Music, Mortgages and More November 26, 2003January 22, 2017 UMBRELLAS Carol Iwamoto: ‘Maybe I missed something, but the Berkshire Hathaway site for doubling your umbrella liability coverage does not seem to cover residents of California.’ ☞ Berkshire doesn’t cover NY with this offer, either. Because every state has its own regulators and rules, insurers pick and choose the states they want to serve. COMMERCIAL-FREE RADIO Hewitt Heiserman: ‘A few weeks back I signed on to download Apple’s iTunes after learning it was Windows compatible. Thought I would buy a few songs, then go to bed. Instead, I stayed for 3 hours and bought almost 50 songs. (Favorite might be Tom Jones and The Cardigans covering ‘Burning Down The House.’) Two observations: First, no Beatles catalog (yet). I have noticed a few other artists/songs missing, as well; e.g., Van Morrison’s ‘Wavelength.’ Second, check out the Radio feature. I used to listen to WCRB here in Boston. But that was commercial radio. With iTunes, I get classical for free. Whatever your musical tastes, iTunes can accommodate you.’ IS THAT AN iPOD IN YOUR POCKET, OR . . . Karl Dudek: ‘You’ve got to be kidding! All your music on an iPod that fits in your pocket? Do I put that in my left front pocket with the Chapstick and money clip; or the right front pocket with the keys to my office and the thing my eye doctor friend (I don’t know how to spell optomotrist) got me; or my back left pocket with my wallet that has too many credit cards or my right rear pocket with my handkerchief? Of course, In the fall winter and spring I suppose I could put it in my jacket pocket along with my car keys which at other times are in my right front pocket or my other jacket pocket that has my Met-RX bar to get me through the morning because after all, it’s only there for a while. Assuming I can find some room for the Blackberry in my shirt pocket, which will weigh me down a bit and look foolish – a where do I put the iPod? Maybe the answer is a backpack. I always used to carry one around in college. It acted as a man purse. I put books in it, letters from my old girlfriend, homework, letters from my current girlfriend, money from Mom and my gym shorts. I have a backpack now; just bought it a month or so ago. Has a pouch for stuff and a second pouch underneath for a camera. Maybe that’s the answer. Stuff everything in the backpack. Do I then need some special insurance rider? Camera: $1,200; iPod: $300; Blackberry: $300; downloaded music on the ipod at .99 per song: your best guess. Imagine what else I could put in the backpack. That book I’ve been reading for the past four years by Hawkings written for dummies but I still don’t get the math in chapter three (or is it chapter two?). I could dump all the spare keys I have in the coffee cup on the shelf into the backpack so when I get locked out of anything there is a better chance I’ll be able to get in. In any event, your comments on the iPod have stirred my imagination and I thank you for that.’ ☞ I have just one word for you, Karl Dudek: cargo pants. (Well, and: optometrist.) As for losing all those 99-cent songs, I think they would remain on your computer at home, ready to synch with your replacement iPod if the original were lost. THINKPAD VS POWERBOOK Brad Hurley: ‘When you’re ready to upgrade your ThinkPad in a few years, you might even consider replacing it with an Apple PowerBook and buying Virtual PC (soon to be offered for just $130 from Microsoft) to run all your PC programs. Then your iPod will work even more seamlessly with iTunes, you’ll be able to make free telephone calls with iChat, organize your digital photo collection (if you have one) with iPhoto (which is just as great as iTunes), etc. etc., and you’ll be able to switch right back to the Windows environment with a click of your mouse, all on one computer. The new PowerBooks come with hard drives up to 80 gigabytes, big enough to store all your PC and Mac stuff on one computer with plenty of room to spare for your CD collection in iTunes. I have both a PowerBook and a ThinkPad, but once my Thinkpad starts showing its age I’ll just move everything over to the PowerBook. In effect, Virtual PC gives you a fully functioning PC for $130, which is quite a bargain.’ APPLE VS MICROSOFT Mike Kozlowski: ‘Alternately, you can download Microsoft’s Windows Media Player 9, which does everything iTunes does and is less limiting. If you rip your music into iTunes’ AAC format, you can only play it back on the iPod. If you rip it into Microsoft’s WMA format, you can play it back on a whole bunch of players (including that Dell) and devices like Turtle Beach’s Audiotron (a music player that sits in your stereo system, and can pull your playlists off your computer over the network, so you can play your music on your REAL speakers). ‘Admittedly, if you use Windows Media, you can’t get to the iTunes store – but you can get to MusicMatch’s store, or the new Napster store, or Microsoft’s announced upcoming store. (And Microsoft is increasingly committed to its Media Center line of PCs, which are designed to sit on your A/V rack instead of that AudioTron, and handle all your photos, videos, TV [think TiVo], and music…) None of that is necessarily a reason to stop using iTunes if you like it — and since you already have an iPod, it’d be silly not to use it – but at the very least it should make you wary about the potential for Apple’s stock to skyrocket. ‘Consider this very likely scenario: Windows Media Player, by virtue of being installed by default on all new Windows machines (and heavily integrated into them), will do to iTunes what Internet Explorer did to Netscape; as portable music players become a commodity, Apple will find it nearly impossible to make money competing with the iPod against Sony, Samsung, and the whole array of consumer electronics companies; and its music downloading service isn’t a money-maker for Apple now, and will become even less of one as competition heats up.’ LEAPing JUST HALF AS FAR Jim Batterson: ‘In writing about the Apple 20 January 2005 LEAPs you ask, ‘But what if, a little more than two years from now …’ Well, but isn’t January 2005 a little more than ONE year from now? ☞ That depends on how you count. If you count very late at night on not enough sleep, then it’s two years. (Sorry ’bout that.) BI-MONTHLY MORTGAGES Lynn Smith: ‘I’m surprised you didn’t mention the closer equivalent to bi-monthly payments: making your regular payment plus an additional one-twelfth of the payment towards principal each month. Who has $1000 or $2000 sitting around to throw towards the mortgage? And the discipline to remember to actually do it? Better to pay a little more each month.’ ☞ That’s good, too, so long as your lender is good about crediting principal prepayments properly. (I’d still write a separate check each month, boldly marked ‘principal prepayment.’) Some people have a lump sum each year in their tax refund. That could be the habit o get into: deposit the refund, but then write a principal prepayment check to your lender in the same, or nearly the same, amount. And just in case you want to come back Friday for a column, here it is: OINK OINK EARMARKS David Bruce: ‘Have you seen this graphic about Republicans’ addiction to pork?’ ☞ ‘The subject of the report,’ Kevin Drum explains, ‘is earmarks, which are specific pet projects inserted into bills by congress critters who are eager to funnel some federal dough directly to their own districts. Bottom line: everyone does it, but Republicans do it a lot more. In the Labor-HHS-Education bill, as the chart shows, the number of earmarks has gone up from zero in 1995, when the Republicans took over, to 1,857 this year. In the annual transportation bill, Democrats inserted 322 earmarks in their final bill in 1995. Republicans inserted 1,818 this year. In the defense appropriations bill the number has gone from about 300 to 1,800 and in VA-HUD from 265 to 921. Earmarks in the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill have skyrocketed from 45 to 966. Put it all together, and in just these five appropriations bills the number of earmarks has risen from about 900 in 1995 to 7,362 this year.’ HAVE YOU SEEN THE RNC COMMERCIAL? Click here. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Music! November 25, 2003February 24, 2017 If you’re already a computer whiz, or a teenager, forget this. But if you’re an idiot like me: Step one: Click here and download Apple’s free iTunes software. I’ve put it on my IBM Thinkpad. Free! Step two: Copy all your CDs onto your computer. (So long as they’re your CDs, you’re not violating anyone’s copyright.) [To make this easy, once you have iTunes installed and running, choose the option that automatically copies a CD to the iTunes library when you insert it … and ejects it when it’s done, ready for the next. This is great, because it happens in the background while you’re using the computer to do your expense account. To set this option, select Preferences from the iTunes EDIT menu and then – on the GENERAL preferences tab – select ‘Import Songs and Eject’ from the pull down menu.] Step three: If nothing else, you now have a copy of your entire CD collection on your computer. To hear something you like, just click and it plays while you’re doing your e-mail. This can be easier than going to the living room to find the CD. And if you’re in a hotel room in Delhi, or in a deli near your hotel – or away for the weekend at your summer place – you can listen to any of your CDs without actually having had to take them with you. Thus endeth the free steps. But if you do no more than