Blogging for AOL has been an interesting experience over the last few years. For me it is one of those unplanned surprising things that pop up on life's journey every so often. For the most part it has been a rewarding experience. I have had to become a lot more thick skinned when receiving harsh and even crude comments from readers.
One of the great things has been the 'pen pals' I have made around the world. People that have taken to my stories and regularly add their insights. The dialogue makes it more informative and the immediacy somehow makes it more personal and real.
Just this morning I received a note from Dan, a frequent participant in the BloggingStocks.com dialogue. He had noticed that one of my colleagues Peter Cohan had picked up my infrastructure theme lately and was not able to find my stories about the subject from earlier in the year.
I think this is one of the themes that Peter and I could write about non-stop and it would not be getting enough attention. It is first and foremost about putting people to work doing things that the nation needs done anyway. If we have to run the printing presses let it be for things that last 80 to 100 years not 2 to 3. The following stories will illuminate the subject as to my views in more detail.
Thanks for writing Dan. I hope you and others will continue to comment and try and wake up our elected officials. I started banging this gong in February. Maybe someone in Washington will do something before next February.
I think that the infrastructure story will continue to be a major theme next year and for many years to come. My stories have discussed roads, bridges, tunnels, highways and the like but future stories will be about water. In using the the picture above contributed by editor and writer Sarah Gilbert, I want to drive home the point that we all have expectations that our simplest needs will be met. That is not going to be so, if we do not plan for the future.
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.
This post was written by Minyanville contributor Sean Udall.
Through my career I've generally stayed apolitical with regard to investment and trading decisions, but there have been times when some higher percentage trades have presented themselves due to political circumstances. Examples include: the tech push in Clinton's second term, the defense sector after Bush's 2000 victory, as well as the oil patch. Based on that, here are some overriding thoughts, in no particular order.
The market has moved to the phase where many if not most participants want and expect a pullback. Since the market confounds the greatest number of players most of the time, is a big pullback a lower probability event now? Moreover, does the selling panic of much of October turn into a buying panic in the coming weeks and months? I'm letting the charts lead me here but aware that this bullish case could possibly trump terrible economic conditions.
I still think the alt energy patch (solar, wind, battery tech, clean coal) will produce some of the best winners, but a lot of easy money has been made in just days. Quality and fundamentals will likely count much more now than over the past few months. Also, extended runs may become vulnerable quickly if policy decisions do not show quick tangible follow-through. Companies with the best balance sheets and funding sources will benefit the most and have the least downside on sharp technical pullbacks.
Vienna, Austria is largely credited with creating the coffee house culture. Its venerable institution of a coffee shop, Café Central, was meeting place, workshop, living room for writers and political firebrands of all kinds. Revolutionist Leon Trotsky was just one famous patron. At the coffee house, you could be sure to connect with the most passionate and literate people around.
While that culture persists in Vienna and many European cities, critics argue that Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) and Dunkin Donuts have devalued coffee's key role in literary and political engagement. I argued last month that this was one of the key failings of Starbucks over the past several years and that the company should endeavor to reclaim the coffeehouse feel. And small steps indicate the chain is trying. Publication of the GOOD sheet and offering free coffee for those who vote seem designed to target the engaged. [Aside: Starbucks changed its qualifications to "anyone who asks" to keep on the right side of election law, which generally bars inducing someone to vote -- or convincing them not to vote -- by giving them anything of value.]
By aligning itself with an ad campaign that encourages voting and prompting its customers to delve deeply into a potentially political issue with its GOOD sheet, Starbucks is clearly attempting to rebrand itself from the accessory of the clueless pregnant celebrity (remember Britney Spears and Jennifer Garner while pregnant, always with a Starbucks cup in hand?) to the brain fuel of the cerebral community organizer. As bold and cutesy stuffed animals and children's insulated mugs are replaced on the counter space with an explanation of the economy or a description of U.S. immigration statistics, it's clear the company is working toward coffee house and away from its industry category ("quick service restaurant").
A bunch of governors went to Washington yesterday and asked Congress to send them tens of billion of dollars to help them balance their budgets. So, taxpayers in Texas can help the citizens of Michigan. According toThe New york Times, "Appearing before separate congressional committees, they said that their states, like many others, had already moved to address budget deficits."
