You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

[CanuckinTX]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

But what's the point of your questions?

My point was just to gain some clarification of your stance on Mish. You declined to provide any history of success with Mish when Largo asked but then you were clear that you'd lost money with EJ's wrong forecasts. I just thought it would be fair of you to give a similar assessment of Mish. Since you're batting a thousand with him though then we can't really compare them.

It might be interesting to know why you think he's been 100% winners for you though - is there a certain type of call of his that you only go after? And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on you or anything - I really don't have a dog in this fight because I've never read Mish and have zero opinion of him. I don't doubt that EJ and Bart have had their issues in the past but I'm just trying to take some of the emotion out of this discussion for the education of all who don't have any history with him. Thanks.

[raja]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

My point was just to gain some clarification of your stance on Mish. You declined to provide any history of success with Mish when Largo asked but then you were clear that you'd lost money with EJ's wrong forecasts. I just thought it would be fair of you to give a similar assessment of Mish. Since you're batting a thousand with him though then we can't really compare them.

It might be interesting to know why you think he's been 100% winners for you though - is there a certain type of call of his that you only go after? And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pick on you or anything - I really don't have a dog in this fight because I've never read Mish and have zero opinion of him. I don't doubt that EJ and Bart have had their issues in the past but I'm just trying to take some of the emotion out of this discussion for the education of all who don't have any history with him. Thanks.

LargoWinch did not ask me about my success with Mish. He said, "Care to back Mish's track record for us raja?" This was in response to my asking metalman on what basis he said that Mish was 80% wrong. Neither metalman nor I were talking about personal investments with Mish.

In any event, I'm pulling out of this thread, but will leave a simple suggestion for those wondering about Mish: Read his blog for a few days. If you like it, fine. If you don't, that's fine too. To each their own. I don't get anything out of convincing anyone. The only reason I posted was because Mish is my favorite commentator now, and I always like to read criticism of someone I'm following just to make sure I'm not getting starry-eyed and missing something that will come back and bite me.

P.S. I will answer Bart if he responds to my last post to him.

[bart]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

Did some brief fact-checking . . . .

The company Mish works for, Sitka Pacific, had an annualized return since 2005 of 8.57%, while the S&P was 3.50%.
I'm not saying that there weren't better investments available -- there were -- but I am saying that you seem to want to portray Mish as a loser, and he isn't. Also, I believe I recall reading that he does not determine the composition of the funds -- he just advises, so the performance of Sitka can't be attributed entirely to Mish.

As I said, "two out of the three main funds where he works did very poorly last year, and at least one actually lost money".

You asked where he was wrong - that's just one of many many examples that came to mind.
I also did not say he was a loser and resent the implication - I said he was wrong about 2/3 of the time... and as a direct answer to your question.

I ask the same question of you as I did of metalman . . . can you back up your "67% wrong" assertion with some facts or statistics?

Can you back up that's it's not? Again - you asked, I answered.

I gave you about a half dozen a week or so ago, and you implicitly rejected them all, including how he was wrong by 18 months in calling the "resumption" of inflation in March 2009, his bogus CPI deflation chart based on CPI-U using Case Shiller and assuming way more frequent home sales than actually occur, his failure to give any credence to BLS fiddling with CPI-U as documented by shadowstats and my own work, his refusal to deal directly with the successes of intervention (especially the Paris and Louvre accords in the 80s), his bad call on China, his general wrong call on deflation, his use of invented and bogus definitions to support his deflation call, and many more.

I'm sure that I can back it up - are you willing to pay me to produce the facts and stats? Yes that's rhetorical but it's a very non trivial task as I'm sure you know.

You say, "Some of my opinion is a value judgement of course." What does that mean?

An example - he had an article a few weeks ago talking about the Swiss Franc and how gold was up - and gold didn't move at all in the Swiss Franc and only about $4 in dollars. Either he blew it or stated his point very poorly - that's a value judgment.

Don't you think "clown" and "fool" seem like perfect descriptors for most of the politicians and economic "experts" out there? I certainly do.

Oh please. You know what I'm talking about. In my opinion, it doesn't take a mental giant to slam the so called experts. Even J6P has known that for years.