this, it could be fun. With most CDs, iTunes automatically enters the Composer, Song Title, Album Title, Genre, and more, allowing you to search in lots of ways, rank the songs, create play-lists, and more. Step four: Go crazy. Blow 99 cents on some favorite song or snippet of classical music you love but don’t have handy. A click from iTunes takes you to Apple’s on-line music store. Another few clicks finds the song. And – except for the couple of minutes it takes the first time to sign up for an account – it’s yours faster than Merlin can say magic. Albums are typically $9.99, cheaper than most CDs. And, yes, if your computer has a CD read/write drive, you can make a hard copy (for your own use). Step five: If you don’t already have good speakers for your computer, click here to buy a pair. They are from Bose, designed for this purpose, $99 for the pair. Merry Christmas! Step six: If you’ve been really good this year, ask Santa to bring you an iPod. Or wait a few months – tease yourself with giddy anticipation – and buy one after the prices come down a bit more. There’s no guarantee that they will, of course, but with Dell jumping into the market with a 20GB competitor that’s already $100 cheaper than Apple’s 20GB iPod, at $299, I’d expect so. (Right now, a 10 gigabyte Apple iPod will cost just under $300 and hold about 2,500 songs. For another $100, you double the memory. For another $100, you double it again – 40GB, or 10,000 songs.) An iPod is about the size of a deck of cards and, once you get the hang of it, is amazing. All your CDs fit on this one deck of cards, which fits in your shirt pocket as you walk around the supermarket or pound the treadmill or drive to the mountains. It knows the time and date, so you can use the ‘sleep’ feature to fall asleep with it and then wake to the music of your choice with its alarm. It lets you download books from Audible.com. Regular readers will know I am a big fan (and, full disclosure, a shareholder). I’m currently reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Ben Franklin – Franklin would have been delighted by the iPod. I think iPod lets you keep your calendar on it and copy big files onto it (I’m still on page 1 of the user’s guide, so don’t hold me to this part). And there’s an add-on you can buy that lets you use it as a tape recorder, for time-stamped memos or interviews for later playback. Another option lets you offload and store photos from your digital camera. The Dell competitor may be easier than the iPod to hook to a PC (I don’t know), but the only real challenge I had with my iPod was in upgrading my Thinkpad from its old inadequate USB ports to the newer, 40-times-faster USB2 slots. This seems best done NOT with the $109 PCMCIA card IBM sells, with its clumsy dongle (don’t ask; it’s clumsy and it’s a dongle) but with this $30 card or this $36 card from newegg.com that requires no dongle and works just fine. (The cheapest iPod will require a $19 USB2 connector; the more capacious models don’t need it.) Step seven: Consider – with all the usual caveats that this is very risky and the general level of the market is high here and you really, really could lose your money – buying a few shares of Apple stock. Or, if we get lucky and it drops a point or two or three, the Apple 20 January 2005 LEAPs. LEAPs are long-term options. These LEAPs (symbol ZAAAD) currently cost about $420 each and give you the right to buy 100 shares of Apple – which closed last night at $21.15 – at $20 per share any time before mid-January, 2005. (Last week, with Apple a point lower, each LEAP was only $360.) This is obviously risky, but let’s say you were able to buy 8 of them for $3,000 and Apple stock did poorly and you lost the full $3,000, which in your federal-and-state tax bracket actually cost you $2,000 (because the first $3,000 in losses can be used to lower your taxable income). OK – them’s the breaks. But what if, a little more than a year from now, Apple were $38? I am absolutely not predicting that. But I do think Apple is a great brand, an innovative company with no debt and a loyal following . . . and it was so easy to click just now and buy Peter Paul & Mary’s Album 1700 for $9.99. If that happened – and I truly, truly am not predicting it, and would have no credentials to do so even if I were predicting it – your 8 options would allow you to buy 800 shares at 20 and, simultaneously, sell them at 38, for an $11,400 profit on your $3,000 investment, turning that $3,000 into $14,400 . . . or about $12,750 after the long-term capital gains tax you would owe. Well, I’m getting carried away. Start with steps one through three for now. I can’t get in too much trouble with those. [Thanks to the estimable Tom Rielly and the estimable Bryan Norcross for teaching me about things like iPods and dongles.]
