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Creative Capital Money

Too Close for Comfort

“This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, it was the most dangerous moment in human history.” — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Last week we watched as the captain and political officer of a Soviet B-59 submarine agreed to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the US Navy ships that had located it. …

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Creative Capital Money

The Blackest Day

“It isn’t the first step that concerns me, but both sides escalating to the fourth or fifth step and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so.” JFK to EXCOMM Previously in this series: DEFCON 3, Pt II On October 25, 1962, the world was very close to …

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