The kind of high emotionalism that he practices isn't at all necessary, and is very counter productive, especially when he's just plain wrong.

The biggest example is how he uses the term "Keynesian clowns". Keynes NEVER promoted what we have - he said to pay back the excess spending from bad times during good times. If he can't even get his facts straight on basic Keynes, or (more likely) is intentionally spinning for "whatever reasons" -- well, that's just plain lying and more... the "more" being about if one can't spot and name the real causes, then any solution will be wrong to the degree that one has the causes wrong.

If memory serves, he also did call EJ a clown in that ZH piece I noted above - and I can say with 100% certainty that he hugely spun and lied about EJ and the iTulip position.

Another - the whole crud about gold being a barbaric relic. What Keynes actually said was that the gold standard was a barbaric relic - and I told him that many years ago.

And just in case - no, I'm not some huge Keynes fan. But the guy did get a lot of stuff right as my quotes page shows.

I like the cut-and-paste approach Mish uses.
He quotes the 3rd pary sources, then comments with his opinion. Instead of rehashing the facts in his own words, he presents directly where he gets his info. A very credible approach, and very valuable, imo. Different than EJ's approach, but as I have said before, both have something to contribute. You must agree, or you wouldn't be reading Mish "frequently".

Fair enough. You like him way more than I and others do.

I read Mish (and Krugman and others) to see the way various vested interests are playing the facts via emotion and "PR tricks", and how they are spun both for sentiment judging and so that I'll be better prepared when the lies and spin or whatever come up elsewhere.

Yes, as I've noted before, he does sometimes have interesting sources and I sometimes even agree with him... but my real point is that he has virtually nothing new of his own. I also don't care much for the high political content on a supposed economics site.

Additionally (an example being the recent quoting of Pettis), he does not quote or even refer to the entire work of others when he disagrees with portions of it.
I have little respect for anyone who does that since it gives one the wrong ideas about the other person and their position(s) - directly or implicitly impugning the reputation and work of another is quite tacky to say the least.

It happened to me with my ESF data and dollar intervention work too, and I documented and refuted it here and many other places.

[raja]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

Bart,

Some comments on parts of your post:

You asked where he was wrong - that's just one of many many examples that came to mind.
I also did not say he was a loser and resent the implication - I said he was wrong about 2/3 of the time... and as a direct answer to your question.

I don't believe I asked "where (Mish) was wrong". I asked what evidence you used to come up with the 67-75% inaccuracy rate you ascribe to Mish.
I never doubted that you could come up with examples of his mistakes . . . it would be impossible for him to have never made any. What I was looking for was the backing for your overall evalution of his success rate.

I'm sure that I can back it up - are you willing to pay me to produce the facts and stats? Yes that's rhetorical but it's a very non trivial task as I'm sure you know.

Well, that's the whole point isn't it?
To document the accuracy rate of someone who makes several calls a week (I use "call" here to include a prediction of some sort of event or trend, not necessarily something as specific as a stock pick) is certainly a "very non trivial task", as you say. The fact that you have not undertaken this task suggests to me that your claim of Mish's 67-75% wrongness rate is more an impression or guess on your part. The fact that you read Mish "frequently", but not daily, introduces further errors in coming up with an overall success rate.

I'm not saying your figures are wrong. But I am saying that they aren't fact based, only your impression derived from an incomplete sampling of the data. Same goes for metalman's 80% claim. I also know that you've had some intense disagreements with Mish in the past, and this could possibly add some emotional bias. Not saying it did, but I know that emotional issues can cloud my analysis, so I figure it could be happening with you.

I also did not say he was a loser and resent the implication - I said he was wrong about 2/3 of the time... and as a direct answer to your question.

I did not say that you claimed he was a loser; I said you "portrayed him as a loser." In my book, someone who is wrong 2/3rds of the time is a loser, and I think most people would agree with that. Also, you said, "two out of the three main funds where he works did very poorly last year, and at least one actually lost money". That is certainly a "losing" record. So, I think you did portray him as a loser. (I hasten to add that Sitka has more than doubled the S&P's performance over the last 6 years, so looking at a bigger time slice, that's a winning record.)

The kind of high emotionalism that he practices isn't at all necessary, and is very counter productive, especially when he's just plain wrong.

