Tag: poetry

YOU DEBTOR!

Juan: ‘How does the interest on the National Debt compare to the $200 billion cost of reconstruction in the Gulf?’

☞ At $8 trillion now, our National Debt – accumulated since 1776 – will have reached $10 trillion or so by the time President Bush leaves office. Of this, roughly $8 trillion will have been racked up under just three presidents: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Bush.

In the fiscal year just ending this month, taxpayers will have paid roughly $350 billion in interest on the debt. That will rise as the debt rises even if interest rates stay low. If they rise, the burden only grows heavier. It’s not hard to imagine an annual interest expense north of half a trillion dollars by the time the current Republican Administration, with the help of the Republican Congress, are finished weakening our finances and increasing our indebtedness to foreign powers.

Note that these are the same Republicans who – until they took total control of the government – were demanding a ‘balanced budget’ amendment. With that long forgotten, they now propose to strengthen America by banning flag burning and gay marriage.

They are nothing if not adaptable.

YOU PSYCHO!

Not quite sure why so many of you sent me this link – ‘Psychopaths Could Be Best Financial Traders.’ (Premise: psychopaths don’t have normal emotions that could interfere with their making a killing.)

I prefer this classic paean to level-headedness, which you very likely know, by Rudyard Kipling. I once saw it in Kipling’s own hand, framed on the wall of a deeply thoughtful investment strategist:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

NTMD

For the week of September 9, UBS reports 365 prescriptions, down slightly from 383 the week before. Prescriptions for hydralazine and isordil, meanwhile – the two generic components of BiDil – are averaging about 4200 a day versus 57 a day for Bidil.

The bulls on the stock expect folks who are currently taking the generics to switch to the more convenient combo pill instead. The bears don’t see much evidence that patients, doctors, HMOs or insurers will rush to pay $2,500 a year for BiDil instead of $300 or $400 for the generics.

UBS – which makes a market in NTMD stock – rates it ‘Buy 2.’ The difference between ‘Buy 1’ (its top ranking) and ‘Buy 2’ (its other buy rank) is ‘predictability.’ It views NTMD’s future as less predictable than ‘Buy 1.’

Yet UBS remains firm – to the penny – in its sales and profit estimates. It expects the price per pill, currently $1.80, to rise to $2.02 by 2009, at which point it expects the company to earn $3.07 a share on revenues of $341 million from 228,000 patients.

In the short term, it still expects the company to report sales through September 30 of $10.1 million. (Cumulative sales from the July 1 launch through September 17 it estimates at $653,184.)

Don’t sell your puts. There is a chance that the estimate of $653,184 in sales is misleadingly low and the company will blow past expectations when it releases the quarter’s numbers, causing the stock to soar. There is a chance that the doctors I’ve talked with are wrong, and that insurers will not fuss over paying for BiDil. And – even if neither of these things happens and the stock is $3 in a year or two – there is a chance it will rise to $25 or $30 in the meantime, giving us a total loss on our puts. That’s why you must only buy puts with money you can truly afford to lose. But as bets go, this would appear to remain a pretty good one.

The stock closed last night at $18.03, giving Nitromed a market cap of $547 million.

But first . . .

THE REST OF THE STORY

Hope you had a great weekend and reflected on what makes America unique and – let’s hope one day again soon – beloved around the world.

In case you’ve not seen it, here is radio commentator Paul Harvey’s view of what made America great (including distributing smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians):

We didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which – feeling guilty about their savage pasts – eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.

For more (we should be using our nukes), click here.

AFRICA

Excerpted from RESULTS.org:

At first glance, it is heartening to see the Bush Administration commit to fight a child-killer like malaria. However the truth is that the President’s budget for 2006 actually cuts funding for infectious diseases, the account that includes malaria, by $61 million. Although the President’s new malaria initiative would add $30 million for 2006, this is less than the total cut already made. Not insignificantly, nearly half of the money pledged for malaria will not come until 2010, when the president is no longer in office, and therefore unable to ensure that this money is allocated.

