<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/518c108a69bedd2921000008-385-453/screen shot 2013-05-09 at 5.08.57 pm.png" border="0" alt="Alan Abelson" /></div>Alan Abelson</td></tr></table>Sad news on Wall Street today: 
Veteran Barron's columnist <keyword id="1743515" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Alan-Abelson">Alan Abelson</keyword> has died at 87.
Alan wrote one of the most-read columns in the financial world for almost 50 years.
Barron's editor Ed Finn<a href="http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704253204578473291926739834.html"> just published the following note about Alan</a>, which Barron's was kind enough to give us permission to publish.
<h1 style="padding-left: 30px;">Alan Abelson: 1925 to 2013</h1>
Financial journalism lost one of its leading lights today when Alan Abelson died at the age of 87. Alan had served Barron's as a writer, editor, and chief columnist for the past 57 years.
For many readers, there can be no substitute for Alan's witty, wise and wonderfully written comments each week in Up and Down Wall Street. But Alan's contributions toBarron's, and to financial journalism, go beyond his marvelous column. During his career, Alan trained dozens of journalists to be skeptical, to be exacting, to help average investors, and to be on the lookout for Wall Street's crooks. About 10 of these fine journalists still work at Barron's, I'm happy to say. Others have gone on to do groundbreaking work at The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and numerous financial newsletters.
One of the unique things about Alan was that his keen knowledge of Wall Street was matched by his love of artful writing. Before Alan began his newspaper career in 1947, he earned a bachelor's degree in English and Chemistry from The City College of New York and a master's degree from the prestigious Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, which counts among its alumni Flannery O'Connor, Jane Smiley and John Irving. In our view, Alan ranks among them.
Alan arrived at Barron's in 1956 and began writing his column in 1966.
When Alan interviewed me for a job at Barron's in 1993, he was 67. He had been Barron'seditor for a dozen years and its managing editor for 16 years before that. He told me he didn't really want to manage people or edit stories anymore, but that he did enjoy writing his column. That's when I came to Barron's to manage and edit. Fortunately for me, forBarron's and for our readers, Alan kept writing his column for the next 20 years, week in and week out, always with gracious prose, sharp insights and a hilarious sense of humor.
Alan's quest for truth and justice greatly enriched the traditions begun by Clarence Barron, who bought Dow Jones &amp; Co. in 1902 and founded this magazine in 1921. A year earlier, Clarence Barron's stories had exposed Charles Ponzi, the Boston swindler who gave rise to the phrase "Ponzi scheme."
In 2001, thanks in large part to editors who trained under Alan, Barron's published the first major story that questioned the investment claims of Bernie Madoff. Seven years later, Madoff was charged by the government and proved to be the Ponzi of our era.
Now is the time to salute Alan and to rededicate ourselves to carrying on his mission. If you would like to contribute a remembrance or tribute to Alan for publication in next week's issue, please leave a comment below (subscription required), e-mail us at<a href="mailto:editors@barrons.com">editors@barrons.com</a>, or write to us at Barron's, 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y., 10036.
--Ed Finn Editor and President Barron's
<a href="http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748704372504578284070758059636.html#articleTabs_article%3D1">Here's a link to one of Alan's last columns, which ran in February &gt;</a>

