Wala`au Media's Blog

Houston cancer center event showcases local impact of Congressional funding cuts

walaaumedia — Sun, 01 May 2011 18:11:22 +0000

Houston cancer center event showcases local impact of Congressional funding cuts

hplvlu | May 1, 2011 at 4:48 pm | Categories: Find Cures | URL: http://wp.me/p1i1rG-3u

Dick Woodruff (left) stands with other speakers at the event (left to right): Dr. John Mendelsohn, president of MD Anderson Cancer Center; Rep. Gene Green, U.S. House of Representatives; Dr. Mark Clanton, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society’s High Plains Division; Dr. Patrick Hwu, chair and professor at MD Anderson’s Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology; Jason Connelly, survivor of stage IV melanoma; and Dr. Raymond Dubois, provost and executive vice president at MD Anderson Cancer Center

Cancer community leaders came together at a unique event in Houston on Monday to call on Texas lawmakers to commit to sustained funding for cancer research efforts. Representatives from the American Cancer Society, ACS CAN, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, and U.S. Representative Gene Green convened at the MD Anderson Cancer Center to highlight the impact of Congressional funding cuts on work being done in the state of Texas and across the U.S.

“Federal support of cancer research has put us on the verge of some incredible discoveries,” said Dick Woodruff, vice president of federal relations for ACS CAN. “We now know the most basic molecular structure of many tumors – and with that knowledge we will figure out how to defeat them – to shut down their metabolic functioning.”

Did you know most federal funding for the National Institutes of Health goes directly to research being done in the states? In fact, more than $1 billion went to research institutes in Texas in 2010. The event at MD Anderson highlighted specific groundbreaking projects at the center that could be affected by funding cuts.

It was a large success – staff from five congressional offices attended and reporters from Houston based ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates covered the event. Check out the ABC story for more.

Seth’s Blog : Economies of small

walaaumedia — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:32:02 +0000

I really like being small, I can adopt, move quickly and make a decision on the spot.

Economies of small

Economies of scale are well understood. Bigger factories are more efficient, bigger distribution networks are more efficient, bigger ad campaigns can be more efficient. It’s often hard to defeat a major competitor, particularly if the market is looking for security and the status quo.

But what about the economies of small? Is being bigger an intrinsic benefit in and of itself?

If your goal is to make a profit, it’s entirely possible that less overhead and a more focused product line will increase it.

If your goal is to make more art, it’s entirely possible the ridding yourself of obligations and scale will help you do that.

If your goal is to have more fun, it’s certainly likely that avoiding the high stakes of more debt, more financing and more stuff will help with that.

I think we embraced scale as a goal when the economies of that scale were so obvious that we didn’t even need to mention them. Now that it’s so much easier to produce a product in the small and market a product in the small, and now that it’s so beneficial to offer a service to just a few, with focus and attention, perhaps we need to rethink the very goal of scale.

Don’t be small because you can’t figure out how to get big. Consider being small because it might be better.

Before sugar, we were talking about cholesterol

walaaumedia — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:17:32 +0000

Before sugar, we were talking about cholesterol

Gary Taubes

I’ve been tied up the past month, finishing and closing my New York Times Magazine article on sugar and high fructose corn syrup, It came out in the newspaper today. But before the sugar article took over every spare minute of my life, my wife, Sloane, a source of wisdom and humor (and patience) in the family, strongly suggested I get my blood lipids checked and post the results for those who were dismayed or discouraged by my choice not to do so on the Oz show. Sloane wasn’t the only one to suggest this was a good idea. Some of those commenting on my blogs were insistent, to put it mildly.

So it took me awhile to get to a Quest lab with a prescription. Then it took another week for the results to come back. That was three weeks ago. Now I finally have the time to post them. Keep in mind as you go through these that I do indeed eat three eggs with cheese, bacon and sausage for breakfast every morning, typically a couple of cheeseburgers (no bun) or a roast chicken for lunch, and more often than not, a ribeye or New York steak (grass fed) for dinner, usually in the neighborhood of a pound of meat. I cook with butter and, occasionally, olive oil (the sausages). My snacks run to cheese and almonds. So lots of fat and saturated fat and very little carbohydrates. A deadly diet, according to Dr. Oz. Without further ado, here are my numbers,

Sent with Reeder

Randy Botti

www.walaaudude.com

Sent from the wild (somewhere other than my desk)

In Budget Debate, Democrats and Republicans Reassess Government’s Role

walaaumedia — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:12:34 +0000

THE air in the capital these days is thick with references to trillion-dollar deficits, debt-to-G.D.P. ratios and mandatory spending. But the budget debate that became fully engaged last week is about far more than accounting and arcane policy disputes. What is under way now is the most fundamental reassessment of the size and role of government — of the balance between personal responsibility and private markets on the one hand and public responsibility and social welfare on the other — at least since Ronald Reagan and perhaps since F.D.R.

The battle ahead “is the big one, and goes to the very major questions about the role of government,” said G. William Hoagland, a former Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee. “This is going to be a very fundamental clash of ideologies.”

The Democratic and Republican Parties have their own internal tensions to address as the debate goes forward in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail. But in its early stages at least, it is liberals who are on the defensive.

The aging of the baby boom generation and the costs of maintaining Medicare and Social Security have put the two pillars of the social welfare system on the table for re-examination. The growing weight of the national debt has given urgency to the question of whether the government has become too big and expensive.

The tepid nature of the current economic recovery, following big stimulus packages, has provided an opening to challenge the effectiveness of Keynesianism as the default policy option for government. And the revived energy of grass-roots conservatives has given electoral clout to the movement’s intellectual and constitutional arguments.

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative research organization, said, “The optimistic view is that we have a confluence of the business cycle, of the demography and of the politics that makes it not just possible to achieve real change, but impossible that we not deal with these things if we want this country to continue on the path envisioned by the founders.” So just two and a half years after a presidential election that was in part a repudiation of conservative governance, and with the nation still smarting from the aftereffects of a financial crisis that grew out of failures of markets and regulation, President Obama finds himself in a somewhat surprising position: forced to articulate and sell a vision of how liberalism and the institutions it built in the 20th century can be updated for the constraints of the 21st.

The speech he delivered Wednesday at George Washington University in Washington was his most ambitious effort so far to do so. In it, he harnessed the language of both left and right to argue against the extremes on both sides while suggesting that many of their core principles were not mutually exclusive — in other words, that Great Society values can endure in a Tea Party moment.

He defined “patriotism” as a shared sense of responsibility for the vulnerable and less fortunate. Basic standards of security for the elderly and poor and government investment in a more prosperous future, he said, can not only coexist with a tradition of “rugged individualists with a healthy skepticism of too much government,” but are also a vital part of what makes America exceptional.

