Reading Grantham Could Give YOU Debilitating Back Pain August 3, 2007March 8, 2017 FMD James Troutman: ‘Just passing this along FYI, in case you didn’t see it.’ ☞ Not to say he will necessarily be wrong; but this analyst seems to know (and care) nothing about the student loan business generally or FMD’s special position in it specifically – only about the shape of its stock chart. Technical analysis, as this is called, has its adherents. But to me, it’s only a half step up from astrology (though, granted, even half a step is something). GLDD Steve MacArthur: ‘Here is a link about dredging – ‘$342 million set aside for newest Soo Lock in House Bill.’ ‘ WASHINGTON – The House overwhelmingly passed a $20 billion water projects bill Wednesday night despite a promised veto by President Bush, who complains the bill is laden with costly pet projects and shifts new costs onto the government. Within the wide-ranging bill, $342 million was earmarked for the building of a new super lock in the Sault. The projected Soo Lock would be at least 110 feet wide and 1,200 feet long and replace the two northern locks. The mega lock would improve access for large freighters. Shippers say that if the existing Poe Lock had to close for any reason, it would stop most Great Lakes shipping trade, as only the Poe Lock can handle the 1,000 feet-long freighters. Funding from the bill also targets the much needed dredging throughout the Great Lakes. The Army Corps of Engineers would get funds to step up navigational dredging at many key points. Low water levels has resulted in Great Lakes freighters being forced to carry lighter loads, which reduces the money they make for moving freight. Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers Association, said that dredging is ‘critically important’ to the freighter industry and that dredging of the lakes has been ‘underfunded for decades.’ Shepherded by Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the bill was seven years in the making and finally passed the House on a 381-40 vote after it was agreed upon by House-Senate negotiators. He said he expected Congress would quickly override any veto by the president. ‘There is urgent, pent-up demand to address the nation’s water resources needs,’ Oberstar said. ‘Divide the cost by the number of years that have passed since we last passed this critical legislation, and the cost is understandable.’ Earlier Wednesday, administration officials said Bush will veto the bill if it isn’t pared down. ‘Indeed, it seems a $14 billion Senate bill went into a conference with the House’s $15 billion bill and somehow a bill emerged costing approximately $20 billion,’ complained White House budget director Rob Portman and Assistant Army Secretary John Paul Woodley Jr. This year’s bill includes some $3.5 billion for Katrina-damaged Louisiana, plus more than $2 billion for projects in California and $2 billion for Florida, mostly for restoring the Everglades. Another $1.95 billion is included for seven new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers and $1.7 billion for repairing the region’s ecology. In May, the Senate approved its version on a 91-4 vote. The House passed a similar bill in April on a 394-25 vote. Even if a final bill becomes law, the money must be appropriated later. ☞ Urgent, pent-up demand can’t hurt. CHARLES’ MRI LJ Kutten: ‘My insurance company is always denying my claims. Numbers 1-3, below, always fix that: Read your policy carefully and follow its exact terms. Appeal the decision internally. Normally this works. If #2 fails, file a complaint with your state’s insurance commissioner. Also: Buy a copy of Make Them Pay by Rhonda Orin. Next time, have the hospital/doctor (not Charles’s assistant) call for the approval. There is always a way around the waiting time. You just need to make the case in appropriate medical terminology.’ Gray Chang: ‘Excruciating, intractable back pain is sometimes triggered by emotional conditions. Did anything stressful happen to Charles when the back pain started, such as the death of a parent, or problems at work? Before he agrees to surgery, please have him take a look at the book, Healing Back Pain by John Sarno, MD. Just go to amazon.com and see what the reviewers have to say about the book. A member of my family was helped tremendously by it.’ ☞ Life with me can be a little stressful. I’ll get him the book. Gary Diehl: ‘Clearly Charles needs to print out and carry a SiCKO card.’ ‘ SiCKO Joel Margolis: ‘Too bad you guys don’t live in Canada. The average for MRI’s in Canada is over 10 weeks (not a measly three days). Of course, if you lived in Canada you could always find a physician in the US who could provide an MRI more quickly.’ Thor: ‘Michael Moore suggests we be more like Canada. A filmmaker I know made a bunch of shorts that I think you should watch – here. The testimonies in this and his other films are astonishing. Healthcare in the U.S. may be messy but socialized/single-payer systems are a lot messier.’ ☞ If Canada decided to spend anywhere close to the same proportion of its GDP on health care that we do – and if it decided to allow the rich to pay to fly “first class’ on elective stuff(at a nice high rate that helped subsidize everyone in the back of the plane) – it would not take 10 weeks to get an MRI. I think this is a pretty crucial point. Sure, Canada’s not perfect. But they spend half what we do. Imagine if they were rich enough to spend as much as we do. That could go a long way, no? JEREMY GRANTHAM Prasanth Manthena: ‘I don’t know if you have the time or inclination to comment on Jeremy Grantham’s latest newsletter (available with free registration). His take on a global asset bubble is interesting. I think it came out before the recent correction; but considering that the ‘correction’ only takes us back to levels seen back in May, I think his very bearish outlook remains pertinent. I’ve followed your advice and Less Antman’s ever since I got a real salary (I’ve made a lot of money going 50/50 domestic/international while dollar cost averaging along the way), but given the fact that I don’t see anything out there that really can be considered a ‘value’ buy – and the dependence of this economy on consumers who now have a net NEGATIVE savings rate – I’ve slowly moved what was a nearly 100% equity asset allocation into about a 35% split btw muni’s/treasuries/international bonds. I can’t fully describe the ludicrousness of a housing market that forms the backbone of this consumer economy: I make a ridiculous amount of money and I barely could afford a starter home here in LA if I were dumb enough to buy right now.” ☞ Jeremy Grantham is as smart as they come. Hope this doesn’t ruin your weekend.
Imagine August 2, 2007January 6, 2017 MY NET WORTH Kathi Derevan: ‘How odd! Yours is exactly the same as mine!’ . . . IS FALLING FAST Emerson Schwartzkopf: ‘Remember those days when your book, The Invisible Bankers, went for something like $600 a copy on eBay? It’s offered today as a Buy It Now item for $0.01, plus $3.50 for S&H. I don’t think that’s as painful, however, as a signed copy of Money Angles going for $0.99. Luckily, Fire and Ice (which is my favorite of yours) is still commanding $19.95 in hardback, although someone’s come up with a gimmick of including a tube of Revlon’s Fire and Ice lipstick in the deal.’ ☞ A penny for my thoughts. Plus shipping and handling. FMD HAS BEEN FALLING, TOO Dan Flikkema: ‘Has your guru had anything to say about First Marblehead lately?’ ☞ Still loves it, owns a ton. Hope he’s right. My guess is that he is . . . but all the usual caveats apply. This is risky. GLDD Steve Miller: ‘Another few million shares of GLDD hit the exchange in a secondary offering today, sending the stock down to $7.78. Is this a buying opportunity?’ ☞ I hope so – though not for me; I already have a ton of it. I think it’s a strong, reasonably conservative, three-year bet. Not on margin or with emergency money or any of that, obviously. But as one of ten stocks? Yes. Dredging isn’t sexy, but it needs to get done, and GLDD is arguably in the best position to do it. And while we’re at it . . . HAPNW and AII+ These warrants could prove worthless, but I continue to think they’re good speculations. SiCKO and the SiMPSONS Look at this! SiCKO is still steady at 8.5 stars, while The Simpsons has slipped to 8.4 –SiCKO is back on top as the most-liked movie out there. (That link happens to be to a theater in a liberal zip code, but the ratings are from IMDB.com users nationwide.) Get thee to a Cineplex. And now . . . IMAGINE Here is Brent Budowsky in The Hill yesterday: Gordon Brown for President By Brent Budowsky August 01, 2007 Effective [Tuesday], British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the leader of the free world and the voice of hope and change that offers the first true answer of freedom to the heinous crimes of Sept. 11, 2001. In his brilliant and comprehensive comments at Camp David, Brown spoke to the aspirations of overwhelming majorities of Americans, Britons and other men and women throughout the democratic world. In Brown’s