Bi-Monthly Umbrellae November 24, 2003February 24, 2017 MORTGAGE ACCELERATION Rick Schulz: ‘Periodically my mortgage company offers a deal to set up bi-monthly payments, automatically transferred from my bank account to theirs. The advantage: it pays down the principal a little faster and thereby saves interest. However, they charge a one-time ‘set-up’ fee of nearly $300, and a monthly fee of $4.95 to accept the bi-monthly payment. I would like to pay down the mortgage faster but the fees seem high. What do you advise?’ ☞ Prepaying principal is a good way for many to save. But having to pay these big fees? Ridiculous. Why not send an extra $1,000 or $2,000 payment once a year (clearly marked, ‘to pay down principal on Loan #1234567890’ on the check and in a cover note, keeping copies in your file)? That would accomplish roughly the same thing – making the equivalent of 13 monthly payments a year instead of 12, and cutting the term of a 30-year 5% mortgage to just over 25 years. (Back in the days of 10% mortgages, prepaying principal this way cut the term to 21 years. The higher the interest rate, the greater the advantage in not paying it.) There’s no magic to this. Whatever rate of interest you’re paying on the mortgage is the rate you ‘earn’ on the principal prepayments. But it’s a good safe way to earn that rate, and brings you ever closer to owning your home free and clear (or building equity in it for your purchase of the next one) – a nice feeling. Check with your bank to be sure you are allowed to make principal prepayments without penalty. UMBRELLA COVERAGE David Baker: ‘Even though one may not have vast assets to protect, who wants to deal with a lifetime of court, liens and litigation? You don’t have to be a millionaire to do a million dollars worth of damage. Why not plan for accidents that can be major instead of minor? And what about living in an apartment on the 18th floor and letting your tub overflow to the ground floor? Wanna deal with paying for that that on your own – let alone the litigation? No one sues for $250,000. anymore. A $1 million in umbrella coverage even if you own a vehicle is just $200-or-so/year in New York City! (And if you need to “up” your underlying limits in order to obtain an umbrella, you probably needed to do it anyway for the sake of good basic coverage. As you mention, coverage gets cheaper as the limits get higher.’ Erich Riesenberg: ‘Regarding an umbrella policy, one interesting excess umbrella policy is from a Berkshire Hathaway company.’ ☞ Yes. Click here. This is probably a better deal for Warren Buffett than for you, but he’s got to eat, too, so I don’t begrudge him the profit. Basically, Berkshire will double whatever umbrella coverage you have now for 90% additional premium. So if you’re paying $200 a year for $1 million umbrella coverage that sits atop your basic $500,000 automotive and homeowner’s liability coverages (say) . . . well, Berkshire will, for $180 (90% of $200), write an additional $1 million in coverage that kicks in if all else has failed to adequately cover you. Berkshire has no sales or underwriting cost to speak of, because you came to them direct from the Internet, and because they know someone else, whose risk is greater, determined you were worth insuring for $200. Slim as the chances are that you’ll need the first $1 million in extra coverage, they are even somewhat slimmer you’d need the second. Ah, but if you ever did, you’d be very glad you had it. (Before going this route, ask your own umbrella insurer what their charge would be to double the coverage.) Tomorrow: I bring music to your life!
One More Reason to Avoid Actively Managed Funds November 21, 2003February 24, 2017 MUTUALS Just in case you have not yet really focused on this ‘mutual fund scandal’ that’s been in the news, Paul Krugman nailed it in his column Tuesday. Yet one more reason actively managed mutual funds have generally done worse than a monkey throwing darts at the stock pages. MEDICARE You might also read his column today on the rotten Medicare bill. If I were an AARP member, I’d quit. UMBRELLAS Lisa: ‘My husband and I have 3 insurance policies with the same company – his life insurance, our homeowner’s, and our automobile policies. Recently the company offered us an ‘umbrella’ policy, but would require higher liability coverage for the auto policy, and would cost more in premiums. What would be the value in this kind of coverage?’ ☞ If you have assets to protect, the umbrella provides an extra layer of coverage (typically $1 million, though you can buy more) on top of your auto and homeowners liability coverage. For someone with little or nothing to sue for, it’s not worth buying an umbrella policy. For someone with lots to sue for (and, thus, to protect) – or for a young brain surgeon just starting out (whose future earnings are worth suing for) – additional liability coverage is a good idea. It won’t cover the brain surgeon’s malpractice, or anything else related to your business or profession. But it will cover you if you hurt someone with your car or your cooking or your canine. Insurers require you to take top limits on auto and homeowners first to keep you from replacing those, more expensive, coverages, with the cheap umbrella. (The primary coverages are more expensive because that’s where almost all the claims are. Relatively few claims exceed the $500,000 required in primary coverage. So the lower layers of coverage are much more frequently tapped and, as a result, must be priced higher.) Having said all this: shop around. Even though you have three other policies there, your insurer may not be offering you the lowest price.