“We are a better country because of these commitments,” he said. “I’ll go further — we would not be a great country without those commitments.”

Republicans in Congress, he suggested, would shred that tradition under cover of a debate that is only nominally about the budget. “The fact is,” he said, “their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.”

Conservatives would and did object to his implication of heartlessness, but not necessarily to his assessment of their ambition.

The Republican plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and adopted by the House on Friday as its policy blueprint for the next decade contains a substantial dose of deficit reduction but is really a manifesto for limited government.

It would take big steps toward privatizing Medicare, slash upper-income tax rates, repeal last year’s health care law, bite deeply into nearly all federal programs and try to cap the size of government relative to the economy. But it also imposes a self-consciously moral judgment on the government’s role, suggesting that the same kind of demand for added personal responsibility that was embedded in the 1996 overhaul of welfare should now be applied more broadly, to food stamps, housing aid and health care for the elderly and the poor.

“The safety net should never become a hammock, lulling able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency,” Mr. Ryan’s budget proposal says.

William A. Galston, who was a domestic policy aide to President Bill Clinton and is now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Ryan deserved credit of a sort for addressing head-on the implications of the Republican Party’s increasingly rigid antitax posture, which since it took root in the late 1970s has put greater and greater pressure on budgets and the social programs they support.

“It represents the first serious effort to begin to bring Republican social policy commitments in line with their fiscal and tax commitments,” Mr. Galston said.

But he said Democrats, too, faced a credibility test. “They have held fast to the security programs in place since the 1930s, but without being able to successfully challenge the antitax orthodoxy,” he said. “The problem the Democrats have is that they can no longer say with a straight face that raising taxes on the wealthy is going to enable them to pay over the next generation for the programs they cherish. So what do you do?”

That question is being asked quietly within both parties, each of which faces its own internal tensions about how to proceed.

There are Republicans who fear that voting for the Ryan plan will put them out of step with their constituents. There are Democrats who think the tax-and-spend label is all too accurate. There are Republicans who might countenance voting for tax increases, and there are Democrats who are willing to meaningfully scale back the benefits promised by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

In the Senate, a group of Democrats and Republicans operating independently of party leaders is trying to come up with a plan that neither party would like but both would accept as necessary. But they are debating basic values; it would no doubt be much easier if the argument was just about numbers.

via nytimes.com

Richard Stevenson should be applauded, this article frames the upcoming battle as clears as it can be; It’s about core ideology.

You can’t go straight to a debate about the numbers without going through the idealogical debate.

HOEA & PIKO Gallery – Unintentional Waimea Secrets – To Be Explored At WCA Town Meeting This Thurs., April 7, 2011 – please join us!

walaaumedia — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:12:08 +0000

E kala mai — if you have already received this!

Please join us — the exhibit by Hawaiian artists of Waimea is breathtaking — and the presentation will share a little about why this indigenous fine arts school is an important addition to our community!

Please also share with family and friends…Mahalo – Patti Cook 937-2833

I've also attached a photo of a Waimea Middle School social studies class using PIKO Gallery as an alternative classroom — where they met Hokule'a navigator Nainoa Thompson — one of nearly a dozen cultural practitioners and kupuna who have been a part of the gallery experience for students.

HOEA AND PIKO GALLERY – UNINTENTIONAL WAIMEA SECRETS - TO BE EXPLORED AT WCA TOWN MEETING THURS., APRIL 7

One of Waimea’s unintentionally well kept secrets is a still new native Hawaiian arts education “school” which is the living legacy of the late Hiko Hanapi, a visionary Hawaiian artist who dreamed of creating an accredited fine arts educational program for Native Hawaiians that also would nurture cultural self esteem as well as economic opportunity.

Called “Hawaiian ‘Ohana for Education In The Arts,” or HOEA, the program today offers a certificated studio art education program in Waimea that addresses the needs of both recent high school graduates who want to pursue a post-secondary level arts training, and emerging adult artists whose aim is to take their art skills to higher levels by working closely with Hawaiian and indigenous masters.

Waimea's HOEA fine arts school and its public showcase for artists, called the PIKO Gallery, will be the focus of this week’s Waimea Community Association Town Meeting at 5:15 p.m., Thurs., April 7, 2011. Everyone is welcome to the meeting which is being relocated to the PIKO Gallery, instead of the usual Waimea School Cafeteria location.

PIKO Gallery is located in the former Parker Ranch Museum in the back of Parker Ranch Center next to Lilikoi Café. Everyone is invited and there is no charge to participate in any WCA Town Meeting.

This special meeting will begin with a brief introduction to PIKO Gallery’s current exhibit by “the skilled hands and hearts” of nearly 50 Waimea Hawaiian artists. This includes keiki to kupuna – from a 5-year-old kapa beater and 10 year-old student photographer to a 95-year-old quilter and painter, as well as the creative works of dozens of weavers, feather lei masters, jewelry, fiber and floral artists, carvers, woodworkers, painters and more.

HOEA director, Fran Sanford, along with several volunteer board members and PIKO Gallery manager, Jennifer Bryan, will tell about how the organization grew out of a first-ever gathering in 2007 here in Waimea of indigenous artists from throughout Hawai’i and the Pacific. That gathering, called PIKO, inspired Hiko Hanapi, with the support of the assembled artists, to launch HOEA’s certified studio program in 2009. Classes have continued and the next series of intensive sessions will be a four-week Summer Session (June 13 to July 8, 2011) and a two-week Winter Session (December 12-22, 2011). Participants receive 160 hours of instruction during the Summer Session and 70 hours of learning and a final assessment resulting in a certificate of completion during the Winter Session. Between summer and winter sessions, students will continue to create art and participate in HOEA Market.

Attendees at Thursday’s WCA Town Meeting also will enjoy a glimpse of how Waimea’s beautiful PIKO Gallery is helping Waimea schools fill an educational gap created by the federal No Child Left Behind mandates that focus exclusively on reading and math. With the pressure on to meet or exceed NCLB benchmarks in reading and math, many schools – both in Hawai’i and across the country — have dropped or minimized arts education.

Because of this, Waimea teachers have recently started using PIKO Gallery as an “alternative learning center” to introduce standards-based lessons to students, showcase Pa'ahana (hard, industrious work) through various mediums of art, and let students know that opportunities for them to dream do exist, said Waimea Middle School’s ‘Ike Hawai’i Resource Teacher and kumu hula Pua Case. In fact, three WMS students are currently showing their art pieces at the gallery this month.

