This weekend Andrea and I came to the east coast – Lake George, NY – to have some fun, and to attend the Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 2008 conference. It was a lot of fun Sunday through Tuesday exploring the local area, going hiking in the Tongue Mountains, and having some great food. The Sagamore is an amazing resort on Green Island in Lake George, and we are staying in a very nice condo on the bay.

Last night we took a great cruise on the Adirondack – a 115′, three deck ship – that cruised around the islands at sunset while we had dinner on board. It was fun to meet some of the other attendees, and the evening wrapped up with a couple of brief presentations by two authors of current books Lawrence Solomon, Author of The Deniers, and Howard C. Hayden, Author of A Primer on CO2 and Climate. It was really good to hear different opinions about global warming, alternate sources of information, and new places to read more about some current theories and measurements. I’ll read the books and then see what I think.

This morning kicked off with George Gilder giving an introduction to this years Telecosm, and then Steve Forbes talking about his opinions on the current financial and economic trends in our country. Overall, he is much more bullish about things, and although he acknowledges that the Federal Reserve has made some errors, he seems to believe that we have a lot of opportunity before us. He feels that oils prices are currently a bubble, and that if you measure oil as a comparison to gold prices, the increase is not as large as claimed. He does feel that a change in monetary policies is going to burst the oil bubble. He is worried about a number of tax cuts that are going to be coming up for renewal in 2010 – capital gains and death taxes – both of which could reduce available capital for entrepreneurs and capitalists.  Steve is always great to listen to …