Free Money; Real Stories November 20, 2003February 24, 2017 MBNA 0% Bryan Howell: ‘The 3% MBNA transaction fee I paid to borrow at 0% has a cap of $50 and a floor of $5. It’s a bad deal if you borrow $100 because the fee would actually be 5% [100x.03 = $3, but you’d pay the $5 floor] But it’s a GREAT deal if you borrow $20,000 as you only pay 0.25% [the $50 fee cap rather than the 3% fee of $600].’ ☞ Yes, this was the part I forgot in my original note. But the $50 transaction fee, on $99,000, seemed too small even to mention – barely 0.05%. (At 3%, without the $50 cap, it would have been nearly $3,000!) REAL STORIES The first time someone suggested the idea of ‘gay marriage’ to me – and could it have been even 10 years ago? – I thought they were out of their minds. And I’m gay! Why would we want to touch that third rail? Ah, but here’s why. If you have a few minutes, read these five real stories, about real people, and see where you come out on how they should be treated.
Marriage TIPS November 19, 2003January 22, 2017 MARRIAGE Congressman Barney Frank was debating Jerry Falwell on CNN’s Crossfire. The occasion? Yesterday’s Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that denial of civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates the Massachusetts constitution. Barney was making the point that it is not a bad thing for two people to love each other in a committed relationship, and Bob Novak broke in, testily: ‘We’re not talking about love, we’re talking about marriage.’ How silly of Barney to think they were related. Stable, committed relationships are, of course, a good thing for society. But there is the fear that, once men see that it’s legal to leave their wives for other men, they will flock to do so, the family will collapse and, with it, civilization. If that’s true, I’m worried, too. But as Barney pointed out later last night, this fear would appear to be based on two seemingly incompatible assumptions: that straight men find gay men ‘inherently repulsive’ and yet ‘infinitely attractive.’ The fact is, Vermont has offered the equivalent of gay marriage for a couple of years now and nothing bad has happened. Canada offers the real thing and nothing bad seems to be happening. Why would it? Why discourage stable, committed relationships? No one is suggesting any religious institution be forced to bless same-sex unions. We’re just talking about civil marriage licenses, issued by the state. MBNA’s 0% INTEREST OFFER Sandra Wilde: ‘I looked at their website, and cash advances were indeed 0% interest, but there was a 3% transaction fee. Did you have this, or are the offers that they send out a better deal than what you can find applying on your own?’ ☞ Apparently they are doing this now – but not when I called to activate my card. It must be done selectively? TIPS SLIPS Floyd: ‘How would the price of TIPS react if interest rates rise because of government borrowing, not because of inflationary pressures?’ ☞ Two things can knock down long-term bond prices: inflation (as you acknowledge) and deterioration in credit quality (meaning: people worry the issuer might go broke and be unable to repay). TIPS are protected from much erosion from inflation because they are indexed to inflation. And there’s no practical risk of default, so I don’t see their prices eroding for that reason either. Yes, excessive borrowing could lead to a weaker dollar, which in turn would lead to inflation – but TIPS should keep pace with inflation. And, yes, the ‘real’ rate of interest borrowers demand to lend long-term could rise above the 2.6% or so TIPS currently yield (I read someplace that 2.75% should be their ‘fair’ yield above inflation. And when they first came out, perhaps because they were new, they yielded 4%. But I don’t see the real rate of return rising that high and staying that high for long periods – although this is definitely not my field of expertise.) BOREALIS Dana Dlott: ‘Borealis is a stock swindle, pure and simple. You have chosen to participate in it in the hope of making some money. It’s up to you to decide whether this is moral or not. If you do end up making money it will be because of the ‘greater fool’ effect. This fellow Dr. Carman is a reasonably well respected technical project manager. The description of his credentials is a bit of a stretch…I am a world class expert in nonlinear optics, he has published a few routine articles many years ago. In your web page you make it sound as if having a fellow this distinguished work for Borealis lends more credibility to their effort. It is almost as if you are saying if Borealis was a stock swindle why would this caliber of guy work for them. The answer must be that he wants in on the money as well and has enough capacity for self delusion to work on the project. Probably in the ‘maybe the horse WILL sing’ motif.” ☞ I don’t even know what nonlinear optics are (seeing crooked?), let alone presume to understand any of the Borealis technology. And I have always said, and believe, that the most likely outcome here is that the stock will go to zero. But when Boeing issues a press release, as it did a year or two ago now, saying that the science seemed sound enough to warrant further study . . . and when Rolls Royce is willing to lend its name to a joint effort . . . and Semikron last month and this Harvard physicist Monday . . . it does make a layman wonder whether something might not conceivably be there. 22 RED Ron Halleran: “In roulette [see yesterday], #22 is black.” ☞ Oops.