“At Waimea Middle School, our teachers understand how important the arts and cultural experiences are to student learning and engagement, so they decided to integrate arts and cultural lessons into standards-based reading, science and social studies,” said WMS CEEO/Principal John Colson.

Kumu Case saw the PIKO Gallery exhibits as an exciting way to help students to connect culture through art to core curriculum and it was possible because of the partnership formed between the school and the gallery staff, and easy because it is within walking distance of the school.

“Our teachers were eager to go beyond the textbook to make lessons relevant and meaningful. For example, when PIKO Gallery exhibit featured photos and artifacts of the first voyage of the Hokule’a sailing canoe to Tahiti, our WMS teachers created Research and Date Collection worksheets that guided students to find specific pieces of information hidden in images and art pieces that helped fulfill social studies benchmarks related to the History of the Hawaiian Kingdom and Pacific Island Studies,” said Kumu Case.

The result was that students carefully studied the exhibit to gather data. Also, Chadd Paishon, who was an early Hokule’a crew member and is now a master navigator in his own right, discussed the exhibit with the students, thereby helping them answer the Essential Question for the day: “Were The Polynesian Navigators Scientists?” The resounding student answer after examining the exhibit and listening to and questioning Paishon was: Yes – and they knew exactly why this was true, said Kumu Case.

Other “lessons” experienced in the gallery have included learning about, and then writing a personal memoir for Language Arts, and, for science classes, studying the unique geology and weather characteristics of the Waimea landscape and relating this to art pieces in the gallery, and in the process, learning to better understand the “story” different artists were sharing via their artwork.

“Waimea’s PIKO Gallery has provided for our students the means to go beyond the pages of their textbooks. What they learn there will serve as a reference for classroom lessons that will follow. Students are always totally focused when visiting PIKO Gallery,” said Kumu Case.

The late Hiko Hanapi would be pleased – not just to see the level of art his school’s students are creating, but to also know that it is being appreciated by both gallery customers and students whose written testimony is often priceless, such as: “I think different mediums teach me different sides of the same story.”

WCA TOWN MEETINGS SUPPORTS LOCAL FOOD PANTRY

As always, all who attend WCA monthly Town Meetings are asked to continue the association’s commitment to supporting Waimea’s food pantries by bringing a donation – preferably cash or a check or KTA Sav-A-Tapes and Foodland Maka’i My Rewards – or non-perishable food items. Cash or checks are given to the Waimea pantries to purchase vegetables, fruit and milk as well as other essentials. Checks may be payable directly to a food pantry so the donation is tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

For more information about Waimea Community Association, call President Sherman Warner (885-1725) or go to www.WaimeaTown.org.

For more information about HOEA and PIKO Gallery, go to www.khf-hoea.org. PIKO Gallery is open to the public free of charge from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

# # # # #

Article: Mass Media vs. Blogs: What Makes Quality Content?

walaaumedia — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 03:51:07 +0000

Mass Media vs. Blogs: What Makes Quality Content?
http://www.digitaltonto.com/2011/mass-media-vs-blogs-what-makes-quality-content/

Mass Media vs. Blogs – What Makes Quality Content?

by Greg

Here we go again…

The NY Times’ new paywall has ignited once again the rancor between mass media and bloggers. I’m a blogger, but have spent a career in media and gained enormous respect for journalists, so I am sensitive to the merits and passions of both sides of the argument.

At the heart of the debate is one of the central questions of the Internet era: What makes quality content? That’s a tough one, but I’m gonna take a stab at it.

Reporting the News

Reporting is central to journalism. It has two main components: observing and verifying.

Observing is what drives newsroom costs. It takes a lot of money to send people to go where the news happens, whether that is to a war zone or to a city council meeting. Ironically, it is also a job that we can all do and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling citizen journalism as never before.

Verification is what separates professional reporters from the rest of us. They spend their careers building up sources. It takes countless hours meeting people and working the phone to confirm facts and tie up loose ends. It’s not glamorous, but it’s what makes news we can trust. Editorial scandals, thankfully rare, happen when verification breaks down.

So is reporting news a commodity as Cory Doctorow argues? Well, it is and it isn’t. Events happen. It rains or it doesn’t. Somebody is shot or they weren’t. Once facts are verified there is little utility in seeing them twice.

However, unearthing truths in a complex world is never simple or easy and those who do the hard work and put themselves in harm’s way deserve our respect.

Commentary and Analysis

I used to manage a very prominent editor who is an important voice in Ukrainian politics. He’s hardworking, intelligent and has a gift for language (and languages, he speaks four of them). He likes to tell his journalists, “write so that the sales and marketing guys can understand it.”

Before I got into senior management, I came up through sales and marketing and so was somewhat offended (which, I’m sure is one reason why he liked to repeat the phrase so often during our long whiskey drinking sessions). Now that my blog has gained a following among journalists, I take no small pleasure in telling him, “See? Anybody can write!”

Everybody, of course, has opinions and most people have expertise in one area or another. Top quality publications have a long history of soliciting content from non-journalists through columns and op-eds. So, in that sense, analysis is something anyone can do.

However, again, I would not be so quick to dismiss professional journalists. There is a wealth of tacit knowledge in newsrooms and a lot to be said for the accumulated wisdom gained devoting your life to a craft. I very much doubt that my blog would be nearly as successful without the years of exposure I’ve had to so many fine professionals.

There’s more to writing than typing.

Curation

“Curation” is fairly new to the media lexicon. So much so that when I mentioned it to an editor over a beer the other night he was prompted to blurt out, “Oh, is that what they’re calling aggregation these days?”

Yet, curation isn’t new. In fact, it’s been a core competency of editors for ages. It’s been their job to decide what gets printed, what’s important enough to make the front page of a newspaper or the cover lines on a magazine. They commission stories, hand out assignments and so on. All of that is curation.

Bloggers curate by choosing which sources to link to, algorithms curate by filtering which content has authority and influence. Editorial curation on the web, such as Real Clear Politics and the Atlantic Wire, has become an art unto itself.

The loss of their monopoly on curation is one of the things that scares professional editors the most. In the past, it was the source of their power and self esteem. They got to choose what we saw and heard. Now it’s a classic battle between man and machine. The humans are winning at present, but they’re understandably nervous.

User Experience

User experience is probably the greatest challenge for traditional journalists. They don’t have their own term for it, but they’ve practiced it for a long time. Structuring publications, writing headlines and cover lines and choosing design elements are all examples of how print editors craft user experience.

However, it is their wealth of traditional expertise that blinds editors to new realities. They are used to working in a world of hard and fast rules. Web usability, on the other hand, is an emerging science. We learning quickly, but still have a long way to go. The only certainty is false certainty.