Legendary Barron's Columnist Alan Abelson Dies At 87

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Tourism hotspots like Venice, Amsterdam, and Rome are pushing back against too many visitors.</li><li>Tourism industry experts said it's just the beginning of efforts to manage overtourism.</li></ul>Picture it: After years of fantasizing and months of planning, you finally arrive at the destination you've always dreamed about. Except, it's just not how you pictured it.You spend three hours in traffic just to pull into <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/photos-yosemite-national-park-buried-under-snow-closed-indefinitely-2023-3">Yosemite National Park</a>. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/pictures-venice-canals-run-dry-drought-low-tide-gondolas-2023-2">Venice Canal</a> bridges are overrun with strangers scrambling for the same selfies. You can barely see <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/tourists-charged-after-taking-selfie-in-front-of-old-faithful-2019-9">Yellowstone's Old Faithful</a> through the rows of people trying to get a good view. And beneath the Eiffel Tower in <a target="_blank" href="https://apnews.com/article/france-tourism-police-shooting-unrest-931985b941fdf3c0a7ee24c8dc901c0a">Paris</a>, you are dodging tour groups and cheap souvenir stalls.Even worse than the demystifying effect <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/tourists-dumb-things-officials-deal-with-it-colosseum-naitonal-parks-2023-7">huge crowds</a> can have on the world's most beautiful places is the impact they can have on the people who actually live there — from smaller things like an inability to get into local restaurants to very big impacts, such as being priced out of their homes or unable to afford to live in the places they actually work.With tourism quickly bouncing back from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.unwto.org/news/international-tourism-swiftly-overcoming-pandemic-downturn">pandemic</a> lows, countries and cities worldwide are ramping up efforts to combat overtourism. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/venice-tourism-fee-day-trippers-italy-travel-vacation-europe-residents-2023-9">Venice, Italy,</a> announced this summer it will start charging day-trippers about $5 dollars to visit the city center. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amsterdam-cruise-ship-ban-solves-big-problems-facing-tourist-spots-2023-7">Amsterdam</a> City Council voted this year to ban cruise ships from docking in the city center. And <a target="_blank" href="https://apnews.com/article/acropolis-greece-visitor-limits-cap-cff1fbf0152cbf77c860e5cf68e18a7e">Greece</a> is now capping visitors to the Acropolis of Athens at 20,000 people per day, with additional hourly entry limits.Although some of these measures are controversial and can make travel more inconvenient for tourists, experts in the industry say not only are they necessary, but it's likely just the beginning.<div type="image" title="Gondolas slowly pass under the Bridge of Sighs near St. Mark's Square due to too much traffic on August 02, 2023 in Venice, Italy." height="2000" width="3000" msid="104783022" hostid="261" sizebytes="396524"></div>"At the end of the day, there's roughly 8 billion people on the planet. In the next 20 to 30 years, there's going to be another billion people on the planet. A lot of those people will travel. Where are they going to go? Well, the same places as everybody else," Alan Fyall, the Visit Orlando endowed chair of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management who studies sustainable tourism, told Insider."There's a lot of people with sufficient money and time to travel, so it's not going to get any easier."<h2>The main problem is everyone coming to the same place, at the same time</h2>Tourism worldwide has steadily risen since the <a target="_blank" href="https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/evolution-commercial-flying-experience">1950s</a>, a trend that's unlikely to slow down. "People now have more access to destinations than they had before," Andria Godfrey, a professor in hospitality and tourism at the University of Southern California, told Insider, adding there are more air routes than ever. "Destinations that before were more remote now have different ways that people are able to travel to them."International travel especially has become more accessible. Godfrey noted that in some cases flying to Europe is not significantly more expensive than flying to destinations within the US. Americans are also more committed to travel than they were in the past. More and more Americans are prioritizing their discretionary spending on travel, while previously that money was going towards consumer goods. Even when there's economic uncertainty and Americans are focused on saving money, travel is one of the last things they're willing to give up.<div type="image" title="Tourists crowd the area near the Rialto Bridge on August 02, 2023 in Venice, Italy." height="2000" width="3000" msid="104783023" hostid="261" sizebytes="497310"></div>"This is something that is probably not going to go away," she said of the rising demand for travel. "We're going to see more destinations having to deal with volume, timing of travel, types of travelers, and traveler behavior."And it's not just that more people are traveling: they are also visiting different kinds of places. In the US, Godfrey said there's been a huge surge in travel related to the outdoors, especially after the pandemic. More Americans than ever are also traveling to Europe, which has been dealing with overtourism for years. Similar to the strain put on small, historic European cities that weren't built for millions of people, the infrastructure in the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/high-visitation-rates-national-parks-lead-to-big-crowds-graffiti-2021-7">national parks</a> is also not equipped to handle too many visitors.The problem is not necessarily the volume of tourists at any given place, but the fact that they all come at once, and to the exact same locations."<a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/travel-destinations-instagram-influencers-ruined-2019-7">Instagram</a> is really compounding the problem," Fyall said, explaining that social media is part of the reason so many people want to go to the exact same spot when they visit a destination. "Everybody wants to get that shot."If destinations could succeed at simply spreading out the tourists — in regards to both the physical spots they are visiting and the time of year they come — it could go a long way in addressing the problems caused by overtourism.