Borealis’ Boeing Hire November 18, 2003January 22, 2017 FREE MONEY Ed Shoben: ‘Enjoyed the story about MBNA. But, 0.8%? MBNA has a money fund (sponsored by the Am. Assoc. of Individual Investors) that will pay almost 2% on amounts over $50K.’ ☞ I love it. Borrow from MBNA at 0%, lend the same money back to MBNA at 2%. BOREALIS One place not to invest the money you borrow at 0%: the stock of Borealis Exploration, of which I have written here so many times before. Full disclosure (yet again): I own a ton of this highly speculative stock. But while it remains wildly speculative – and I’m not kidding when I say you must only gamble money here you truly expect to lose, as when you bet money on ’22 red’ at roulette – one could make the case it’s not quite the total fantasy today, at $9 or so, that it was when we started making fun of it at $3. (Even at $9, it sells for just one fiftieth the value of Krispy Kreme, and just about the cost a single high-end 10-seater corporate jet.) Several of you have investigated this company’s web site, read its annual reports, inspected its patents, and written to tell us it is too good to be true. The company has, let’s face it, nearly as many Red Flags as the former Soviet Union. (For starters, it used to be a Canadian mining stock. For continuers, it’s now headquartered in Gibraltar. But mainly, it claims not one but a handful of near-cold-fusion-like claims of stunning technological breakthrough.) Still, the press releases keep coming. Yesterday, there was this: Chorus Motors plc said today that Dr. Robert L. Carman Jr. has joined the company as Program Manager for Aerospace Applications. Dr. Carman has also been appointed to the same position at Cool Chips plc and Power Chips plc; all three companies are majority-owned subsidiaries of Borealis Exploration Limited. Dr. Carman, formerly of the Boeing Company’s Rockwell International Aerospace sector, spent 18 years as a program manager within the rocket engine, launch vehicle and satellite areas. He is also internationally known for his original work in lasers and nonlinear optics, and, more recently, for his pioneering work on virtual corporations, in conjunction with DARPA and various aerospace industry organizations. His prior experience includes senior research and program management positions at the University of California’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. Dr. Carman has published more than 80 original, refereed journal publications, authored several patents and contributed to more than eight books, lectured in ten countries and consulted for the U.S. government in several capacities as well as acted as a consultant and advisor for many Fortune 500 U.S. companies. His Ph.D. is in Physics from Harvard University. Dr. Carman said: “The technology developed by Borealis will be transformative throughout the aerospace world. Its adoption and implementation is now my job, which I am looking forward to with great relish.” Ignited by that press release, trading volume in Borealis exploded yesterday to 600 shares. Someone, or a collection of people, bought nearly $6,000 worth! (This from someone, or a collection of people, who sold $6,000 worth.) Krispy Kreme, meanwhile, traded 756,700 shares, or about $31 million worth. I mean no disrespect to the genius that is the Krispy Kreme Donut when I suggest that it is the thing no one wants (or wants no more than 600 shares of), that is sometimes the more intriguing bargain than the thing everyone craves. Then again, I’ve never met Dr. Carman – I don’t know if he even exists. But what if he does exist? A boy can dream, can’t he? And what if his enthusiasm for Borealis is real – and, most crucially, well-founded? So I’m beginning to think (and this is always a bad sign, so take it with a grain of salt) that Borealis could be like a roulette table where the odds are in the bettor’s favor. You still have only a small chance of winning, and will probably lose all your money. But if you do win, it would be such a big win that it justifies the risking the likely loss. If, that is (and it is a very serious if), you can afford the likely loss.