A complete paradigm shift in editorial operations is required. The time honored convention of the Chinese wall needs to be rethought and reengineered. Traditional editors will have to learn to collaborate with others and integrate expertise from multiple domains to a much greater extent than they ever have before.

As much as I respect editors, this is a control issue. They need to get over it.

Nostalgia for the Craft

Another lament of editors is the decline of journalistic technique. With greater competition, newsrooms are being pared down. There are fewer reporters and skills passed down for generations are atrophying. Old timers shudder to think that the hard won competenciess they honed in pursuit of their craft are falling into irrelevance.

Well, nobody cares. The world changes and skills need to change too. We don’t kill our own food anymore and haven’t for a long time.. Very few of us could survive in the wilderness for a week without supplies from a grocery store. Microsoft Word and Excel have demolished our ability to spell and do basic arithmetic.

As some skills decline, others are coming to the fore. Editors need to learn how to effectively work with search engines to uncover sources, use Google Insights to understand the zeitgeist and utilize real-time audience data in order to serve their audience better.

Whining never solves anything. Keep the old skills that are still valuable. Learn the new ones you need to be successful. Get on with it.

Running a Meme Business

The debate between blogs and mass media is an important one. The reliability and quality of our information is far from inconsequential. However, histrionic rantings like this one in Ad Age don’t do anyone a service.

The simple fact is that successful media depends on successful memes. It shouldn’t be a surprise that digital memes travel differently than analog ones and it is illogical for editors to cheer mentions on the evening news while they decry links on web sites. You have to succeed in the world you live in, not one that you yearn for.

Media is, after all a business. Professional journalists need to be paid. It is therefore publishers’ primary responsibility to ensure that they learn how to generate revenue in a new digital reality. Unfortunately, as I’ve argued before, the NY Times paywall is a step backwards.

There is no worse betrayal to quality journalism than running a media business poorly.

- Greg

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AT&T Buying T-Mobile Won’t Matter. In Mobile Communications, Innovation Is Elsewhere.

walaaumedia — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 18:43:05 +0000

via techcrunch.com

Wonder if I can ixnay the cellular phone – hmmm

Fw: The Plight of the Working Class – John Mauldin’s Weekly E-Letter

walaaumedia — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:01:24 +0000

Great thoughts, it’s a new paradigm, just as it will take a long time for real estate to rebound, it will take a long time, if at all, for the jobs to return.

Randy

The Plight of the Working Class
By John Mauldin | April 2, 2011

In this issue:
The Plight of the Working Class
Can You Say Jobless Recovery?
Drowning in Debt but Getting No Growth
The Cancer of Debt
New York, Portland and La Jolla

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the Muddle Through Middle with you!
With thanks to Stealers Wheel

I get a lot of email from readers. I recently got an impassioned letter from very-long-time reader Bill K., who asks some very pointed questions about austerity and spending cuts. It is a rather lengthy letter, so I will only quote part of it and use it is the launching pad for this week’s letter, where we look at today’s employment report, but from a little different slant. This letter will no doubt anger a few other long-time readers. I argue this week for the middle, but do so as a survivalist.

While Bill starts out by saying some very nice things about me (thanks), let’s jump to the meat of the letter:

“. I would like to get something off my chest. I would like to know why you seem to side with those analysts who keep telling us that the only way we can sort out Western economies is by making the average guy suffer through austerity programs You are a very intelligent guy obviously. You can see how things work and what is broken. You can also see through the greed and excesses of Wall Street, and you can read the economic data which clearly shows that the wealthy continue to get more wealthy in America whilst the average Joe continues to see his standard of living going in the opposite direction. Capitalism today only works for the ‘have gots’. It’s been going in that direction for more than 30 years now. You saw the senseless and stupid greed of the derivative scheme which fueled the housing bubble which led to the meltdown which never melted because Bush/Obama handed out a huge welfare check to financial institutions that should have been allowed to fail.

“In the aftermath of all this, politicians in DC, you, and your guest pundits warn us that the world as we know it will end if we don’t somehow reduce the average Joe’s Social Security, pension, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Oh and let’s not forget the budget, which is being argued in Washington as I type this. The line is that we have to make drastic reductions to spending on domestic programs, on our schools, on our infrastructure, on unemployment entitlements, on all the things that serve to give working people a chance at a dignified life. You’re a smart guy. You can recognize what is fair and what is greed and excess. When the nation is as troubled as it is today and yet the wealthy are living even better than they did 30 years ago, what does that say about America? I wonder if we really care about our neighbors anymore? I wonder why such a great country with such great natural resources cannot find a way to be just and generous and a beacon to higher ideals? Ike warned us to be wary of the military-industrial complex. Looks like he was right. We’re a nation constantly at war, spending trillions on defense, whilst at home we enrich the already wealthy and tell the average Joe that he has to pay for it. I wonder how you manage to rationalize all this away if indeed you do?

“Thanks and with respect, Bill”

The Plight of the Working Class

Bill, you ask a very complicated question. There is not a simple black and white answer, but I am going to try and address your concerns. Let’s start with today’s employment numbers. We got a decent non-farm payroll number of 216,000, and 240,000 new jobs in the private sector (governments everywhere are still shedding jobs). That means over the last two months the private sector has added almost 500,000 jobs. If you take the household survey, that number looks even better. So why did all the consumer sentiment numbers in March come out so awful?

Looking deeper into the data we find that wages were once again flat, for the 4^th time in the last five months. We are certainly not keeping up with inflation. The chart below shows real median household income since 1967. It is published in May of each year by the Census Bureau, so we don’t have the data for 2010, but it will not be good. Real median income, when the new data comes out, if I read the chart right, will not have grown for almost 14 years.

But all this has led to what David Rosenberg calls the “Wageless Recovery.” Wage growth just continues to fall.

And given the rise in food and fuel costs (which are now about 23% of the average person’s income), the recent lack of wage growth is even more frustrating.

Although the economy in the US is now producing more “stuff” than it did at its peak in 2007 (fact), we are doing it with 6.8 million fewer people. That means the productivity of the workforce is much better, which is good for corporate profits, but this has not yet translated into higher wages, although in past cycles higher profits have given way to higher wages (eventually, at least).

Can You Say Jobless Recovery?

The following chart is from the St. Louis Fed. It shows the spectacular fall in jobs in the last recession and the painfully slow recovery.

And note that we have gained 30,000,000 more people in the US over the last decade! And negative job growth!

And this next chart is courtesy of my friend Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture. It is also from the Fed, but it’s one I have never seen.

