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    • Mon Nov 24th 10:08 AM
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      Is Goldman Sachs Sounding an Exaggerated Alarm?
      Correct....the big boys want big stimulus.....Bit business is often in favor of big govenment. That is why so much vigilance is needed.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 11:29 AM
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      GE, Goldman Bond Spreads: Unrealistic and Unsustainable
      Thanks BS Detector.....good comment. I was a bit concerned about GE and other bonds I bought. they "look" like a great deal, as do preferred and convertable bonds. What do you think....? I realize the CDS mkt says "maybe not".
      Thanks
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    • Tue Oct 7th 14:19 PM
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      Did JPMorgan Almost Fail?
      Dorque
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    • Tue Sep 30th 10:06 AM
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      Stop Yelling About FDIC Limits - In Fact, Just Stop Yelling
      This author's point sound like it is being made by a prissy dorque, though I am sure the author is sensible in all other respects. The point is not there are administrative alternatives. The point is to stop the panic. Panic is often partly irrational. Th solution is not to send depositors through administrative hoops to try to protect their money--set up 10 bank accounts...? Come on! Yes we know we can do that. In fact I have done it. It is a royal pain in the *ss, not to mention putting my name, social security number and address on another 50 computerized, never-to-be-erased, hackable junk mailing lists. The 100K cap has been increased....never?...... is not even indexed to inflation. Small businesses that want to make payroll out of a simple account cannot do it. Promontory might be a solution but I don't know much about it, and anyway, it is a response to a pig headed delay by Congress to address the real problem, which is a paltry sized limit. It should immediately be made at least $10 million, and indexed to inflation.
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    • Wed Sep 3rd 19:57 PM
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      Google's Chrome Sounds Like 1970s Pressure Cooker
      I am no techno geek, but dgcaste and RickRussell make a lot of good points. Tell me if I have this correct: Microsoft is nearing the apex of its innovation curve...in other words, how much better can Office and IE get? Answer: Not much...because they are already satisfactory. So....Microsoft's massive cash flow is dependent on something that cannot be made much better. Therefore the cash flow will stagnate and dwindle. On the other hand, Google, who also has a massive cash flow, is linked to the evolution of...well.....modern life itself: Google will always be reporting what is "new" in culture, and selling ads to the viewers, like TV did 50 years ago. Microsoft is the Saturday Evening Post, Google is TV and Radio, wrapped into one. The new Chrome browser is an entry into the 10 year old browser wars true.....but....its purpose is not necessarily to break ground....rather it is to incrementally grease the skids to use Google services even more than is currently done with Firefox/IE and others. Do I have this right? If so, it is an ephiphany. I now realize why my Microsoft investment is stagnant for 5 years, while Google has taken over the world......
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    • Wed Sep 3rd 11:44 AM
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      Oil: The Inconvenient Truth
      This was kind of like reading a stream of conciousness essay experiment. Wasted my time. Nothing new, interesting, creative, or particularly logical.
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    • Sat Aug 30th 08:07 AM
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      NBC Refuses Pickens Plan Ad
      One more comment. I wish we as a people would not panic about energy cost. Yes, it is going up, and that is not good. But it is not terrible either. It is just normal, like growing old, and sometimes getting a cold. It happens. When goods and services get scarcer, their prices rise. (Thought experiment: What would happen if their prices did not rise?) For instance....when whale oil prices rose at the turn of the last century, guess what happened? People went looking for alternatives. When they found it in the ground, whaling became an enterprise of the past. Lamps burned oil and a new era was formed. Government had nothing to do with the successful transition--it was all done by citizens in their roles as engineers, businessmen and women, and entrepreneurs. The depletion of oil truly represents nothing more dramatic than a transition: a transition from liquid oil extraction to all of the following: Nuclear ($30), gas ($30), wind ($100), membrane bioreactor (waste gas capture) ($100), shale ($120), oil sands ($100), coal gasification ($90), geothermal ($200), conservation ($50 and up). By the way, those numbers represent the price of oil at which those technologies become competitive with oil in a big way. Guess what happens when oil permanently reaches those prices? Absent government inteference, entrepreneurs will build new industries and make lots of money (as they should) supplying those sources of energy. All of those sources except shale and sands are very, very environmentally friendly. If you are a friend of the environment, you should pray, PRAY for the depletion