. . . According to UNICEF, malaria kills a child in sub-Saharan Africa every 30 seconds. Globally, more than 1 million people die due to malaria every year, the vast majority of them young children under the age of five.

Two interesting points about this are, first – as noted by Professor Jeff Sachs last month – saving children’s lives actually REDUCES population growth (so we could save a million people a year and slow Africa’s tragic population explosion). And, second, the money it would cost us to eradicate malaria is a tiny fraction of the tax cuts planned for the heirs of those leaving estates of $50 million or more.

FAUX NEWS

Media Matters reports that the Fox News ‘Supreme Court analyst,’ C. Boyden Gray, heads a political committee formed to ensure the confirmation of Bush judicial nominees. Fox did not disclose this to its viewers.

LETTER FROM GEORGIA

A friend writes: ‘I am spending the holiday in my hometown in rural Northwest Georgia. I made the mistake of attending METHODIST (not Pentacostal or Baptist, but METHODIST) church with my mother this morning. I listened in shock when the pastor led a sermon about how our forefathers wanted to create a CHRISTIAN, and only a CHRISTIAN, nation and that the congregation had to stand up and force the government to follow Christian beliefs. That our president should start each major speech by praying to God. That the Ten Commandments should be on display in every public building. Amens coming left and right from the congregation. I stormed out in mid-sermon when he came to the topic of gays and lesbians. My view: It is going to be almost impossible to win against the pulpit when pitching to this group. Peer pressure is so strong. Even my mother, a relatively loving and progressive woman, has been sitting there and listening to this BS because it is where all of her friends go to church. After the last election she was informed on the church steps that she wasn’t a good Christian unless she had voted for Bush.’

And now . . .

BUT I STILL THINK IT’S A BUBBLE . . .

. . . in the frothier housing markets, anyway. The kicker here is when this poem was written:

(As spotted by Bob Fyfe on the Loon Lake Realty web site.)

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Yesterday’s column
Will just have to do.

Back tomorrow . . .

Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Yesterday’s column
Counted as two.

So very briefly:

Last week I wrote about the possibility of TIPS in a retirement account, leaving some of you to wonder (a) how you can buy them at auction in an IRA; and (b) whether there would ever even be another issue of these inflation-protected Treasury bonds.

• If you open a retirement account at a brokerage house, your broker may buy at the Treasury auction on your behalf. Writes the estimable Less Antman: “Fidelity, which is the broker I use in my advisory practice, will do so for a fee of $50.”

• Max Stone: “Your article seemed to indicate there was some question about whether any more TIPS will ever be issued. There has been some controversy over that topic (see an excellent article in the July 15 NY Times, by Beth Kobliner, on this topic, although since it is more than 30 days old you need to pay to access their archives), but the auction date for the next issue has been set: On Oct. 10, 2001, there will be an auction of the 30-year TIPS (see this site for a more complete Treasury auction calendar). You may want to alert readers to what is possibly their last chance to buy long-term TIPS without a dealer markup (and it’s often a hefty one, which is a little crazy given the low volatility of the instrument, but I guess dealers have to eat as well).

Thanks, Max! Where would I be without my readers?

Paul Morton: ‘I just noticed CN went up over 6% today, from 80 cents to 85 cents a share. And the number of shares traded so far was 1,900. Which to my mind begs the question how many shares of a stock have to be purchased before it sends the price up? I mean, I could afford to buy 1,900 shares of CN. I know it’s illegal to manipulate the stock by buying shares to send its value higher, and then dump them once the value is higher. But isn’t it possible to buy shares in a stock hoping it would go up. Then noticing it HAS gone up, perhaps unaware it has gone up because of YOU. Or maybe you’re aware of what caused the shares to go up after the fact, but that wasn’t your intention on buying the shares initially. So you dump the shares at a nice profit. Sort of premeditation versus temporary impulse? Anyway, Calton seems in a place where one could almost single-handedly send the price up with little investment. It’s a chicken versus egg thing. Who is the finger to be pointed at and when?’

