Author: A.T.

Here’s a quick, easy one. Want to see who your long-distance carrier is? Just pick up the phone and dial 700-555-4141. It’s free.

Ah, you say: you know who your carrier is. Well, probably you do. But sometimes your account gets scarfed up by someone else. This is an easy way to check.

Which makes me realize that — wow! — what about 700 numbers? Here’s the only one I’ve ever heard of, but there’s the potential for nearly 10 million more (700-000-0001, 700-000-0002, 700-000-0003 …). Will these be used for pet beepers? Your golden retriever off on a romp someplace and time to call him to dinner?

And what of the 600- and 500- and 400-numbers? And the 777-numbers (for gamblers?) and 666-numbers (devil-worshippers?) and 555-numbers (fictional TV characters?) … don’t tell me we don’t have a lot to look forward to. I’m not sure who decides all these things (though presumably she reports to Bill Gates), but it must be fun designing the future.

Yesterday I told you about going out to Chicago to praise booksellers. Today I want to tell you about going to Washington a week or two ago to attend the swearing in of my friend Fred Hochberg as the number two guy at the Small Business Administration.

Eighty percent of all the job growth in America (and since 1992, we’ve added 16 million new jobs) comes from small business, and the SBA is its advocate. Indeed, the head of the SBA, Aida Alvarez, holds a "cabinet-level" post. Not quite Secretary of Defense, but still. Phil Lader, now our ambassador to England, held the job before Ms. Alvarez, and Erskine Bowles, now the president’s chief of staff, held the job before Mr. Lader.

So the SBA is given considerable shrift (if that were the opposite of short shrift, which I deeply fear it is not) by the administration, and rightly so. Under its three recent administrators — Bowles, Lader and Alvarez — it has reinvented itself, finding ways to do more with considerably less. (Its budget, last I checked, had been voluntarily trimmed by about 40% since the Bush years.) It has learned largely to "get out of the way," reducing paperwork to a minimum, by guaranteeing enough of a bank’s loan to small business to encourage lending while leaving the bank sufficiently at risk (25%, in many cases, I think), so that the bank will not blindly make dumb loans.

(The SBA is not a place to go for financing if you have in mind to start a business. But once started, it has a corps of retired executives and others who can help with advice; it can help with additional financing; and it lobbies for small business on Capitol Hill. Interested? Click here.)

So there was Fred, whose appointment as Deputy Administrator had to be confirmed by the Senate, with his hand on a Bible held by his life-partner Tom Healy, being sworn in by Vice President Gore, with more than 100 well wishers, including two congresspersons and the chairman of the S.E.C. (another agency that’s been doing excellent work of late).

I was interested to hear that the oath of office Fred took was the same one the president takes: "I, state your name [Fred, I was relieved, repeated, "I, Fred Hochberg," where I think I, in the same frazzling circumstances, might well have repeated, "I, state your name"], do solemnly swear …"

Fred pledged to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic, so help him God (you never know when the SBA may come under attack), and then, the formality over, made a really eloquent speech. Tom and Fred’s family and all the rest of us were very proud, and more than a few of us were proud not just of Fred, but of America — a country that in a relatively few short years has gone from almost complete intolerance of its gay and lesbian citizens to a growing acceptance of their right to pursue happy, constructive, responsible lives.

Although he’ll be making a small fraction of what he earned in the private sector as president of Lillian Vernon, the mail order company (don’t miss their red-white-and-blue inner tube pool floats for Fourth of July, about $6 each and terrific), Fred is more than a little charged up about his new assignment. Not that he could do Lillian Vernon any good at the SBA. With 5 million customers, it long since disqualified itself from the ranks of small business. (For that story, see his mother’s recent autobiography, Lillian Vernon: An Eye for Winners.)

I had a chance to go out to Chicago for the booksellers convention recently and thank a lot of booksellers. Where would I be without them? But I wanted to say more than just that — every author says that — and so I did a little research before my talk. I discovered that, sure, we all know about bookish New York prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who nearly became president … and Dudley R. Dewey, whose Dewey Decimal System libraries all use. But how many of us remember their ancestor David Bowie Dewey, who recognized that the real money in libraries wasn’t in selling memberships or library cards but in all the fines for overdue books … and who hit on the idea of charging those fines up front and not requiring the books to be returned at all?

And thus was born the modern bookstore — the brains and soul of the retail world.

Think about it, I told my audience: every other store is devoted to your food, clothing, or shelter. Necessities. But what other store caters to your mind? To your soul?*

All hail the modern bookstore.

*Yeah, yeah — Blockbuster and Tower Records. I know. But I was addressing booksellers.

