Summarize and Simplify, Please

An excerpt from a reader comment: "Perhaps you would be kind enough to summarize the matter in terms simple enough that we mere BS's would be confident to understand."

Our response was: "Thank you for the compliments and commentary. Please don't take this the wrong way and be patient with me... I'm no Einstein, nor MBA, just a rank and file working stiff, like Little Tommy Shaw said "a blue collar man" who reads a little, and sometimes can think. There are many out there far more educated and intelligent than moi....

The real business of money management is not managing money, it is getting money to manage.” - Mark Hurley, Goldman Sachs report on the evolution of the investment management industry (see WSJ 11/16/95). Many contributors are MS, MBA, JD, PHD and/or licensed financial professionals. To be clear, I'm not trying to get anyone's money and I have no agenda, just trying to share information.

This isn't rocket science, but unfortunately, neither is it the stuff of sound bytes, elevator versions, for those with ADD or who desire a short read during the daily constitution. Searching, sourcing, sampling, sequencing, then decomposing, decluttering, masticating and regurgitating, all for adsorption and digestion, is resource intensive. But that's part of the reward, sifting through a pan of dirt and gravel to find a nugget or two. To give examples: try sound sampling a Mozart symphony into a 2 minute Phil Spector bubble gum rock song. If you can... put the sum of the Vedas, Quran or Tanakh into 500 words. 

It's the bigger picture, not an easy task given the interrelationships and correlations, as macroeconomics and finance are intertwined like "spaghetti code". In the process, like Howard Hawkes, a huge amount of detail gets left on the floor. The result of this culling is that certain aspects and details get left out as the comment from orchestra below indicates. I am on part 3, to get to the "conclusion" probably 3 or 4 more parts depending... In the final part, I usually bust out "Lebowski's rug", which really ties the room together, usually.

"The rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth." - Baz Luhrmann


"Take it for what its worth, take the best and leave the rest." - The Nattering Naybob"

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