<div type="image" title="A line of cars creeps slowly to the Tioga Pass Highway 120 entrance of Yosemite National Park as viewed on August 5, 2023, just outside Yosemite National Park, California." height="3840" width="5760" msid="104783026" hostid="261" sizebytes="2223070"></div>"If you don't control the numbers at a certain time, you will ruin the resource so much that there won't be anything to go see," Fyall said. "That's the reality."<h2>Visitor limits, fees and fines, and development controls are becoming more common</h2>Amir Eylon, president and CEO of Longwoods International, a market research consultancy that specializes in the travel tourism industry, told Insider there are five primary ways destinations are addressing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/hallstatt-austria-locals-protest-overtourism-frozen-village-photos-2023-10">overtourism</a>.The first two are visitor caps, like what Greece has done at the Acropolis, and reservation systems, like at several US national parks, including Zion, Glacier, and Rocky Mountain. Caps and reservations are also common at more specific attractions, such as popular museums like the Louvre.The third trend is destinations instituting taxes and fees, like Venice, or even fines. In Rome, for instance, officials vowed to charge tourists caught <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/italy-colosseum-keeps-getting-defaced-media-attention-isnt-helping-2023-7">defacing the Coliseum</a>, which comes with fines of €15,000, or $16,850, or even jail time.<div type="image" title="Hundreds of tourists gather on a boardwalk to watch Old Faithful Geyser erupt on July 14, 2021 at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming." height="683" width="1024" msid="104783027" hostid="261" sizebytes="128968"></div>And while fees and taxes may not be enough on their own to lower tourist numbers — is $5 really going to deter the average traveler from visiting Venice? — it can give that location more resources to improve infrastructure or invest in permanent community housing."People are going where they want to go," Eylon said. "If it is a quality experience with an aspirational destination, people are going to pay."Another approach that doesn't involve directly limiting or charging tourists is development caps, which Eylon said are becoming more common, particularly in smaller destinations or resort towns that draw far more visitors than they are built to manage. In 2019, <a target="_blank" href="https://mountainx.com/news/asheville-city-council-approves-new-hotel-development-regulations/">Asheville, North Carolina</a>, instituted a one-year ban on any new hotel developments so the leaders of the town could assess the situation and develop policies for new hotel proposals. The ban was lifted over a year later, with new policies requiring hotel developments to meet certain standards or contribute to a permanent housing fund.Lastly, there's how destinations market themselves. While for a long time, tourism marketing boards primarily encouraged visitors to come, some are now taking a different approach. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amsterdam-travel-tourism-drugs-red-light-district-b09d1286">Amsterdam</a>, for instance, launched a campaign this year directed at tourists who only want to come to the city to party. The message? Stay away.Other places have focused on encouraging tourists to behave better, such as Colorado's partnership with <a target="_blank" href="https://lnt.org/partnership/tourism/colorado-tourism-office/">Leave No Trace</a>, which is aimed at promoting responsible tourism.<div type="image" title="Members of the public walk away from the Eiffel Tower in Paris on August 16, 2023." height="5088" width="7633" msid="104783029" hostid="261" sizebytes="1143414"></div>Both the Netherlands and Colorado have also focused on promoting locations beyond their primary attractions — Amsterdam and Denver — to encourage tourists to explore other parts of the country and state."There's no one-size-fits-all solution," Eylon said, adding that what works for one community won't necessarily work for another.<h2>Tourism is good for communities — until it's not</h2>One of the biggest roadblocks to addressing overtourism is the fact that, in many ways, tourism is good for communities. In addition to the economic benefits, the things that make places great tourism destinations are often the same things that make them great places to work and live: a variety of restaurants, good infrastructure, great museums, and other attractions.Surveys done by Eylon's company have found that most Americans believe the positives of tourism outweigh the negatives. Still, there's generally a line, and various stakeholders will have different opinions about how many visitors are too many. Eylon said it's becoming increasingly common and important for tourism boards to not only measure the economic benefits of tourism but to also measure resident sentiments about tourism levels.<div type="image" title="Crowds of tourists in front of the Parthenon, on the Acropolis of Athens in Greece." height="3333" width="5000" msid="104783195" hostid="261" sizebytes="1343778"></div>Anna Abelson, an adjunct professor at New York University's Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, said there are some clear indications of when overtourism has become a problem: too much noise, high levels of pollution, and just so many people in an area that it's difficult for locals to simply enjoy their day-to-day lives.Residents of such locations will often make their displeasure known. In <a target="_blank" href="https://www.france24.com/en/20170807-spain-barcelona-tourism-airbnb-protests-demonstrations-italy-venice">Barcelona, Spain</a>, for instance, there have been massive protests against tourism, and a lot of residents have simply left the neighborhoods they had long lived in."They were leaving because certain neighborhoods lost authenticity. It was not really for locals anymore. It was mostly souvenir shops," Abelson said.The challenge for tourism destinations now is to find the balance between promoting tourism in order to get the benefits of it, while being realistic about where to draw the line and listening to local residents about how they're being impacted.While tourism management measures can pose an inconvenience to travelers or require them to plan more of their trips in advance, they are the only way to preserve the world's most treasured places."We want all generations to come to visit Venice," Abelson said. "But I'm not sure what state they're going to find Venice in when they go.""To do nothing at this point is not an option."