☞ Well, the first thing to say about this, though off the point of your question, is that the big 71% profit in CN I was gloating about – for those of you who bought the stock a few weeks ago at $5.80, got that $5 return-of-capital dividend shortly thereafter, and then saw the stock open at $1.40 a day or two later (thus effectively turning your 80-cent risk into $1.40 in just two or three weeks) – that awesome profit has now shrunk to zero with the stock back around 80 cents. I know at least one of you did sell at $1.40. Mazel tov. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to see how this speculation turns out.

But that’s not what you were asking. The answer to what you were asking is: forget it! In the first place, as you point out, stock manipulation is illegal. More practically, your plan would not work.

Yes, by buying 1,900 shares of the stock, you could boost its price, paying (in this example), 85 cents for most of it . . . plus a commission, which can be as low as $13 on a limit order at some deep discount brokers, plus another $13 to sell, but as much as $38 each way – $76 total – at other discount brokers that charge a 2-cent-a-share minimum. (That would be a 4% handicap to overcome.) The problem comes in when you go to sell. Just as a purchase of 1900 was enough to drive the stock up, so you would have paid 85 cents for most of it, a sale of 1900 shares is likely to drive the price down. You might sell the first 100 or 200 or even 500 shares at 85 cents, just as you bought the first 100 or 200 or even 500 at 80 cents. But the balance might well get sold at 80 cents, just as most of your purchase was completed at 85 cents.

So what have you accomplished? You bought the stock at 85 cents plus commission and sold it at 80 cents minus commission. You had the fun of seeing your transactions move the market. But you lost money.

What some people do attempt to do is ‘paint the tape,’ perhaps in secret concert with a pal or two. They create a flurry of unusual activity in a stock, which attracts the attention of folks who sit mesmerized by such things (in the old days, a narrow ribbon of ticker-tape spewing out of a machine; these days, a narrow ribbon of type dancing across the TV screen or computer monitor), and who think, ‘Gee, something must be going on. Someone must know something. I’ll jump on board.’ That makes the activity and upward spike in the stock price even more noticeable, attracting other momentum players, chart readers and assorted riff raff who care nothing about value and are just in it as a video game – and before you know it, there’s a full-fledged little rally going on in this stock (and maybe some short-covering, too, by nervous, soon-to-be-panicking, short-sellers). So now the stock is really on a roll, CNBC commentators are trying to come up with knowing one-line explanations (‘expectations of street-beating third quarter earnings’), and it’s easy for you and your pal(s) to sell the shares you traded back and forth to get this going.

But your buying 1,900 shares of CN, and driving it’s price – $1.40 a couple of weeks ago – up to 85 cents from 80? Nah. Not gonna attract any interest at all. Rarely, even if you made a concerted, illegal effort like the one above, would you be able to ignite enough of a rally to justify your costs and economic risks – let alone the criminal liability.

Fun to think about, though, isn’t it? In an earlier millennium, much the same sort of thought was put into turning baser metals into gold.

Rejected Hallmark Card (or so the spoof goes):

My tire was thumping….
I thought it was flat….
When I looked at the tire….
I noticed your cat… Sorry.

Quick – want to hear my haikus again?

I’m just so pleased with myself. Because my haikus not only follow the 5-7-5 syllable format, they also make the requisite direct or indirect reference to the season. Or did until last week, when icy winter turned to spring.

Winter of the bear.
What fun is there in bonds? None.
Boy needs some action.

Priceline – ice ego.
Bezos could have a shot, though
No more big discounts.

Stock market deep freeze,
Taxes kept me from selling.
I’m an idiot.

The only other poem I ever wrote I wrote when I was 23 in what our President might describe as his – or in this case my – young and irresponsible days. Seen through those very wide pupils, it seemed quite brilliant to me. I even submitted it to the New Yorker – yes, the New Yorker — which shows you just how wildly I was hallucinating. It’s not a haiku, it’s simply this:

Every day
Is a happy day —
With an asterisk.*

*It*s passing.

