Calculating Your Tariffs March 17, 2016March 16, 2016 Tomorrow: A little more on antique food . . . and on the education solution that breaks the cycle of poverty. But first a little more on “the trade deal.” I’ve argued previously that those who hate NAFTA should want to fix it. Which the TransPacific Partnership does, at least in meaningful measure — Canada and Mexico are among TPP’s dozen signatories — by making the unenforceable promises of NAFTA’s “side letter” enforceable. And I’ve argued that even if a labor leader somehow knew TPP would create more good jobs than it would kill, he would have to oppose it because those losing good jobs would, understandably, be looking for someone to blame (and it would be him!), while those gaining good jobs would mostly not even realize it was the trade deal (and his support of it) they had to thank. And I’ve posted this really thoughtful Charlie Rose interview that anyone serious about trying to assess the TPP pros and cons should take the time to watch. Now comes an updated tariff calculator, complete with 7-minute tutorial, that lets U.S. manufacturers see how much easier it should be to sell abroad. TPP will eliminate more than 18,000 tariffs placed on Made-In-America exports. (Donald Trump, needless to say, would have eliminated far more than 18,000. A little baby could have eliminated more tariffs than that. If there’s anything Mr. Trump has the patience, skill, and nuance to do, it’s negotiate multinational trade deals. He doesn’t say much; but what he does say is so carefully considered he has already won the respect of most world leaders.)
Jeffrey Goldberg on The Obama Doctrine March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 If you’re a critic on the left who deplores the President’s drone strikes . . . Or a critic who thinks he’s not been tough enough . . . . . . perhaps the Atlantic Monthly piece everyone’s been talking about will move you closer to my own view: We could not have a more thoughtful, steady commander-in-chief. (It’s impossible to read without wondering — with dread — what a Trump or Cruz presidency might look like.) A tiny snip: . . . Obama returned to a point he had made repeatedly to me, one that he hopes the country, and the next president, absorbs: “You know, the notion that diplomacy and technocrats and bureaucrats somehow are helping to keep America safe and secure, most people think, Eh, that’s nonsense. But it’s true. And by the way, it’s the element of American power that the rest of the world appreciates unambiguously. When we deploy troops, there’s always a sense on the part of other countries that, even where necessary, sovereignty is being violated.” . . . Making the point that Obama is a gambler but not a bluffer, Jeffrey Goldberg concludes: George W. Bush was also a gambler, not a bluffer. He will be remembered harshly for the things he did in the Middle East. Barack Obama is gambling that he will be judged well for the things he didn’t do. It’s so much easier to just want to bomb a problem until, in Ted Cruz’s words, you make the sand glow. Or in Trump’s words, get a lot tougher than just waterboarding. Enough with all the thinking — let’s just do something! What we need is a tough “dead or alive” shock-and-awe approach like we had in our last macho Republican president. Yes, true, he didn’t get him dead or alive; and, yes, true, the shock and awe didn’t work and cost us trillions that could have gone into building our infrastructure . . . and caused widespread death and misery while playing into the hands of the terrorists. But why quibble? It was muscular. It was direct. We need to try it again. (And 35% tariffs and a trade war would be a good idea, too: bring back Smoot-Hawley! That’ll show the Mexicans and Chinese who have their boots on our neck!)
TED: $16,900 Off The Sticker Price March 15, 2016March 13, 2016 If you missed last month’s 2016 TED Conference in Vancouver, you’ll find a nice review of it here: “I’ve Discovered the Antidote to This Year’s Nasty Election: TED.” And TED’s 20 most popular talks of all time, here. Free! Indeed, it is in part to make all its talks available free that TED requires annual conference participants to contribute $6,000 on top of the basic $2,500 conference fee. Double that if you bring your better half: $17,000. If you’re not ready to do that — or spring for the airfare and hotel — you and he or she can see the entire 2016 conference at your own pace/s starting today, for just $100. Here.