That is a graph of the last three recessions, with employment indexed at 100, and it shows what employment did from the beginning of the recession, and then from the end of the recession. As Barry said, we don’t want to think about what the next recession will look like, if this is a trend.

The most recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Business shows that small businesses are indeed once again hiring. “The positive job creation observed in February was repeated again in March [sigh of relief here], confirming that the number of net new jobs reported on Main Street was decidedly positive. The March net increase in jobs per firm was .17 workers, a repeat of the February performance. Employment gains have not been this good since 2007.”

But that still begs the question of why wage growth has been so poor. And why do we now have such structural unemployment? Although the headline unemployment number went down to 8.8%, the only way you can get to that number is by not counting the millions who have dropped out of the employment pool, too discouraged to look, but who will take a job if they can get one. If you go back and take the number of people in the labor force just two years ago, the unemployment picture is back over 10% (back-of-my-napkin math).

GDP has recovered, but jobs haven’t. This chart from the NFIB shows the disparity.

Bill, I get it. The average guy is getting squeezed. You can see it in the numbers. For a while, it was masked by growing credit.

Drowning in Debt but Getting No Growth

This is an older chart, but it is relevant. We grew debt in this county in all forms by over 100% of GDP in the last decade. $14 trillion. And what did we get for it? No real job increases, no increase in wages. It was an illusion. In fact, my friend Rob Arnott pointed out to me today that a piece he is working on (which I hope to be able to give you soon!) shows that the only way you can show a positive GDP for the last decade is with government spending.

And that, Bill, is part of the problem. We have become a credit-addicted, credit-fueled economy, which works just fine until you have too much credit driving too little real growth. Without government spending, “real” GDP would be at levels it was over ten years ago. And it is real growth that drives wages and creates jobs.

You write: “The line is that we have to make drastic reductions to spending on domestic programs, on our schools, on our infrastructure, on unemployment entitlements, on all the things that serve to give working people a chance at a dignified life.”

That is not my line. My book calls for a large increase in funded infrastructure spending through a fuels tax (none of it going to the federal coffers!). I am not against unemployment insurance, but at some point it needs to become job training and a path to employment. I am a huge proponent of education, having spent a great deal of money on it over the years, with seven kids (and paid even more in taxes!). But does the current system really work? We have double the educational workers per student we had only a few decades ago, but no improvement in outcomes.

Yes, we have to make cuts to government programs. A 33% growth in federal discretionary spending (not including stimulus money) the last three years alone is not reasonable, given the size of the deficit. The last recession was not caused by too little government.

The Cancer of Debt

The problem is that the debt is like a cancer. The bigger it grows the more threatening it is. Pretty soon it consumes its host (think interest expense).

Bill, I am worried about the survival of the country economically. Another crisis caused by the bond market driving up interest rates, because they become concerned about the size of the debt and deficits, will seriously reduce the choices we have with none of them being good. Ask Ireland or Greece how it feels. They are in what can only be called a depression, and likely to stay there for some time. You think we have it bad now? Avoid dealing with the debt and see what happens.

To think it cannot happen here is to simply ignore reality. Yes, the US can go longer than we might think, but there is a limit. I think that limit will come before the middle of this decade. Perhaps as early as 2013, if the new incoming President and Congress do not deal with the deficit in a realistic manner. Then Bang! , we have our own Greek moment. I want to avoid that.

In my book and on numerous radio and TV shows, I have made the case that we must get the fiscal deficit below the growth rate of nominal GDP. That means we need to cut, over time, about $1 trillion from the current budget deficit.

And that means entitlement spending has to be on the table, as well as tax increases. The polls clearly show that people want to keep Medicare and also are against tax increases (close to 70% in both cases). Those are not compatible objectives.

We have to have a national conversation about how much Medicare we want and how we want to pay for it. Writing the words tax and increase in the same sentence is difficult for me. Tax increases taken from private producers do nothing for economic growth, which is where we get new jobs. But I would rather have higher taxes than for deficits to be at a level where they threaten the economic survival of the republic. (And I make the case that if conservatives give in on tax increases, that means there needs to be a complete structural change to the tax system, gearing it more to encouraging growth, real Medicare reform, and even larger spending cuts, etc., that are linked to real, measurable metrics!)

I am just as frustrated as you about the bailout of banks, that we still have banks too big to fail, that credit default swaps are not on an exchange, that Fannie and Freddie still even exist in their current forms, and a host of other problems you mention. (Frank-Dodd was a disaster! It almost guarantees another crisis.)

I have become all too familiar with cancer of late. It tends to focus the minds of those who are suffering, and their families, on survival. Chemotherapy is nasty. It means putting a toxic drug into your body. That is something you don’t want to do under normal circumstances, but when your survival is the issue, you do it.

It is no less than economic survival we are talking about. Oh, the US has been through worse. Civil war, depressions, panics. We will survive as a nation, but the pain we will endure is simply more than most people can comprehend, Bill. Whole generations of savings and investment will be wiped out. Think the cuts I am talking about are serious? Wait until interest payments are eating up 25-30% of revenues in a 12%+ unemployment world. Think the underfunded pension problems are bad now? Let’s have a REAL bear market, with inflation.

I have some friends who think that is what it will take to get government smaller. They relish the thought, as they also think their gold portfolios will go through the roof. I am not in that camp. That is not a world I want for my kids and grandkids, Bill, most of whom are (for now) your average person. (Well, except for my exceptional grandkids.)

I want us to find that middle path, to cure the cancer of debt. Yes, I want smaller government and lower taxes, but survival is now my fixation. The cure for too much debt is not more debt. We can get it under control, but it is going to mean compromises, a word that I hate but I also hate chemotherapy.

I get that we need to do things to make government more efficient. And we need to provide safety nets. We need a lot of things.

But most of all we need an adult conversation about what it is that we need, and what we can afford. The American people have to understand that the path back to a sustainable economy will not be easy. As I have written many times, cutting government spending will mean lower GDP numbers in the short term, but survival in the longer term. This is not a typical business cycle. We cannot simply grow out of our problem. We haven’t really grown, except for government spending, for ten years. Yes, there are numerous steps we can take that will make it better and easier and quicker than if we wait until we are forced by a crisis to act. But there are no “Easy” buttons.

Gentle readers, I promise you we get through this, one way or another. The 2020s are going to be a heck of a lot of fun!

