An interesting afternoon

OK, truth be told, I haven't exactly been devouring the news over the last few days trying to keep abreast of financial market developments in order to write some witty or insightful commentary in what is usually an unsuccessful attempt at producing something that might be mildly entertaining.

Things will get slower here at the blog by midweek as I'll be completely disconnected from the internet for at least a day or two - maybe that's a good thing.

For some reason, after New York, I agreed to go to Atlantic City for a couple days and finding an internet connection is likely to be at the bottom of the list of things to do there.

After sitting through a number of presentations this morning, all of which were modestly informative (James Dines was his usual self) I trotted two blocks east of here to sit down with Barry Ritholtz for an hour or so.

After resolving all the world's financial problems, we set out to cure world hunger and eliminate all disease but, alas, we were unable to find any workable solutions for either.

We agreed to meet again at some unspecified time in the future to try again.

All the new work being done at The Big Picture and at Fusion IQ looks pretty neat and I think the two of us could have sat and talked for the rest of the afternoon, but we both had other things to attend to.

Upon returning to the hotel, I had the pleasure of meeting Al Korelin who will host the panel I'll be on tomorrow at 8:30 AM - "Causes and Consequences of the Credit Crisis".

It seemed like a good idea to get the whole "... and the name of your blog is what?" thing out of the way beforehand and we ended up having a pleasant chat along with Jay Taylor and Ben Johnson (see the Hard Assets Investment Conference speakers page for more on all of these folks.)

It was a pretty interesting afternoon meeting lots of great people.