The recent release of Ben Affleck’s The Accountant 2 along with its predecessor are among the few exceptions to my belief that films that deal with finance focus primarily on times of turmoil or excess. While The Accountant franchise twists the relatively staid world of forensic accounting into a dangerous and exciting plot, most films […]
News & Insights
The artificially intelligent classroom?…
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is becoming widespread, and education is already feeling its impact. The technology will, without a doubt, have broad implications for how we acquire learning and educate our children and the workforce. First, the good: AI can be a huge boon to efficiency. A 2022 survey conducted by Merrimack College found that […]
News from the driver’s seat…
The U.S. continues to have one of the highest car ownership rates in the world with approximately 90% of Americans owning at least one car and almost 25% owning three or more. A range of factors including high urban home prices, the nation’s dispersed geography, and underfunded public transit systems have all contributed to the […]
“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” … – Ford Motor Chief Executive, Jim Farley
The idea that we can create machines that rival what we do as humans is scary stuff. We are not discussing factory robots which do repetitive things, day after day without ever getting tired. We are talking about machines which simulate human intelligence, machines which can actually learn, reason and problem solve. And then you […]
Crypto is mainstream, but is it investable?…
From decentralized utopia to meme coins and manias, fraud and crashes, and political grift, crypto has come a long way from its genesis. And yet, it endures. In fact, it’s back on top of the world, with Bitcoin near its all-time high versus the U.S. dollar. For our part, while the use cases of the […]
When does an implicit guarantee become explicit?…
With tariff chaos and geopolitics dominating headlines, you would be forgiven for missing the news around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, you’d be forgiven for recognizing the names but not knowing what (who?) they are and what they actually do. We’ll get to that, but the story is that the Trump Administration is […]
Turn the page…
Many investors try to get to Omaha once a year, or at least once in a lifetime, to see Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. At 94, Buffett still is viewed as one of the greatest investors of all time, and still, he stays on stage for hours spouting truths so simple you […]
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”… – Susan Sontag
Travel and tourism took a big hit during Covid. The industry worldwide has been struggling ever since. The political climate in Washington is not helping. Our president’s choice words for other countries and their leaders has probably made tourists everywhere more wary of travelling to the U.S. So, what’s the future hold? As with most […]
Where do we go from here?…
The world’s current struggles with waste are not new. Many of us first became aware of the problem in the 1980s as recycling programs across the country gained steam. Since then, a steady stream of regulations at both the domestic and international levels have done little to stem the tidal wave of waste. Is there […]
Our evolving E-waste problem…
Electronic waste, or “E-waste,” is the byproduct of our ever-increasing appetite for electronics, including smartphones, tablets, laptops/desktop PCs, e-cigarettes, small and large household/kitchen appliances, and flat televisions. We not only own more of these devices than ever before, but have come to view many of them as disposable after a few years of use. The […]
A life of plastic…
The creation and commercialization of plastic may be one of the crowning achievements of the twentieth century. It may also end up being one of the most harmful to humanity and the earth. For better, and certainly for worse, disposable plastic products are perhaps synonymous with a stereotype of America, like fast food and baseball. […]
Wasting away…
The weekly pilgrimage down the driveway with garbage and recycling in tow is a common rhythm of domestic life. The conscientious among us take the additional time to rinse and sort. Many of us have two bins, and may have seen those “sorted” bins end up in the same truck! So what really happens next […]