New York, Portland, and La Jolla

I worry that I may have to go into hiding after this letter, as the middle is a lonely place. Oh well, I leave Sunday for New York. I had to cancel Utah at the last minute to go on a secret mission, but will be doing the media rounds in NYC next week to promote the book. Fast Money on Monday, Bloomberg on Tuesday morning, a guest host spot with the lovely Liz Claman on Fox Business on Wednesday, and videos with Yahoo Tech Ticker, thestreet.com, the Wall Street Journal, and with Steve Forbes himself. Lots of meetings with cool people, so should be a fast and fun week.

Korea has been postponed, which gives me more time at home in May, which I need. I am already starting to work on my presentation for my Strategic Investment Conference, April 28-30. There are only a few spots left. Best speaker line-up of any conference anywhere. You can learn more at https://hedge-fund-conference.com/2011/invitation.aspx?ref=mauldin.

Endgame has now been on the New York Times best-seller list for three weeks. And this week, if you have not yet bought your copy, let me commend you to my friends at Laissez Faire Books. I have been buying books from them for nearly 30 years. They are the best source for Austrian economics and libertarian books, along with the usual offering of investment books current in the market. They have matched the Amazon price for Endgame; but if you are interested, move around their website and pick up a few other things along with my book. http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=1014&PromoCode=L401M301

It is time to hit the send button. Daughter Amanda and her husband are in town. I didn’t know it when I gave him permission to marry my daughter, but he is a Red Sox fan, and as they open the year with the Texas Rangers at the Ballpark, he finally decided to bring my daughter back to Dallas for a long overdue visit. At least we won the opener today. I see margaritas and talk of baseball and family for the next few hours, with no mention of the worries of the Endgame and deficits. Have a great week!

Your hoping I don’t lose too many friends with this letter analyst,

John Mauldin
John@FrontlineThoughts.com

Copyright 2011 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved

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Who Killed Social Media Marketing? | Digital Tonto

walaaumedia — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:52:07 +0000

via digitaltonto.com

The key is a solid website. The Web site sells, not social media.

The Umbrella Man

walaaumedia — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:10:03 +0000

Find the gap, fill the gap, profit.

The Umbrella Man

chrisbrogan.com

When I got to Manhattan the other day, it was raining (heading towards snow). There was a very long line waiting at the cab stand for a taxi away from Penn Station. Walking back and forth near that stand was a man with a bag full of umbrellas. He kept saying the same thing.

“Umbrellas. Don’t get wet.”

It was a simple sale. Honestly, I wanted to change it just a little. I wanted to tell him to say, “Umbrellas. Stay dry.” Because that would sell the benefit of the umbrella. But then, what did I know? He was out there doing his thing.

I didn’t talk to him. I watched him. It was a simple experience. I’m sure he bought the umbrellas from a distributor for cheap, maybe around $2 a unit. I’m pretty sure he would sell them for $10. Maybe if it really started to pour, he’d go for $20. It was an obvious win for him to stand there and get those things sold, because if he bought 20 umbrellas for $40, and he sold them for $200, he was going home with more money than he started with for a very straightforward effort.

That’s the basics of entrepreneurial thinking: find a gap, fill the gap, profit.

When people say they’re entrepreneurs, I’m often skeptical. I think they tend to think that having more than one pursuit makes them an entrepreneur. No, that makes you an ADD sufferer. I had a really hard time calling myself an entrepreneur, but starting and running three companies that fill a need seems to have me feeling like I can say that about me.

But also maybe not.

Because I don’t always think the way that Umbrella Man does. If I did, I’d be doing many more deals. I’d be making bigger wins. I’d be helping people more directly.

I think we need to think about the Umbrella Man more often, if we want a healthy business. Because I’m pretty sure he’s not wasting his time on half the stupidity we are.

Sent with Reeder

Sent from the wild (somewhere other than my desk)




