In Search of the Perfect Investment

This morning’s jobs report sucked. MarketWatch writes:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy added jobs at a slower pace in June than in May, suggesting that the sudden slowdown in the economy might be longer-lasting and more severe than feared. Nonfarm payrolls rose by only 18,000 in June, well below the 125,000 gain expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch. Job gains in May were revised down to 25,000 in May from the initial estimate of 54,000. Employment rose by an average of 215,000 per month from February through April but now has only averaged 22,000 over the past two months. The unemployment rate ticked higher to 9.2% in June from 9.1% in the previous month. This is the highest level since December. Economists had expected the unemployment rate to remain steady. Average hourly earnings were flat in June and up only 1.9% over the past year.

The market will probably tank today.  Which means stocks will be on sale. Time to pick up your favorites a little cheaper, especially high-yielders like NLY, AGNC, ANH and TWO. And maybe more SGOL. And AAPL and GOOG — see below. The high yielders  need low iinterest rates to make their oodles of money on the spread. Washington won’t raise interest rates with so many people “unemployed.” Personally I think the real unemployment rate is misleading and there are much better indicators of how our economy is really doing — including trucking and railroad carriage statistics. And they’re doing OK, though not ebulliently. But certainly better than the unemployment numbers show. I believe what we’re seeing in the U.S. at present is an explosion in the unground, also called “black” economy — jobs off the books, paid in cash. Europe has “black” in spades. Walk into any Swiss bank and ask them “What can I do with all my black (i.e. untaxed) money?” And you’ll quickly see what I mean.

Did the Saudis finance 9/11 and did we know? The deal between the Saudi royals and Osama was simple: Here’s pots of money; Stay out of Saudia. Don’t hurt us.

Vanity Fair’s August issue has a piece called The Kingdom and The Towers. The article begins:

Was there a foreign government behind the 9/11 attacks? A decade later, Americans still haven’t been given the whole story, while a key 28-page section of Congress’s Joint Inquiry report remains censored. Gathering years of leaks and leads, in an adaptation from their new book, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan examine the connections between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi), the Bush White House’s decision to ignore or bury evidence, and the frustration of lead investigators—including 9/11-commission staffers, counterterrorism officials, and senators on both sides of the aisle.

The lead illustration is

The caption reads:

TROUBLING LINKS From left: King Abdullah, Prince Naif, Osama bin Laden, Prince Bandar, and Prince Turki—Saudis all, as were 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11. Large photograph by Allan Tannenbaum/Polaris; bottom, from left, by Ludovic/REA/Redux, by Li Zhen/Xinhua/Landov, from Getty Images, by Hassan Ammar/AFP/Getty Images, by Hasan Jamali/A.P. Images.
illustration

IN the body of the article are two paragraphs:

In June 1996, according to published reports, while in Paris for the biennial international weapons bazaar, a group including a Saudi prince and Saudi financiers gathered at the Royal Monceau hotel, near the Saudi Embassy. The subject was bin Laden and what to do about him. After two recent bombings of American targets in Saudi Arabia, one of them just that month, the fear was that the Saudi elite itself would soon be targeted. At the meeting at the Monceau, French intelligence reportedly learned, it was decided that bin Laden was to be kept at bay by payment of huge sums in protection money.

In sworn statements after 9/11, former Taliban intelligence chief Mohammed Khaksar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Department (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi targets. In return, Saudi Arabia would provide funds and material assistance to the Taliban, not demand bin Laden’s extradition, and not bring pressure to close down al-Qaeda training camps. Saudi businesses, meanwhile, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

Please read the entire gripping piece. Click here. The print edition has more photos and illustrations and is worth buying.

Check. Check. Check.

+ I bought a new backpack from Tumi. They charged me five times. Four times on my Visa. Once on my Amex.

+ I had ten messages stuck in my Outlook outbox. I assumed they’d gone. Check.

+ My artist left the price off my new dictionary. I should have caught it. Check.

IBM once had THINK as its motto. My company had CHECK. CHECK. CHECK.  It was much more effective.

Huge new  buzz on Apple and Google.

Google has Google+ and Apple has iPhone5. The buzz on the Internet has ratched up. You can literally feel it.

Here”s every iPhone5 rumor we know: Click here.

This Atlantic Monthly piece is called Google+: In praise of starting over. Worth reading. Click here.

Recent favorite New Yorker cartoons.

Harry Newton who’s amazed at how many new ventures are being financed. And how quickly they’re being financed. We’re in the middle of a huge startup boom. This is most gratifying. This New York Times piece “Connecting With Clients Through the Power of Tech” talks about how new technology can really help small business. Click here.