Thursday update

Sorry for blowing it on our normal schedule for publishing this week, having missed our typical Wednesday spot. I thought I had something lined up, but it fell through. To make up for that, a few things here today...

First, check out our second Podcast Short, a new feature we are adding for podcast listeners. I've been a bit overwhelmed this week to get back to a lot of the people that have emailed me, but I've had a big smile each time one of you has signed off with "keep doing what you can to build strong towns." That line just kind of happened. Then it stuck. Glad to see it catching on.

Second, I posted a link on our Facebook site to a Chris Martenson interview with Nate Hagens of The Oil Drum. I'm a big fan of the writing at The Oil Drum and this interview was great. You can read excerpts on Martenson's site or listen to / download the audio version, which I've already listened to twice while driving (too many miles this week). The title -- We're not facing a shortage of energy, but a longage of expectations -- is a brilliant insight.

Third, this morning there was an announcement on unemployment applications and the optimistic spin that the slightly lower number was part of an overall trend. This week we are at 400,000, which is down from 401,000 last week. If you are running out to go long the stock market based on that 0.0003% improvement, understand that last week's number was 398,000 but was revised this week up to 401,000. Oh, the little games we play with numbers... I could make a long-winded point here about the problems with hyper-specialization, but I'll just point out that it applies to economists as well and recommend that you read The Original Green.

Finally, I find it useful to ground myself frequently by listening to clips of Nassim Taleb. His resiliency approach is so counter to all of the standard dogma relating to finance and economics that one is exposed to today that I have to inoculate myself from time to time. Here is a video I've been listening to lately where he talks about forecasting and how, the more fragile our society becomes, the more reliant on forecasts we are (and see Monday's post for a little insight on how bad at forecasting we are).

News Digest under development.