It is not unfair for people paying federal income tax to ask why these states did not put aside money into "rainy day" funds when their treasuries were doing well. What about cutting down on all of those people who plant trees in state parks or the guys who mow the governor's lawn? What about the receptionist in the state assembly? Shouldn't all of those calls go directly to state officials?
Governors like to spend their testimony time talking about all the hospital they have to close and the police they may have to fire. Of course, they don't show up with budgets taking out the cost of the state helicopter of the doughnut budget for the state highway patrol. Why should anyone with those perks suffer?
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
If you're peeved about your stock portfolio right now -- and who isn't -- you may be interested in some data The New York Times pulled together on the correlation between the party in the White House and the returns of the market. Click here to check out the all too compelling graphics. A quick summary:
Since 1929, Democrats have been in power for 39.9 years -- over that time, an investment of $10,000 in the S&P Market Index has grow to $300,671. Over the 39.7 years the Republicans have had the White House, a $10,000 investment has grown to just $11,733.
So basically, it's not guns or butter and it's certainly not guns and butter. It's cat food or caviar. So take your pick and punch your ballot. I know it's not really that simple: a correlation does not prove a causal effect and there are many, many factors affecting the market far more than the political affiliation of the guy who pardons the turkey. It's still interesting.
Fresh statistics reveal an economy that is in grim shape -- and just in time for the election. Jobless claims are higher than they have been since September 2001 and factory orders plunged 4%. If we elect the McCain whose chief economic advisor thinks we're whiners, we can keep this streak going for another four years.
The economic statistics are grim. Initial jobless claims were higher than they've been in seven years. They increased 1,000 to 497,000 last week thanks in part to Gulf Coast hurricanes and staff cuts due to low demand. Meanwhile, the 4% decline in factory orders was worse than anticipated. Economists had forecast a 3% drop after a previously reported 1.3% increase in July. Why so bad? With banks reluctant to lend, companies can't get the funds they need to buy that factory equipment.
Could we be getting whitewashed economic statistics? If GDP growth is reported as positive for the recently departed third quarter, I will be surprised. If you like the effects of deregulation and tax cuts on our economy, there is ample opportunity to keep those policies firmly in place for four more years. With the S&P 500 down 22% so far this year, I am not sure who can afford to vote that way.
But congratulations are in order for their ability to prosper under such difficult economic conditions.
If there's one great advantage to the failed $700 billion bailout bill, it is this: America has just been given one undeniable opportunity to see which side of the fence the bear squats on. In other words, we can now see exactly who is serving whom.
A majority of Republicans voted against the bailout bill. A majority of Democrats voted for it. So, who's kidding who? Who is serving their constituents? By all accounts that I've heard and read, Republican representatives are saying that they voted the bill down because their constituents were split on the matter 50/50. Fifty percent said no, the other fifty percent said hell no! Yes, we know this could hurt us a bit, but delaying the inevitable would hurt worse. Your best investment today, in my humble opinion, is to go to Congress.org to review exactly how your personal representatives in government voted on the $700 billion bailout package. Then, armed with the facts, support the candidates who took your position on the most important piece of fiscal legislation brought to the floor in our lifetimes.
Pardon me Washington, but your slip is showing . . .
If the government is finally willing to admit that we are in some deep crap and Warren Buffett is willing to make the call to arms himself, a non-Bush supporter, then the members of Congress that can't find some satisfactory compromise on the $700 billion appropriation are screwing up!
I don't care if the number is a trillion dollars at this point. The money is not a give-away if it is a loan. It may be a bailout, but it is also a backstop against further erosion of our economy.
If the value of equity in the United States, all real estate, stocks, bonds, gold, you name it is worth 100 trillion dollars (wild guess) than how much do we lose if it goes down in value like it is doing now as I type. See Flash: House rejects bailout package, market dives
Every man, woman and child in the country will lose if confidence and liquidity are not propped up. How many jobs will be lost?
Think about this, if the downward spiral is not curtailed than the amount of taxes NOT collected by the Federal Government in the next year or two will be larger than the amount of the backstop the fed is trying to create now! That alone makes the deal worth doing.
Update: The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 7% of its value today. That is in just one day! How many billions of equity is that? How much did you house go down in value today? How much less secure do you feel in your job today?
Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.
Let's be polite. It looks like John "Straight Talk Express" McCain may have misspoken when he said that his campaign manager did not receive money from Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). McCain said in a CNBC interview on September 21 that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, "has had nothing to do with [Freddie and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)] since [2005], and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it," according to the New York Times. He was either kidding, having a senior moment, or worse. It turns out that Freddie paid Davis "$15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through [August 2008]," according to the Times.
Although Davis did not do much for the money -- besides retain his ties to McCain -- his firm, David Manafort, got $500,000 from Freddie and $2 million between 2000 and 2005 as president of "the Homeownership Alliance, which [Freddie and Fannie] created to help them oppose new regulations," according to the Times. It's too bad because more regulation might have prevented the need to spend $200 billion worth of our money to bail out Fannie and Freddie bondholders like PIMCO's Bill Gross and China's People's Bank.
Sure, McCain has been trying to change the subject -- by creating, what I consider to be, false advertisements that accuse a former Fannie CEO of advising Obama. (This former CEO and the Obama campaign both deny the ad's claim, according to the Times). And while McCain's "verbal missteps" may disturb some, his pattern of working closely with those who deregulated the financial services industry links him to what put our economy in the tank. After all, his chief economic advisor, Phil "Americans are Whiners" Gramm, deregulated the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market that helped bring down Lehman Brothers and American International Group (NYSE: AIG).
In less than two months, the U.S. is scheduled to hold an election. As the current 100 Year Crash unfolds, it is clear that old ways of thinking will not fix the problem. This challenge is enormous: history will not provide much of a guide and it is likely that the entire global financial system will need to be rebuilt from scratch. In short, whoever gets the job will face a challenge that would be overwhelming for anyone -- and it will require a leader with brains, energy and determination.
That's what scares me about John McCain's interview on NBC's Today Show Wednesday. Dealbreaker reports that Matt Lauer asked McCain whether he would let American International Group (NYSE: AIG) fail "on their own" without government help. To that, McCain replied,
Well...quote, "on their own"...we have to - we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else...this is something we're gonna have to work through -- there's too much corruption, there's too much access, we can fix it, I believe in America - we can have a 9/11 commission such as we had after 9/11, 'cause this is a huge crisis and we can come up with fixes and we can make sure that every American has a safer future and that is to make them know that their bank deposits are safe and insured."
One of the many cliches about the stock market is that it's never wrong. Today's triple-digit rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows that markets can be depressed, manic or just pain stupid, sometimes all at the same time.
There is no sign that the market has hit bottom. Garage sales are mushrooming in my suburban community as people sell their personal possessions to raise cash. It's really sad.
Mania set in today as investors start to wonder whether lowering commodity prices will give the economy a jolt. Remember that no car or truck was designed with oil over $100 a barrel in mind. The fact that oil is only slightly less insanely high should give no solace to anyone. Fuel got so expensive that people started driving less and began snapping up pint-size Smart Cars, which look to me as safe as a Matchbox car. This is a sign that things are bad -- not that they will improve. Mind you, the smallest wiff of political instability and oil prices will start climbing yet again.
People seem to think that the economy is going to get better through some magic elixir of a second economic stimulus package and drilling for oil. Those ideas are not only stupid, they are dangerous. Unfortunately, quick fixes are not the answer. We have to let the market sort things out. About the best the government can do is figure out a way to cushion the blow.
Oil got off to a strong start today, with prices at one point moving up as high as $130.69 a barrel as fears of supply disruptions in Iran have kept the market bullish for the time being.
Prices cool off a bit and are now sitting at $129.40, but you can be sure that as long as the tension between the West and Iran persists, you are going to continue to see prices that just refuse to come back down towards any sort of comfortable level.
Last week, we saw a pretty sizable drop in oil prices (see chart at the end of this post), which could be the main reason why this morning's rally was not able to hold above the $130 mark. Investors are probably still a bit weary of betting that we have hit support yet. What really got the market moving early on was fresh threats from the U.S. that more sanctions would be imposed on oil-rich Iran should it not cease its current nuclear program.
For the first time Monday I heard John McCain comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. I had heard this before in other arenas, but not from McCain. I guess that despite these two presidential candidates pledging to the American people to bring change and resist politics as usual, they are both, as usual as one could get.
