How many times has this happened to you: you attend a conference where one of the directors of the Federal Reserve Board is scheduled to speak on the state of the economy - which is a subject you'd like to better understand in these bearish times, and maybe include in your client communications. ("I was chatting the other day with the Michael Moskow, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and he happened to tell me...")

And then the guy behind the podium starts talking, and you realize that you read everything he's saying about interest rates and economic trends and animal spirits in the Wall Street Journal, and you already knew more than he's telling ...