Perhaps this is just a matter of taste . . . .
I like his frank and expressive style. He says what he thinks, and doesn't care whether others disagree. If he thinks somebody is a fool, he calls them a fool. For example, in today's column, he lays into John Williams:

As much as I think GDP is nonsense (and I really do think it is nonsense, figuring the first 2% is hedonics and imputations), Williams carries the idea to ridiculous extremes.

. . . . Amusingly in the Hyperinflation Special Report (2011) William comments on his timeline for hyperinflation.

. . . . Williams Fails to Understand

1. Debt-deflation
2. The role of credit vs. money
3. Flight to cash
4. The significance of trillions of dollars in excess reserves just sitting there because banks are undercapitalized and there are to few credit-worthy borrowers
5. How little power the Fed has in controlling the demand fore credit (and thus inflation)
6. How international trade works

Mish then says, "That is a heck of a lot of things to not understand . . . "

The biggest example is how he uses the term "Keynesian clowns". Keynes NEVER promoted what we have - he said to pay back the excess spending from bad times during good times. If he can't even get his facts straight on basic Keynes, or (more likely) is intentionally spinning for "whatever reasons" -- well, that's just plain lying and more... the "more" being about if one can't spot and name the real causes, then any solution will be wrong to the degree that one has the causes wrong.

Mish really likes the phrase "Keynesian clowns" . . . it must be the alliteration as it rolls of the tongue.

Here's the way I interpret Mish's take on the subject . . . but I'm no economic historian, so correct me where I err:

If I understand correctly, Keynes said that the way to smooth out normal business down cycles caused by inventory buildup, etc., was to use government spending to boost consumption. Resources saved up during the good times are pushed into the economy during recessions. Of course, what has happened is that resources were not conserved during good times, and massive debt continued to be accumulated, so yes, Keynes is not being followed.But I believe that Mish would say that our current situation is not caused by a normal business cycles, but is due to debt deflation . . . hence, the Keynesian solution will not work. Yet, the "Keynesian clowns", like Krugman, think the Keynes way will work, which is why Mish calls them "clowns"; their solution is laughable.

Personally, I don't know who is right. Sometimes when I read Krugman I think maybe he's right, and sometimes I think Mish is right. So I remain agnostic on the issue, but leaning toward Mish.

By the way, I did a search in Mish's archives "keynes gold relic" but nothing of relevence came up. Can you direct me to Mish's comments on Keynes and gold?

but my real point is that he has virtually nothing new of his own.

I'm not sure what you mean by "virtually nothing new".
What Mish mostly does is reproduce excepts from several of news reports on a particular topic, then he gives his opinion of what's really going and how things will play out. Sometimes it's just a few phrases, and other times it's a more detailed description of his reasoning along with a synopsis of the relevant facts.

Is he producing a lengthy data-based report like T. Gordon Long or EJ creates every month or so? No. So if that's what you call "new", then you are correct: Mish does not produce much new stuff.

But it's exactly Mish's daily analysis of what's going on that I treasure. It's "new" to me, and enhances my understanding. It may not be an in-depth data analysis, like EJ does, but it's an intelligent take on what's going on by someone whom I consider a genius . . . .

I also don't care much for the high political content on a supposed economics site.

Wasn't it EJ who said something like the economy IS political?
IMO, economic analysis without considering the political realities is nearly meaningless.
Of course, you may think Mish overdoes the politics, perhaps it's a matter of taste . . . .

Additionally (an example being the recent quoting of Pettis), he does not quote or even refer to the entire work of others when he disagrees with portions of it.
I have little respect for anyone who does that since it gives one the wrong ideas about the other person and their position(s) - directly or implicitly impugning the reputation and work of another is quite tacky to say the least.

I just reviewed his recent post (8-22-2011) with the Pettis quote. Mish quotes 34 paragraphs from a Pettis email, and says:

That is a lengthy clip of ideas, yet hopefully within the spirit of Pettis' guidelines on these emails. His PDF is 14 pages and will appear on his blog shortly.

So I don't get it when you say, "he does not quote or even refer to the entire work of others when he disagrees with portions of it."

