Sometimes this blog writes itself. Yikes, I could use more days like today.
ADI in the news
There will be an article on ADI in the July issue of Farm Equipment Magazine. You should all subscribe to this excellent publication as it provides insights into what end users and distributors care about in their equipment. Seeing ADI in Farm Equipment Magazine is better than being on the cover of Rolling Stone. I know I am getting 25 copies of that issue just for myself.
Things That Need to be Taught to Humans #2, courtesy of John Keough
Don’t drive your car with the handicap tag hanging from the mirror. Motorcycles and cars approaching at certain angles disappear behind the tag … not to mention that it is against the law.
Things That Need to be Taught to Humans #3
Drive in the right lane, pass in the left lane.
Markets in Action
That same Farm Equipment Magazine has a piece on corn and soybeans. Corn prices are down … because crops are up: “The USDA reports that 76% of the corn crop is in good to excellent condition, compared with 63% last year.” These things happen. The same article reminds us that “About a third of the U.S. soybean crop is exported to China, where there's a large demand for soybeans to feed hogs, poultry, and dairy cows.” That trend will not go away, and remember you read it here first.
Market Distortions #1
In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an excellent opinion piece by John H. Cochrane on the “Failure of Macroeconomics”. This piece agrees with things I have said for years: people respond to incentives and behavior changes at the margin. These microeconomic ideas are no great insight yet nobody seems to pay attention. Instead we get macroeconomic tinkering (bad bad bad) like we see today as microeconomic decisions are put on hold. Cochrane asks “Who wants to hire, lend or invest when the next stroke of the presidential pen or Justice Department witch hunt can undo all the hard work?” Who indeed? This is why we have anemic growth. Please read the entire piece.
Market Distortions #2
In the most recent Economist there is a piece on the global education bubble. I do not agree with all of the conclusions and I have little exposure to MOOCs. However, I rejoice at anyone publishing eye-opening numbers like these, even when they are unhappy news:
“On one front, a funding crisis has created a shortfall that the universities’ brightest brains are struggling to solve. Institutions’ costs are rising, owing to pricey investments in technology, teachers’ salaries and galloping administrative costs. That comes as governments conclude that they can no longer afford to subsidise universities as generously as they used to. American colleges, in particular, are under pressure: some analysts predict mass bankruptcies within two decades.”
It goes on:
“Universities have passed most of their rising costs on to students. Fees in private non-profit universities in America rose by 28% in real terms in the decade to 2012, and have continued to edge up. Public universities increased their fees by 27% in the five years to 2012. Their average fees are now almost $8,400 for students studying in-state, and more than $19,000 for the rest. At private colleges average tuition is more than $30,000 (two-thirds of students benefit from bursaries of one sort or another). American student debt adds up to $1.2 trillion, with more than 7m people in default. …. Student enrolments in America, which rose from 15.2m in 1999 to 20.4m in 2011, have slowed, falling by 2% in 2012.”
Remember, in the Godfather Tom Hagen told Wolz “"Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing bad news immediately." I look at those numbers in the above paragraph and think that America has finally received the bad news and reacted.