The Plight of the Working Class By John Mauldin \| April 2, 2011
In this issue: The Plight of the Working Class Can You Say Jobless Recovery? Drowning in Debt but Getting No Growth The Cancer of Debt New York, Portland and La Jolla
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the Muddle Through Middle with you! With thanks to Stealers Wheel I get a lot of email from readers. I recently got an impassioned letter from very-long-time reader Bill K., who asks some very pointed questions about austerity and spending cuts. It is a rather lengthy letter, so I will only quote part of it and use it is the launching pad for this week’s letter, where we look at today’s employment report, but from a little different slant. This letter will no doubt anger a few other long-time readers. I argue this week for the middle, but do so as a survivalist. While Bill starts out by saying some very nice things about me (thanks), let’s jump to the meat of the letter: “. I would like to get something off my chest. I would like to know why you seem to side with those analysts who keep telling us that the only way we can sort out Western economies is by making the average guy suffer through austerity programs You are a very intelligent guy obviously. You can see how things work and what is broken. You can also see through the greed and excesses of Wall Street, and you can read the economic data which clearly shows that the wealthy continue to get more wealthy in America whilst the average Joe continues to see his standard of living going in the opposite direction. Capitalism today only works for the ‘have gots’. It’s been going in that direction for more than 30 years now. You saw the senseless and stupid greed of the derivative scheme which fueled the housing bubble which led to the meltdown which never melted because Bush/Obama handed out a huge welfare check to financial institutions that should have been allowed to fail. “In the aftermath of all this, politicians in DC, you, and your guest pundits warn us that the world as we know it will end if we don’t somehow reduce the average Joe’s Social Security, pension, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Oh and let’s not forget the budget, which is being argued in Washington as I type this. The line is that we have to make drastic reductions to spending on domestic programs, on our schools, on our infrastructure, on unemployment entitlements, on all the things that serve to give working people a chance at a dignified life. You’re a smart guy. You can recognize what is fair and what is greed and excess. When the nation is as troubled as it is today and yet the wealthy are living even better than they did 30 years ago, what does that say about America? I wonder if we really care about our neighbors anymore? I wonder why such a great country with such great natural resources cannot find a way to be just and generous and a beacon to higher ideals? Ike warned us to be wary of the military-industrial complex. Looks like he was right. We’re a nation constantly at war, spending trillions on defense, whilst at home we enrich the already wealthy and tell the average Joe that he has to pay for it. I wonder how you manage to rationalize all this away if indeed you do? “Thanks and with respect, Bill” The Plight of the Working Class Bill, you ask a very complicated question. There is not a simple black and white answer, but I am going to try and address your concerns. Let’s start with today’s employment numbers. We got a decent non-farm payroll number of 216,000, and 240,000 new jobs in the private sector (governments everywhere are still shedding jobs). That means over the last two months the private sector has added almost 500,000 jobs. If you take the household survey, that number looks even better. So why did all the consumer sentiment numbers in March come out so awful? Looking deeper into the data we find that wages were once again flat, for the 4^th time in the last five months. We are certainly not keeping up with inflation. The chart below shows real median household income since 1967. It is published in May of each year by the Census Bureau, so we don’t have the data for 2010, but it will not be good. Real median income, when the new data comes out, if I read the chart right, will not have grown for almost 14 years. But all this has led to what David Rosenberg calls the “Wageless Recovery.” Wage growth just continues to fall. And given the rise in food and fuel costs (which are now about 23% of the average person’s income), the recent lack of wage growth is even more frustrating. Although the economy in the US is now producing more “stuff” than it did at its peak in 2007 (fact), we are doing it with 6.8 million fewer people. That means the productivity of the workforce is much better, which is good for corporate profits, but this has not yet translated into higher wages, although in past cycles higher profits have given way to higher wages (eventually, at least). Can You Say Jobless Recovery? The following chart is from the St. Louis Fed. It shows the spectacular fall in jobs in the last recession and the painfully slow recovery. And note that we have gained 30,000,000 more people in the US over the last decade! And negative job growth! And this next chart is courtesy of my friend Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture. It is also from the Fed, but it’s one I have never seen. That is a graph of the last three recessions, with employment indexed at 100, and it shows what employment did from the beginning of the recession, and then from the end of the recession. As Barry said, we don’t want to think about what the next recession will look like, if this is a trend. The most recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Business shows that small businesses are indeed once again hiring. “The positive job creation observed in February was repeated again in March [sigh of relief here], confirming that the number of net new jobs reported on Main Street was decidedly positive. The March net increase in jobs per firm was .17 workers, a repeat of the February performance. Employment gains have not been this good since 2007.” But that still begs the question of why wage growth has been so poor. And why do we now have such structural unemployment? Although the headline unemployment number went down to 8.8%, the only way you can get to that number is by not counting the millions who have dropped out of the employment pool, too discouraged to look, but who will take a job if they can get one. If you go back and take the number of people in the labor force just two years ago, the unemployment picture is back over 10% (back-of-my-napkin math). GDP has recovered, but jobs haven’t. This chart from the NFIB shows the disparity. Bill, I get it. The average guy is getting squeezed. You can see it in the numbers. For a while, it was masked by growing credit. Drowning in Debt but Getting No Growth This is an older chart, but it is relevant. We grew debt in this county in all forms by over 100% of GDP in the last decade. $14 trillion. And what did we get for it? No real job increases, no increase in wages. It was an illusion. In fact, my friend Rob Arnott pointed out to me today that a piece he is working on (which I hope to be able to give you soon!) shows that the only way you can show a positive GDP for the last decade is with government spending. And that, Bill, is part of the problem. We have become a credit-addicted, credit-fueled economy, which works just fine until you have too much credit driving too little real growth. Without government spending, “real” GDP would be at levels it was over ten years ago. And it is real growth that drives wages and creates jobs. You write: “The line is that we have to make drastic reductions to spending on domestic programs, on our schools, on our infrastructure, on unemployment entitlements, on all the things that serve to give working people a chance at a dignified life.” That is not my line. My book calls for a large increase in funded infrastructure spending through a fuels tax (none of it going to the federal coffers!). I am not against unemployment insurance, but at some point it needs to become job training and a path to employment. I am a huge proponent of education, having spent a great deal of money on it over the years, with seven kids (and paid even more in taxes!). But does the current system really work? We have double the educational workers per student we had only a few decades ago, but no improvement in outcomes. Yes, we have to make cuts to government programs. A 33% growth in federal discretionary spending (not including stimulus money) the last three years alone is not reasonable, given the size of the deficit. The last recession was not caused by too little government. The Cancer of Debt The problem is that the debt is like a cancer. The bigger it grows the more threatening it is. Pretty soon it consumes its host (think interest expense). Bill, I am worried about the survival of the country economically. Another crisis caused by the bond market driving up interest rates, because they become concerned about the size of the debt and deficits, will seriously reduce the choices we have with none of them being good. Ask Ireland or Greece how it feels. They are in what can only be called a depression, and likely to stay there for some time. You think we have it bad now? Avoid dealing with the debt and see what happens. To think it cannot happen here is to simply ignore reality. Yes, the US can go longer than we might think, but there is a limit. I think that limit will come before the middle of this decade. Perhaps as early as 2013, if the new incoming President and Congress do not deal with the deficit in a realistic manner. Then Bang! , we have our own Greek moment. I want to avoid that. In my book and on numerous radio and TV shows, I have made the case that we must get the fiscal deficit below the growth rate of nominal GDP. That means we need to cut, over time, about $1 trillion from the current budget deficit. And that means entitlement spending has to be on the table, as well as tax increases. The polls clearly show that people want to keep Medicare and also are against tax increases (close to 70% in both cases). Those are not compatible objectives. We have to have a national conversation about how much Medicare we want and how we want to pay for it. Writing the words tax and increase in the same sentence is difficult for me. Tax increases taken from private producers do nothing for economic growth, which is where we get new jobs. But I would rather have higher taxes than