Where are we going as a nation?
There are certainly some worthy observations here on the crucial importance of building a financial plan with an eye toward expecting the unexpected. As far as I’m concerned, however, merely creating such a “plan” and then blindly sticking to it (as Mr. Richards suggests here) has been the death knell of far too many portfolios. True “long-term investing” demands constant situational awareness, solid advice and – most importantly – the ability to adapt your plan – not just adhere to it.
Rolling Stone TRASHES new Tom Cruise flick, “Oblivion” — “Earth is a garbage dump. Alien wars have left the future in ruins. The remnants of humanity have taken refuge on a space station. A pair of unlikely lovers are assigned from on high to do the robotic work of reclaiming vital resources and maybe saving the planet. OK, that’s the plot of Pixar’s WALL-E. Minus the animation, it’s also the motor that drives Oblivion . . .”
Quite coherent article on the changing face of information and news flow in the investment world.  Twitter is becoming both an awareness tool and a “disintermediator” of access to preferred information sources.  Financial institutions that fail to recognize this are going to be left in the dust: “Simon Ricketts of the Guardian has noted that ‘Twitter does its best work in the first five minutes after a disaster, and its worst in the twelve hours after that.’” (@rolldiggity)
Twitter: Your First Source of Investment News, The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz, 4/21/2013
“Director Antoine Fuqua made a great film in Training Day (2001), but here settles for passable pulp. Die Hard (1988) is obviously the model, and Olympus Has Fallen reminds you just how wonderfully balanced John McTiernan’s film was: Bruce Willis’s cocky nonchalance, Alan Rickman’s slithery charm, the whipcrack action scenes, the ever-ratcheting tension. Fuqua doesn’t come close to matching that, and Butler is a little short on quips to leaven the violence. But it rattles along with no little vim, and there is one excellent joke about the difficulty of finding a computer’s hash key when time is tight.”
The staid New Yorker’s (not so surprising) take on the upcoming raunchy antics in the movie, “Spring-Breakers“ – “Like a spume of beer hosed across bare flesh.” Damn, those guys can write!