The following post is an excellent example of how a disciplined due diligence process saved an investor from ruin.
If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
Actually, the formulation of that headline that I prefer these days is the famous inversion by the Nobel economist Paul Samuelson: “If you’re so rich how come you’re so dumb?”
And yes, that brings us promptly to the Bernard Madoff scandal.
But this week Barron’s brings us one: “Living to Tell About Madoff,” an interview with James Hedges (not, I assume, a stage name, although in the circumstances it ought to be), “president and founder of LJH Global Investments in Naples, Fla., who has invested billions in hedge funds and private equity since 1990 through relationships with numerous hedge funds.”
Eleven years ago, Hedges spent two hours meeting with Madoff in his New York office planning to invest a few billion dollars of his clients’ money. He walked out without a deal.
Here are some of the reasons why…
As the new year approaches you will be tempted to look at your expanding waistline and say, “I’m going to get in shape”.
The problem with information work is that it always takes longer to accomplish any task than you will admit. Your work day always intrudes on personal time. Personal time you would devote to “getting in shape” mysteriously evaporates.
What you need is a fitness regimen that takes little space, little time, and gets results. How does 11 minutes a day in the space of a yoga mat sound? This isn’t some expensive fad; it’s been around since 1960, it’s effective, and it’s free.
5BX
The program was originally developed as a fitness regimen for the Royal Canadian Air Force by Dr. William (Bill) Orban. The program was simple, took little time and was easily adaptable for everyone, from jet pilots to office workers. The 5BX (5 Basic Exercises) fitness plan debunked the notion that fitness requires sustained, rigorous exercise.
Today some of the most expensive exercise programmes, and one machine that sells for fifteen thousand dollars follow Oban’s fundamental principles.
The only change to 5BX that I would make is to use the abs exercises that I wrote about here to replace the sit-ups in charts 2 through 4.
When you start this don’t jump in with both feet and start on chart 3 or 4. Instead, start at the beginning and do it every morning. If you can’t do it every day due to soreness, then drop down a level or two until you can. Fitness comes from consistency and persistence. Put this in your Monthly Habit List.
You are welcome to download a copy of the 1986-1988 reprint (1.8MB PDF zipped up).
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted.
Efficient online searching dictates that you set time limits for each search. If you don’t, the time allotted will be infinite and the job will expand to fill all the time you have and more.
Defeat Parkinson and His Damn Law
The first step to preventing Parkinson’s Law from taking over your life is to fully understand what you are really looking for. As an Investigator, I will normally look for data on people or companies; each has a name, address, telephone number, and fax number. This is how I search for this data on the Internet and compile the results in the shortest possible time.
The Assembly Line
The purpose of the “Assembly Line” is to be certain that I search using all relevant search terms while keeping good records of the date and URL’s where I find things. The collected material will be well organised for easy report production. Hence the title, Assembly Line Searching. Continue reading ‘Assembly Line Searching’
Good detectives know how things work. That is what makes them effective. This applies to both the private and public sectors. The police detective has to know how the criminal justice system works. The Private Investigator has to know how the civil courts, business, and the economy works.
Functional Research
This knowledge of how things fit together and function builds on previous knowledge and allows you discover how new things work. Researchers call this Functional Research. However, doing functional research requires broad knowledge in a wide variety of subjects to understand how things might fit together or complement each other.
Economics
An understanding of the economic forces that have shaped our world will serve you well in learning how government, courts, and businesses work. Our laws, customs, and institutions are built upon a foundation of economics.
Economics is not difficult to understand. It can be reduced to the interplay of four factors:
- Wealth
- Power
- Distributive justice (a value judgement)
- Impersonal efficiency
The following list of books should be read in order:
- Diamond’s
- Cameron & Neal’s
- Landes’s
- DeSoto’s
- Ferguson’s
These books cover a lot of ground. They start with why a lack of natural resources prevented economic and technological growth in some areas of the world and move onto the political factors that shaped that growth. Then in Landes’s work, why some nations fail to live up to their economic potential. DeSoto’s book is absolutely necessary for an understanding of why property rights are so essential to economic growth and why established property registration systems have created a huge divide between the rich nations that have such systems and poor nations that don’t. Finally, Ferguson will explain the origins and evolution of our finance system and financial institutions.
An all-to-common phone fraud story from the CBC.
Phone systems are often a weak link in loss prevention and security plans, and cost you real money. When you get defrauded and contact the telco you find that don’t care, they just want the bill paid.
Paul Kelly and colleagues at Loughborough University found that a disulfur dinitride (S2N2) polymer turned exposed fingerprints brown, as the polymer reaction was initiated from the near-undetectable remaining residues.
Traces of inkjet printer ink can also initiate the polymer. The detection limit is so low that details of a printed letter previously in an envelope could be read off the inside of the envelope after being exposed to S2N2.
“A one-covers-all versatile system like this has obvious potential,” says Kelly.
“This work has demonstrated that it is possible to obtain fingerprints from surfaces that hitherto have been considered extremely difficult, if not impossible, to obtain,” says Colin Lewis, scientific advisor at the UK Ministry of Defence. “The method proposed has shown that this system could well provide capabilities which could significantly enhance the tools available to forensic scientists in the future.”
Original article: Paul F. Kelly, Chem. Commun., 2008, DOI: 10.1039/b815742a
Provided by Royal Society of Chemistry
Litigation may tell you what the target company doesn’t want you to know.
Here are five things to look for when reviewing a company’s legal entanglements:
- Is the company the target of large scale mass tort actions?
- Is the company facing class action claims for faulty products and/or services?
- Is the company facing lawsuits claiming shoddy or unfair business practices?
- Have employees sued for wrongful dismissal?
- Are shareholders claiming the company knew about material facts that depressed their stock price and failed to disclose them?
couple served with legal documents via Facebook
Mark McCormack, a lawyer in Canberra, persuaded a court to allow him to use the unusual method after other attempts to reach them failed.
Victims lash out at Hollywood private investigator
Victims of former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano say they have never been able to free themselves from the emotional and financial fallout caused by crimes he committed while wiretapping the rich and famous.
A Private Investigator often deals with business issues, but often the PI does not have a real understanding how the economy works or how companies function.
The best guide for understanding how companies work that I have come across is Charan’s where the author describes the universal principles that help all companies make money. This book is too simplistic for CEOs , but to readers on the lower and middle rungs it offers useful insights into how companies function and prosper or fail.
The Library of Parliament announced enhancements to LEGISINFO, a research site containing information on legislation currently before Parliament.
Effective immediately, users may:
- consult short summaries of 500 words or less for Government bills from the current Parliament onwards. These summaries are placed under the Legislative Summary link within 48-72 hours of first reading;
- and access “Royal Recommendations” and “Major Speaker’s Rulings and Statements” for all bills from the 40th Parliament onwards, where applicable, through the links to the Senate Debates or House of Commons Journals. These links are found just below “Text of the Bill”.
LEGISINFO also provides access to information about individual bills, along with links to recent newspaper articles, a reading list, and other related information.