Month: November 2011

Two really excellent interviews.

Consuela Mack interviews Mark Holowesko, who I’d never heard of but who became Templeton’s director of Research/PM at 27, and runs a Global Value product as Holowesko Partners today.  He’s an avid cyclist and his firm sponsor the Garmin Cervelo team.  On a multitude of angles, his investment views line up with my less-developed investing “world-view” and is good framework for fleshing out a more articulated view.

Charlie Rose’s extended interview of Seth Klarman is a special gem – Klarman has remarkebly few public appearances.  He touches on philanthropy, importance of Ben Graham’s legacy, and the staying power of his book.  Also a lot of valuable perspective from a really smart guy on the current economic mess – role of government, moral hazard, leverage, and being contrarian. (Look at minute 34 in the Klarman interview – comments on the bias of institutional influence – erosion in value proposition of investment stewardship.)

I’m late to the game on this subject and article in the NYT.  Fascinating material and really puts in perspective the potential for disruption and change available from the building blocks in place today.  It’s easy to forget the power of innovation and driving change against a backdrop of economic turmoil and deflationary pressures, but this perspective really drives home the importance of being involved in and exposed to technology from an investing perspective as well as just general base of knowledge and familiarity.

More handwringing observations on the power of the 1%, but still I see little out there offering pragmatic solutions.  Stiglitz piece from Vanity Fair talks about the distortions and economic costs of an uneven playing field.  Lucid framework for observing the structural problems – I guess understanding the dynamics of the dangerously flawed status quo is a good starting point to understanding what mechanisms got us to this place and how to begin to reverse or dismantle that system in the least painful way.