A Decent 10 Weeks March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 Recently, I apologized for some of the awful stocks I had suggested (“Year-End Tax-Selling Buying Opportunities”), concluding: All that said, would this be a time to buy a little GLDD? A little PRMRF? A little BOREF? Each under $5? Check back with me in a year or two and we’ll know. In the 10 weeks since . . . GLDD is down slightly. I just wait, and wait, and wait, as the silt accumulates (they are the nation’s largest dredging company) . . . and the CEO, with any luck, gets fired. BOREF is up by a third. Sort of. I mean, it is . . . but it trades so thinly, it could go right back down if some guy decides to sell 500 shares and no one happens to be around to buy them. But this is not a stock to buy for a small quick gain anyway; it is a stock to buy for either an eventual wipe out (somehow, I guess) or else for a big score. Two years ago, when the stock was $16.50 and the company less far along, I posted, “BOREF: $338 A Share? Or $2.79?” To me (and perhaps only to me), the logic still holds. I wouldn’t sell any at $6.20. PRMRF is up 50% and depends almost entirely on the price of oil. My hope is that even at today’s prices, low-cost producers like this one will do okay. (My even greater hope is that the world will move away from fossil fuels altogether.) But if in a couple of years oil is back to $70, say, PRMRF could be back into the 20s. And it was in the 20s that my smart rich friend who had researched it deeply thought it was worth a great deal more. I’ll settle for the 20s. As always: my little speculations are only for money you can truly afford to lose.
Mars! March 11, 2016March 8, 2016 I’ve not seen “The Martian.” People told me the book was even better — and the audio book really well performed. So I listened (it was!), consuming the last four hours in two, at double speed, and realized The Martian is Robinson Crusoe three centuries later. All alone, stranded not on an island but a planet. Salvaging tools and supplies from his wreck. Surviving through ingenuity. And then that flight home! When I was five or six, I had a 78 rpm record of the first moon landing. I played it over and over. Something went wrong on the return trip. They were not going to make it. Too heavy. But then the boy on the flight — there was a boy on the flight — came up with a solution for lightening the space ship and saved the day. They made it home! I listened to that record 100 times. All that, pre-Sputnik. And here we are. We’ve been to the moon. (Just 60 years after the Wright brothers made their first 12-second flight!) And it seems pretty clear we’re going to Mars. What a time to be alive. How important that we elect truly thoughtful leaders . . . who “believe in” science . . . and not just someone we’d like to have a beer with. Have a great weekend.
LBJ — Our First Jewish President? March 10, 2016March 7, 2016 I am enthusiastically neutral among all — now between both — our fine Democratic candidates. But whatever happens, I was interested to learn this: It’s possible Bernie will not be our first Jewish president. LBJ may have beaten him to it! Click here. (The pay-off is at the end.) Thanks, Mel!
A Suitable Fiduciary March 9, 2016March 7, 2016 My pal Bobby Monks explains here how the Obama Labor Department proposes two radical new rules re your retirement account: Brokers must act in the best interests of their clients. All the fees they collect must be disclosed. Typical lefty bleeding-heart type stuff, right? Never fear: the industry is fighting it, as they fought Dodd-Frank. Read Bobby’s post and write your Congressperson?
