All posts by bfiggefox

Bob Doll: Financial Entertainment vs Financial Education

Around Town, Business, Guest Post, , , ,

Kudos to Karen L. Johnson CPA CGMA PMP for filling in for me to file this guest post. For more economic input, the Princeton Regional Chamber holds its economic and technical summit on Tuesday, March 8.   When he was still at BlackRock, Doll was the keynote speaker. 

bob doll A man of finance, family and faith spoke at the Princeton Chamber’s luncheon on March 3. Fresh from CNBC’s Squawk Box, Robert Doll, senior portfolio manager and chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management,  sees one factor in the purpose identified by some media:  financial entertainment and not financial education, in an environment where bad news sells. What was wrong with the market?  A fear funk.

What’s really the biggest risk to the market? That we will import deflation from the rest of the world. Doll suggests we keep in mind that the US is the most isolated economy in the world, 87% domestic, and we’re letting the tail, 13%, wag the dog.  Consider first some positive tailwinds for the US consumer, such as the biggest generation of jobs in history over the last five calendar years, with 89% full-time, along with average earning up 2.5%, to be 3% by the end of 2016.

Look too at corporate balance sheets, where debt has been paid down, and the powerful impact of oil going from $100/barrel down to $30.  As of now, we’re spending a third and saving two-thirds.  Add up those gas savings and it’s “Time for vacation, honey.”

Hand-wringers are citing the decline of manufacturing.  We had Cassandras when we moved from agriculture to manufacturing, just as we do now as the economy has moved from manufacturing to technology. And keep in mind our 2.4% growth, last year and this.

What about Washington? There’s the good, bad and the ugly. [my phrase, not his]  The Good: over about the last 7 years, the Federal deficit has collapsed from $1.4 trillion to $0.4 trillion.  The Bad: Corporate America has the highest marginal tax rate in the world.  The Ugly?

Is this choir director (Doll is listed as such on the website of Stone Hill Church) preaching to the choir? Hard to tell.  What’s sure — it was education and entertainment as he captivated the full house at the Forrestal Marriott.

He wasn’t a funny guy but he did have amusing parts – and he did have the undivided attention of the audience — which puts into question CNBC Squawk Box’s contention that being entertaining means you can’t also have an educational purpose.

So get rid of the fear funk. Don’t confuse the stock market and the economy.

karen johnson
Karen L. Johnson

 

Cleaning out the Little Closet of Horrors

Uncategorized

Source: Cleaning out the Little Closet of Horrors  – this blogger’s discoveries about the decluttering could be an inspiration to me. And you?

Princeton to move forward with historic district designation

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A historic decision — for the Witherspoon Jackson neighborhood. Many members of NIOT Princeton came out to support this. I was not able to attend, but here is the story from Shelley Krause.

Shelley Krause's avatarNot In Our Town Princeton

If you were unable to attend last night’s open meeting of Princeton Council, in which it was decided that Princeton will move forward with an historic designation for our Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood, here are some highlights:

Princeton’s 20th Historic District

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Saturday: Sakata — African Dance

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, , , ,
 

africanDoroBucci, Princeton’s premier African dance group sponsors a competition, 2/27 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Carl A. Fields Center. It features 8 schools: UMD, Towson, Yale, UPenn, Rutgers, Columbia, Albany, and Syracuse.There will be 9 African dance groups: Afrochique Dance Academy, Les Belles Noires, Les Hommes D’Afrique, Dzana, West African Vibe (WAVe), Twese Dance Troupe, ljoya, UMOJA, and OneWorld.

100 DANCERS!!!! All competing for a chance to win $500 and the title of best African dance group. Join DoroBucci on their quest to spread a love for African dance.Tickets for $10 are at the Frist ticket booth.

Please keep the ribollita

Around Town, Memoir, , , , , , , ,

John Marshall, son of the founder Sue Simpkins, is cashing out the family stake in Main Street Cafe and Bistro, which has two eateries and a catering kitchen. I remember interviewing Simpkins when she opened in Kingston and talking to her and Marshall over the years, including for an elicited oped page.

Sara Hastings of U.S. 1  wrote about Main Street for its Clocktower Bar and it was covered by food critic Pat Tanner for outdoor dining and a friendly bar.

As Planet Princeton says here,  both the Cafe in Kingston and the Bistro at Princeton Shopping Center are staples here in Princeton, just as flour and cinnamon are staples in a kitchen. The Bistro is our family’s “go to eatery,” the dining equivalent to comfort food. Here’s hoping the ribollita and the chili don’t change.

Guest author: Chrystal Schivell

Faith and Social Justice, Uncategorized

Chrystal Schivell: “Any person’s story can be fascinating, but every black person’s story is an education for me.” Here is an important post from her blog

Chrystal Schivell's avatarwhyalwaysblackandwhite

I’d be more optimistic about achieving a post-racial society if some of my neighbors were black. Recently I visited a town in rural New Jersey. A white couple lives across the street from a black friend of mine, who has just returned from the hospital. The couple promised they’d drop over daily to help her out. Down the street three young black men pulled into their driveway, next door to a white guy mowing his lawn. An integrated community with at least one neighborly neighbor! Do they even bother to notice black and white?

In Princeton, some of us constantly notice black and white because we’re worried. As the value of land increases, along with taxes, black people whose families have resided in Princeton since its early days may be forced to leave. We say that we want to keep Princeton’s diversity, but it’s not certain that, even with white…

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Einstein validated, 100 years later

Around Town, , ,

Einstein_patentoffice

This is a letter from the president of MIT, sent to me by alumnus and friend from Princeton United Methodist Church Ed Sproles. “This morning” refers to today (February 11) and it celebrates a discovery of “the first direct detection of gravitational waves, a disturbance of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago.” Hurrah for basic science!