Bart, I can't spend anymore time on this thread, so this will be my final post. I am content to give you the last word, and I will read your response should you choose to make one.

It's interesting how two people can look at the same set of facts and come to such different conclusions. However, I respect your style and your willingness to discuss in a resonable way with a give and take of albeit perspectives . . . .

[jk]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

just a question that occurred to me. by way of background, i should say that i looked at mish's stuff some years ago, read him for a few weeks, didn't find it useful and moved on. i'm just curious if there's any discussion of janszen over on mish's site, growing out of mish's post on eric, comparable to the one about mish being held here. if not, i would request that you, raja, as a user of both sites, try to start a discussion of itulip over there, see how it goes, and report back. from what i gather, this might provide some interesting information.

[bart]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

just a question that occurred to me. by way of background, i should say that i looked at mish's stuff some years ago, read him for a few weeks, didn't find it useful and moved on. i'm just curious if there's any discussion of janszen over on mish's site, growing out of mish's post on eric, comparable to the one about mish being held here. if not, i would request that you, raja, as a user of both sites, try to start a discussion of itulip over there, see how it goes, and report back. from what i gather, this might provide some interesting information.

I've tried 3 or 4 times over the years with my or EJ's points, but for some reason those posts never make it public.

[jk]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

I've tried 3 or 4 times over the years with my or EJ's points, but for some reason those posts never make it public.

i thought i recalled you and/or ej saying that before. that's why i made my suggestion to raja. if he indeed finds the same result, he might have to think about mish's motives. and if mish is suppressing certain kinds of conversations, or certain kinds of information, you might wonder about other systemic, motivated distortions in his writings.

[bart]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

I don't believe I asked "where (Mish) was wrong". I asked what evidence you used to come up with the 67-75% inaccuracy rate you ascribe to Mish.


I never doubted that you could come up with examples of his mistakes . . . it would be impossible for him to have never made any. What I was looking for was the backing for your overall evalution of his success rate.

I have given piles of facts and evidence, at least twice. Others have noted other goofs.

They all remain unacknowledged or directly addressed.

Well, that's the whole point isn't it?
To document the accuracy rate of someone who makes several calls a week (I use "call" here to include a prediction of some sort of event or trend, not necessarily something as specific as a stock pick) is certainly a "very non trivial task", as you say. The fact that you have not undertaken this task suggests to me that your claim of Mish's 67-75% wrongness rate is more an impression or guess on your part. The fact that you read Mish "frequently", but not daily, introduces further errors in coming up with an overall success rate.

I'm not saying your figures are wrong. But I am saying that they aren't fact based, only your impression derived from an incomplete sampling of the data. Same goes for metalman's 80% claim. I also know that you've had some intense disagreements with Mish in the past, and this could possibly add some emotional bias. Not saying it did, but I know that emotional issues can cloud my analysis, so I figure it could be happening with you.

As I said last time, pay for my time and I'll produce it. I'd even accept a substantial bet. It's *way* more than an impression or guess.

That you haven't offered or acknowledged it, and have also not commented at all on the many goofs I documented speaks large volumes.

You have also refused so far to produce anything that shows his overall goof rate is lower than 2/3 - which also speaks volumes.

I said I read him frequently - translate that as virtually every day. So your bald and unsupported accusation "derived from an incomplete sampling of the data" is insulting yet again, and I resent it strongly.

I did not say that you claimed he was a loser; I said you "portrayed him as a loser." In my book, someone who is wrong 2/3rds of the time is a loser, and I think most people would agree with that. Also, you said, "two out of the three main funds where he works did very poorly last year, and at least one actually lost money". That is certainly a "losing" record. So, I think you did portray him as a loser. (I hasten to add that Sitka has more than doubled the S&P's performance over the last 6 years, so looking at a bigger time slice, that's a winning record.)

I strongly dislike people putting words in my mouth like "loser". That kind of characterization is what Mish does with "fool" and "clown" etc.

Of course 2 out of 3 funds losing money is a losing record, and blowing it on inflation and deflation calls for year after year is also a losing record, etc. etc.

But its not incontrovertible evidence that someone is a loser. I know at least two futures traders who are wrong over 2/3 of the time... and they've made substantial money every year for about the last 10 years. I'd hardly call them losers.