Success v. New York Times March 8, 2016March 7, 2016 A quick break from politics, money, and antique food. (A personal best! I just consumed Kraft Caesar Italian Fat-Free dressing I found open in the back of the refrigerator dated June 1, 2001!) But what’s more important than education? So: You know I’m a fan of Success Academy charter schools (here and here, etc.) — astounding results that break the cycle of poverty for thousands of kids in New York’s toughest neighborhoods. It is a big, big deal that should be replicated nationwide. The New York Times doesn’t think so. Most recently, it focused on a Success Academy teacher ripping up a little girl’s paper in front of the class and speaking harshly to her: all caught on video. The New York Times is indispensable. (Subscribe!) But in their ongoing attacks on Success Academy, they seem to have lost perspective. Here‘s a letter to the Times from the grandparent of a Success scholar suggesting just that. . . . My grandson attends Success Academy Cobble Hill. He attended a district school kindergarten before transferring. He hated kindergarten and didn’t want to go to school. Every week, we heard about some incident that rivaled the video you have been featuring for the last two weeks. His parents met with the principal, who agreed that my grandson and the teacher were not a good fit. But she said her hands were tied. She vowed if they would leave him in the school, she would ensure that he got a more appropriate teacher for first grade. Instead, they transferred to Success Academy, and for the past three years he has cried on the last day of school because he had to leave behind teachers he loved. If we had been smarter, we would have sent him to kindergarten with a cellphone and told him to video one of his teacher’s frequent outbursts. Would we then have been able to get the Times to do a series of stories about the incident? Unlikely, because it wouldn’t have fit into some preconceived notion you had about this school and its policies, but would represent only an unfortunate single incident in a single classroom. But that pretty much is what the Success Academy video is, too. . . . And here is a video of Success Academy parents who seem to adore the teacher in question. Read the Times piece. Join the Times and everyone else — including that teacher — in acknowledging she went too far. But the big picture is that we should be rushing nationwide to turn all our most troubled public schools into wild successes like the dozens of Success Academy public schools . . . free and open to all (or at least all those fortunate enough to win the lottery to attend them). Tomorrow: back to our regularly scheduled programming. (And some really old Greek olives. I haven’t decided yet whether to try them.)
Full Frontal March 7, 2016March 6, 2016 What? You haven’t been watching Samantha Bee? The only things wrong with her show are that it’s on only Mondays (10:30 PM on TBS) and only half an hour. Here’s a sample from one of her first four shows. (I actually disagree with her first bit — lampooning how we always say “this is the most important election of our lives.” That can only be true, of course, if they’ve become successively more important — but they have. Remember Kennedy / Nixon? Very different people, but largely shared policy perspectives. Coke versus Pepsi. As the moderate Republicans have been all but eliminated from Congress (but not the moderate Democrats! it’s not symmetrical!), the choice has become ever starker . . . Coke versus V8 . . . Coke versus a pickle . . . Coke versus Ted Cruz. But why quibble. Watch.)
5% Off Everything — Except Trump University March 4, 2016March 3, 2016 Well, 5% off everything you buy on Amazon, if you have Amazon Prime — which for me is practically everything. Click here for details. No annual fee for the card. Just be sure to pay it off in full each month (I’ve set mine to debit my bank account automatically) — it carries a crazy interest rate. (And note the cautionary reviews — 54% five-star, but 23% one-star.) Meanwhile, it turns out Trump University is way worse than most of us knew. Check it out. Thank you, Vox. . . . Trump University wasn’t a university but a multilevel marketing scam Trump University — which was never licensed to call itself a “university” — shut down in 2010. But the legal fallout, including Schneiderman’s suit, has continued. The university, Schneiderman has charged, was a “bait and switch,” a classic multilevel marketing scheme: People are told that the real benefits they want are only available if they keep paying, essentially urging them to throw good money after bad. People were lured into a free workshop with marketing materials that promised they’d learn Trump’s real estate secrets from his “handpicked” instructors and maybe even from Trump himself. Instead, they were urged to sign up for a three-day seminar that cost nearly $1,500. And at that seminar, they were pushed to sign up for an elite mentorship program that could cost as much as $35,000 per year. Trump didn’t handpick the mentors. He didn’t write the curriculum. He didn’t even show up at the seminars. Instead, students got to take a photo with a cardboard cutout of him. Even the most expensive mentorship didn’t deliver, Schneiderman’s lawsuit charges. Some mentors simply vanished. Others had no background in real estate at all. The lawsuit accuses Trump University of other shady behavior, such as asking students to fill out information about their financial assets — so that Trump University could pick out the wealthiest participants to urge them to pay more for the next level. They also urged participants to seek a credit line increase with the promise that it would improve their credit score. That’s sometimes the case, but greater access to credit also made it easier for participants to pay more for the next level of Trump University “advice.” Trump fought back by claiming his university has a 98 percent satisfaction rate, and by suing Schneiderman, saying the attorney general used the lawsuit as a threat to force Trump’s attorneys and family members to contribute to Schneiderman’s campaign. But the state ethics commission dropped that complaint. . . . If the students were 98% satisfied, one wonders why the business isn’t thriving to this day. Oh, well. Have a great weekend.