In Search of the Perfect Investment

Everyone is falling down stairs.

Pity the poor folks at Deutsche Bank. 

Many have their compensation tied to DB stock. This is DB over the past ten years. It once was $140. Now it’s $13.05. That’s a 91% drop!

Don’t despair: My people tell me it’s a great bank run by a great, relatively new CEO, John Cryan, who’ll do the right things: Dispose of junk it bought in recent years, settle with the U.S. government, get some sort of bailout from the German government and concentrate on its core banking and investment banking business.

“The stock is depressed by short sellers who would have you believe that it’s going down the gurgler in the next nanosecond,” says Todd Kingsley, who retains his DB shares and options and believes the stock will hit $20, one day.

Starting your own business

Your kids are full of new product ideas. They want to start a company. There are oodles of ways to finance their ideas. Like friends, family and venture capitalists.

My present favorites are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Use them and you don’t have to give up equity.

Why USA TODAY recommends you NOT vote for Donald Trump

Posted today on the web site of

The Editorial Board (of USA Today) has never taken sides in the presidential race. We’re doing it now.

In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now.

This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.

From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents.

Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.

We’ve been highly critical of the GOP nominee in a number of previous editorials. With early voting already underway in several states and polls showing a close race, now is the time to spell out, in one place, the reasons Trump should not be president:

He is erratic. Trump has been on so many sides of so many issues that attempting to assess his policy positions is like shooting at a moving target. A list prepared by NBC details 124 shifts by Trump on 20 major issues since shortly before he entered the race. He simply spouts slogans and outcomes (he’d replace Obamacare with “something terrific”) without any credible explanations of how he’d achieve them.

He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements typically range from uninformed to incoherent. It’s not just Democrats who say this. Scores of Republican national security leaders have signed an extraordinary open letter calling Trump’s foreign policy vision “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” In a Wall Street Journal column this month, Robert Gates, the highly respected former Defense secretary who served presidents of both parties over a half-century, described Trump as “beyond repair.”

He traffics in prejudice. From the very beginning, Trump has built his campaign on appeals to bigotry and xenophobia, whipping up resentment against Mexicans, Muslims and migrants. His proposals for mass deportations and religious tests are unworkable and contrary to America’s ideals.

Trump has stirred racist sentiments in ways that can’t be erased by his belated and clumsy outreach to African Americans. His attacks on an Indiana-born federal judge of Mexican heritage fit “the textbook definition of a racist comment,” according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected official in the Republican Party. And for five years, Trump fanned the absurd “birther” movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of the nation’s first black president.

His business career is checkered. Trump has built his candidacy on his achievements as a real estate developer and entrepreneur. It’s a shaky scaffold, starting with a 1973 Justice Department suit against Trump and his father for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals. (The Trumps fought the suit but later settled on terms that were viewed as a government victory.) Trump’s companies have had some spectacular financial successes, but this track record is marred by six bankruptcy filings, apparent misuse of the family’s charitable foundation, and allegations by Trump University customers of fraud. A series of investigative articles published by the USA TODAY Network found that Trump has been involved in thousands of lawsuits over the past three decades, including at least 60 that involved small businesses and contract employees who said they were stiffed. So much for being a champion of the little guy.

He isn’t leveling with the American people. Is Trump as rich as he says? No one knows, in part because, alone among major party presidential candidates for the past four decades, he refuses to release his tax returns. Nor do we know whether he has paid his fair share of taxes, or the extent of his foreign financial entanglements.

He speaks recklessly. In the days after the Republican convention, Trump invited Russian hackers to interfere with an American election by releasing Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he raised the prospect of “Second Amendment people” preventing the Democratic nominee from appointing liberal justices. It’s hard to imagine two more irresponsible statements from one presidential candidate.

He has coarsened the national dialogue. Did you ever imagine that a presidential candidate would discuss the size of his genitalia during a nationally televised Republican debate? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine a presidential candidate, one who avoided service in the military, would criticize Gold Star parents who lost a son in Iraq? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine you’d see a presidential candidate mock a disabled reporter? Neither did we. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to ignore criticism raises the specter of a president who, like Richard Nixon, would create enemies’ lists and be consumed with getting even with his critics.

He’s a serial liar. Although polls show that Clinton is considered less honest and trustworthy than Trump, it’s not even a close contest. Trump is in a league of his own when it comes to the quality and quantity of his misstatements. When confronted with a falsehood, such as his assertion that he was always against the Iraq War, Trump’s reaction is to use the Big Lie technique of repeating it so often that people begin to believe it.

We are not unmindful of the issues that Trump’s campaign has exploited: the disappearance of working-class jobs; excessive political correctness; the direction of the Supreme Court; urban unrest and street violence; the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group; gridlock in Washington and the influence of moneyed interests. All are legitimate sources of concern.

Nor does this editorial represent unqualified support for Hillary Clinton, who has her own flaws (though hers are far less likely to threaten national security or lead to a constitutional crisis). The Editorial Board does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement.

Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service – as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State – and believe she’d serve the nation ably as its president.

Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton’s sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information.

Where does that leave us? Our bottom-line advice for voters is this: Stay true to your convictions. That might mean a vote for Clinton, the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House. Or it might mean a third-party candidate. Or a write-in. Or a focus on down-ballot candidates who will serve the nation honestly, try to heal its divisions, and work to solve its problems.

Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump.

 USA Today’s position is mine also. But they said it more eloquently than I could. I differ with them on one point: I think we all should vote for Hillary — even though she’s not perfect. We need to see our vote as an insurance that Donald doesn’t become our President.

Trump becoming our President would be a major disaster for my adopted country, and the country I live in and love. I’ve watched too many populist leaders become elected and then later destroy their country. Because of our “checks and balances,” (the three branches of government), an American President has less power than in countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Russia, Turkey, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Belarus, Syria, etc. But an American President is commander in chief of our military. Using their military is how the leaders in those countries cement their power and become dictators.

I’m worried. Trump is clearly unstable.

Visit Niagara Falls. Here’s what you get for $cdn32 — two 8×10 prints plus email copies. This my lifelong Australian friend Shann Turnbull, 82, having a ball.

I like the  picture as much as I like the business of shooting tourists for free and then selling them the prints they like.

When I was a teenager I used to photograph tourists at Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo. After much research, I found my biggest selling photos were American tourists with koala bears.

Handling Koala bears, by the way, is neither easy nor pleasant. They’re shy and aggressive. They did their nails into you and they pee on you. You cannot wash out the smell. I tried. I threw out all my clothes.

I love this stuff.

If you see this in your local supermarket, buy it. It’s delicious.

 CHECK. CHECK. CHECK. I think I received four of these before they finally got it right.

Monday is ROSH HASHANAH

A woman goes to the post office to buy stamps for her Rosh Hashanah “Happy New Year” cards. She says to the clerk “May I have 50 Rosh Hashanah stamps please.”

“What denomination?” says the clerk.

The woman says “Oy vey … has it come to this?

Okay, give me six orthodox, twelve conservative and thirty-two reform!”

The Citizenship Test

Saul Epstein was taking an oral exam to finally become a citizen. He is asked to spell “cultivate.” He spells it correctly.

He is then asked to use the word in a sentence.

With a big smile, he says : “Last vinter on a very cold day, I vas vaiting for a bus, but it vas too cultivate, so I took the subvay home.”

Harry Newton who reminds you — when the market pulls back, add to your positions in AMZN, CAT, FB, and FLEX. Have a great weekend. And don’t even think about voting for Donald.