{"id":57040,"date":"2021-03-10T07:02:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T12:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57040"},"modified":"2021-03-10T07:02:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T12:02:38","slug":"everything-is-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57040","title":{"rendered":"Everything Is Broken"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Everything Is Broken<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n<\/header>\n
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Broken Credit<\/a>
\nBroken Retirement<\/a>
\nBroken Stocks<\/a>
\nBroken Data<\/a>
\nBroken Unemployment System<\/a>
\nPuerto Rico, Vaccines, and Some Good News<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Broken lines, broken strings,
\nBroken threads, broken springs,
\nBroken idols, broken heads,
\nPeople sleeping in broken beds<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Bob Dylan, \u201cEverything is Broken\u201d from the album\u00a0Oh Mercy<\/em><\/strong>, 1989<\/p>\n

I was on a client call earlier this week with Steve Blumenthal. The gentleman is at that stage in life where he needs cash income and not risk. Steve commented, \u201cThe bond market is broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

And indeed, the traditional fixed income bond market is broken, thanks to the Fed. We were able to suggest some alternatives (they are out there) that could help solve his problem.<\/p>\n

But it got me to thinking… What else is broken? And the more I thought, the more I realized that the data that we use every day, the very systems that we are forced to work with, are indeed in various stages of being broken.<\/p>\n

There is a great scene in the fabulous movie\u00a0The Princess Bride<\/em>\u00a0where the criminal \u201cmastermind\u201d Vizzini keeps uttering the word \u201cinconceivable.\u201d After the nth time, Inigo Montoya turns to him and says, \u201cYou keep using that word. I don\u2019t think it means what you think it means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today we are going to look at data from the standpoint of Inigo Montoya. I don\u2019t think that data means what you think it means. Indeed, much of the data in the way we use it is simply broken.<\/p>\n

(In a few weeks, I will do a letter on things that aren\u2019t broken, which are in fact incredible. I am an optimist, but I\u2019m also realistic. I am \u201clong\u201d on the human experiment. Government? Not so much\u2026)<\/p>\n

Our economic and financial systems are badly broken in multiple ways. Some of the cracks are enormous, maybe beyond anyone\u2019s ability to repair.\u00a0Step one is admitting they are broken.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything Is Broken Broken Credit Broken Retirement Broken Stocks Broken Data Broken Unemployment System Puerto Rico, Vaccines, and Some Good News Broken lines, broken strings, Broken threads, broken springs, Broken idols, broken heads, People sleeping in broken beds \u2014Bob Dylan, \u201cEverything is Broken\u201d from the album\u00a0Oh Mercy, 1989 I was on a client call earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8226,21625],"class_list":["post-57040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-john-mauldin","tag-thoughts-from-the-frontline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57041,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57040\/revisions\/57041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}