More Free Money November 17, 2003February 24, 2017 I went to Microsoft Outlook Express, which I guess came with my ThinkPad, I don’t remember signing up for anything – and I found 13,693 messages waiting for me – oops, 13,694 – all spam. # About 18 months ago I got I got an offer from MBNA to sign up for a credit card that would let me borrow up to $100,000 at ZERO interest for the first nine months. So I made the call, as it urged, and had them wire $95,000 to my bank account, which they did. It was free money for nine months, which I can put to work at 2% or so, paying only the $15 monthly minimum until it was time to pay back the $95,000. (The card itself, when it arrived, I just cut up.) As tickled as I was by this bonanza (MBNA just gave me $2,000), it made me nervous, just as the free running shoes some dot-com gave me made me nervous back during the dot-com bubble. I hesitated to brag about this at the time, and hesitate now. I know I am exceptionally fortunate to be able to get this kind of credit. But it seemed to me to be telling. I’m not sure of what exactly, but telling. And I was reminded of this last week when my new MBNA card arrived in the mail, with one of those peel-off strips instructing me to call a toll-free number to activate the card. When I called, the agent asked if I would like to have up to $99,999 wired to the account of my choice at 0% interest until June. I had been calling just to activate the card – had planned to cut it up but keep the number (and secret number on the back) just in case I ever wanted another card with which to make phone or Internet purchases. But now they were offering me six months free money, so I took it. I may do something else with it, but for starters, I just sent it to a money market account yielding 0.8% . . . about $400 for the six months (before tax). I then went to the MBNA web site and set up 6 automatic $15 monthly withdrawals from my checking account, so that the bill will automatically be paid on time. Then I cut up the card. The part I found extraordinary (well, I find the whole thing extraordinary – and a little giddy, as in, Gee, something bad has got to follow) is that before I hung up with the MBNA agent, she advised me that, for accepting this 0% cash advance – as it was above the required $6,000 threshold – I would be receiving a free companion airline ticket on virtually any U.S. airline. They were not just giving me free money – they were paying me to take it. This is nuts, if you ask me, and that giddy feeling creeps back. I assume the Fed will keep the pedal to the metal until the election a year from now . . . and that the massive tax cuts will keep coming to gun the economy. But can it all really be this easy? Or could it be like the student grinding out a term paper, taking whatever they take these days to stay up three nights running. He finishes the paper . . . but then what? Does he wake up happy and productive the next morning? GAY BISHOPS Cyrus Ginwala: ‘A friend sent me this: ‘The consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church is an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage.’
Molly on the GWB Disconnect "Hunger? Don't You Think I Would Know About It?" November 14, 2003February 24, 2017 The great Molly Ivins in Mother Jones: In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn’t get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow – and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people. On the few occasions when Bush does directly encounter the down-and-out, he seems to empathize. But then, in what is becoming a recurring, almost nightmare-type scenario, the minute he visits some constructive program and praises it (AmeriCorps, the Boys and Girls Club, job training), he turns around and cuts the budget for it. It’s the kiss of death if the president comes to praise your program. During the presidential debate in Boston in 2000, Bush said, “First and foremost, we’ve got to make sure we fully fund LIHEAP [the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program], which is a way to help low-income folks, particularly here in the East, pay their high fuel bills.” He then sliced $300 million out of that sucker, even as people were dying of hypothermia, or, to put it bluntly, freezing to death. Sometimes he even cuts your program before he comes to praise it. In August 2002, Bush held a photo op with the Quecreek coal miners, the nine men whose rescue had thrilled the country. By then he had already cut the coal-safety budget at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which engineered the rescue, by 6 percent, and had named a coal-industry executive to run the agency. . . . When the 1999 hunger stats were announced, Bush threw a tantrum. He thought it was some malign Clinton plot to make his state look bad because he was running for president. “I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where?” he demanded. “No children are going to go hungry in this state. You’d think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas.” You would, wouldn’t you? That is the point at which ignorance becomes inexcusable. In five years, Bush had never spent time with people in the colonias, South Texas’ shantytowns; he had never been to a session with Valley Interfaith, a consortium of border churches and schools and the best community organization in the state. There is no excuse for a governor to be unaware of this huge reality of Texas. For more, click here. Have a great weekend.
