This is unbelievable! California (my home state) is going to issue I.O.U.'s to seniors, disabled and welfare recipients starting tomorrow because our State Legislature cannot agree on a budget. This is outrageous beyond belief!

Next time someone refers to California as the "Golden State" the laughter from all corners of the nation will be deafening. They say that California Bonds and Schools will not be affected.

What I want to know is whether the politicians will be getting paid in I.O.U.'s. There are many people in the land of the petition and ballot initiative that would be in favor of a law that says the politicians do not get paid for twice the time it takes to settle the budget beyond yesterdays (June 30) deadline.

Wednesday, Bernard Madoff requested leniency through his attorney Ira Sorkin, who suggested a sentence of 12 years would be a sufficient penalty for his client's crime of stealing billions of dollars in one of the greatest frauds in history.

Sentencing by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin is set for Monday June 29, and the eyes of the world will be upon him. So will the eyes of the yet-to-be discovered fraudsters everywhere.

My thoughts on the subject are relatively simple and have little to do with revenge or payback. In cases like this I often remember a very old quote from another time and place.

The BRIC nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China -- basically the powerhouses of the developing world, recently met to discuss, among other things, the possibility of forming an effort to move away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Among options for consideration: a) a shift to another hard currency, b) a shift to a basket of currencies, and c) the possibility of the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights unit of account serving as the new reserve currency.

What's the current, sexy trade by institutional investors? Buy oil, sell the dollar.

For market absolutists and conservative economists, this is an 'np' -- or nooo problem. Like oil? Knock yourself out, and buy away. Oil's sexiness, due to expected increases in oil demand as the U.S. and global economies recovery, is a major reason crude's price has increased about 100% in six months. Oil closed Wednesday up 56 cents to $71.01 per barrel.

The landslide victory of current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the announcement of same, only hours after the voting polls closed, even though paper ballots had to be hand counted, has cast serious doubts about the election results.

Last week I wrote of Iran's great potential but today much of that potential has evaporated for the time being, and perhaps for another four years. The rulers of Iran have decided that the devil they know is better than the one they don't. Unfortunately, as far as politicians go, they may have gotten exactly that.

Can investing and collecting go hand-in-hand? Yes -- especially if you are collecting coins, stock certificates, bank notes, or other rare items of value. Larry Schutts, an expert in investment-related collectibles, will periodically review items of interest from his collection and answer your questions here.

Every December, I send each of my brothers a package of Christmas gifts for the family. The boxes contain the usual assortment of presents one sends to sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces, but my brothers always get the new American Eagle Silver Proof dollar. The U.S. Mint has issued the coins every year since 1986 and I have been sending them just that long. It has been some time since the boys have been able to express any surprise about their gifts, but I have always told them to be of good cheer. Those silver dollars, I have said with emotional certainty, are bound to be worth rather more one day. Well, I got to thinking about that promise recently and I thought I would look at the prices folks are getting for the coins nowadays to see whether I was right.

Iran's flawed democracy is still better than most of the political systems among other countries in the region. For the past few decades the morality police, prodded by religious literalism, have mandated women to cover themselves when they are out in public. This same religious literalism has impeded the potential of a country that has a large population, in a key geographic region, with oil and other natural resources.

Iran is in the midst of a presidential election that has stimulated much heated debate among the population about the failures of the current government in economic and political terms, and that has created a feeling of isolation. The isolation is more than a feeling, and it has limited the growth of the nation to something far less than its capabilities.

Can investing and collecting go hand-in-hand? Yes -- especially if you are collecting coins, stock certificates, bank notes, or other rare items of value. Larry Schutts, an expert in investment-related collectibles, will periodically review items of interest from his collection and answer your questions here.

The development of the mining industry was critical to the economic expansion of twentieth century America. Coal and uranium furnished much of the energy necessary for industrialization. Iron, copper and cement components provided essential building materials. Gold and silver served as monetary bases. Most work in the 1800s involved the removal of near-surface materials, but growing mineral demands sent twentieth century miners deeper. Increasingly complex technologies required higher levels of capital investment and that led to a wide variety of corporate stock offerings. Many of the old mining certificates are reasonably priced and that makes them popular with the "scripophily" (collector) crowd. Decent levels of appreciation are also attracting the investment community. Compare seven-year price gains of the specimens discussed below with advances in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+16%) and the S&P 500 Index (+16%) since the market lows of 2002.

