The Twelve Apostles - the undisputed highlight of the Great Ocean Road - are actually misnamed. There's only seven or eight of them left, and they're all being steadily eroded by the waves; in this photo, you can see the notch being cut in the base of the nearest stack.
They'll have to rename it The Three Wise Men before long.
More Apostles here, and here's a former Apostle.
Bells Beach is one of the most famous surf beaches in Australia. There were some decent three-metre waves breaking when I stopped by, and a few brave surfers out catching them (even though it was about fifteen degrees out there).
I was shooting from the beach for these, and the surfers were a fair way out - still turned out OK though.
More Bells Beach action here, here, and a pretty good one here.
Hail piled up outside St. Paul's Cathedral on Flinders Street after the Gigantic Hailstorm Apocalypse this afternoon.
If I wanted gigantic storms, I'd have stayed in Singapore!
This was the scene at the corner of Flinders and Russell Streets, in the middle of the most ferocious storm to hit Melbourne in twenty years. Hail, lightning, and probably two inches of rain in ten minutes. (The road was under a foot of water by the time the rain calmed down.)
Off on holidays with one of Stuttgart's finest (previously on JRE: Detroit's finest). Posting will be light. Pix TK.
In the meantime, here's something to chew on: you are more likely to be shot dead in Omaha, Nebraska (home of Berkshire Hathaway and not much else) than in Los Angeles.
So what's the Economist's policy on printing swear words?
Is it, as per this JRE post from last year, to mask them with some tactful asterisks?
Or is it, as per this week's Rebuilding RBS briefing, to print 'em all and damn the torpedoes?
Why did RBS’s bit of ABN lose so much money? It may reflect arbitrary accounting allocations after the event. Even so, there is little question that ABN’s investment bank was a weak business. A former ABN credit officer who left before 2007 says its risk systems and communication lines were a “complete clusterfuck”.
(Not that I mind either way. A bit more swearing in the Economist would liven it up immeasurably.)
We've secretly put caffeine in Marketwatch.com columnist Paul Farrell's decaf skinny soy vanilla hazelnut mocha chai latte. Let's see if he notices...
Remember Charlie Ellis' famous 1975 classic: "Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing?" Like Napoleon Hill's "Think & Grow Rich" everyone on Wall Street has read it. Well, guess what: Charlie failed us the past decade. Wall Street lost trillions, lost 11% of your money. Adjusted for inflation, Wall Street lost 20% of your money. Warning: Wall Street will do it again by 2020.
Another 20% (inflation adjusted) down-leg by the end of 2020? Yeah, I'll take that bet.
You cannot win at Wall Street's "Loser's Game." The past decade proves it. The house always wins in Vegas and on Wall Street.
The past decade proves it... and what about the nineties? The eighties? The seventies? The sixties? The fifties? The forties? The... okay, not the thirties... the twenties? The teens? the 1900s? The 1890s? Hell, the 1860s saw a 12% annualised return, and the 1840s were pretty rockin' as well.
So why bet on the house? Why bet with the Wall Street casino for another decade?
Because sixteen out of the past eighteen decades have had positive returns, and the two "down" decades were both within spitting distance of flat?
Why? You're betting in a rigged casino. Worse, they keep adding powerful new tools, scams and algorithms to their "financial weapons of mass destruction" arsenal, as Warren Buffett calls this mysterious $670 trillion global shadow banking world of derivatives. You cannot win.
Oh, god, here we go, he's going to start ranting about how credit default swaps will blow up your pension fund.
Statistically, the odds now predict Wall Street losing another 20% of your money in the next decade.
Which odds would those be? 'cause I've already said I'll take the other side of that bet.
The momentum's headed down. So, what should you do? Sell all your stocks, ETFs, bonds and funds. Get out of commodities and gold. Sell.
And put the money in what, exactly? Canned goods? Aren't those commodities too? (But give him credit: by saying "sell gold", he's managed to distinguish himself from the usual gold-and-guns crazies.)
What do you expects some kind of divine intervention will save you? Get real, consider the "Swiss Family Robinson" scenario.
...oh, wait, he is saying to put everything in canned goods. I dunno. The yield on canned goods isn't so crash hot. Is there anything this guy does like investing in?
