A Graduation Day Gift

YOU NEVER CALL . . .

Wayne Arczynski: ‘Never! Never! Never put your email address on a web page! Just as Google traverses the web to index content, a bazillion spam and phishing engines do the same looking for email addresses, phone numbers, SSN numbers and credit card numbers. Expect a serious increase in spam and phishing in about a week.’

☞ Ugh. Well, too late now, I guess. But I was desperate to hear from you guys.

IT’S FIXED!

It seems AOL’s server suddenly – after all these years – somehow stopped communicating with my web site provider’s server. So my trusty webmaster, Jason, has switched the ME-MAIL address to a non-AOL account and we’re back in business.

BOREALIS

Joe: ‘Are you sure the plane moved?’

☞ Joe attached a copy of his confirmed purchase yesterday morning of 400 shares at $8.50. All I can say is, you must truly only do this with money you can afford to lose – because you may. But just as (to me, anyway) the facts of the Nitromed story last year made the stock’s high valuation bizarrely irrational – and its puts a greta speculation – so what we know of Borealis makes its low valuation bizarrely irrational. Not to say the company can’t fail – it absolutely can fail. But why is the chance it will succeed currently valued at under $45 millon? (Five million shares at $8.50 each when Joe bought his.) A Jackson Pollock painting recently fetched $140 million, more than three times as much. And it’s not the only one he did.

GAS PRICES

Gennady: ‘Please explain to this neophyte how this works: GOP lowers the prices for mid-term elections, loses them, then raises the prices? If this is the logic, why did they wait six months? Nov. 8 was as good time as any, and if the price increases were instituted for profits, why start in May 07 instead of Nov 06? Makes little sense. Your obsession with Reps and Bush reminds me an old saying: ‘If all you have is a hammer, the rest of world looks like a nail.’ Admit it, not every problem, catastrophe or event are Bush’s fault!’

☞ I admit it. And I absolutely don’t know for sure that the Saudis and the oil companies leaned against high gasoline prices in advance of the election. But they surely did not want to see the gavels change hands. And they surely have a bit of influence over oil prices. Given their past track record, and their closeness to the Administration, I think it’s naive to think this could not have been a factor. (Look at how the Administration failed to lean against high electricity prices in the artificial California crisis, despite the clear power of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to do so.)

This is an Administration that got elected saying of their giant tax cuts that ‘by far, the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.’

This is an Administration that got elected promising a humble foreign policy – yet was planning how to split up Iraq’s oil even before 9/11.

This an Administration that even under subpoena from the General Accounting Office would not release the names of the participants in Vice President Cheney’s energy task force.

This is a team that threw out thousands of ‘overvotes’ in Florida because the intent of the voter – who had punched Gore but also written in Gore – could not be discerned.

So, no, I may have just been lucky in guessing that gas prices would rebound after the election (‘don’t sell your oil stocks’). But please don’t tell me the oil interests didn’t want a Republican win or that the oil interests have no influence over the price of oil.

(As to the timing, would it really have been possible – or smart – to drop the price of gasoline a buck and a half November 6 and then hike it back up November 8? Would that have left you arguing that it was just coincidence, as you do now?)

FOR FATHER’S DAY, FOR GRADUATION

I am in a twelve-step program for self-promotion (‘Hello. I’m Andy and I’m a shameless self-promoter.’ ‘Hi, Andy!’), but this generous review over at Amazon a few weeks ago knocked me off the wagon:

Truly the only investment guide you will ever need!, March 24, 2007
Reviewer: Douglas Lindal “SeaBear” (Seattle, WA USA)

I purchased my first copy of Mr. Tobias’s book when I was in my mid thirties and it truly changed my life. I found it to be such practical advice that I started following it immediately. Written in a self depreciating manner the author just made the complicated financial decisions we all mishandle or put off seem so simple. Insurance, banking, investments, clipping coupons, saving money – he addresses it all and you can understand it.

I am now 56 and retired and I know a lot of it I owe to this book. Read it!

☞ I net 82 cents if you buy the book, so I hope you will.

65 years ago today two very wonderful people got married in New York