I note that this discussion is getting way more into nuances and semantics than with actual facts and real logic and amount of calls blown.

Perhaps this is just a matter of taste . . . .
I like his frank and expressive style. He says what he thinks, and doesn't care whether others disagree.

I note that you did not address Mish's factual massive error that I noted about "Keynesisn clowns". He is just plain wrong about Keynes extreme basics - and yes, well beyond foolish too.

Yes - he says what he thinks, even when he is demonstrably incorrect. I call that Ready Fire Aim.

If he thinks somebody is a fool, he calls them a fool. For example, in today's column, he lays into John Williams:

As much as I think GDP is nonsense (and I really do think it is nonsense, figuring the first 2% is hedonics and imputations), Williams carries the idea to ridiculous extremes.

. . . . Amusingly in the Hyperinflation Special Report (2011) William comments on his timeline for hyperinflation.

. . . . Williams Fails to Understand

1. Debt-deflation
2. The role of credit vs. money
3. Flight to cash
4. The significance of trillions of dollars in excess reserves just sitting there because banks are undercapitalized and there are to few credit-worthy borrowers
5. How little power the Fed has in controlling the demand fore credit (and thus inflation)
6. How international trade works

Mish then says, "That is a heck of a lot of things to not understand . . . "

Great example!
There's nothing but opinion there, and mostly demonstrably false as I've noted in this thread and over the years. If he had actually read and understood all of William's work, he couldn't and wouldn't say that. He can't though - his vested interest in deflation prevents him seeing the entirety of Williams work... so he is reduced to cheap and incomplete shots.
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree 100% with Williams either.

But the real problem is that he dare not address the major points from John Williams - the WAY too low CPI, having been massaged by the BLS since 1983. He has NEVER addressed any of it, including either JW's or my (U7b) fully corrected unemployment rates.

Mish really likes the phrase "Keynesian clowns" . . . it must be the alliteration as it rolls of the tongue.

It's ok to spread a massive falsehood about Keynes and his work because it sounds good? I can't believe you really mean that or approve of it.

Here's the way I interpret Mish's take on the subject . . . but I'm no economic historian, so correct me where I err:

If I understand correctly, Keynes said that the way to smooth out normal business down cycles caused by inventory buildup, etc., was to use government spending to boost consumption. Resources saved up during the good times are pushed into the economy during recessions. Of course, what has happened is that resources were not conserved during good times, and massive debt continued to be accumulated, so yes, Keynes is not being followed.But I believe that Mish would say that our current situation is not caused by a normal business cycles, but is due to debt deflation . . . hence, the Keynesian solution will not work. Yet, the "Keynesian clowns", like Krugman, think the Keynes way will work, which is why Mish calls them "clowns"; their solution is laughable.

You do get that particular basic of Keynes, but then completely miss that what's happening is NOT due to Keynesian economics - and Mish blames it on "Keynesian clowns" when they're not and have not AT ALL applied both sides of Keynes work.

In my book, Mish is just plain lying and posing and who knows what all else when calling people "Keynesian clowns" - it's well beyond dubious journalism (or clownish or foolish). He's slamming people as Keynesian when all the evidence shows that they're not - no savings were done during good times. And he knows about both sides of Keynes work too - its inexcusable to paint it that way... but he has his vested interests and folk who believe him without knowing the actual facts.

Yes, debt deflation exists - but it has zero to do with Keynes having not been applied during good times.
Do you really seriously believe that if we had truly followed Keynes and saved during good times that we'd be in the mess we're in today??

And while we're on debt deflation - where's his raw facts and stats and proof? They just plain don't exist anywhere on his blog that I've ever seen.

And that he and other Austrians believe that increased Federal debt is not money is almost ludicrous. It seems that he and they literally believe that Federal money is different and won't buy things, as per the basic definition of money "a medium of exchange".
I was one of the many that continually pointed out for years that credit is money, per the same definition, and he finally got it... but refuses to see the same thing about Federal new money.

Additionally, the evidence shows (see my Depression thread) that the spending and actions that have been done so far have kept us out of another Great Depression (the most generally well accepted definition is a 20% drop in GDP, a depression 10% - and we did hit that depression level per my work).

