After years of focusing on nano-economics (too small to call it micro) of my little family, I went on a pleasant trip down the macro-economics lane today. At the end of it I realized that I must have slept through the undergraduate class on Federal Reserve monetizing the nation’s debt because I was “surprised” to see almost a trillion dollars of Treasury obligations on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet…

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” ~ Albert Einstein

If you have something important to convey, just say Einstein said it or it’s one of Franklin’s quotes. I don’t know for sure who said the above but it made sense to me especially given this little experience yesterday.

My six-year-old knows how to play chess and recently has started making me think harder…

I bought a house for $150,000 eight years ago and had a loan of $120,000. The value of my house increased to $350,000. I took advantage of the situation and refinanced, being a conservative person, only borrowing $280,000 at a favorable 5.5% rate fixed for 30 years paying $1,600 per month for the mortgage and another $400 per month for real estate taxes and insurance…

The year before my mother passed away, she taught my son a song about a little boy and his toy ship. Every time I hear the song (“Im pokrik navak” here), I remember my childhood. I remember my mother and her words here and there that in hindsight seem to all have had a purpose. She would sometimes make a comment about something that seemed irrelevant or unimportant at the time…

I was the summer intern at Eaton Vance, in the Strategic Income Fund team a few summers ago. Taking my job very seriously, I did everything to make sure that my duties were carried out to absolute perfection with attention to every detail. After a few weeks, the team got used to having everything in order; and I realized that I had created a process where…