Dear Everyone,

Holy Cow! The Cubs won the World Series!  There was allegedly a 5 million attendance at their victory parade (something I find hard to believe, given the population of the Chicago metro area is under 10 million).  And, so far, Kim Il Jun hasn’t yet unleashed the nuclear apocalypse (he’s a known White Sox fan). 

Political apocalypse, on the other hand, has to wait for Tuesday. Running as major candidates are a white female professional bureaucrat with a penchant for secrecy, and a whiff of scandal, non-withstanding the fact that she and her cronies have been under intense, serial investigations for years and years that have come up with zero, nothing, bupkiss in terms of criminal wrongdoing.  If elected, whether she will be able to govern our fractured nation is a different question.  And the ‘candidate’ on the other side - - a megalomaniacal narcissistic businessman who has failed many times over, managed to fool the banks (bankrupt multiple times), cheat his employees and the consumers of his products, who either believes or mouths Republican cant on 1) climate warming 2) evolution 3) birth control 4) immigration, etc., who is completely unqualified for the office by either temperament, knowledge, or ability.  His entire campaign has been a parade of insults, pseudo (or real) fascism, and know-nothingness. To me, the differences between these two candidates is between a flavor of ice cream you might not care for, and a red hot poker shoved up your.…and I don’t think a protest vote lodged with some of the alternative candidates is a viable solution either - - they are both pretty flakey, and I see a vote for Ms. Clinton as a complete repudiation of ‘he who shall not be named’ as well as his disgusting party that rolled over and allowed this travesty to happen. It’s absolutely horrendous, and I no longer recognize the part of the country that would nominate this Berlusconiesque (if only this and not much worse) buffoon for high office.  If the majority of the electorate chooses this excuse for a human being, Cindy and I will move off shore until the end of his tenure. 

Needless to say, this wave of political pessimism continues unabated as I look at the doings of the rest of the world, including Putin, Israel, Iraq-Iran, the Philippines, and so on. It really feels like we are getting ever closer to some inflection point where out tenderly crafted balance of powers will disrupt and explode.

On nicer news, I have been ear-wormed by Nicola, who took the Go Cubs Go song, and changed the lyrics to Go Meeko.  She is the cutest dog in Chicago today.  I recently read a new biography of U. S.Grant.  He has become a forgotten president, and the author of the book wonders why publicly, without giving us much of an answer.  Grant was a man of modest means and demeanor who became president to great acclaim.  His tenure of president was scandal prone, though none of it was ever directly related to him; more that he had loyalty to people who may not have been fit to serve.  After his time on office, he spent over two years travelling the world as a sort of ambassador without portfolio.  When he died, he was acclaimed as one of the great presidents.  Yet somehow over the last 130 years, he lost his luster.  I speculate this happened for a two part reason – 1) there was no appetite in the North to keep Federal troops in the former confederacy long enough to actually bring about necessary social change so, 2) the rise of Jim Crow (and similar social institutions in the North) brought on a revision of Grant’s role post-Civil War.  Perhaps we judged to harshly earlier, and now have forgotten his role in the creation of our modern United States.  I don’t doubt that his allegiance today would be towards the Democrats.

Last, we did just get back from our annual NY manager trip.  Sin this trip we saw a lot of people in the distressed credit space – vulture investors who try to capitalize in the mistakes and miseries of other people.  Sadly, we seem to do better in investing in this portion of the spectrum rather than inventors and entrepreneurs.  The highlight for me was the long conversation I had with Danya about social networks and algorithmic processing.

Love

H.