The tourism free-for-all is over

This weekend we mentioned <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/barrons-money-manager-poll-shows-the-highest-level-of-bullishness-in-20-years-2013-4">the latest Barron's cover</a>, which is about the paper's professional investor survey, which shows record high bullishness and a widespread belief that the Dow is going to go to 16,000.
<keyword id="1746060" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="John-Hussman">John Hussman</keyword>, the famously bearish mutual fund manager, sees this as screaming sell signal, as <a href="http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc130422.htm">he invokes</a> the ol' contrarian magazine cover indicator.
He writes:
The Barron’s Big Money Poll is typically bullish, on balance. This is Wall Street, after all. But variations in the tone and extent of that bullishness can be informative, especially when the consensus is extremely optimistic at new highs of mature bull markets, and defensive at new lows of mature bear markets. I can’t really throw stones about 2009, as I had my own concerns at the time (relating to the need to stress-test against Depression era outcomes, despite our favorable views of valuation). But it’s worth noting that the 2009 Big Money Poll questioned the advance from the March lows, noting “good reason not to jump in with both feet yet.” The 2003 Big Money Poll – already well into a new bull market – was bullish on balance, and up from just 43% bulls in an October 2002 poll near the market lows. Still, the 2003 poll noted “the bulls’ views have been tempered by the market’s losses in recent years. Consequently their expectations for the Dow, the Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 stock index, and the Nasdaq Composite have been ratcheted down from past surveys.”
This certainly isn’t a criticism of Barron’s itself. I grew up on Barron’s Magazine, and will remain a devoted reader at least as long as Alan Abelson provides a worthy counterbalance to the more short-sighted views of Wall Street and the Market Lab section remains in print. Still, the Big Money Poll is most useful as a contrary indicator.
Rule o’ Thumb: When the cover of a major financial magazine features a cartoon of a bull leaping through the air on a pogo stick, it’s probably about time to cash in the chips.
Anyway, this chart from Hussman says it all.
<div class="image-container" style="width:600px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5174f45869bedd743f00001d-708-587/wmc130422a.jpg?maxX=600" border="0" alt="magazine cover barron's hussman" width="600" /></div><a href="http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc130422.htm">John Hussman</a></div>
<a href="http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc130422.htm">Read Hussman's whole letter here ---&gt;</a>

You Searched For "Alan Abelson" and got 3 results

Legendary Barron's Columnist Alan Abelson Dies At 87

Henry Blodget

The tourism free-for-all is over

Kelsey Vlamis

HUSSMAN: The Cover Of The Latest Barron's Is A Screaming Sign Of A Stock Market Top

Joe Weisenthal