Putting Your Mouth Where George Soros’ Money Is November 13, 2003February 24, 2017 BIG ZOO More than a year ago, I quoted a reader saying good things about this cheap-rate long-distance service. Last week, one of you noticed that BigZoo had removed the reader’s name from the quote and, instead, attributed the recommendation to *me* — under the headline, THE CONSUMER ADVOCATE – saying that *I* had been using the service for six months and that *I* thought it was great. (I had never even heard of it, let alone used it.) Not surprisingly, this phone company has no phone number listed on its website. Instead, there are e-addresses for Customer Service and Marketing. I sent an e-mail to each and got back a form e-mail saying that they do their best to answer inquiries promptly. That was three days ago. PUTTING YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS It’s important to say – even though it’s completely obvious – that most Republicans are fine people of good will, just like most Democrats, Independents, Libertarians and, for that matter, if there are any left (very left), Socialists. So why are Democrats so intent on unseating Bush? Well, there’s the trillion dollar lie about the tax cuts, where he told voters that ‘by far the vast majority of the help goes to people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’ That’s a very big, very selfish lie. It takes the existing distribution of good fortune and tilts it significantly further in favor of those already best off, taking resources from everyone else. Most people, not being great at math or big readers of budget data, don’t see this for what it is. (A Time survey a few years ago found that 39% of Americans thought they were either in ‘the top 1%’ or expected to be.) And, as is becoming increasingly clear, we didn’t have to start this war in Iraq in the way we did. (But now that we’ve started it, we have put ourselves in the very difficult position of absolutely having to find a way to succeed.) It’s heartbreaking to see the cost to our brave soldiers who’ve died or lost limbs in this cause. It’s frustrating to think how much more effective it might have been to put even a tenth the blood and treasure into following through in Afghanistan and with Al-Qaeda. It’s discombobulating, at the very least, to read on the front page of the New York Times last week that, with our troops massed and ready to strike, Saddam was backing down. You mean all this might have been avoided? What if we had taken a few more months to (a) finish off Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? (b) show the world we were truly making every effort to avoid war? (c) win broader support if war proved unavoidable? (d) either accept the bloodless victory the Times story suggested was a real possibility or else, at least, have more time to plan for a successful ‘aftermath,” instead of what’s going on now? One does not dispute that Donald Rumsfeld is much smarter than the rest of us. (Or that Robert McNamara, in an earlier era, did not enjoy the same advantage.) One empathizes with his exasperation at having to deal with us. Why do we even take his time questioning his judgment? But I’ll tell you someone else who’s pretty smart. George Soros. Made many, many billions by being smart. He’s already given $13 million or more to avoid a second Bush term. Asked in a Washington Post interview this week whether he would give even more if he had to, he said yes. Ah, but would he trade his entire $7 billion fortune to have Bush gone, the Post reporter asked? Soros opened his mouth. Then he closed it. The proposal hung in the air: Would he become poor to beat Bush? He said, “If someone guaranteed it.” Soros has his own view, which you can read in the Post or in his forthcoming book. Mine is that I don’t want to live in a country – like some – where we need machine guns to guard our gated communities. Yet as the disparity between the rich and the rest grows ever wider, and support is cut back for ‘the least among us,’ that’s where we’re headed. Nor do I want to live in a country that’s lost the separation of Church and State – but that’s where we’re headed as well. (Speaking at the First Baptist Church of Pearland, Texas, in April of last year, House majority leader Tom DeLay said that God is using him to promote ‘a biblical worldview’ in American politics. Speaking to a divinity school audience a few months earlier, Justice Scalia pointed out the obvious flaw in our otherwise worthy Constitution. It says that the ultimate authority resides in ‘the people,’ when, of course, as he and his audience knew, it resides in the Divinity. Chief Justice Rehnquist has written: ‘The ‘wall of separation between church and State’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.’) So, yes, I’d like to get back to figuring out what to do with your money and how to save on long-distance. (Your TIPS are doing fine, though, and even your wacky Borealis sits at $8 a share.) But getting this other stuff right is important, too. Tomorrow: Molly Ivins Tries to Understand the George Bush Disconnect