The market is down again today and there are millions of people trying to figure out why. Some will tell you they know why and give you a plausible rationale. There may be bits of truth here and there but there is also an arbitrary nature too. If not arbitrary, then haphazard.

The market may be down because nobody in Washington - Obama, Benanke or Geitner - made a speech today pounding the drum for a brighter economic outlook.

It could be because oil prices have been slowly rising again as inventories are drawn down.

A lot of readers have been thinking similar thoughts to someone who commented on my recent post: Chasing Value: Watch BNI -- the heck with Citigroup.

• Donald wrote, "Why the hell would I take advice from a company, that as a whole, its Net income was US$ −27.684 billion for 2008.

While this is an obvious question from a skeptical investor, and we all have good reason to be skeptical, it obscures a more important issue. Is there a relationship between the financial standing of the bank and the value of an individual analyst or adviser? The answer is, absent any conflicts of interest, that there is not.

Just as investors were beginning to feel somewhat positive -- the economy was at least bottoming, and possibly showing early signs of turning around -- swine flu has appeared and put the global economy under its own stress test.

The Obama administration declared a public health emergency Sunday because of the flu outbreak. So far officials have confirmed cases in New York, Texas, California and Kansas. Globally there have been cases of the same strain of the deadly flu, which is suspected in the deaths of 103 people in Mexico, as far as New Zealand.

One after another, sectors, markets and companies affected by the flu's consequences have exhibited symptoms -- good or bad.

BloggingStocks and DailyFinance have more:

• Don't fear the swine flu . . . trade it
• Airlines could suffer thanks to a potential swine flue epidemic
• Analyst warns Visa/Mastercard could be smacked by swine flu
• Swine flu: Outbreak takes its toll in the oil patch
• Fear of flu epidemic hurts stocks, helps some drug companies
• What would a swine flu pandemic do to the economy?

As I have been sharing with our readers over the years, I do not suggest anything I would not do myself. Today I am calling your attention to the Williams Companies, Inc. (NYSE: WMB) which I bought today at $13.00.

I had already taken advantage of a negative market view on the stock by selling "naked puts" at a November $12.50 strike price receiving $2.25 per share. I have been touting this as a way to make some money if you truly are interested in owning the stock already. On the puts my break even position is $10.25, the same as the recent market bottom.

Let's talk about investment risk and alien sightings. How do you assess risk? What is your exposure? What are the odds? What kind of fact checking do you do? What return is appropriate for what level risk? What is your time frame? Do you ask yourself the hard questions?

An ex-astronaut claims that the aliens have landed on earth. According to CNN: former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell and other UFO enthusiasts are concerned, the real story is happening elsewhere. Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, asserted Monday that extraterrestrial life exists, and that the truth is being concealed by the United States and other governments.

All of this alien talk is baloney. The "government" could not keep a secret if the entire universe were at risk. The odds that multiple governments could keep a common secret and that not one person would provide the slightest conclusive evidence are microscopic.

President Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the bank "stress tests." First of all depending on the Treasury's commitments, there is only $32 billion, or possibly $135 billion, left of the $700 billion TARP monies.

The administration is floating three possible scenarios about what to do when the "stress tests" results are made public in about two weeks. First, they could show that it's thumbs up for banks, that they will survive further economic decline over the next few months. This is a long stretch for all 19 banks to come out on top. Most probably, there will be a few that don't pass muster. Then what to do?

Can investing and collecting go hand-in-hand? Yes -- especially if you are collecting coins, stock certificates, bank notes, or other rare items of value. Larry Schutts, an expert in investment-related collectibles, will periodically review items of interest from his collection and answer your questions here.

By 1862, rising Civil War costs prompted the U.S. Congress to levy taxes on use of a broad range of public and private documents. Most of the charges were rescinded ten years later, but a two cent tax on bank checks persisted until 1883. Citizens met the banking requirement by purchasing adhesive revenue stamps and applying them to blank areas on the faces of their checks. The law initially excluded transactions valued at less than $20, but Congress soon extended the tax to all sums and that led many businesses and individuals to order checks with government-approved tax stamp designs already printed on them. Fifteen general designs and more than one-hundred individual varieties were ultimately used. An active collector community now keeps high quality revenue stamped checks in demand and many have become solid long-term investments. Compare 30-year price gains of the specimens discussed below with three decade improvements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+833%) and the S&P 500 Index (+743%).