This is no time to be shy. I’m offering you a chance to visit yourself upon 41 million households. You’ll get calls from people you haven’t seen since high school! You could get modeling offers, movie deals, marriage proposals.

And how will all this happen?

I’m doing a story on credit cards for PARADE, the Sunday supplement that appears in newspapers throughout the country, and I need some real people (not to say average people: you are way above average) to bring it to life.

So would you do me a favor?

1. E-mail me your own credit card story … even if it’s bland. When did you get your first, how do you use them now, what’s your philosophy about them, how many do you have, did you ever have/overcome a problem with them … whatever. I’ll assume that if you e-mail me, I can use your name and where you’re from (so please let me know your full name and where you’re from) unless you indicate otherwise. It would help also to know your age and occupation.

• Note: I’m not just looking for unusual stories. I need some very run-of-the-mill, typical examples, too. So just because you don’t have 48 cards, or never started a $100 million business by borrowing to the max against your Visa card, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a great help to me to have you respond. (But if you do have 48 cards, I’ll naturally want to hear that, too.)

2. Let me know if you’d be willing to have PARADE use your photo with the story. They have good photographers. You’d look great.

Thanks for your help!

I’m writing this one a few days in advance, so for all I know the market’s been just jolly as you read this. But it doesn’t feel jolly today. Sure, the Dow’s down only 3% or 4%, but any number of smaller stocks are down 30% and 50% and more over the last few weeks. So for those few of you who may not own shares in Berkshire Hathaway or see Warren Buffett’s annual shareholders’ letter some other way (to my everlasting regret, I see them some other way — the press list) I thought that I would pull out a quote that seems apt … and could seem apter and apter if things don’t go well.

“[W]hen you read a headline that says, ‘Investors lose as market falls,'” advises Buffett, “edit it in your mind to ‘Disinvestors lose as market falls — but investors gain.’ Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: ‘Every putt makes someone happy.’)”

Especially if you’re young and adding to your investments each year rather than drawing upon them — investing rather than disinvesting — then a falling market is a wonderful thing.

Of course, this presupposes the notion you are trying to buy companies that you actually believe will make a lot of money (profits) over the years to come, rather than merely buying stocks you hope will go up.

If you’re not young and in or entering your disinvesting years, then market declines are bad news. And we may not have seen the last of this one.

From Aaron L.: “The short version of the question is: Is it possible to inflate the price of a stock by placing limit buy orders at a price above the stock’s market price? The long version: There is a fairly thinly traded stock I watch (average trading volume: 2,500 shares a day). Its price fluctuates only slightly from time to time. Let’s say I buy 5,000 shares. Then let’s say I offer to buy some more (100) at a higher price. I do this several times (perhaps from different accounts) to try to make the appearance of general interest in the stock at the higher price and eventually have the appearance of interest turn into actual interest in trading at that level, so it becomes a so-called “base” price level for the stock. Then I sell my shares and make a killing. This seems an obvious sort of gambit, especially on a stock where the trading volume is small, so there must be a reason this would generally fail. Any thoughts on the subject?”

A.T.: Yeah, I have two main thoughts:

• There are SEC regulations against deliberate manipulation. If caught, you could be in hot water. Realistically, you would not get caught; but that’s partly because …

• It wouldn’t work. Normally, what you propose is called “painting the tape,” where a lot of little trades are done (though not necessarily above the current price range), to suggest, by the unusual activity, that “something must be up.” If nothing else, it’s a form of advertising — everyone watching the ticker sees this symbol they don’t recognize going by over and over, so curious investors around the world may take a look to see what the darn thing is. But a few 100-share trades are hardly going to arouse a lot of interest.

Consider: If the stock trades 2,500 shares a day, buying 100 shares here or there won’t move the price. And what if you really get into this and made 50 little trades of 100 and 200 shares each, accumulating 7,500 more shares, say, and edging the price up 3/8 in the process? Guess what: when you went to sell what are now your 12,500 shares (or whatever), you’d likely knock the price back down by even more than you edged it up.

Yes, there are ways to manipulate the market — some of the folks on various Internet sites passing on rumors may actually be starting those rumors in hopes of hyping the holdings they itch to sell.

But homework and patience will ultimately serve you far better as an investor than trying to find a legal scheme for beating the system that no one ever thought of before — or an illegal one you won’t be caught at.

But you knew that.

1. After 500 years of 3% inflation, $100,000 will be worth 4 cents.

2. “The guy who invented playing cards was brilliant. But the guy who invented chips was a genius.” – Ricky Jay (himself a genius)

3. Spending tens of thousands of dollars on a person’s last few months of life is compassionate – but spending. Spending tens of thousands of dollars to improve a person’s first few years of life is also compassionate – but investing.