Studies prove that nobody -- neither Wall Street pros nor Main Street amateurs -- can predict long-term trends. But we do know Wall Street's high-frequency quant traders are making thousands of millisecond bets every second gambling on short-term shifts in volatile markets.
See? He likes investing in high-frequency stat-arb hedge funds! (He seems to be absolutely convinced that HF guys are taking all of his hard-earned, so that's where he should be putting his money.)
Eight reasons Wall Street will lose another 20% in the next decade...
Whatever; whatever; whatever; that's not right that's not even wrong; whatever; whatever; seriously? Lobbyists?; whatever.
The Wall Street casino's version of "Liar's Poker" is a "Loser's Game,"[...]
I thought the Wall Street casino's version of "Liar's Poker" was Liar's Poker.
So again I ask you: Do you really want to bet on the market winning for the next decade? Do you really believe that stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, commodities and bonds will make a profit in the next decade after Wall Street's miserable performance the past decade? Trust them, you lose.
Yeah. Yeah, I do want to bet on the market winning. Because while stocks were down over the decade, gold had a blinder (up 250% over the decade). Even boring old US Treasuries made 110% total return over the decade. Commodities as a whole were up. Aussie stocks were up 50%. Chinese stocks doubled (although they got there the long way, losing 25% between 2000 and 2005). The point is: diversify.
Gold's just had a huge run higher, and it'll probably have a pretty crappy decade. But stocks should do well. Bonds are a bit iffy, but they'll still give you yield no matter which way they go. The point is, if you diversify, you'll be less exposed to the vagaries of a single asset class (which is what this guy seems to be ranting about, even though he's suggesting bailing on every single asset class except guns).
Okay, I know this whole post was a bit facetious. And I know Farrell and Marketwatch.com are just whoring for page-views. But I don't think I've ever seen so much wild-eyed rubbish in one place before (with one notable exception). Seriously, Paul mate... switch to decaf.
OMG STOP THE PRESSES: Singapore's service standards are "appalling", reports Pravda:
Six high-level business leaders banded together on Monday to address service standards in Singapore, which they said are in dire straits.
Harsh words were used to describe the service sector here. The CEO of Capitaland Group Liew Mun Leong said he was concerned about 'the severe deteriotation of service quality', an 'appalling situation that appears chronic'.
So does this mean the nauseatingly earnest Are You Being Served campaign (previously on JRE) isn't helping improve service standards? Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
I have nine monitors on my desk at work. That might sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the setup that appeared on Lifehacker earlier today - an overcaffeinated day-trader in the States has set up a home office with forty monitors. ("Originally there was to be 60", he notes in the post.)
Here's one-third of his setup:
So, I'm officially stumped: how the hell would anyone use forty monitors? I'm assuming he's doing some sort of systematic trading mumble swerve, but there's still no way that that takes forty screens. So what's going on here? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Because there's just not enough "WTF, China?!" news hitting the wires this week, here's a great photo-essay from Foreign Policy about the rash of golf courses springing up on Hainan island (they call it "China's Hawaii", and not without cause). The subhed says it all:
Green lawns and sand traps are now replacing ancient villages and tropical forests on Hainan Island, one of China's most pristine spots. Necessary development, or destructive clear-cutting?
I'll take "destructive clear-cutting" for 200, Alex. And get a load of this:
While between 100 and 300 courses are expected to be built here, the most mysterious project -- and by far the most audacious -- is the latest offering from Hong Kong's Mission Hills Group, already owners of a 12-course resort in southern China's Guangdong province. Its Hainan club, when completed, will be the world's largest, with some 22 courses covering an area nearly 1.5 times the size of Manhattan.
Who on earth needs twenty-two golf courses in one place? WTF, China?!
Aussie house prices increase 1.8% in January and 11.8% year-on-year; first home buyers seen singing I'm forever blowing bubbles, housing bubbles in the air....; West Ham United sues for copyright infringement...
Every hedge fund in the world is short a stack of EUR; George Soros sues for copyright infringement...
POUND COULD COLLAPSE WITHIN WEEKS, PREDICTS BILLIONAIRE FINANCIER JIM ROGERS; Marc Faber and Slavoj Zizek sue for copyright infringement...