for deficits to be at a level where they threaten the economic survival of the republic. (And I make the case that if conservatives give in on tax increases, that means there needs to be a complete structural change to the tax system, gearing it more to encouraging growth, real Medicare reform, and even larger spending cuts, etc., that are linked to real, measurable metrics!) I am just as frustrated as you about the bailout of banks, that we still have banks too big to fail, that credit default swaps are not on an exchange, that Fannie and Freddie still even exist in their current forms, and a host of other problems you mention. (Frank-Dodd was a disaster! It almost guarantees another crisis.) I have become all too familiar with cancer of late. It tends to focus the minds of those who are suffering, and their families, on survival. Chemotherapy is nasty. It means putting a toxic drug into your body. That is something you don’t want to do under normal circumstances, but when your survival is the issue, you do it. It is no less than economic survival we are talking about. Oh, the US has been through worse. Civil war, depressions, panics. We will survive as a nation, but the pain we will endure is simply more than most people can comprehend, Bill. Whole generations of savings and investment will be wiped out. Think the cuts I am talking about are serious? Wait until interest payments are eating up 25-30% of revenues in a 12%+ unemployment world. Think the underfunded pension problems are bad now? Let’s have a REAL bear market, with inflation. I have some friends who think that is what it will take to get government smaller. They relish the thought, as they also think their gold portfolios will go through the roof. I am not in that camp. That is not a world I want for my kids and grandkids, Bill, most of whom are (for now) your average person. (Well, except for my exceptional grandkids.) I want us to find that middle path, to cure the cancer of debt. Yes, I want smaller government and lower taxes, but survival is now my fixation. The cure for too much debt is not more debt. We can get it under control, but it is going to mean compromises, a word that I hate but I also hate chemotherapy. I get that we need to do things to make government more efficient. And we need to provide safety nets. We need a lot of things. But most of all we need an adult conversation about what it is that we need, and what we can afford. The American people have to understand that the path back to a sustainable economy will not be easy. As I have written many times, cutting government spending will mean lower GDP numbers in the short term, but survival in the longer term. This is not a typical business cycle. We cannot simply grow out of our problem. We haven’t really grown, except for government spending, for ten years. Yes, there are numerous steps we can take that will make it better and easier and quicker than if we wait until we are forced by a crisis to act. But there are no “Easy” buttons. Gentle readers, I promise you we get through this, one way or another. The 2020s are going to be a heck of a lot of fun! New York, Portland, and La Jolla I worry that I may have to go into hiding after this letter, as the middle is a lonely place. Oh well, I leave Sunday for New York. I had to cancel Utah at the last minute to go on a secret mission, but will be doing the media rounds in NYC next week to promote the book. Fast Money on Monday, Bloomberg on Tuesday morning, a guest host spot with the lovely Liz Claman on Fox Business on Wednesday, and videos with Yahoo Tech Ticker, thestreet.com, the Wall Street Journal, and with Steve Forbes himself. Lots of meetings with cool people, so should be a fast and fun week. Korea has been postponed, which gives me more time at home in May, which I need. I am already starting to work on my presentation for my Strategic Investment Conference, April 28-30. There are only a few spots left. Best speaker line-up of any conference anywhere. You can learn more at https://hedge-fund-conference.com/2011/invitation.aspx?ref=mauldin. Endgame has now been on the New York Times best-seller list for three weeks. And this week, if you have not yet bought your copy, let me commend you to my friends at Laissez Faire Books. I have been buying books from them for nearly 30 years. They are the best source for Austrian economics and libertarian books, along with the usual offering of investment books current in the market. They have matched the Amazon price for Endgame; but if you are interested, move around their website and pick up a few other things along with my book. http://www.lfb.org/product_info.php?products_id=1014&PromoCode=L401M301 It is time to hit the send button. Daughter Amanda and her husband are in town. I didn’t know it when I gave him permission to marry my daughter, but he is a Red Sox fan, and as they open the year with the Texas Rangers at the Ballpark, he finally decided to bring my daughter back to Dallas for a long overdue visit. At least we won the opener today. I see margaritas and talk of baseball and family for the next few hours, with no mention of the worries of the Endgame and deficits. Have a great week! Your hoping I don’t lose too many friends with this letter analyst, John Mauldin John@FrontlineThoughts.com Copyright 2011 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved
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Thoughts From the Frontline is a free weekly economic e-letter by best-selling author and renowned financial expert, John Mauldin. You can learn more and get your free subscription by visiting www.JohnMauldin.com. Please write to johnmauldin@2000wave.com to inform us of any reproductions, including when and where copy will be reproduced. You must keep the letter intact, from introduction to disclaimers. If you would like to quote brief portions only, please reference www.JohnMauldin.com. To subscribe to John Mauldin’s E-Letter please click here: http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/subscribe To change your email address please click here: http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/change-address If you would ALSO like changes applied to the Accredited Investor E- Letter, please include your old and new email address along with a note requesting the change for both e-letters and send your request to wave@frontlinethoughts.com. To unsubscribe please refer to the bottom of the email. Thoughts From the Frontline and JohnMauldin.com is not an offering for any investment. It represents only the opinions of John Mauldin and those that he interviews. Any views expressed are provided for information purposes only and should not be construed in any way as an offer, an endorsement, or inducement to invest and is not in any way a testimony of, or associated with, Mauldin’s other firms. John Mauldin is President of Business Marketing Group. He also is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA) which is an investment advisory firm registered with multiple states, President and registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, (MWS) member FINRA, SIPC. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB) and NFA Member. Millennium Wave Investments is a dba of MWA LLC and MWS LLC. 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Investors should discuss any investment with their personal investment counsel. John Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA), which is an investment advisory firm registered with multiple states. John Mauldin is a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, (MWS), an FINRA registered broker-dealer. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB). Millennium Wave Investments is a dba of MWA LLC and MWS LLC. Millennium Wave Investments cooperates in the consulting on and marketing of private investment offerings with other independent firms such as Altegris Investments; Absolute Return Partners, LLP; Fynn Capital; Nicola Wealth Management; and Plexus Asset Management. Funds recommended by Mauldin may pay a portion of their fees to these independent firms, who will share 1/3 of those fees with MWS and thus with Mauldin. Any views expressed herein are provided for information purposes only and should not be construed in any way as an offer, an endorsement, or inducement to invest with any CTA, fund, or program mentioned here or elsewhere. Before seeking any advisor’s services or making an investment in a fund, investors must read and examine thoroughly the respective disclosure document or offering memorandum. Since these firms and Mauldin receive fees from the funds they recommend/market, they only recommend/market products with which they have been able to negotiate fee arrangements. PAST RESULTS ARE NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THERE IS RISK OF LOSS AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GAIN WHEN INVESTING IN MANAGED FUNDS. WHEN CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS, INCLUDING HEDGE FUNDS, YOU SHOULD CONSIDER VARIOUS RISKS INCLUDING THE FACT THAT SOME PRODUCTS: OFTEN ENGAGE IN LEVERAGING AND OTHER SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT PRACTICES THAT MAY INCREASE THE RISK OF INVESTMENT LOSS, CAN BE ILLIQUID, ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE PERIODIC PRICING OR VALUATION INFORMATION TO INVESTORS, MAY INVOLVE COMPLEX TAX STRUCTURES AND DELAYS IN DISTRIBUTING IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION, ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE SAME REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS AS MUTUAL FUNDS, OFTEN CHARGE HIGH FEES, AND IN MANY CASES THE UNDERLYING INVESTMENTS ARE NOT TRANSPARENT AND ARE KNOWN ONLY TO THE INVESTMENT MANAGER. Alternative investment performance can be volatile. An investor could lose all or a substantial amount of his or her investment. Often, alternative investment fund and account managers have total trading authority over their funds or accounts; the use of a single advisor applying generally similar trading programs could mean lack of diversification and, consequently, higher risk. There is often no secondary market for an investor’s interest in alternative investments, and none is expected to develop. All material presented herein is believed to be reliable but we cannot attest to its accuracy. Opinions expressed in these reports may change without prior notice. John Mauldin and/or the staffs may or may not have investments in any funds cited above. John Mauldin can be reached at 800-829-7273. Thoughts from the Frontline \| 3204 Beverly Drive \| Dallas, Texas 75205