I'm not sure what you mean by "virtually nothing new".
What Mish mostly does is reproduce excepts from several of news reports on a particular topic, then he gives his opinion of what's really going and how things will play out. Sometimes it's just a few phrases, and other times it's a more detailed description of his reasoning along with a synopsis of the relevant facts.

Is he producing a lengthy data-based report like T. Gordon Long or EJ creates every month or so? No. So if that's what you call "new", then you are correct: Mish does not produce much new stuff.

He simply comments on others work, rather than doing his own fact based research etc. That's how he blew it on Keen and his odd assertion about debt growth vs, checking accounts and their relation to loan growth - the actual facts show otherwise and I've posted the chart that proves it numerous times.

I find it of very low value, much like editorial sections of newspapers - they push a certain view or vested interest, and that's it.

He virtually never goes into real behind the scenes stuff, and even hammers it. He did it with GATA, with dollar or currency intervention (yes it does work for a while as history shows - and nothing works forever in the material universe), with the PPT, with any stock or bond market behind the scenes stuff including the various Fed OMOs which provably work most of the time - etc etc etc almost ad nauseum.
He has serious blinders... and I hope they don't cause you big losses in the future.

But it's exactly Mish's daily analysis of what's going on that I treasure. It's "new" to me, and enhances my understanding. It may not be an in-depth data analysis, like EJ does, but it's an intelligent take on what's going on by someone whom I consider a genius . . . .

We certainly have very different views on him.

Ritholtz is far far better - he doesn't call others clowns, isn't one himself, is balanced on deflation/inflation, has far more depth and breadth, has long term very good contributors... and has a much better track record. EJ too of course.

Wasn't it EJ who said something like the economy IS political?
IMO, economic analysis without considering the political realities is nearly meaningless.
Of course, you may think Mish overdoes the politics, perhaps it's a matter of taste . .

Of course politics is part of it, but as I've said before his blog has turned mostly political and with very little economics.

His main trick by far is criticizing or attacking others and that's the primary game in politics, and he uses logical fallacies more and more as the months go by - as witness the diatribe about Williams (which I haven't read yet, but all his other blogs about Williams have said the same thing for years and years... and again, without EVER covering his CPI/inflation work - in overview or detail).

I just reviewed his recent post (8-22-2011) with the Pettis quote. Mish quotes 34 paragraphs from a Pettis email, and says:

That is a lengthy clip of ideas, yet hopefully within the spirit of Pettis' guidelines on these emails. His PDF is 14 pages and will appear on his blog shortly.

So I don't get it when you say, "he does not quote or even refer to the entire work of others when he disagrees with portions of it."

Apparently you're not familiar with Pettis's fine work, otherwise you'd see what I'm talking about.

Virtually all of Mish's views on China come directly from Pettis, and that includes his recent understanding of trade balances... which Williams has known for years. Read Pettis directly - your education and understanding will be much better and much more complete.


Its quite interesting to me that there was no link when he published it. I predict that within a few months maximum that Pettis will no longer be anywhere near as cooperative with Mish as he has been, as most "names" (including EJ himself) have been over the many years I've been reading Mish. They don't last.

[Guest]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

You miss the point I was trying to make. The site isn't garbage. I was illustrating relative effort/value vs a more tangible service. A business with significant overhead (ever buy a garbage truck?) can literally drive to my home in a rural area, down a driveway, empty cans of refuse, drive it to a dump, pay a fee, etc. four times a month for ONE customer and make just $20 for all that effort and expense. If they want another $20, they have to do it all over again for another customer.

You also show a lack of understanding of what's involved in performing a tangible service. Just one minute in front of a home, eh? Do they teleport to my home? No, they drive from a location in an industrial area over 45 minutes from my home. They have a route that (I speak to the owner) covers a wide area of my county. It's not a row of development homes where everyone has to use the same garbage company. It's my house, then another a mile down the road, then two on one street, etc, etc. Yet for a whopping $5 they do all this w/o fail. When full, they then have to take the refuse periodically to a dump located even further out, wait in line, drive to a designated location, dump it, then resume the route. On top of that are environmental and other regulations that a website doesn't have. They also do all this in the elements, rain or shine. Not in a climate controlled office in front of a PC. So, in contrast, one figures a website with maybe thousands of subscribers paying $20-$30/mo each can get it together enough to have an associate read over a column for half an hour once every 4-6 weeks or so and fix the awkward writing without it being considered the equivilent of kicking Jerry Lewis off the MS telethon merely to suggest that.

