These photos show a Chase ATM on State St in Madison, WI.
For those unfamiliar with the area, State St is the main entertainment and consumption drag near the university. It's actually closed off to cars, so the traffic is primarily pedestrians and buses. This ATM is located at approximately 517 State St, in between Five Guys Burgers and Underground Printing.
This is the grossest ATM I've ever seen. It has been like this since I moved in nearby two weeks ago. State St is a tough location to maintain, to be sure, but none of the other storefronts or ATMs in the area are nearly this dirty and neglected. On a busy street full of current and future bank customers, I am shocked that Chase would let their brand be displayed in this manner.
I won't take money out of it--I'm worried some big ass fucking spider is going to jump out and stick me up.
More pics:
I just finished John Kenneth Galbraith's account of the 1929 stock market crash and I was amused to read the following passage, which really flies in the face of conventional wisdom nowadays:
The crash was also effective in bringing to an end the foreign lending by which the international accounts had been balanced. Now the accounts had, in the main, to be balanced by reduced exports. This put prompt and heavy pressure on export markets for wheat, cotton, and tobacco. Perhaps the foreign loans had only delayed an adjustment to the balance which had one day to come. The stock market crash served nonetheless to precipitate the adjustment with great suddenness at a most unpropitious time.
At the time the US was running a current account surplus, which meant that it had no choice but to act as a creditor to countries who desired to buy US exports. This was seen as a risk to the economic health of the US--exactly the opposite sentiment as is commonly expressed today. I'm not trying to suggest that our current account deficit is desirable or without risk, but I think it's helpful to think about the supposed threat from China in light of Galbraith's analysis. China has no choice but to finance its customers if it intends to prolong economic growth.
This passage was also very amusing:
There was also the bogey of "going off" the gold standard and, most surprisingly, of risking inflation. Until 1932 the United States added formidably to its gold reserves, and instead of inflation the country was experiencing the most violent deflation in the nation's history. Yet every sober adviser saw dangers here, including the danger of runaway price increases...The fear of inflation reinforced the demand for the balanced budget...The rejection of both fiscal (tax and expenditure) and monetary policy amounted precisely to a rejection of affirmative government economic policy. The economic advisers of the day had both unanimity and the authority to force the leaders of both parties to disavow all the available steps to check deflation and depression. In its own way this was a marked achievement--a triumph of dogma over thought. The consequences were profound.
It has been widely reported that Ben Bernanke is scholar of the Great Depression. In light of the above analysis, it's easy to see why the Fed is now divided between inflation hawks on one side and Bernanke on the other.
I've been using Twitter to broadcast my random self-important thoughts to the world lately, so my Vox blog has been rather empty. Here are some random updates:
- I found a great brand of hummus at Whole Foods. Why is it so hard to get right?
- My attention to detail is slowly (and alarmingly) deteriorating. I didn't realize the CFA Level I exam had a separate morning AND afternoon tests--so I left 1/3 of the morning questions unanswered figuring I had time to kill during the afternoon session. Also, I didn't study at all. I guess that's important for a 240 questions, 6 hour test given twice a year. They'll inform me of my failure in late January! It was a very expensive practice test, I suppose.
- No Country for Old Men was great. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was just okay.
- I read a book about Thomas Jefferson. He's from history.
- My boss misused the word "fulsome" in an email this week. He was trying to praise our due diligence team's "fulsome report." Awesome.
- One of our lawyers accidentally emailed me a screen shot of his personal checking account. Lawyers are silly.
I really don't like baseball. I haven't watched a game in two years. I did attend a Diamondbacks came last year, but I spent more time acquiring or planing to acquire various ballpark delicacies than I did watching the game.
But I love reading about baseball. Well, not just anything, but a good piece of snarky or analytical baseball-related writing really gets me excited. Moneyball was the start of it and now FIRE JOE MORGAN is one of my favorite blogs.
Some examples of entries that cracked me up today: 1, 2, 3, 4.
And it doesn't even have to be snarky commentary. I really found these pitch diagrams fascinating (via SportsFilter).
Also, this is my first post to Vox in over a month. This thing is kinda dying off. I blame Twitter. And ARod.
For the third time now I've heard one of my favorite songs played in a Chipotle: Tom Waits' "Heartattack & Vine". At first, it makes me feel a little sick--the same feeling as when I heard the Buzzcocks in the AARP commercial (or in their SUV commercial, or Iggy Pop's car commercial, or the Ramones' Diet Pepsi commercial). But I suppose this is different than using a song in an advertisement. And it's sure better than the usual mainstream dreck they play in chain stores.
I saw David Cronenberg's new film Eastern Promises tonight--it was very good. I don't have a good sense of which films are or are not marketed heavily these days, but I hadn't heard anything about it until recently. No trailers at all, which surprises me as I'm in the theaters pretty often.
Eastern Promises is a gangster flick, but in that unique Cronenberg-style. The subtle plot and character development is punctuated by short bursts of intense action and graphic imagery. If you've seen A History of Violence, you'll know what I mean. But Eastern is much less gimmicky and a better movie overall. See the trailer here.
Cordless electric screwdrivers. Every time I want to use it, the battery is dead. By the time it's done charging, I've already finished the job with the standard screwdriver.
Perhaps I just need one of those bad-ass Makitas with a back-up battery pack.
Interesting article by Michael Lewis in the NYT Magazine on the catastrophic insurance market (known as super-cat insurance). If you enjoyed Nassim Taleb's work, this will be just as interesting. Some related discussion can be found in Warren Buffett's 2006 BRK shareholder letter. Berkshire Hathaway plays in both the super-cat insurance and other oddball risk markets (the Equitas asbestos reinsurance deal being the biggest).
(thx to needled from mefi for the lewis article.)
The most recent issue of the New Yorker featured this gem. The fables remind me of these non-jokes from Andy Richter. I've read those Andy Richter non-jokes dozens of times and I still get an immense amount of perverse pleasure from them.