of oil, because it will cause us to transition in an orderly fashion to nuclear, geo, wind, & membranes (no CO2 emissions). So everyone, please don't panic about energy. Panic only if the government gets involved doing anything other than leveling the playing field (pollution control) and honoring contracts. If it begins taxing and spending, predicting winners and loser, promoting an "industrial policy", look out. We will be in trouble. By the way, consider some benefits of higher gas prices: less driving, CO2, gas guzzlers, sulfur, NOX emissions, highway deaths/injuries, hospital visits, suburban sprawl, etc. More trains, stay-home vacations, family time, electric cars, hybrids, conservation, etc, etc. To summarize, increasing gas prices cause us to use less of a noxious, dwindling resource (good), and cause entrepreneurs and investors and engineers and business people to vigorously create profitable alternatives (good). If the government will get out of the way, in 100 years we will be talking about "drilling" the same way we we now talk about "whaling".
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    • Fri Aug 29th 11:04 AM
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      NBC Refuses Pickens Plan Ad
      Please, Please PLEASE, Congress don't "do" ANYTHING about Energy. Except of course, GET OUT OF THE WAY!! Every time government "does" something about a problem, the problem worsens or creates even greater problems. Look at most of our most pressing problems: they are either PERSONALLY self inflicted (divorce, unwed parents, drug addiction, chronic unemployment, obesity, diabetes, lack of education despite education being available for free) OR government caused: lack of drilling leading to foreign oil dependence; stubbornly blocking nuclear energy leading to foreign oil dependence; government subsidized burning of food for energy (corn) leading to global food inflation and starvation; destroyed inner city schools due to government protected unions in control; lack of school choice for the poor due to the same unions; government funded public housing (drug and crime hell-holes); confiscatory tax rates leading to lack of investment in just about everything (energy, infrastructure, jobs, growth); government spending every cent of social secuity receipts instead of saving it; needless foreign wars; the list of government funded depredations against the our citizens GOES ON AND ON AND ON. The BEST thing possible for our country would be for government to return to being efficient and limited, that is, back to its original constitutional purpose of law and order, and leaving the citizens alone, including their money. Thank you. PS, you pay 50% of your income in taxes. If you don't believe that, add it up. Obama wants it to be 80%. McCain wants it to be 60%. Not much difference.
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    • Tue Jul 29th 13:20 PM
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      Making Profits Through Understanding Market Psychology
      Well put Ron. Once in a while a technical analysis factor like this will work for a while, until it doesn't....best bet, do the homework. That is what Cramer preaches, & Dorsey, Lavallier, Buffett, Graham & Dodd and so forth. To me, the central investing truth of our time is that the masses are getting fleaced by the Investment Industry, because the masses are terrified to take responsibility for their own savings & investments. People will spend 100s of hours learning how to garden, grow green grass, or fix their car. But they won't spend 10 hours researching a well diversified portfolio of stock to buy and hold. Result: As Bogle teaches us, over a 30 year time horizon, they hand over 80% (yes eighty) of their gains to their mutual fund managers and brokers. So so sad.
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    • Tue Jul 29th 13:18 PM
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      Rating: 0 0
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      Making Profits Through Understanding Market Psychology
      Well put Ron. Once in a while a technical analysis factor like this will work for a while, until it doesn't....best bet, do the homework. That is what Cramer preaches, & Dorsey, Lavallier, Buffett, Graham & Dodd and so forth. To me, the central investing truth of our time is that the masses are getting fleaced by the Investment Industry, because the masses are terrified to take responsibility for their own savings & investments. People will spend 100s of hours learning how to garden, grow green grass, or fix their car. But they won't spend 10 hours researching a well diversified portfolio of stock to buy and hold. Result: As Bogle teaches us, over a 30 year time horizon, they hand over 80% (yes eighty) of their gains to their mutual fund managers and brokers. So so sad.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 11:21 AM
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      Re-examining My American Capital Strategies Position
      Excellent backup from shuddacudda.....I got it. Follow up....so the only way to cut dividends and stay in compliance would be to realize losses to reduce statutory income. I.e., sell some "dogs" to raise cash, and at the same time reduce income to reduce the dividend requirement. Thus the company could retrench a bit, reduce leverage and or buy back shares.
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    • Thu Jul 24th 11:14 AM
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      Re-examining My American Capital Strategies Position
      Excellent article.

