APRIL 2012 The high priests of the Social Security and Medicare “trust funds” (whatever happened to lockbox?) issued new warnings about the solvency of the “trust funds” they oversee. The Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund will be gone, depleted, kaput in 2016, which is two years earlier than expected. Thank you, masters of the obvious! A record […]
APRIL 2012 I’ve often found counterintuitive notions offer solutions. One of the first, and important of these notions was made by Christopher Columbus. Because he knew the earth was round, he came up with the radical notion of sailing west to reach the east. Then there’s the thinking behind vaccinations — a little disease can […]
MARCH 2012 The list is long and growing. There’s the “Amish Bernie Madoff”, accused of bilking residents of quiet Amish and Mennonite towns in Ohio. There’s Raj Rajaratnam, former hedge fund manager, now a convicted criminal for insider trading. Then there’s Marc Drier, a once prominent lawyer, convicted of defrauding hedge funds, investors and clients […]
MARCH 2012 On April 1, our ally Japan is playing a cruel little April Fools’ Day joke on us: The country is lowering its corporate tax rate from 39.5% to 35%. This will give the United States the dubious and awkward distinction of having, at 39.2%, the highest integrated federal/state tax rate among the developed […]
MARCH 2012 I sure do love the management team at Apple. It’s not because I own shares in the company (this has nothing to do with whether my clients or myself own shares), but because of the lessons they can teach all of us, especially our friends in Washington, D.C. about removing uncertainty from the investment landscape. Specifically, […]
JANUARY 2012 Poor Sport What a $%^&*#@ crybaby! Democrat Steve Driehaus from Ohio’s 1st Congressional District is throwing a hissy fit after losing the 2010 mid-term election. What do Democrats in the midst of hysteria do? They sue. Charging that its activities contributed to his defeat and therefore contributed to “loss of livelihood,” Driehaus is […]
JANUARY 2012 We want underpants today, all day Search for underpants, today We won’t stop until we have underpants Yum yum yummy yum yay Time to go to work, work all day Search for underpants today We won’t stop until we have underpants Yum yum yummy yum yay […]
NOVEMBER 2011 A recent study by the Swiss research University of St. Gallen seems to have scientifically proven what readers of our newsletter and listeners of the Watchdog on Wall Street Radio Show have been privy to for years. The University found that the behavior of stockbrokers’ tops that of psychopaths when it comes to […]
