The FED did not extinguish all the problems with Bear Stearns, and how naive to think they would. Forbes takes a look at Lehman Brothers. Now contrast these doubts with the bravado of Erin Callan when Maria Bartiromo talked with her as recently as March 20. This also illustrates the importance of continually reading what is…

Last year I speculated that after housing the next logical industry to get into trouble would be casinos, and sure enough….Now Donald Trump and Jimmy Buffet are planning a deal in Atlantic City. Buffet's other venues are fairly modest, this will be an immodest $300 M venture. Atlantic City has never quite been what its planners…

Steve Forbes holds forth on what the FED should do. And that is strengthen the Dollar.  I suspect he is a bit naive on interest rates, they should be higher with all the currency floating around the world. He is quite right that a cheap dollar has led to food and energy inflation. Which reminds me,…

Robert Samuleson explains the latest misguided idea in Washington. The domestic wars never end, poverty, physical fitness, ignorance, all have come in the Washington crosshairs.  Now Washington is going to tax energy or rather make someone pay an additional fee for it.  This should be up for a vote, not something Congress passes on their own, your…

As always, http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/05/28/futures_markets  Walter Williams sheds some light on futures trading.

As  elementary students we received the Weekly Reader.  In the 1950s and 1960s the big news was that Afreican Nations were becoming indpendent. The centuries of ‘ colonialism’ of being ruled by foreign countries was coming to an end.  And so it did. But for most of Africa it has just been the same or…

Today in the WSJ one hedge fund manager pronounces that the worst is past. Good reading for perspective, the housing bust reached a critical point in January, it has been in decline for the last few years.

This column in Fortune highlights why AAPL is worth more than 3x DELL. The reason is not market share but return on sales and assets. Clearly Jobs figured out that cost cutting to corporations would sell more widgets but not profitably. So he stopped doing that.  Now let hte corporations come calling, and pay the…

India is quickly returning to its socialist roots.  Now India is considering banning futures trading in food products. This has already happened in rice and wheat. Okay budding capitalists, the prices are rising, so the logical result is encourage more food production ban trading in open markets where prices are there for everyone to see…

One of you asked me to explain how the price of oil or futures is determined.   Politicians  have done nothing to decrease our dependency on oil or find more of it or encourage alternate energy sources that actually produce energy, like nuclear. Rather many would simply tax oil company profits, remember we tried that in…