And in news from Dubai: a 2-million-litre shopping-mall aquarium holding 400 sharks and stingrays has sprung a leak; the makers of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus sue for copyright infringement.
I do like Gizmodo's take:
So how long do you think it's going to be until [Dubai] can't afford to keep up all this ridiculous shit they've built and the entire thing turns into a post-apocalyptic wasteland with lawless bandits scavenging for all of the luxury items no one is around to pay for? Should be exciting!
Mel Gibson sues for copyright infringement.
Professional Slavoj Zizek impersonator Marc Faber (previously on JRE) says "buy farmland and gold". (What, no shotguns?)
And then he took his pants off (previously on JRE) and ran around yelling "ooh ooh look at me I'm on TV and I'm going to keep spouting complete rubbish as long as CNBC keeps giving me screen time look at me look at me LOOK AT ME".
It's time for another round of stories about ghost cities in China, this time in the southwest near Kunming (dear FT, you guys are awesome, but can you please make your paywall a little less tight-arsed?):
Chenggong is a new town near Kunming, one of the main cities in the south-west of China. Construction started in 2003 and the results are now apparent in 13 immaculate local government buildings, each clad in marble tiles. A high school boasts an impressive indoor swimming pool and several of the region’s main universities have built large campuses. Pristine high-rise apartment blocks stand in rows, their new windows glinting in the subtropical sun.
The one drawback: at the moment, Chenggong is almost completely empty. Its wide streets are all but bereft of traffic, a bank branch has no customers and leaves collect in the foyers of the municipal offices.
(Update: am I seeing things, or have the FT (hi Alphaville!) moved this article outside the paywall? If so, two thumbs up.)
Memo to CCP: the capitalist running dog lackeys of the decadent western media will stop writing about boondoggle ghost cities when you stop building boondoggle ghost cities.
And in related "WTF, China?" news: Huaxi, a town 50 miles down the road from Shanghai with 30,000 people and a per-capita income of about US$12,000 p.a. (which makes it the "richest village in China"), is building a residential tower that will be one of the 30 tallest buildings in the world. (With 200 residents able to pony up US$1.5 million each for a share in the tower, it probably has the highest Gini coefficient in the world as well.) But it gets better:
Huaxi has an even more ambitious project coming up: a 6 billion yuan, 538-meter skyscraper that would today rank as the world’s second tallest. The only loftier building is the new Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
WHY?!
...it's Singapore's 2010 budget!
Some selected highlights, courtesy of Pravda's Twitter feed:
So, uh, do the EFF and Reporters Without Borders count as "institutions of a public character"?
Totally unrelated to finance, but in the interests of getting something up on the front page (in my defence, I was stuck on a tropical island without any internets for two whole days and had to resort to reading something called a "book"), here's your editor's new favourite band. From Rock Sugar's official history:
1989 should have been the best year ever for Rock Sugar, the big haired heavy metal band that had just broken the top 41 on the rock radio charts with their solid brass debut album "Bang You Like A Drum". But instead of headlining concerts, Rock Sugar made the headlines when they were presumed lost forever after playing an extremely ill advised gig celebrating the bat mitzvah of 13-year-old Lisa Rosenberg.
[...]
Having been denied rescue, the band credit their miraculous ability to make it to the shore alive only because of their firmly held belief that "sharks don't eat metal". Left to their own extremely questionable survival skills, Rock Sugar managed to salvage several items from the sunken yacht. In addition to their instruments, they retrieved a hot pink battery powered boom box covered with stickers of Hello Kitty, a crate of batteries, 158 cases of schnapps and numerous articles of teenage girls clothing, most of which the band admit to trying on and several pieces of which apparently fit and looked "pretty frickin' awesome". But things got worse when the horrified rockers discovered that the only music available for them to listen to was little Lisa Rosenberg's very pop, very 13 year-old girl's, very '80's CD collection.
Don't Stop The Sandman (the first track from their new album) should give you a pretty good idea of what they're about. The clip is right down below.
(Also - I can't decide whether Shook Me Like A Prayer (it's exactly what you think it is) is sacrilegious or sacrilicious, but it can't be as criminal as Celine Dion's awful, awful, awful version - which was voted the Worst Cover Song Ever and previously mentioned on JRE as justification for invading Canada.)
