Links - 12/13/2022

“If interest rates are artificially kept too low in relation to risks, there will be a reduction in both saving and lending.... The effect of keeping interest rates artificially low, in fact, is eventually the same as that of keeping any other price below the natural market. It increases demand and reduces supply. It increases the demand for capital and reduces the supply of real capital. It creates economic distortions. It is true, no doubt, that an artificial reduction in the interest rate encourages increased borrowing. It tends, in fact, to encourage highly speculative ventures that cannot continue except under the artificial conditions that give them birth. On the supply side, the artificial reduction of interest rates discourages normal thrift, saving, and investment. It reduces the accumulation of capital. It slows down that increase in productivity, that ‘economic growth,’ that ‘progressives’ profess to be so eager to promote.” —Henry Hazlitt

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Howard Marks memo: Sea Change (Memo, Podcast)

In his latest memo, Howard Marks writes that the investment world may be experiencing the third major sea change of the last 50 years. Events in recent years – especially the spike in inflation and the Federal Reserve’s response – appear to have caused a reversal of the market conditions that prevailed after the Global Financial Crisis and for much of the last four decades. Howard discusses what this potentially new era could mean for lenders, especially bargain hunters.

Berkshire Hathaway Blowout: On Pace for Biggest Win Over S&P 500 in Fifteen Years (LINK)

Consoles and Competition - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Notes on The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (LINK)

Jake Taylor demos Journalytic on Value After Hours as well as on Planet MicroCap (videos).