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Latest Jim Rogers video interview on Bloomberg

Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, talks with Bloomberg’s Haslinda Amin about China’s yuan policy and calls for the mainland to allow the currency to appreciate. Speaking from Singapore, Rogers also discusses the outlook for global economies, currencies and the commodities market. Bloomberg’s Paul Gordon and Patricia Lui also speak.

Jordan Belfort interview – The Wolf of Wall Street


Must Watch ,Don’t miss it 

Yachts, planes, women, drugs – stockbroker Jordan Belfort had it all and lost it all. Tom Leonard meets the man who taught the Mafia how to cheat – then wrote a book about it

Could there be a more compelling poster child for the dark side of modern capitalism than Jordan Belfort?
As a 31-year-old multimillionaire stockbroker, Belfort once landed his helicopter on his back lawn, flying with just one eye open because he was so stoned he had double vision. He sank his 167ft motor yacht, complete with seaplane and helicopter, after overruling the captain and taking it into a Mediterranean storm.
He organised a midget-throwing contest to entertain brokers on his trading floor.
And when he wasn’t completely out of his head on drugs, or getting executive relief from prostitutes in the presidential suites of luxury hotels, the man nicknamed the Wolf of Wall Street was presiding over a firm that swindled investors out of $200 million in a shares fraud that landed him and his chief confederates in prison. (more…)

Does Religion Serve a Purpose?

This lecture by professor Paul Bloom of Yale starts with the observation that religion serves no obvious adaptive purpose. I find that a little surprising since it is well documented that people who have a make generally accurate appraisals of themselves and their environment are depressed (notice it is not clear which way causality runs). Since optimism is considered to be adaptive, and most religions have a point of view as to what death is all about and what if anything happens afterwards, I would think that giving people coping strategies about the inevitability of death would be adaptive. As I wrote last year:

In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Yudhisthira goes looking for his missing brothers, who went searching for water. He finds them all dead next to a pond. In despair, but still parched, he is about to drink, but a crane tells him he must answer some questions first. The last and most difficult: “What is the greatest wonder of the world?” Yudhisthira answers, “Day after day, hour after hour, countless people die, yet the living believe they will live forever.”

And as Americans have become more and more work focused, and as job tenures become shorter and people often have to move in search of gainful employment, the idea of community as a place seems quaint. As this video suggests, houses of worship may be the only place most people find community these days. I doubt that is a healthy development.

And this DOES relate to the Super Bowl! The Center for Public Religion has found that 1/3 of Americans think God decides the outcome of sporting events. He does not do so directly, by having favorite teams (too tacky!) but by favoring teams with more God-fearing athletes.

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