Month: October 2023
HIKING
NORWALK RIVER VALLEY TRAIL
WILTON, CT
NOVEMBER 2, 2023
9:30 AM
The Norwalk River Valley Trail, when completed, will be a multi-use 30 mile trail stretching from Calf Pasture Beach in Norwalk to Danbury. The NRVT is a 501(c(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Georgetown, CT funded by private contributions. Every $250 donated builds one more foot of trail!
A completed section that we will be hiking in Wilton runs from near the Orem Diner on US 7 for 2.4 miles through thick woods up to Skunk Road where the completed section ends. We will hike up the trail and then retrace our steps back to RT 7. The path is 10 feet wide and composed of compacted stone and there is little elevation change. We estimate the round trip will take about 2 hours after which we will adjourn to Orem diner for an optional lunch.
The parking lot for the trail is on the west side of RT 7 just past Orem but short of the corner where RT 106 ends at RT 7. It is marked as a lot for the trail as well as for carpooling.
Dogs, friends and family are welcome on this hike.
Dave McCollum
Robert Plunkett
On the coldest day of the fall, 26 hearty DMAers and guests hiked the 4.5 mile roundtrip of the new Wilton Loop of the NRVT. This was an out and back trek since the new trail is not finished past Skunk Road on the east side of Rt 7 in Wilton. As advertised, the trail is wide and made of crushed stone giving a smooth surface now covered by leaves.. There was some ice on the several bridges but all traversed safely. As is typical on our hikes, we saw little wildlife but many other hikers and a couple of bikes.
With such a large group, we got strung out quite a bit but all gathered at the Skunk Road terminus for a group photo by Marilyn Parker. The different speeds also meant we arrived back at the parking lot in small bunches. Many hikers stayed for lunch at Orem Diner nearby but we were prevented from having a group lunch because of a large college group which was already in the Diner. All does not go as planned all the time!
Dave McCollum
Robert Plunkett
The last Current Affairs unit of the year will explore the role that the Federal Reserve played coming out of the Pandemic. How did the Fed deal with its important mandate to preserve price stability? What could Jerome Powell have done differently? We will examine the three most significant policy tools available to a central bank in fighting inflation: interest rates; quantitative tightening; and coordination of monetary and fiscal strategies with Treasury. Since the viewpoints on these matters vary widely among the media and the public, discussions at this CA session are expected to be lively. Bert von Stuelpnagel will start with an introduction of the subject and moderate these discussions. He says that his two objectives for the session are (i) to better understand what happened, but also (ii) to allow participants to make an assessment of what interest rates might do going forward.
Bert wrote his master’s thesis at the State University in Munich on monetary policy in 1977. For the next 40 years he worked in the banking industry, always on the fixed income desk, ending his career as the head of dollar capital markets at BayernLB, New York. In the 1990s, he served on the board of the Financial Markets Association. In retirement, he has remained an avid Fed Watcher, always guessing what the Fed may be up to next, and appreciative of Chairman Greenspan’s one-liner that “if I made myself clear about future interest rates, you must have misunderstood”.
Recommended Readings:
Paul Krugman, Wonking Out – Are High Interest Rates the New Normal? New York Times, September 29, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/opinion/natural-interest-rate-higher.html
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, September 19-20 FOMC Meeting, Press Release
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcpresconf20230920.htm
MarketWatch, Ray Dalio thinks the U.S. is courting a debt crisis. Are regulators moving fast enough to avert it? October 12, 2023
Reuters: Fed’s QT mix may be capping, not spurring, long term yields, October 11, 2023
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/fed-qt-mix-may-be-capping-not-spurring-long-yields-2023-10-11/
Wall Street Journal: Where have all the Foreign Buyers Gone for US Treasury Debt, November 17, 2023
Forbes: Here is the Fed’s 2024 Meeting Schedule and Interest Rate Outlook, November 18, 2023
What are the effects of deregulation on commercial air travel? How are airlines trying to reinvent air travel as business travel declines? What will Artificial Intelligence mean to aviation? Are spare parts the airlines are using safe? What happens in the cockpit of a Navy jet when it is strafed by a Chinese jet? A pilot all of this career, Gunnar will tell us things we never knew about aviation.
Articles of interest
Your Pilot has a new job and a bigger plane to fly WSJ-Subscription required
Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Now Take to the Sky
Why Planes Were Grounded for the First Time Since 9/11
Spate of Runway Near Misses Casts Shadow Over Summer Travel
More Workers Are Getting Hurt on the Tarmac. ‘It Was Really Frightening.’
Airlines, Regulators Weigh More Cockpit Safety Alerts After Close Calls on Runways
Delta, Southwest Search for Jet Engines Parts Sold With Forges Safety Records
American Airlines’ Radical Plan to Reinvent Business Travel
Revenge Travel Fizzles for Budget Airlines
“When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own–until it all came undone”–