In Search of the Perfect Investment

Europe remains a mess. All markets are interwoven. Ten years ago, they weren’t. Hence diversification across market categories worked. It doesn’t now. Now you got to pick very carefully. Or stay in cash and bonds. My high dividend paying mortgage REITs are holding up. So is Con Edison, which also has no business in Europe.You don’t want to do business in Europe. And you don’t want to do business with Wall Street — see Andrew Ross Sorkin’s article below.

The message from travels?

1. Markets will remain volatile, difficult and probably depressed.

2. Your best investment is your own business. And now is a good time to start one. There are huge opportunities wherever you look. You see more of them when you travel. Good enthusiastic people who listen to their customers are the best. Those people are now available, newly unemployed.

Recommended reading:

+  The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class. They had good, stable jobs – until the recession hit. Now they’re living out of their cars in parking lots. This is the story of what happens to people who lost it all. It’s very sad, and increasingly common. Capital preservation is one lesson. The second is the rainy day does come and it comes in buckets. For these people, The Great Recession was a rainy day beyond all rainy days. Click here.

+ The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia. How America’s biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy – until they were caught on tape. This is the story of how Wall Street ripped municipalities off for billions. As the piece by Matt Taibbi explains,

…These three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from “virtually every state, district and territory in the United States,” according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being -cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

You can (and should read) the entire piece. Click  here.

+ A Con Man Who Lives Between Truth and Fiction. A man ran a $450 million Ponzi scheme. Andrew Ross Sorkin flew down to visit him in jail. Writes Sorkin:

I was there to talk to him because his story is a cautionary tale of the highly sophisticated, often endemic, fraud that still lurks on Wall Street. People I spoke with who dealt with him are still mystified about the breach of trust and how no one had a clue about his deception until it was too late.

“Everyone cheats,” he said as a matter of fact.

Read the full piece here.

+ The New Rules of Sunscreen. The editors at Men’s Journal researched sun screens. “Forget all the misleading BS you’re heard about sunscreen,” they wrote, “Here’s all you need to know to find products that really work.” Click here.

Useful travel tips. The first travel tip is not to try uploading this column on Aer Lingus’s WiFi right at departure time. I stupidly did. And lost half of the copy and al the photos. hence I’m trying again with the tips

1. American Express platinum card will get you two business class seats for the price of one. It’s the bargain of the century. You can bargain with those airlines who don’t honor Amex’s platinum deal. In fact, you can bargain with everyone in today’s economy, including hotels and the poshest of retail stores. You must do your bargaining on the phone. the Internet is useless for bargaining.

2. When they open the door into your chosen hotel room immediately object (politely) and ask if they have a better one? They always do.

3. Get over your dislike of fat people. They’re everywhere. And they’re eating constantly, in airports, in restaurants, in hotels and outside eating huge ice cream cones. Here is scenic Shannon Airport.

4. Never eat main courses in restaurants. They’re too big. Order one appertiser, or a soup and an appertiser if you’re really famished. If you travel, you have to fight the need to eat and eat and eat. They don’t have zillions of tourist sites. But they do have zillions  of restaurants.

5. Leave home all your credit cards and other ID stuff. You don’t need it. And it probably will get stolen. A friend got pickpocketed in a tram in Lisbon. The police said they knew the culprits but couldn’t prosecute because by the court date, all the victims (the tourists) had left. There are motorcycle-riding thieves in Phukkit, Thailand and Phnon Penh, Cambodia. A woman tourist got killed in Phukkit when a motorcycle thief accidentally stabbed her. Her carried to the knife to cut her handbag strap. Women should even carry a purse. They’re too vulnerable. Carry the important stuff around your neck inside your jacket.

6.  Be wary of overhead bins. Everyone wrecks their shoulder and their back lifting cases into and out of them.Bend your knees when hoisting.

7. Most tourist traps are exactly that — traps. We visited Bunratty Castle, a sort of medieaval theme with a small, boring castle. There was only one way out.

The gift shop was bigger than the castle.

8. Make summer and winter lists of all the clothes you took last time, then edit for the next trip. Saves forgetting urgent stuff. Figure on two sets of underwear each day.

9.  GPS often gets it wrong. Good idea to have a paper map for backup.

10. WiFi is ubiquitous. Free email is cheaper than pricey roaming phoning.

11. European car rentals can nickel and dime you to death. They wanted $12.50 a day for a second driver. Our rental price doubled for automatic transmission.

12. When you first log on to WiFi, always open a browser. Then do your email.Nothing will work until you open your browser and agree to their conditions.

13. Always ask your hotel for extra pillows. Beg for feather ones. You’ll sleep better.

14. Visit the gym. Even ten minutes running on the treadmill will make you feel better.

15. Don’t pay with your Visa or MasterCard. They charge 3%more for purchases overseas. With Amex, it’s free.

Favorite recent New Yorker cartoons:

Wimbeldon Tennis has started. It’s on ESPN, ESPN2 and The Tennis Channel. It runs most of the time — either in the original or in replays. For a full schedule, click here.

Harry Newton who finally switched to Windows 7 on his new, faster ThinkPad X220. Windows 7 seems to be faster and more reliable — I haven’t had an “out of memory” message yet. But it takes a little getting used to. It’s a bit stupid, too. I’ve found some replacement software for stuff that doesn’t work on Win 7, including SyncToy, free from Microsoft. It’s slow but seems to work. I also like PDF Exchange over the free, junky Adobe Reader which came with the machine.

Useful Irish toast: Here’s to our wives and girlfriends. May they never meet!