The important thing about yesterday’s Federal Reserve statement was—in the words of Sherlock Holmes—the dog that did not bark. The Fed's statement included the “considerable time” language that some, including me, had been obsessing over.

For those of you with lives, perhaps some clarification would help. As the Fed continues to move toward a more normal monetary policy, we're seeing two things:

I am headed to New York today to speak at a conference on liquid alternatives. These types of alternative investments are often thought of as hedge funds for the masses; the idea is to take hedge fund-like strategies and wrap them in mutual funds. Ideally, this makes the expertise and money-making capabilities of all those hedge fund wizards available to mom and dad, so we can all get rich.

For many, the study of economics goes back to the eighteenth-century urtext, The Wealth of Nations, by Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. Notably, Smith and his contemporaries did not study economics, but political economy. At the time, there was no notion that economic behavior could be analyzed separately from its context, the political environment. The different governmental structures made the impact of government on human behavior absolutely impossible to separate—the ties between politics and economics were inextricable. To put it another way, it would be like considering the health of the brain while ignoring that of the heart.

I’ve been listening to satellite radio as I commute to and from the office, coming across songs I haven’t heard in years—and, in some cases, decades—and getting exposed to music I’ve never heard at all. 

One song in particular, “It’s All About the Benjamins,” recently caught my attention. I missed this song in its initial incarnation, but I heard about it during the financial crisis, when it became something of a theme song (at least in my mind) for Benjamin Bernanke’s Federal Reserve intervention. 

I got some thoughtful feedback on my post yesterday about the aftermath of 9/11, and what has been accomplished—or not accomplished—since then. I genuinely appreciate the comments, both for the thought and time that went into them and also as prompts for refining my own thinking.

What many took away from yesterday’s post is that I’m against committing troops. That is partially correct, in that I’m against committing troops without a clearly defined American interest in play, a plan to attain that interest, and an exit strategy thereafter. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that any commitment of lives actually have a specific goal.

Thirteen years ago, on a bright sunny morning, the world changed. A violent, apocalyptic form of Islam shocked America in a way we hadn’t been shocked since Pearl Harbor. Thousands of deaths, trillions of dollars, and more than a decade later, we remember those who died, both in the 9/11 attacks and in the wars that followed.

Today, the top headline is that the President has authorized expanded military action against an army of extremists terrorizing large parts of the Middle East. ISIS, as it is known, has successfully baited the U.S. back into the tar pit.

I’m the archetypal Apple customer. Between my wife, my son, and me, we own five Macs (including work computers), three iPhones, at least three iPods, and two iPads. I understand the attraction of the whole Apple experience. That said, I haven’t been a fan of Apple stock.

Why?

I figure my family has already bought pretty much everything we could use from the company’s current product lines. In my mind, Apple is more of a movie studio than a regular company, in that it depends on a stream of hits to grow. Samsung and Android are nipping at Apple’s heels in the phone and tablet space. Google is pushing hard at the laptop space with its Chromebooks. And the desktop market is no longer a growth area.

One of the real problems Europe faces, in my opinion, is that its banking system has never really acknowledged its problems and raised capital to the extent it should have. 

The U.S. banking system, on the other hand, has raised substantial capital and pretty much restored itself to financial health—as the banks interpret it, anyway.

Even as the U.S. economy continues to improve, and signs of better times keep popping up—the most recent being a break in the oil price below $100 per barrel, which will support consumer spending—other parts of the world continue to show signs of weakness.

Today, I want to highlight something that hasn’t yet become a major worry for Europe, but probably will: the possible secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom.

“When in danger or in doubt / Run in circles, scream and shout.”

Although the source of this quotation isn’t clear—several authors, including Robert Heinlein and Herman Wouk, come up—I suspect it was probably inspired by the stock market. In any event, the disappointing employment report released this morning is sure to generate some amount of angst.