I even went so far as to explain to the New Yorker – yes, to the New Yorker – that my poem would be best read aloud, because that way the listener wouldn’t know whether ‘its’ had an apostrophe or not – and the great thing about my poem was that it was valid either way.  So maybe they should set it with an asterisk instead of an apostrophe.

(The New Yorker sent a very polite rejection.)

I still like this poem. (Hey! ‘The fog comes on little cat’s feet and having come, moves on?’ I mean, what’s so great about that?)

It reminds me that when I start getting anxious about stuff I can’t change, like, say, a bear market, I’m wasting precious time. And back I plunge into my e-mails.

Monday: More on Puts

“He is richest who is content with the least.” — Socrates

But forget that. This is not one of those common ‘ask less and ye shall not be disappointed’ columns. It is, rather, a unique ‘Ask Less and ye shall not be disappointed’ column. It ushers in a new free feature of this web site.

Wait! Wait! Don’t click yet! Indulge a little haiku and Section 529 frivolity – you do not get this sort of stuff at quicken.com – and then meet me at the bottom so I can explain the new free feature.

‘Oh, not more haikus!’ I hear you cry. Well, yes, more haikus. Deal with it.

HAIKUS FOR A CRASH
by the estimable Less Antman

1.
Lo! A bear market.
‘Time for stocks to return to
Their rightful owners.’

2.
Value investor:
He sold at Dow 3000,
Now thinks he’s proved right.

3.
New electric source:
A painful shock is given
Each time I check quotes.

4.
Sell until you sleep . . .
Invest this way at 30;
You’ll never retire.

5.
For one year it’s cash.
With five or so, buy I-bonds.
Beyond, global stocks.

6.
Buy when stocks are down.
Also buy when they are up.
Buy! Buy! Buy! Buy! Buy!

Kim Ness: ‘This week’s TIME has a little blurb about how Section 529 college savings plans are a bad deal because they hurt students’ chances for Financial Aid. Since I’m doing the paperwork on one for a nephew right now, I’d be interested in knowing what Less Antman has to say about this.‘

☞ Less Antman this, Less Antman that – everybody wants a piece of him. You may recall the scene where Woody Allen is arguing with some stranger about the meaning of Marshall McLuhan’s work. They are in line for a movie. Finally, as they keep topping one another – the stranger wrote his doctoral dissertation on McLuhan – Allen pulls out the final trump card. He goes behind some prop and pulls out Marshall McLuhan himself. ‘Well, I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here,‘ he crows.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, have I the estimable Less Antman.

Less writes: ‘What I have to say is what you had to say in The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need (pages 91-92): virtually all student financial aid nowadays consists of loans, which are widely available even to fairly affluent families. Outright grants, on the other hand, are rare, except for students who can throw a football. Furthermore, since the money that has been put into a 529 plan already MUST be spent on the education of the beneficiary, there is nothing really negative about the fact that financial aid calculations assume the money will be spent on the education of the beneficiary.’

☞ Which brings me, at last, to the new free feature. It is a link, really, and nothing more, but a link to a wide world of expertise – yours and Less Antman’s.

You know all those very specific questions you e-mail me that I don’t get a chance to answer? Ask Less! Less has set up a message board for all manner of personal finance questions, and will endeavor to do his best to provide answers and guide the discussion.

He charges nothing for this and cannot guarantee the accuracy or efficacy of his answers – and neither can I. But I do know Less to be a very smart, funny, generous, and credentialed soul who always does his best to help.

His motivations for taking this on, as best I can tell, are, first, that he enjoys it, and, second, that he might pick up some clients.

Mine is to lessen the frustration you feel at having to read canine haikus when what you really want to know is whether, when your wife has a Keogh Plan, you are able to establish a Roth IRA.

For the record: I get no part of any fees Less might ever charge a client he acquires though his message board; nor can I take responsibility for his advice. OK. Now you can click. In the future, if all goes well, you will find ‘Ask Less’ every day as one of the permanent options at the top left of this page.

HOES

In response to Monday’s gloomy column and ‘the tough row we could have to hoe,’ Craig Furnas writes: ‘Looks like we should all invest in hoes, then.’

