You gotta love Robin Williams……..Even if he’s nuts! Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan. What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message. Robin William Made This Speech in New York…
Milton Friedman Talking on Socialized Medicine
Observations of the President’s 1st 100 Days
Observations of the President's 1st 100 Days:
1. Offended the Queen of England
2. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia .
3. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
4. Kissed Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
5. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia
The $23.7 trillion bailout’s biggest message: Fail catastrophically
What does America value? The answer is simple: building the biggest and riskiest companies in the world. If you achieve world-class levels of size and risk, the U.S. government will use everything in its power to rescue you if you get into trouble and let you pay yourself billions in bonuses if things are going well. With $23.7 trillion of taxpayer money at risk to bail out those huge institutions — almost twice U.S. GDP — there can be no doubt how great the reward is for failing big.
You Cannot Multiply Wealth by Dividing It
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody any-thing that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
-Adrian Rogers, 1931-2005
After $182 billion taxpayer rescue, is AIG on the verge of collapse?
You may remember American International Group (AIG). The U.S. government gave it $182 billion of taxpayer money last fall in exchange for a 78 percent stake. Of that money, $165 million went for bonuses to a handful of people in its Financial Products Group (FPG), which sold Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) on which AIG lacked the capital to make good. And $200 million more is slated for those good folks in 2009.
July 28th with Dennis Wolfe and Annette Martin
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Will Obama serve Sam Adams at this week’s White House happy hour?
There's a potentially exciting investment opportunity brewing this week, blending a mix of racial politics, political stagecraft, and the kind of free publicity that every business executive dreams of. I'm talking about the scheduled meeting this Thursday at the White House, when President Obama will sit down with Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police, who arrested Gates in his home one afternoon this month.
Four market rally explanations that make little sense, and one that might
I was just as happy as anyone who owns stocks to see the Dow close over 9,000 yesterday. But the question that remains unanswered is why exactly did stocks rally? There are four reasons commonly offered to explain the recent rise in stocks: their prices were cheap relative to earnings, the economy is getting worse more slowly, second quarter earnings are better than expected, and investors are focusing on the economic recovery. I don’t think any of these explanations hold water.
One explanation that might make sense is that cash is scrambling into stocks — due to both short covering and huge cash balances afraid of being left behind. Short sellers bet that a stock will fall by borrowing shares from a broker and selling them at what they think will be a high price. If their bet is right, they can repay the stock loan by buying shares back in the open market at a lower price.
Why GM can’t repay the money
General Motors (NYSE: GM) presented a 117-page plan for “viability” last night. But after looking at it, I concluded that it was “crafted” to increase the odds of getting the $30 billion loan it now claims it needs to survive. As Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” And GM’s viability plan is the third kind. Why? Its sales forecasts are way too optimistic.
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