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I’ve got a soft spot for big countries with small populations. They’re great to trade (and fun to visit) but you need to keep an eye on the exit. Australia’s got 7.5 people per sq/mile and Iceland 8 (US 178, China 361, Germany 594). This wk I went to Canada for some treasure hunting; they’ve 9 per sq/mile and I liked ‘em all. Those chilly Quebecois have a lot of fighting spirit: every other home has a swimming pool.

Bolinas California is a tiny spot with big ideas. A rural village 1hr north of San Fran, it was overrun in the ‘60’s by brilliant young dropouts. Most stayed, some smoked their way to oblivion, a few changed the world. Bolinas fuses political rebellion, sexual revolution and creative genius all under the banner of “rage against the Machine”; I love it. It’s where Mara grew up and where we drop out now and then. Lucas

Larry is one of the great American’s. Born a bastard, given up for adoption, he was raised by a Russian Jew who took the surname Ellison in honor of Ellis Island, our welcome mat. Little Larry grew up poor in Chicago, wrote some damn good code, stayed a step ahead of the pack, and now at age 65, the Oracle has a $28bln treasure pile. Never finished college. Made in America. Couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Anyho

An old buddy owns stakes in the top clubs in NY & Vegas. Works his tail off. He’s an astro-chemist. Finds the perfect combination of rap stars, sport stars, porn stars, movie stars and Ford models then BANG, the young Sheiks, Trustafarians and 2/20 crowd (those of us without 4 kids) pull out their Amex Black. Bono, Gaga and Jeter don’t carry wallets; someone’s gotta foot the bill. The A-list loves him, so he sees

Spent the wk touring monuments. The ones in NY get built by boys who make money. The ones in DC by boys who spend it. The former is gritty, dirty and electric, just like the business that foots the bill. NY monuments make money, just take a deep breath at Rockafeller, you can smell it. I love it. I’m biased, I know, it’s my hometown. Anyhow, went for a sunrise jog in DC. Empty streets, that city sleeps. Circled Georg

I know 3 brothers. Boomers. Went to great schools, got great jobs, raised great families. Mid-to-late sixties now. One loved to ski and moved north, another loved golf moved south, the 3rd loved big living and small bills, moved to Mexico. El Guapo lived off real estate deals, now he’s as broke as the unfinished resorts he peddled to gringos. Vermont planned well, just put the big house of bricks up for sale, time to

One of my boys runs product mgmt for a cloud computing start-up, few yrs old. Amazon.com realized they had enough servers to handle Christmas orders and too many for the other 49wks of the yr. Figured they could earn a buck leasing their spare capacity. Obvious and smart. But my boys’ company figured out how to build the pipes and interfaces to connect users and capacity faster than Amazon could, so they let him do i

My Dad fought in Korea, engineering PhD on GI bill, designed spy planes and spaceships. Raced the Reds most of his life. He moved on. Designs Predators to hunt cavemen. We have fun talking economics, he finds the theories amusing, and no one dies. I explain Ricardian Comparitive Advantage Theory and the shift of labor overseas. He says sounds great, then drives me through the Hartford ghetto, once a gem of US manufac

Few mths back, Obama sent Mara an email blasting “greedy bankers”. Took ‘em to the woodshed. My leftie friends gave me an earful. Few days later the SEC launched the Goldman investigation to leftie applause. Hard not to connect the dots. Two wks back, MoveOn.org sent Mara an email raging over the $1trln we’ve spent in Afghan/Iraq. This wk General Petraeus told the NY Times we’ve found $1trln of mine

A buddy in Santa Barbara (Dan) was a US Olympic coach and built a nice training biz. Makes $200k/yr which in the real world (non-finance) is a lot. He couldn’t afford to buy a house and rents for $3,500/mth. His next-door neighbor (Bob) bought an identical house and paid $1.2mm. Bob stopped paying his mortgage 1yr ago because the house is now worth $750k. The bank hasn’t bothered to kick Bob out. Guessing