In contrast, a website can do the (of course much more complex and time consuming and higher skilled ) work ONCE, post it to a website, and charge hundreds or thousands of people $20-$30 a month for the work. In return it might be nice to get "for sure" one update a month. I simply posit that perhaps this lack of perceived or real value could account for the relatively lower visitor count. It would be the height of arrogance for any business to feel it doesn't have to deliver what customers want. Hypothetically, the attitude of "I'm smarter than you, take it or leave it, I'll do what I feell like" will result in many deciding quickly to 'leave it'.

I subscribe to other financial experts where I get not only a monthly update (rivaling the detail here) but a weekly update, (some are daily!) plus special updates if something significant happens. $5-$12/month. Some are "trading" people, others are macro/long term oriented. Some have come-ons for more expensive services I don't want. But their updates are magically free of typos, use professional looking charts/graphs, lack grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and are a breeze to read. I just checked my fidelity.com account this morning and in the last 12 month period my return was 37.8% (8.5% ytd including the recent crash) so I'm not complaining. It's 10.8% over the last 5 year period even though 1.5 of those years were when I was in money markets only because I didn't know squat and the rest were during a bad recession with a brief period of stimulus inspired growth. Eric Janszen's chapter on gold in a book I read in 2007 is at least half of why I made money while others lost it. But every other expert I use said buy 30-40% gold, plus I made more in other things not suggested here. So for that reason I have to reject the "nobody else but EJ has a clue" comments I'm seeing and the deity-like reverence. I accept what I think makes sense and discard their other advice I feel may not be right. Do the others make more "wrong" calls? Probably. But when you are in gold and treasuries and satisfied with 8-9% those swinging for the fences are bound to make more mistakes.

With limited time and money to invest in a multitude of "advice" on economics by more knowledgeable people, it's not unfair , for one's $30, to assume one can give reasonable feedback w/o being labled some sort of troublemaker. And I didn't realize one had to be "first" to mention any flaws for it to count. If nobody says anything, how do they count how many users are dissatisfied?

GM, Ford, and Chrysler got great results with that attitude, didn't they? "Quit complaining, things are fine! If you don't like it go buy something else buddy".

I don't think I've ever read a more ridiculous analogy in my life. You're seriously comparing a macro focused investing site's frequency of updates to a garbage man that spends at most 1 min in front of your house each month?

You've only been around a couple months but do you really think you're telling anyone here something new about the website?

If you're looking for trading tips then go to a trading site. This one is very successfully focused on macro investing trends, and we should be lucky EJ spends any time sharing his analysis with us. He doesn't need subscribers to pay his bills which is why he's happy to be selective and have fewer. You don't even have Select access so I'm not sure how you can pass judgement on the volume or quality of information available on iTulip.

[Guest]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

I have a query.

EJ desribes his holdings to Mish as the following:

From 100s of articles on iTulip since 1999, here is a summary of my portfolio over the past decade:

• From 2000 to 2001, 25% cash, 75% 10-year Treasury bonds
• From 2001 to Aug. 2010, 10% cash, 15% gold, 75% 10-year Treasury bonds

OK, then, where is the silver that EJ said he started buying in 2001 and held until selling it all earlier this year?

Can anyone explain this? Not trying to bash anyone, I bought the Post-Catastrophe Economy and loved it.

I wondered that too. I had specifically held off buying any in the low 20's since I didn't see anything touting it here and always worried about its industrial use affecting its value when the facade of money printing faded. I certainly could have missed it though, as I was only a periodic reader for reasons I've gone over before.

[Guest]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

Not sure that you can/will understand, but those of us that have been here for some years like the site the way it is. It is something like a great friend that has a big wart on the side of their face. You look at the individual underneath and ignore the disfigurement because you know that, in the end, it simply does not matter.

