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Monthly Archives: March 2009
The Great Rape of Taxpayers Continues
Zero Hedge is an excellent blog. It makes me truly sad that we continue this massive bailout of companies, extending the pain and enriching Wall Street insiders, at the expense of every day taxpayers. It is sick and disgusting. This latest blog post by Zero Hedge, describes how the government is using AIG to funnel billions in money to banks. Read for yourself:
Rio Bravo
I love the movie Rio Bravo, and I actually never knew anyone else enjoyed it as much as I do. So today’s Wall Street Journal article by Allen Barra took me by surprise. Here is a snippet:
French director Jean-Luc Godard called “Rio Bravo” “a work of extraordinary psychological insight and aesthetic perception.” British film critic Robin Wood wrote, “If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be ‘Rio Bravo.’” Quentin Tarantino, whose “Pulp Fiction” was also both popular and hip, told an audience at a 2007 Cannes screening of “Rio Bravo” that he always tested a new girlfriend “by taking her to see ‘Rio Bravo’ — and she’d better like it!”
And here is the link: Rio Bravo
Liberals and Tax Cheating
The blog, Audacious Epigone, has a very interesting post describing a study showing that “Liberals do not consider cheating on taxes to be as morally problematic as conservatives do. This presents an obvious moral quandary of its own, as, putatively less surprisingly, liberals are more likely than conservatives are to favor greater amounts of taxation and wealth redistribution.”
See the whole study:
Cheating
This is an excellent talk by Dan Ariely on cheating. (Got this from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed blog).
Still not sleeping
Harry Markopolos below talks about how he is still not sleeping well at night. This guy is a real hero in my book and really good man. I hope he realizes that he did much more than any other person involved in the Madoff scandal. He did his best to try to uncover the fraud. He should be sleeping a full night’s sleep knowing that.
Quote of the Week
In one instance the regulators asked her about her role in preparing the Stanford International Bank quarterly report. She replied it was her job to edit the report, checking the report’s pie charts “to make sure they equal 100.”
Are Natural Gas and Oil Prices About to Explode Higher?
The following is a very provocative presentation by Matthew Simmons with Simmons International and a proponent of peak oil. He makes a very compelling fact based argument that oil and especially natural gas are about to explode higher.
Particularly compelling is his analysis of a sample Haynesville Shale gas well, which on day 1, yielded 18 bfc/day and on day 90 yielded 3.3 bfc/day. What this means is that all of the excess production that caused production to jump the last two years have come from shale gas production, which is actually expensive, and has very quick drop-off rates. With the amount of drilling plunging by the day, it won’t be long before we start to see it in the gas supply numbers. And the result could be for much, much higher natural gas prices than we have right now.
Check out the whole presentation:
Dispelling myths about the 1930s stock market
This is a great article by Mark Hulbert from Barrons. Here is a snippet:
MYTH 1: It took 25 years for the stock market to recover its losses from the high reached just before the stock market crashed in October 1929.
It’s easy to see why investors believe this myth to be true: It wasn’t until Nov. 23, 1954, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the level at which it closed on Sept. 3, 1929, the date of its closing high before that year’s crash. That’s a recovery period of more than 25 years.
If the recovery from the bear market over the last year and a half were to take the same length of time, the Dow wouldn’t again close above its all-time high from Oct. 9, 2007, of 14,164.53 until — you’d better sit down — Dec. 28, 2032.
The truth, however, is that it took stocks far less than 25 years to recover. According to Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel, the inflation-adjusted total return index of the U.S. stock market was just as high in late 1936 and early 1937 as it was at its precrash peak in 1929. That was less than eight years later.
That may not be great news to investors who are hoping to recover their bear market losses in just one or two years. But it’s a whole lot better than taking 25 years to recover those losses.
Here is the link: Myths of the 1930s
What would the Talmud say?
A friend emailed me this article in Time Magazine about what the Talmud would advise about the financial crisis. I continue to believe that the way out of this crisis is to focus on a shared trust and faith. Virtue and responsibility are to in order and a basic morality. All of the frauds, deceitful behavior and fraudulent accounting must end and must be exposed. Only then will investors return in mass to the markets.
Here is the article: Talmud article in Time