The Sunday Drive - 01/08/2023 Edition

A Sunday Drive Around the Internet

👋🏻 Hello friends,

Greetings from Saratoga Springs, NY!  

Let's take it easy and enjoy our leisurely Sunday Drive around the internet.

Vibin'

Most often, the Vibe of the Week is, at least in some way, related to the theme of that week’s edition of The Sunday Drive. But sometimes, it’s just a vibe. No message, just a cool tune that makes us smile. This is one of those weeks. 😊

Please enjoy Two Princes from the Spin Doctors’ 1991 album, Pocket Full of Kryptonite.

💡  Quote of the Week‌

"One day, you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now." - Paulo Coelho

📈  Chart of the Week

I found this table quite fascinating.

There is much bearish sentiment in the marketplace right now, much angst about the impact of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy as they “fight” inflation, and much fear and loathing of the impact of that policy on our economic growth prospects.

However, the table above shows us two things. First, a Fed Funds rate target of 5% (their current policy target) is not unusually high by historical standards. Secondly, looking back over time, the level of interest rates isn’t especially correlated with the pace of technological innovation.

So I say, “Take heart!” Just because short term interest rates are no longer essentially zero (free money!), it doesn’t mean that the wheels must come off the global economy.

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Interesting Drive-By's

🤔  Coming Soon: The 60 Year Career - With more people living to 100, employers and employees must become more flexible.

💡  It’s Always Time to Build - Excellent article by Evan Armstrong, and the source of the Chart of the Week.

The sentiment that low interest rates made highly risky companies fundable is one that has come up again and again in my private conversations with venture capitalists. There is this tribal belief that because interest rates are higher, it’s time for “safer” startups to prevail.

They are wrong.

😏 Related.

Jack Raines @Jack_Raines

We lived in an era of near-zero interest rates where we could have borrowed virtually unlimited money to fund cool stuff like high-speed rail networks, cancer treatments, and nuclear reactors. Instead we got the metaverse and monkey JPEGs.

🤓  The End of Organizing - I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all of the time we’ve spent organizing our notes was probably wasted. 

Instead, in the immediate future, our notes will be organized for us by large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3. #ArtificialIntelligence

🤯  Well when you put it like that….

Benjamin Carlson @bfcarlson

In 1977, media prophet Marshall McLuhan discussed CIA and FBI surveillance, and then turned it into one of the most mind-bending riffs on identity in the digital age I've ever heard.

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If you have any cool articles or ideas that might be interesting for future Sunday Drive-by's, please send them along or tweet 'em at me.

‌I hope you have a relaxing weekend and a great week ahead. See you next Sunday...

Your faithful financial provocateur,

-Mike‌

If you enjoy the Sunday Drive, I'd be honored if you'd share it with others.‌‌

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