What you seek is to define the parameters of what you believe the site should look like; when, in truth, if you feel so strongly, you should go out and start up your own version and see how far you get. You will discover that it takes many decades to get to where EJ and his small team have today; widely respected and accepted my the many, warts and all.

Please, you have made your point, so, with the very greatest of respects; do us all a favour and can it.

If you read back you'll see I originally made exactly ONE comment critical of technical 'warts' on the site. The rest are unfortunately defenses of that to those who apparently feel that if something they cleave to so emotionally is not adored as they adore it, it becomes a threat to their own fragile egos. Rest assured, I don't blame you for the warts, so you can now "can it" yourself, ok?

[bart]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

Not sure that you can/will understand, but those of us that have been here for some years like the site the way it is. It is something like a great friend that has a big wart on the side of their face. You look at the individual underneath and ignore the disfigurement because you know that, in the end, it simply does not matter.

What you seek is to define the parameters of what you believe the site should look like; when, in truth, if you feel so strongly, you should go out and start up your own version and see how far you get. You will discover that it takes many decades to get to where EJ and his small team have today; widely respected and accepted my the many, warts and all.

Please, you have made your point, so, with the very greatest of respects; do us all a favour and can it.

The "T" word comes to mind here with him.

Of course neither EJ nor the site is perfect, but the continual and incessant posting about both on a Mish thread just doesn't sit well at the very least... especially given his comments about limited time for investment actions and review etc. when there is obviously lots of time for posting critically - except about Mish and all the negative facts posted about his long term record on deflation etc., bad calls, Keynesian clown crud, proven track record of vicious and lying attacks on others, frequent use of logical fallacies and similar, total and complete failure to address all the CPI changes by the BLS over the years, redefining of words to fit a vested interest, etc. etc.

[jk]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

I wondered that too. I had specifically held off buying any in the low 20's since I didn't see anything touting it here and always worried about its industrial use affecting its value when the facade of money printing faded. I certainly could have missed it though, as I was only a periodic reader for reasons I've gone over before.

i don't recall that ej ever officially recommended buying silver. many forum members participated in many threads about silver, however, so it was discussed in that manner on the site.

if ej never added silver to "the itulip portfolio," i don't care. i made the decision myself to put some of my pm money into silver, and i made the decision myself to sell it shortly before ej posted his sell recommendation.

i think itulip's strength is in getting the big things right, and thus also providing an orientation or context within which to view other investments. itulip isn't the fox; it's the hedgehog.

[CanuckinTX]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

You make your own argument against how silly it is to compare this site to a garbage truck route...

...a website can do the (of course much more complex and time consuming and higher skilled ) work ONCE, post it to a website, and charge hundreds or thousands of people $20-$30 a month for the work

Anyone could go and buy a garbage truck and drive a route, it takes zero skill unless you think being on time and not losing your cans each time are a skill only few possess. There are very few people who can do what EJ does.

Nobody says you can't suggest changes, many have done that. But imagine you've just walked into a bar in a city you've never been to before. After being in the bar for 10 minutes you start pointing out to the barkeep and the patrons how they need to update the decor, and need to carry a different selection of beer, and the bathrooms need to be cleaned more frequently etc etc. Do you think you're going to get a lot of positive feedback from the regular patrons that have been going there almost daily for 5 or more years? Seriously, give it a thought. Then take your focus off the 'sizzle' of the website and worry about the content.

[jiimbergin]

Re: You're not going to believe this - Eric Janszen

You make your own argument against how silly it is to compare this site to a garbage truck route...



Anyone could go and buy a garbage truck and drive a route, it takes zero skill unless you think being on time and not losing your cans each time are a skill only few possess. There are very few people who can do what EJ does.

Nobody says you can't suggest changes, many have done that. But imagine you've just walked into a bar in a city you've never been to before. After being in the bar for 10 minutes you start pointing out to the barkeep and the patrons how they need to update the decor, and need to carry a different selection of beer, and the bathrooms need to be cleaned more frequently etc etc. Do you think you're going to get a lot of positive feedback from the regular patrons that have been going there almost daily for 5 or more years? Seriously, give it a thought. Then take your focus off the 'sizzle' of the website and worry about the content.

+1, especially when you are not even a paid member