vision, Afghanistan, not Iraq, is the central military battleground in the fight against terrorism; and hope, not fear, is the central weapon in the great battle of ideas that will determine who prevails in the great conflict of our times. In Gordon Brown’s world, for the first time since Sept. 11, world leaders would lead, with an all-out attempt to seek a comprehensive peace in the Middle East that offers young men and women the aspiration of a life free from endless war, hunger, injustice, corruption, despotism and disease that are terrorism’s greatest allies. In Gordon Brown’s strategy, world leaders issue a global call to action to deal with poverty and AIDS, to protect the world from global warming and save the world from deadly dependence on oil, to take a moral and aggressive stand against genocide in Darfur and to mobilize what Thomas Jefferson would call the decent opinion of men and women everywhere. What a powerful contrast with the world of George W. Bush, in which Iraq is treated as our 51st state, the only nation in the world, and an obsession that deforms the force structures of our military, bitterly divides our people and thoroughly dominates our national life… Imagine what is possible with an America that is united and at the forefront of the causes that move humanity at the beginning of the 21st century. Imagine an America that is not all Iraq, all the time, debating timelines and torture, dealing with virtually no other global issue of our age, held hostage by a president who is obsessed with a war without end that he appears driven to continue in perpetuity, while he imprisons a great nation in a political torture chamber that has deformed our democracy and done grave damage to our national interest. Imagine: an American president who would speak as Gordon Brown speaks, and do what Gordon Brown proposes to do!… Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Bill Alexander, then-chief deputy whip of the House. He is a contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.
Iran, Your Pool, My Tea August 1, 2007January 6, 2017 IRAN David Mixner thinks Bush will bomb Iran and recommends this recent Economist editorial, along with the special report it links to, to really understand what’s going on – and how badly the world needs to find a better way. HEAT EXCHANGE Stewart Dean: ‘Here’s an even better freebie than free swimming pool heat: free air conditioning or free hot water (take your pick; you have to pay for one of them). You get it from a residential Heat Pump Water Heater (HPWH). It’s a heat pump (air conditioner) that takes the heat out of the air and puts it into water. In my old house, I had one. In the winter, I heated my hot water with the oil-fired furnace; in the summer, with a HPWH . . . and got some free air conditioning in the process. Making hot water during the summer by running your furnace all the time is VERY inefficient, so it was a three-way win. Furnace was turned off, HPWH was turned on, which stored the hot water in an electric hot-water heater that ‘turned off,’ and I got some free cooling. There’s a comprehensive report on them here.’ HONEST TEA Bill Graves: ‘Re yesterday’s item – doesn’t your tea have the same environmental problems as bottled water: i.e. the bottles?’ ☞ Yes! But it does not run from the tap. I live for the day that it does. FREEMAN DYSON – WARMING Osborne Lytle: ‘When I suggested that you should be more even handed in your discussion of global warming you responded by saying that there were no reputable scientists on the other side. Regarding political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change, Dyson argues that other global problems should take priority: I’m not saying the warming doesn’t cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I’m saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans. ☞ But he doesn’t doubt the likelihood of human-affected climate change. If we ever propose some hugely expensive dubious thing to fix it, by all means let’s be cautious. But what harm in cutting energy for lights 75% with CFLs or tripling automobile mileage to cut gasoline consumption by two-thirds? (Or drinking tap water from the tap, instead of bottling it first?) These kinds of things, and many others, just make us more efficient and prosperous and profitable and secure. Stewart Dean: ‘The Union of Concerned Scientists has put out a report on climate change in the Northeast. A shocker.’ MY VAST FORTUNE David Triche: ‘What is your net worth?’ ☞ Less than I’d like, more than I deserve. Keep buying those books.