Category: Business

Kyle Bass Gives BBC Econ 101 Lesson — Reader Tom C sent this link from an interview by Sarah Montague of BBC’s HARDTalk of Kyle Bass, the Texan who founded Hayman Capital Partners, a hedge fund that made a mint short selling mortgage bonds during the subprime disaster and, more recently, bonds issued by the government of Greece.

Ms. Montague implied he was profiting from the suffering of others. Bass replied that he was looking out for his investors and that blaming him for the fiscal implosion of governments and financial institutions is  akin to blaming the mirror for one being ugly.

Here is the interview. It is worth watching.

Tom also sent this link from FrontPageMag.Com regarding the on-going persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world. It’s not something you’d see in the Inquirer.

Thanks Tom.

 

Kyle Bass Gives BBC Econ 101 Lesson

Barbara Bater, whose company Penncora  designed and decorated the ceremonial stage  for the “Liberty In Motion” Event which marked the 2003 moving of the Liberty Bell to its present location at the Liberty Bell Center, has some fascinating tidbits about the Bell on her site.

Check it out here.

 

Inevitable Gold Standard? — Reader TomC, who knows a little bit about banking, sent a link to this fascinating Barron’s piece  in which respected financial guru James Grant “promises” that the United States will soon be on a gold standard.

Grant says doing so will result in more scrutiny about government spending, as is now happening.

“We have a credit card and the gold standard would be our debit card,” he said.

Oh, and for those who spend too much time watching old media and hence fear a government default, Grant also says the “the U.S. Treasury market is pretty fine”

Inevitable Gold Standard?

Farewell, Borders — Borders Group Inc., which is the nation’s second largest bookstore chain, cannot not find a buyer and is going to liquidate.

It’s a shame as it has dramatically improved over the last year but creative destruction happens.

Not that that’s going to make any better the feelings of the chain’s 10,700 workers who will be added to the rolls of the unemployed in these Obama years.

 

Farewell, Borders

Eric Cantor Betting Against T-Bonds? — Old friend Tom Flocco of Upper Providence has noted that Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Va7) who led the walkout in negotiations regarding the raising of the debt ceiling has money invested in a fund that will rise if Treasury Bonds drop as would happen if the debt ceiling is not raised.

It’s a subject being discussed with suspicion at numerous small harbors on the great sea of the world wide web.

The fund is ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury ETF. Cantor has $15,000 invested in it as part of a diversified portfolio — which also includes Treasury Bonds.

If one has a halfway-decent money manager one very well might have similar amount of money in that fund or a similar one.

It has been said — by the left-leaning Daily Kos no less — that Cantor sabotaging U.S. Treasury Bonds to benefit his ProShares fund would be like burning down a “million dollar mansion to collect 100 grand in fire insurance.”

Eric Cantor Betting Against T-Bonds?

Looming Disaster Explained — Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, an investment firm,  is getting some notice and causing some controversy on the World Wide Web with a video warning of an impending collapse of the dollar which it claims will usher in 1,000 percent inflation and months of domestic turmoil.

If you get to  the very end of it you’ll find it to be a sales pitch. Still, Porter Stansberry makes some points worth considering:

–If all Americans paid 100 percent of their income in taxes it would still not pay off the national debt.

–That our government owes more money to more people than anyone else in the world — and that was before the financial crisis.

–That we are repaying this debt by printing trillions of dollars and that our creditors will either stop accepting dollars in repayment or greatly discount their value.

–That Mexican banks are no longer accepting dollars for deposits and that there are 150 legal alternatives to U.S. currency being circulated in the United States, such as BerkShares.

One free bit of advice he gives that is probably worth taking as best as one can is that one should have at least a six-month supply of food, water and medicine on hand.

Here’s the latest link.

Here’s a more user friendly one on youtube.

 

Looming Disaster Explained

Productivity Booms In Obama Years — The U.S. economy produced a record $13.38 trillion worth of real gross domestic product, based on 2005 dollars, in the last quarter of 2010.

Just 139 million employees were used to achieve this feat which is 7 million fewer than in the last record quarter — fall 2007 — when $13.36 trillion in real GDP was produced.

The motivation for this achievement, which has good and bad sides, can be laid at the feet of President Obama. Businesses are bending over backwards not to hire people fearing they may be stuck paying for them forever via unemployment compensation insurance and various other mandates — new, proposed and unforeseen.

The bad side is many businesses are making the employees they didn’t lay off work far harder than they used to to make up for the smaller workforce, and these employees are stuck since they fear there is nothing else out there and if one quits without a good reason one is likely not to get unemployment compensation.

And truthfully, most Americans would rather work than be a useless drone.

The good side is many business are also making productivity gains by cutting red tape, removing communication bottlenecks and increasing the skills and flexibility of its workforce.

And, of course, by adopting new technology.

One example that has gotten quite a bit of publicity is Marlin Steel Wire Products of Baltimore. Marlin has replaced $6-an-hour workers, who did 300 bends an hour, with robots and a $22 an hour technician that do 20,000 bends per hour.

One can say that a whole lot of $6 an hour people got put out of work. Or one can say that $6-an-hour workers can now afford a product that had not been able to.

Back during the dot.com boom, a prediction was made of  era of 0 percent employment. The idea wasn’t that all would be in soup lines depending of government handouts but the world would become the Merry Old Land of Oz, where we would all sleep till noon, start work at one, an hour for lunch and at two we’re done.

We wouldn’t be drones but be free living under our own vines and fig trees.

Maybe Obama is going to bring this about in spite of himself.

 

Productivity Booms In Obama Years