Below is a CBS 60-minute segment, with Charlie Rose interviewing T. Boone Pickens who talked about, among other things, his 'crusade' on solving the nation's energy problem:
As an 80-year-old man, his mind is just as sharp as anybody!
To many people's surprise, US dollar has shown incredible strength since the financial crisis surfaced in US during the last few months:
Reasons for the rise?
The market may continue to drop, but many small-cap companies are becoming unbelievably cheap: their market cap is close to or below its net cash value. These relatively illiquid stocks may go down, say, another 50%, in this crazy market, but that doesn't really matter as long as you don't need the money in the near term. I hope I am right.
Contrary to historical behavior, the large cap stocks have not performed better than the small cap ones in this down market. I think we should continue to avoid large cap names. Beaten-down names like CAT, GE and BHP seems attractive, but it could go down another 50% and still don't see the bottom.
In general debt-ridden stocks such as GM, LVS and AMKR have performed much worse than the broad market. No surprise there. Should continue to avoid.
... from investment guru Bogle:
You can control risk. You can't control return.
A handy shell command to do image conversion, e.g., in a batch process. It must be one of the new Unix commands that came up in recent years.
DESCRIPTION
Convert converts an input file using one image format to an output file with a differing image format. In addition, various types of image processing can be performed on the converted image during the conversion process. Convert recognizes the image formats listed in ImageMagick.
EXAMPLE
To make a thumbnail of a JPEG image, use:
convert -size 120x120 cockatoo.jpg -resize 120x120 +profile '*' thumbnail.jpg
One more great quote from the great Warren Buffett, who explained the problem of using leverage in his inimitable way on "The Charlie Rose Show.":
"Leverage is the only way a smart guy can go broke ... You do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and you do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball. The guys look better all the time, the music sounds better, it's more and more fun, you think, 'Why the hell should I leave at a quarter to 12? I'll leave at two minutes to 12.' But the trouble is, there are no clocks on the wall. And everybody thinks they're going to leave at two minutes to 12."
How true!
The quote was used in yet another good article in Newsweek: Zakaria: A More Disciplined America | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
Debt is not a bad thing. Used responsibly, it is at the heart of modern capitalism. But hiding mountains of debt in complex instruments is a way to disguise costs, an invitation to irresponsible behavior.
Boykin Curry, managing director of Eagle Capital, explains why the problem snowballed for so long:
"For 20 years, the DNA of nearly every financial institution had morphed dangerously. Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them 'right.' These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital. Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved 'wrong.' The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion. They lost their hold on capital. This happened every day in almost every financial institution over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things. This year, the capital that remains is finally being reallocated to more careful, thoughtful executives and investors—the Warren Buffetts … of the world."
However, on the same issue of Newsweek, Robert Samuelson made a point arguing against de-leveraging too fast! Doing so may actually make the financial system crashing further.
Quiz: Do You Speak Bailout? | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
Well, I thought I knew a lot, having been bombarded with related news lately. To my surprise, I ranked just above average in the quiz however.
Didn't realize it until I plotted the 5-year chart of SPX. Since the "fear" has just started, we may actually see a low that's lower than the 2003 trough, when SPX was at 768.
After more than 5 months since first reported, and after its stock price dropped 75%(!) from its recent high, Ivanhoe finally signed the highly anticipated contract with PetroEcuador. The press release, which contains much of the details about the contract, is here.
"Block 20", which contains the Pungarayacu heavey oil field, is shown on the map below. ARCO's OOIP estimate for the block was 4.5 billion barrels, while Petrocuador's estimate was 7.0 billion barrels.
Clearly pro-Democrats and Obama, the article in Newsweek is an excellent read on what has taken us here: back from the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The idea of neo-liberal capitalism, tax cuts and preaching democracy worldwide was necessary at the beginning but went too far down the road, creating a country of mass deficit, tax-cut stimulated growth, speculation by wall street using other people's money, inequality in the society and using democracy for justifying wars.
Fukuyama: The End of America Inc | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
However, it seems that the author, a quite-influential scholar in politics, has been a supporter of the above-mentioned policies and had predicted that the political and economic liberalism would prevail, as evidenced by his book The End of History and the Last Man, according to Wikipedia. If true, the author's credibility can be questioned, or maybe he has changed his stance.