 

Dear MIT graduate,

At about 10:30 this morning in Washington, D.C., MIT, Caltech and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will make a historic announcement in physics: the first direct detection of gravitational waves, a disturbance of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago.

You may want to watch the announcement live now. Following the NSF event, you can watch our on-campus announcement event.

You can read an overview of the discovery here as well as an interview with MIT Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss PhD ’62, instigator and a leader of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) effort.

The beauty and power of basic science
I do not typically write to you to celebrate individual research achievements, no matter how impressive; our community produces important work all the time. But I urge you to reflect on today’s announcement because it demonstrates, on a grand scale, why and how human beings pursue deep scientific questions – and why it matters.

Today’s news encompasses at least two compelling stories.

First is the one the science tells: that with his theory of general relativity, Einstein correctly predicted the behavior of gravitational waves, space-time ripples that travel to us from places in the universe where gravity is immensely strong. Those rippling messages are imperceptibly faint; until now, they had defied direct observation. Because LIGO succeeded in detecting these faint messages – from two black holes that crashed together to form a still larger one – we have remarkable evidence that the system behaves exactly as Einstein foretold.

With even the most advanced telescopes that rely on light, we could not have seen this spectacular collision, because we expect black holes to emit no light at all. With LIGO’s instrumentation, however, we now have the “ears” to hear it. Equipped with this new sense, the LIGO team encountered and recorded a fundamental truth about nature that no one ever has before. And their explorations with this new tool have only just begun. This is why human beings do science!

The second story is of human achievement. It begins with Einstein: an expansive human consciousness that could form a concept so far beyond the experimental capabilities of his day that inventing the tools to prove its validity took a hundred years.

That story extends to the scientific creativity and perseverance of Rai Weiss and his collaborators. Working for decades at the edge of what was technologically possible, against the odds Rai led a global collaboration to turn a brilliant thought experiment into a triumph of scientific discovery.

Important characters in that narrative include the dozens of outside scientists and NSF administrators who, also over decades, systematically assessed the merits of this ambitious project and determined the grand investment was worth it. The most recent chapter recounts the scrupulous care the LIGO team took in presenting these findings to the physics community. Through the sacred step-by-step process of careful analysis and peer-reviewed publication, they brought us the confidence to share this news – and they opened a frontier of exploration.

At a place like MIT, where so many are engaged in solving real-world problems, we sometimes justify our nation’s investment in basic science by its practical byproducts. In this case, that appears nearly irrelevant. Yet immediately useful “results” are here, too: LIGO has been a strenuous training ground for thousands of undergraduates and hundreds of PhDs – two of them now members of our faculty.

What’s more, the LIGO team’s technological inventiveness and creative appropriation of tools from other fields produced instrumentation of unprecedented precision. As we know so well at MIT, human beings cannot resist the lure of a new tool. LIGO technology will surely be adapted and developed, “paying off” in ways no one can yet predict. It will be fun to see where this goes.
*        *        *
The discovery we celebrate today embodies the paradox of fundamental science: that it is painstaking, rigorous and slow – and electrifying, revolutionary and catalytic. Without basic science, our best guess never gets any better, and “innovation” is tinkering around the edges. With the advance of basic science, society advances, too.

I am proud and grateful to belong to a community so well equipped to appreciate the beauty and meaning of this achievement – and primed to unlock its opportunities.

In wonder and admiration,

L. Rafael Reif

job opening: community health worker

Around Town, multicultural

Community Health Worker – Bilingual English/Spanish

Posted  2/9/2016

Position Description:  We are seeking a full time Community Health Worker for our Improving Pregnancy Outcomes grant. The Health Worker will provide culturally competent maternal and child health (MCH) advocacy and support services for women of childbearing age and pregnant women in Middlesex County. This position will involve navigation of the health care system; identification of health care resources; appointment scheduling; arranging transportation and child care; accompanying patients to prenatal/specialist visits and other associated tasks.

Qualified applicants must have H.S. Diploma, BA Preferred and a minimum of 1 year in maternal child health field. A strong knowledge about the Middlesex County (must be a resident of Middlesex County) and New Jersey social services system required and experience relating to the field of public health, specifically maternal child health is strongly preferred. A valid driver’s license and the ability to travel extensively on a daily basis for community based appointments in Middlesex County is also required. If you are interested in applying for this position, please email your cover letter and resume to jclaudio@cjfhc.org.

Jocelyn Claudio, MA*

Director  of Human Resources *

2 King Arthur Court, Suite B

North Brunswick, NJ 08902

Phone: 732-937-5437 Ext. 124

Fax: 732-937-5540

www.CJFHC.org

Tonight 2/9: Modern Racism

black history month

Loss, danced

Dance and the other arts, Memoir, , , , , ,

louisdanceMurray Louis — one of my favorite choreographers — died yesterday, February 1, age 89. Jack Anderson, long time dance critic for the New York Times, wrote the obituary, with this poignant description of a dance will resonate with many who have lost life companions — or who dread losing them.  (Stephen Ministers, take note…) To quote: 

One of Mr. Louis’s most memorable and moving works was created in 1994 as a memorial to Mr. Nikolais, his longtime collaborator and companion,who had died the previous year at 82. Mr. Louis titled it “Alone.”

In the piece, Mr. Louis never moved far from one spot, making the empty stage around him seem like a vast void. He kept turning from side to side, as if expecting someone to enter, but no one was ever there. Nor was there anyone to touch when he spread his arms wide.

From time to time, as he danced to recorded music by Astor Piazzolla, he clenched his fists, then bent over and drummed them quietly on the floor. Yet he always preserved his decorum and never exploded into rage or grief. Ending the solo, he slumped in dejection.