5 years ago (Nov 2003) Buffett wrote a great article in FORTUNE that helps simplify the macroeconomic implications of a trade deficit. This device is the analogy of two islands: Thriftville and Squanderville…

We were taught in Economics 101 that countries could not for long sustain large, ever-growing trade deficits. At a point, so it was claimed, the spree of the consumption-happy nation would be braked by currency-rate adjustments and by the unwillingness of creditor countries to accept an endless flow of IOUs from the big spenders. And that’s the way it has indeed worked for the rest of the world, as we can see by the abrupt shutoffs of credit that many profligate nations have suffered in recent decades.

The U.S., however, enjoys special status. In effect, we can behave today as we wish because our past financial behavior was so exemplary–and because we are so rich. Neither our capacity nor our intention to pay is questioned, and we continue to have a mountain of desirable assets to trade for consumables. In other words, our national credit card allows us to charge truly breathtaking amounts. But that card’s credit line is not limitless.

Read Buffett’s original article.

Buffett even goes so far as to suggest a very creative solution – the creation of Import Credits that are issued to exporters based on the value of goods they sell abroad.

Seeking Alpha had a brief article this evening that pointed to Buffett’s original piece…

色即是空 空即是色

这句话带很深刻“禅意”的意思。

用英语来说：
Everything visible is empty.
The immaterial is material.

左边是“李孝利”在一部电影也叫“空既是色 ”。

如要继续了解“色即是空 空即是色”可以参考这里和这里。

你自己是败类装斯文，斯文装败类，斯文装斯文败类？

Robert Frost’s poem, often misremembered as “The Road Less Traveled” due to the last line…

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

今早“寻找阿尔法”有一篇文章叫：央行家能防止大萧条？

这里有更多的消息关于为什么现在的全球金融危机是上世纪90年代的互联网泡沫和亚洲金融危机的后果。

Greenspan’s second error was pegging interest rates too-low and too-long at 1%, and moving too slowly to lift the fed funds rate to a more neutral level, that could have taken the wind out of the housing bubble. Instead, Greenspan was a “serial bubble blower,” inflating commodity and housing prices at the same time, while casting a blind-eye to reckless sub-prime lending in the mortgage market.

格林斯潘的第二个错误是太长的时候压着利息太低，在1%，然后他太慢把这个利息率提到一个合理的比例，如没有压着利息率那么低，房地产泡沫就早结束了。反而，格林斯潘是个“连续造成泡沫着”，同时造成通货膨胀和放低长价格升高，并没有监督很高危险的按揭贷款。

After stock market “bubbles” collapse, coinciding with economic recessions, it can take several years until the forces of inflation gain the upper-hand over deflation. The textbook way to combat deflation is for central banks to rapidly expand the money supply or bank credit, and slash interest rates. That’s what the BoJ and Fed did in 2001, in a double barreled assault against deflation.

如同时有股市泡沫崩溃和经济衰退，经济的反弹经常需要几年。反弹的过程要求通货膨胀需要超过通货紧缩。最典型克服通货紧缩方式是央行来快速扩大货币的供应，银行信贷，或把利息率剪得很低。直至2001年，日本央行和美联是怎么做的－直接攻击通货紧缩。

One month into the Windows Mobile experience, I can report the original STABILITY from the new device honeymoon period is over.

1. Device occasionally upon receipt of SMS message Device hangs on key-lock screen

2. No way to silence call without sending to VM The lack of a good “Launcher” user interface can mostly be addressed with Spb Mobile Shell.

3. The lack of a Task Switcher can be addressed with HandySwitcher.

4. The lack of a World Clock can be addressed with Spb Time.

For the best sources of information about Treo Pro bugs and customization, visits:

Treo Pro @ Treo Central and Treo Pro @ XDA Developers

一切反动派都是纸老虎：

如若不被敌人反对那就不好了：

人民靠我们去组织：

我们大家要学习他：

艰苦的工作就象担子：

Great news today. The excellent “Pleco” Chinese <-> English and Chinese <-> Chinese dictionary was finally relased today! If you speak english and use Chinese then I can’t recommend this dictionary highly enough. Download it.

More information about Pleco…

Our flagship product, Pleco 2.0, gives you everything you need to look up and study Chinese vocabulary: content from seven different dictionaries, handwriting input, flexible Pinyin searches, audio recordings for over 34,000 words, stroke order diagrams, a built-in document reader, and one of the most advanced and customizable flashcard systems ever invented. And all of this running on a device you can carry around in your pocket.

More important than the software itself is the quality of the dictionaries that the Pleco team has licensed:

• ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive (almost 200,000 entries)
• Oxford Concise English & Chinese Dictionary
• Chinese-Chinese Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian
• 21st Century English-Chinese Dictionary (280,000 entries)
• Cheng & Tsui English-Chinese Lexicon of Business Terms

Go to www.pleco.com and take a closer look!

This was posted on NPR’s Science Friday…

Considering that the elections on the USA are typically something like 52% to 48% (that is, very rarely more than a 10-point-spread) it made me think more deeply into politics.

Consolation: political parties in america are not based on an underlying principle of conservation of the status-quo vs capitalism vs communism. Rather, political parties are closely akin to coalitions.

Reasoning: parties are fueled by the support of special interest groups. Parties divide up the special interest groups issue by issue, accounting for the base of the party, and then seek out new issues based on the desire to expand their party membership.

Interesting to note that based on demographic shifts in the USA, the republican party may have put itself on the wrong end of the growth trend.

Is it just the philosopher in me that believes the “party” should be based on a single underlying philosophy about what creates the optimal system of american government, and that all positions could be logically derived from this PoV? Perhaps I’m too simple minded in believing that there should be a theoretical underpinning to the management of what is ultimately interest/benefit. More importantly, perhaps we could never even arrive at agreed definitions within a party on what is “optimal”…

Libertarianism does seem to be somewhat in line with this logic: The government that governs best is the government that governs least.

有一篇英语文章关于卖衍生品的销售者怎么看衍生品。感觉很多开发软件的人是换了到华尔街去。他说“衍生品越复杂，赚的钱越多”。自己研究一下：

Customized and client-specific, these transactions also meant something else: fat spreads. By the time the 1990s rolled around, spreads on vanilla derivative transactions collapsed rapidly and new entrants moved in and competition increased. Doing a vanilla fixed-to-floating swap off the back of a bond issuance or floating-to-fixed swap to lock-in the rate on a bank financing simply wasn’t interesting – from a compensation perspective. Knock-ins, knock-outs, up-and-outs, down-and-ins, embedded bermuda swaptions, momentum caps, etc. all helped to differentiate solutions from competitors and preserve proprietary profits in trades. Volumes off the corporate desk simply weren’t great enough to make a business solely on vanilla trades, and smart and creative derivative originators, structures and traders found ways to “add value” through complexity.

参考原文在Seeking Alpha：Insights from a Derivatives Salesman