      A question for David Bui....why should the stock price have anything to do with the 50%/50% ratio of Debt:Equity. I realize debt can't be >50% of total capital. But this rule refers to the Debt and Equity that are on the books, not Debt and Equity market valuations, right?? The required ratio is based on the book equity and the book debt? Meaning stock price is irrelevant for this consideration....Thank... in advance.

      Second, comment to shuddacudda....I think they have occasionally paid out >100% of earnings so they could still cut without dropping below 90% requirement. In fact, with the writedowns, they are running accounting losses, and could cut dividend for a while without breaching the 90%. I personally would not be put off by a dividend cut, but I realize most owners would.
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    • Tue Jul 1st 08:54 AM
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      Massive Government and Private Sector Job Cuts Coming
      People who don't know what they are talking about, please post elsewhere. Thank you.
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    • Tue Jun 24th 08:25 AM
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      Point of No Return or Perfect Buying Opportunity?
      Tantrist.....I like it.....give us some more.
      Thanks
      We need more WH von Dreel in our posts.
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    • Wed Jun 11th 10:57 AM
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      BP CEO: Three Oil Myths
      It is likely that Supply and Demand will solve the peak oil problem, if it is a problem, just as it has since the dawn of time. Higher prices will drive a thousand subsitutions made by 5 billion people all over the world for the next 500 years. Smaller, cheaper cars and mass transit are two examples. When we experienced "peak whale oil" at the turn of the 19th century, did civilization end? Supply will be spurred by a thousand ways to make money by creating supplies of energy. "Depleted" fields with still half their oil untouched will be reopened. Oil sands and shale EACH containing more hydrocarbons than all the Middle East will be tapped. Sands are already profitable with oil at $80/barrel (which is cheaper on an inflation-adjusted basis than in 1974!). Nuclear, conservation, solar, geo, wind, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. [Ethanol, only if you are getting money under the table.[

      The only thing really that we as a nation have to fear is the United States Congress. Because they have a monopoly on power, Congress has the unique ability to frustrate Energy progress. Congress may well add to the energy crisis they created and engineer a genuine catastrophy. [NOTE: Other catastrophies Congress created include primary education (teachers union protection), public housing ($1T spent to build crime/drug incubators), college tuition inflation (tidal subsidies), health uninsured (tax laws), tort mafia barons (tort law driven), confiscatory taxation (we, you, pay >50% counting all direct and indirect taxes), race relations (quotas), Iraq (maybe), forclosures (Negative interest rates--Humphrey Hawkins driven), Torture Porn/Hollywood (legal "protection"... Border Non-control (accusations of 'racist'), overpaid CEOs (ironically, compensation limit tax laws) and so on. Congress creates most of the biggest problems, headaches, and indignities we face. The ingenuity and common decency of most Americans then helps to address, if not solve, them.

      The best we can hope for from Congress, is that they will limit their damage. If they spend less than, say, half a $ trillion on subsidies & pork, and don't frustrate or tax to death the ability and willingness of Engineers, Entrepreneurs, and Investors to create new sources of energy, we will be OK. We can be sure Supply and Demand, and Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will work their magic.

      Tax policy matters. Replacing bad taxes with less damaging taxes is a promising idea. Unfortunately, knowning Congress, they will likely pass big new taxes, and keep the former taxes, too. This is what they are trying to do with Cap & Trade, a massive new Tax & Spend regime being debated today.

      On the hopeful side, if Congress will only huff and puff, but do no serious regulatory damage, we have a chance. As mentioned, an Entrepreneurial, Pro Growth tax policy would help. The best example would be an energy or carbon tax to replace taxes on growth, employment, and investment--helpful, but not indispensable.

      Good Luck!
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