Mexican Bonds October 8, 2010March 19, 2017 WARREN “We’re going to have to get more [tax] money from somebody,” says Warren Buffett. “The question is, do we get more money from the person that’s going to serve me lunch today, or do we get it from me?” It’s well worth reading the whole (short) thing – and ogling the charts – over at the Motley Fool. BARNEY Can you believe that “GOProud” – the gay Republican group that celebrates Ann Coulter – hopes to unseat Congressman Barney Frank? They have endorsed his opponent, a conservative Catholic marine who opposes marriage, opposes civil unions, opposes repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. The rightwing, with virtually unlimited funds from undisclosed sources, is licking its chops at the prospect. They’re trying to pin the subprime mess and Wall Street’s meltdown on Barney – which is exactly backwards. But then this is the same team that mocked John Kerry’s purple hearts and bronze star and promised that the “vast majority” of their tax cuts would go to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder. Up is down, black is white, off is on – who cares? Whether your issue is the financial reform he championed, the appointment of Elizabeth Warren he championed, the reduction in military expenditures he champions or, yes, the LGBT equality he champions – or even if it’s just his wit and refusal to sugarcoat his message that you want to support (“on what planet do you spend most of your time?”) – would you do me a huge favor and click here to help make sure he is returned to Congress? And spread the word to your friends? MEXICAN BONDS Mexico just issued $1 billion in bonds maturing in October, 2110 – 100 years from now. They offer a tempting 6.1%. I have to laugh. Not at Mexico – I have high hopes for Mexico. At the timing. Just as the bonds were hitting the market earlier this week, I was wrapping up the new edition of my investment guide. As some of you know, it begins with the tempting yields south of the border – a whole long cautionary riff, not a word of which has changed since 1978, except that at each new revision I get to add news of the most recent peso revaluation. The peso is now worth about one-thousandth what it was at the outset of my original anecdote. So I’m proofreading and proofreading – found one place where some glitch in the typographer’s software changed a minus sign into a 2, which made 1930’s 6% deflation (“–6%”) 26% inflation – and I’m listening to cable news in the background, and I get to the last sentence of the last page of the book at almost the same moment as I hear this news about the Mexican bond issue – and that last sentence reads, as it has since 1978: “I hear, by the way, that the Mexican peso is now very strong again, and that you can get a hell of an interest rate south of the border.” Hundred-year Mexican bonds. What could go wrong?