☞ Good plan.

BUTTS

Joe Cherner, founder of Smokefree Educational Servies writes:

I am very saddened by the recent death of Morton Downey, Jr., age 67, from lung cancer. Years ago, Mr. Downey had a very popular TV talk show, particularly with young people. As a repeat guest, I had heated debates with Mr. Downey. Mr. Downey smoked throughout his show and often blew smoke in the face of guests who opposed him. Most of it was done for sensationalism, theatrics, and to provoke his opponents.

Unfortunately, Mr. Downey was idolized by young people, many of whom probably started smoking to imitate him. Mr. Downey constantly screamed that all his aunts and uncles smoked and lived to be 100 (which I doubt was true), and that he would live to be 100 too. In any case, it was a terrible message for young people who clung to his every word.

About seven years ago, Mr. Downey was diagnosed with lung cancer. He publicly apologized for his past antics and did some public service announcements against smoking. Unfortunately, as is often the case, he was no longer a youth icon. His apology didn’t come close to making up for the damage he had caused.

A list of famous celebrities who have died from smoking can be found on our website. Just click on “documents” when you get there. As usual, these celebrities influenced millions of young people to start smoking (many even appeared in cigarette ads), and by the time they died, they were almost unknown to the next generation. In other words, their lives influenced young people to start smoking but heir deaths didn’t prevent young people from smoking.

I will miss Morton Downey, Jr. and I know he is sorry for what he did.

GOTTA LOTTA HAIKUS

Sharon Barowsky: ‘Not positive because I haven’t read the whole book, but the likely source of those wonderful Jewish Haikus is Haikus for Jews: For You, a Little Wisdom by David M. Bader.’

These are some of George Berger‘s excellent canine haikus. He’s not sure who wrote them, either:

I love my master;
Thus I perfume myself with
This long-rotten squirrel.

I lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You ever will be

Today I sniffed
Many dog behinds — I celebrate
By kissing your face.

I sound the alarm!
Paper boy-come to kill us all
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

I sound the alarm!
Garbage man-come to kill us all
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

How do I love thee?
The ways are numberless as
My hairs on the rug.

My human is home!
I am so ecstatic I have
Made a puddle

I Hate my choke chain
Look, world, they strangle me! Ack
Ack Ack Ack Ack Ack!

Look in my eyes and
Deny it. No human could
Love you as much I do

Dig under fence — why?
Because it’s there. Because it’s
There. Because it’s there.

I am your best friend,
Now, always, and especially
When you are eating.

I’ve gotten this several times now, and you probably have, too. But can we risk that you have not?

Here they are, 17 syllables apiece, 5 – 7 – 5. I have taken the liberty of highlighting a couple of the most important ones:

Hey! Get back indoors!
Whatever you were doing
could put an eye out.

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she beams — nice, but
her son is forty.

Lovely nose ring —
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

After the warm rain,
the sweet scent of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?

Wet moss on the old
stone path — flat on my back, I
ponder whom to sue.

• Today I am a
• man. On Monday I return
• to the seventh grade.

Left the door open
for the Prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

In the ice sculpture
reflected bar-mitzvah guests
nosh on chopped liver.

Beyond Valium,
the peace of knowing one’s child
is an internist.

The same kimono
the top geishas are wearing —
got it at Loehmann’s.

Jewish triathlon —
gin rummy, then contract bridge,
followed by a nap.

Would-be convert lost —
thawed Lender’s Bagels made a
bad first impression.

Today, mild shvitzing.
Tomorrow, so hot you’ll plotz.
Five-day forecast — feh.

• Yom Kippur — forgive
• me, God, for the Mercedes
• and all the lobsters.

As always, if anyone knows who actually wrote these, I’d love to give credit where credit is due. Here are three financial haikus:

Winter of the bear.
What fun is there in bonds? None.
Boy needs some action.

Priceline – ice cold ego.
Bezos could have a shot, though
No more big discounts.

Stock market deep freeze,
Taxes kept me from selling.
I’m an idiot.