Post 3000 — I’m glad to be back!

Photo Credit: Stephan Caspar || In Roman numerals 3000 is MMM… and thus the yummy picture that will make some people go “mmm….” As for me Mmm… I’m glad to be back.

Every 100 posts (except that I did not do it at the 2900 milestone), I take a moment to reflect. I started blogging back in February of 2007. I was 46 years old then; I am 58 now.

I resisted starting a blog for some time. When my editor at RealMoney asked me (she was asking all the contributors) “Are you going to start a blog?” I answered, “RealMoney, particularly the Columnist Conversation is my blog.”

I loved writing for RealMoney, but in some ways I was not the best fit for RM. I wrote more about theory, and less about actionable ideas. My main reason for that was that beyond holding a CFA charter, and at the time, a dues-paying life actuary, I have a code of ethics in addition to those from CFAI and the SOA. Aside from that, feedback is lopsided, like on Yelp. You get disproportionate feedback when you make a mistake, but little praise when you get something right.

But the reason I decamped from RealMoney was that I wanted more editorial freedom. It is the same reason that I tried writing for The Balance, and gave it up because I needed more freedom to write what I was thinking. (Also, writing for The Balance involved rewriting old articles, many of which were average for the web, but way below my standards. Rewriting those took a lot of time, and did not satisfy the other requirement of writing new articles on topics the the editors wanted, most of which were decidedly niche.)

How Aleph Blog Changed Over Time

When I began, I was writing two small articles per night. I morphed into writing articles that were relatively long, and one per night. I had a goal: to express all of the main ideas that I had come to regarding finance, economics and investment. A major part of that was The Rules posts, which mostly stemmed from insights I had between 1999 and 2003. There were a few that came after that, but not many. When I finished the last of the original Rules posts, I breathed a sigh of relief, because one of the major goals of the blog was complete. I had written an article on all of the “Rules.”

Now, one other thing that changed was the financial crisis. During the crisis, I resolved to write about all of the issues that I thought my distinct view could help explain. But I did not want to be a “crisis blogger.” There are some bloggers that are locked into writing about disaster, which is problematic when we have been in a very long though shallow recovery. Some commenters criticized me for not being like Zero Hedge back in 2009 or so. I ignored it because I want to be an “All Weather” blogger. I will write when the sun shines. I will write when it rains.

I do want to make one comment from the crisis era, when I was one of the bloggers invited to the first US Treasury / Blogger summit. In my 7-part coverage of the event, I never mentioned what I said during the main portion of the event. I was not the most outspoken at that event. Those that were “crisis bloggers” dominated the conversation.

There were only two things I got to say during the meeting. The first was my telling them that they could learn something from the way Canada regulates their banks, and also that the US state-regulated insurance companies were regulated better than the depository institutions in the US, especially for solvency.

The second thing that I said was that the US should lengthen maturities for Treasury issuance, and issue fifties, centuries, and consols. Also, they should issue floating rate debt. I told them that the US government would face a crisis when there is too much debt to roll over, so stagger the maturities, and pay up to borrow longer.

Back to the Present

I wrote a lot of book reviews in the past. I am unlikely to write a lot more of them, though there will be some. Part of that is Amazon favoring reviewers that bought their books at Amazon. I got most of mine from the publishers.

I have maybe 40 article ideas to work on now. Many of them will require significant work. Many of my best articles required that level of work, but it will mean that my output will slow down. If you have something you would like me to write about, send me an email. My address is on the Contact Me page. I don’t guarantee that I will write about it, but reader letters have led to more articles at my blog than most others.

Thanks to my Readers

There is one post that is especially dear to me, the one entitled Learning Leadership. It describes a time when I effected a huge change in the business that I worked for, and got little to no reward for doing so.

I thank all of my readers for reading me, wherever you are. One-third of my readers are outside of the US. I try to write for a global audience, but living in the US, I know that it will be somewhat US-centric. All the same, I invite those outside the US to write me and ask me questions.

And with that, I close this piece. Not that I will answer every question, but I will read everything that is written to me. My readers help make my blog better. Keep writing to me and helping me; I appreciate it.