4. “A man who says he is willing to meet you half way is usually a poor judge of distance.” – Anonymous

5. “This fishing tackle manufacturer I knew had all these flashy green and purple lures. I asked, ‘Do fish take these?'” “‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘I don’t sell these lures to fish.'” – Berkshire Hathaway’s Charles T. Munger, as quoted in Fortune

6. THE LIMITS OF EXPERTISE: “Years ago my father was told the refrigerator was broken beyond repair. After the repairman left, my father kicked it, it started, and worked fine for eight years.” – my friend Mary O’Neil

In answer to my call for suggestions on sensible ways to invest in Japan, Neile Weissman wrote: “Try Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance ADRs — symbol TKIOY. TKIOY is an old line, well capitalized company that itself owns a diversified portfolio of Japanese stocks. Trading in the low 50s, it’s at a 25% discount to its underlying securities. Their website: http://www.tokiomarine.co.jp/index-e.html. Mutual funds that hold this security are deep value players like Sogen International and Third Avenue Value. One of Third Avenue’s past reports had an extensive write-up of TKIOY (visit www.mjwhitman.com).”

To balance Tokio Marine’s mostly blue-chip holdings, Neile suggests the Warburg Pincus Japan OTC fund. “The guy who had been running the better-performing Warburg Pincus Japan Growth also took over this one.”

Recently, I wondered what would happen to MSFT when it had to start paying real wages rather than rely so heavily on stock options to keep its people happy.

My musings elicited this interesting message from the ether:

“I am not a fan of Microsoft and I hate Bill Gates, partly because I do not have money like him and partly his philosophy about selling software does not match with mine. However, I am long his stock, because he is a savvy CEO and the world demands his products. I think his stock will do good in the long run. However, I do not agree with your projection of labor cost etc. Following are my reasons.

1. Just like when the US was a powerhouse in small scale industries in 70s and early 80s and now the whole industry is shifted to Asia and Latin America, software industry will follow it. It is a matter of when, not if. It could be 20 years, 50 years or whatever. Already you can see it. Microsoft has only 3 offices (R&D) in the world. 1. Redmond, WA; 2. Israel; and 3. Hydrabad (India) – will be operational by December 98. Microsoft does not believe in opening many offices and the fact that they have considered India as their only major offshore software development center is significant. Recent Bill Gates visit to India signifies his commitment.

2. Almost all software companies worth their salt have some of their operations offshore (somehow they like to use this word). One big reason is that U.S. universities are not churning out enough graduates to keep up with the growth worldwide.

3. American graduates cost more, demand more, and prefer to (or I should say forced to) move around. That creates a drag on product development.

4. India has state subsidized (almost 50-95% of education cost. I am a great beneficiary of this subsidy and always grateful to the government) and very good education system and relatively stable job environment. Graduates cost less than 5 to 20% of cost of US graduates and the number of universities and institutes are almost equal to US. The engineering and science graduates pool is almost 2 to 4 times of the size of US graduates. Naturally, demand and supply works here and wages are rising about 20% a year for last 10 years. Microsoft entry would ignite this competition.

5. Most companies offer restrictive (cannot sell before 5 year or 10 years) stock options to their overseas employees in US$. That alone is a significant attraction to most potential employees. How else they can get almost sure chance to become millionaire (in local currency, $1=Rs 40)? I know some of my friends, who did become millionaire by exercising stock options.

6. Internet, satellite telecom and government support do play a big role. The world is so close. When I was in India recently, I was able to read your page, trade stocks and be in touch with my office, just as I would staying in US. This was not possible even 3 years ago.

“Bottom line is, these technological advances will accelerate the migration of software jobs and will keep the production cost in check (in today’s dollars). Just think about it, your clothes, cars, shoes are much cheaper today (please include inflation in your calculation) than they were 50 years ago.

“However, I do worry about unexpected things which no one has control of it. Would next CEO will be as lucky or smart or savvy as Bill? How about something like Internet, which Bill miscalculated badly. Would next president of US or justice dept. go after Microsoft big time. I do not know and frankly nobody does…So keep investing in profitable growth companies…and pray for higher stock prices.”

A.T.: I pray for higher productivity, continued technological breakthroughs, good health, and auto insurance reform. I do not pray for higher stock prices. They’re already awfully high. Better to let earnings catch up for a while.

But his message is interesting. When I was growing up, India was a distant abstraction. One day soon, my late-night customer service query may be handled (at noon, India time) by a customer service rep in New Delhi. Small world, indeed.