Obama is being shaped by the pressures of running for office and to believe otherwise is delusional. I suppose one has to have hope but the effects of the campaign are becoming clear. Obama has been painting McCain as an extension of Bush, which is nonsense, and now in a typical tit-for-tat response, McCain is filling the air with Carter references.
Both McCain and Obama are wrong in their assessments of their opponents and they are becoming commoners to resort to the bottom of the barrel campaign techniques used in every campaign for most of our nation's proud history. Obama gave up the high ground too easily and McCain has decided he can sling mud with the best of them.
Larry Kudlow, a right-wing market commentator on CNBC and WABC radio, has been trying to sell the idea that the market doesn't like presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and will surely tank if he's elected.
Kudlow claims: "Markets don't like Obama. If he wins alongside Democratic gains in the House and Senate, taxes are going up big time. [...] Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight...because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can't with Obama."
His proof? The day after West Virgina the Dow was up 66 points. But didn't everyone already know she would take West Virginia (if not by such a huge margin? Don't traders still buy on the rumor, sell on the news anymore? Do traders only belong to that dwindling club of Clinton partisans who believe West Virginia was another turn-around?
Like, his paymasters, the oil companies -- who contributed $2.7 million to his 2004 campaign -- George W. Bush is feeling sorry for himself. Perhaps his record low poll ratings are hurting his feelings. He went to Saudi Arabia and asked it to increase production. He went to the Middle East and asked them to make peace -- it's a nice sentiment but will results follow? But that's not why Bush is whining.
BusinessWeek reports that Bush's complaint is that he thinks General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) NBC News was unfair in the way it edited an interview. In the Israeli parliament, Bush gave a speech which none-too subtly implied that Barack Obama was like Nazi appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, because Obama has said he would meet with Iranian leaders. Bush thought he was being clever in his non-denial denial. Now he is complaining that NBC is being "deceitful."
That's rich coming from the person who got the U.S. into a war with Iraq based on false claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and ties to Al Qaeda. Is it the "Mission Accomplished" Bush or the "Heck-of-a-job-Brownie" Bush who's complaining about NBC News's "deceit?" Meanwhile -- as I posted here, here and here -- the oil companies have been whining because their earnings are down -- the price of oil has doubled and they have only been able to increase wholesale prices by 39%. Boo hoo!
So as you stand at the pump filling up your tank with $4 a gallon -- a surprise to Bush -- shed a tear for Bush and those poor, suffering oil companies.
Blogging for AOL has been an interesting experience over the last few years. For me it is one of those unplanned surprising things that pop up on life's journey every so often. For the most part it has been a rewarding experience. I have had to become a lot more thick skinned when receiving harsh and even crude comments from readers.
Through my career I've generally stayed apolitical with regard to investment and trading decisions, but there have been times when some higher percentage trades have presented themselves due to political circumstances. Examples include: the tech push in Clinton's second term, the defense sector after Bush's 2000 victory, as well as the oil patch. Based on that, here are some overriding thoughts, in no particular order.
Vienna, Austria is largely credited with creating the coffee house culture. Its venerable institution of a coffee shop, Café Central, was meeting place, workshop, living room for writers and political firebrands of all kinds. Revolutionist Leon Trotsky was just one famous patron. At the coffee house, you could be sure to connect with the most passionate and literate people around. 
If the government is finally willing to admit that we are in some deep crap and Warren Buffett is willing to make the call to arms himself, a non-Bush supporter, then the members of Congress that can't find some satisfactory compromise on the $700 billion appropriation are screwing up! 
Let's be polite. It looks like John "Straight Talk Express" McCain may have misspoken when he said that his campaign manager did not receive money from 
One of the many cliches about the stock market is that it's never wrong. Today's triple-digit rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average shows that markets can be depressed, manic or just pain stupid, sometimes all at the same time.
Oil got off to a strong start today, with prices at one point moving up as high as $130.69 a barrel as 
For the first time Monday I heard John McCain comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. I had heard this before in other arenas, but not from McCain. I guess that despite these two presidential candidates pledging to the American people to bring change and resist politics as usual, they are both, as usual as one could get.
Like, his paymasters, the oil companies -- who contributed 
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