Anyone who has any illusions about the Canadian tar sands business should take a look at the picture below. I?m not a fanatic, sandal wearing, organic bean sprout eating environmentalist, but just looking at it tells you that this is an eco-disaster of Biblical proportions. A $50 billion investment by several firms over the last
On my way back from Lake Tahoe last weekend I saw that every bend of the American river was dotted with hopeful miners, looking to make a windfall fortune. Weekend hobbyists were there panning away from the banks, while the hardcore pros stood in hip waders balancing portable pumps on truck inner tubes, pouring sand
?Isn?t it funny when you walk into an investment firm, and you see all of the financial advisors watching CNBC? That gives me the same feeling of confidence I would have if I walked into the Mayo Clinic or Sloan Kettering and all of the doctors were watching the TV soap opera General Hospital,? said
If I had a nickel for every time that I heard the term ?Sell in May and go away? this year, I could retire. Oops, I already am retired! In any case, I thought that I would dig out the hard numbers and see how true this old trading adage is. It turns out that
?If there is no monetary stimulus and no fiscal stimulus, obviously we are going to continue to grow slowly. We could be in secularly slow growth for decades,? said Harvard economics professor, Ken Rogoff.
?If you want to succeed, double your failure rate,? said Thomas Watson, the CEO who built IBM into a global force from the twenties to the fifties. He also said, ?I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.?
There is no doubt that the crisis in Spain is getting worse, threatening to drag down the rest of Europe, and ultimately the US, with it. Over the weekend, Standard and Poor?s downgraded the debt of 11 Spanish banks, after downgrading the country?s sovereign debt weeks earlier. Further downgrades are a given so expect them
This certainly promises to be an interesting week for the markets. On Thursday, we get the Department of Labor?s weekly jobless claims at 8:30 AM EST. If we clock a fourth consecutive week over 380,000, or go even higher, then an exact repeat for last year?s summer slowdown will be in play. So will the
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams argues that you should invest in companies you hate, because only the most unprincipled and rapacious firms make the greatest profits. Moral bankruptcy is a great leading indicator of success, and the best ones can get you to balance your wallet on the end of your nose and bark like a
?The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain,? said John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group of index funds.