John Train's The Broadside

They had not reviewed the testing manual, so they made a little tiny trifling booboo or two.

Warren Buffett, that most eminent investor, has been fond of proclaiming smugly that “it’s only when the tide goes out that you see who’s been swimming naked.” Is it indeed true that nudity is revealed by an ebb tide?

A Russian visa cannot be extended after arrival in the country, except for a medical emergency. Travelers who overstay their visa’s validity, even by a day, can be prevented from leaving until their sponsor intervenes.

“Strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime.” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox make soothing noises just before the financial crisis.

Index investing makes excellent sense in most situations, and is necessary in some. And three cheers for John Bogle, who has spent decades popularizing the idea.

This has been a fairly typical speculative waterspout: houses, in this instance, go higher and higher, propelled by wormy mortgages that are flogged off to institutional suckers. Rising prices draw in more and more speculators until everything is overpriced, whereupon the waterspout collapses.

When you go to Hong Kong, Ronnie Chan is a man you are told to try to meet. A U.S. citizen, he has high contacts in Beijing, and it usually turns out that he has just had lunch with Henry Kissinger. On a trip in China, I was able to collect his views on conditions in that country.

Old age brings its own repertoire of familiar afflictions which a physician can usually spot with ease. Also, though, a serious economic hazard that the financial practitioner may not spot because he hasn’t encountered it before: a calculated raid on the estate of a rich, lonely, oldster.

There is a greater demand for medical services in America than can possibly be paid for. The tab is already 16% of GDP. Half of the 16% – more than a day every two weeks – goes to pay for each person’s terminal illness, the last few months of life.

Some austere nuggets from Le Matin’s eminent faits divers editor Félix Fénéon, also a critic, publisher, art dealer, and an anarchist with a fondness for bombing.

Olivier Roy, a lifelong French specialist on Islamic affairs, says today’s radicals are disoriented dropouts, not apostles of long-term objectives that will really be advanced by violence.