The sun is shinning. Finally. But the city is a mess. Subways and tunnels are flooded. Airports are closed. They’re not landing floatplanes at La Guardia. They could:
Our bus and subway system carries 8.5 million passengers a day. That’s a lot of people who can’t get to work.
Much of downtown Manhattan has no power. One friend lives on the 34th floor. He has no water, no electricity and no elevators. His friends walked miles uptown to charge their iPhones. These were hapy campers at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle.
They’re opening the NYSE and NASDAQ today because it’s the end of the month, or because it’s Halloween. You choose. I bet trading will be scary.
The most thorough visual coverage of what happened is in he U.K. Daily Mail. Click here.
Excerpts from long weekend reading:
+ Bill Black has written a book called “The Best Way To Rob a Bank is to Own One.” Great title. I’ve not read the book.
+ 15 People Who Failed Before Becoming Famous. they include Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, J.K. Rowling, Jerry Seinfeld, Lucille Ball, Fred Astaire, Steven Spielberg (who got rejected from film school – three times), The Beatles, Stephen King, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs nd Elvis Presley. Click here.
+ By mid-November more than a billion shares of Facebook shares will be eligible to sell — about 48% of the FB shares that are trading today.That could be hugely negative.
+ A lot of ink on Apple over the weekend. The two firings are good. Maybe bad. The earnings are depressing. Maybe not. Not the same old ebullience. Apple’s stock is taking a breather.
+ I love technology. This is a clever screen that hangs outside the mailroom for a large residential high-rise. The package room flips switches to alert residents to deliveries. Neat.
+ From a recent Richard Russell newsletter:
Remember, the great profits in the market come to those who buy good stocks when they are on the bargain table and at a time when nobody wants them. Those periods may come two or three times in a decade or two. The trick is to have the money and the guts to buy those stocks when they are unwanted bargains. I hope to get us there — safely.
+ The two best men’s health magazines are Men’s Health (click here) and Men’s Journal (click here).
+ Best Buy remains a great short. I went into my local Best Buy to see the new Windows 8 laptops. It took 20 minutes to find a machine that actually worked. Most depressing. Best Buy will now “price match” anything sold by Amazon. That means you must bring proof of Amazon’s price into Best Buy and it must be an item that Amazon itself actually sells — not one of its associates. Of course, all this assumes that Best Buy has what you want in stock — which they usually don’t.
+ Michael R. Bloomberg in Bloomberg View on immigration as an economic issue The New York City mayor writes that immigration reform is an issue for Democrats and Republicans to convene around, not a partisan talking point. Immigration reform is “the single most important step the federal government could take to bolster the economy,” he writes. Citing various studies, Bloomberg says immigrants create businesses, jobs, and revitalize cities as a result. One solution: Demand that the election frames immigration’s role in the economy. “To remain great, we must remain a nation of immigrants,” he writes. “To do otherwise would betray not only our heritage, but also our future.”
+ You can buy a New York City apartment, put a tenant in it and earn 2.5% a year cash-on-cash on your money.Since apartment prices rise by 2% or 3% a year, your return will rise to 5.5%. That’s better than what you can earn at the bank. You’ll need to “manage” it.
Harry Newton who spent the last four days updating and correcting the 27th edition of my dictionary. Friend Pete Rawlings emails, “BTW, while birding one day I saw a great statement on a bench. It said “Don’t Postpone Joy“. I’m going to try not to. Have a great day!”
Some of our buses are running. The bridges are open. It’s great bicycling weather. They’re planning on holding the Marathon this weekend. Only 40,000+ runners, if most make it.
Harry, I want to purchase a pocket size camera with specifications similar to the Sony RX100. It is expensive but I believe I will use it more than my large cameras. Do you have experience with the Sony RX100 or can you recommend another pocket size camera?
It’s a beautiful camera. It has a huge image sensor. I’ve played with it, but decided against buying it because its zoom was very limited. I bought the Canon G15 and Canon G1X instead. A lot depends on the size of the camera – shirt pocket, pants pocket, belt attachment, etc. and the size of the enlargement you will need to make. I like Canon’s software. There’s a big review of the RX00 here: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sony-cybershot-dsc-rx100
Without immigrants, California would come to a screeching halt, not only on our extensive farms, but in every town and city. Our federal policies are insane (no surprise there), forcing massive illegal immigration and chasing our great foreign tech school graduates back to their homelands once they graduate, or to Canada which welcomes them with open arms. Opening the doors should be coupled with one language, English, and other traditional melting pot policies that worked in the past. And voter ID’s should be mandatory.
Let Cali come to a screeching halt without illegals. What will happen is that farmers will finally have to pay indiginous labor a fair rate. Prices go up for a short time until the market equalizes, then produce falls again when compensated for less demand. Go try to get a job in another country without their equivalent of a work visa/green card. Aint happening. Only happens here. What foreigners do is take our educations home. They should never have been allowed to go to school here in the first place:this is a root cause, beside Govt subsidies to universities, that college is so expensive. shrink the demand and the price will follow.
Deflation is good. Adam Smith works. The best news is that government has to spend what it takes in, in taxes when the currency is stable. This will cause, at the margin, massive decrease in government spending and taxation. Also good.
The Fed, and inflation enables Congress to deficit spend, and rampant lawless in both parties caused the mess. Only debt default, sound money, and deflation are the long term answers. Unless you like Weimar, that is. Throw in mass emprisonment of bankers, and Bush/Obama admin executives and theres a party.
I’m a legal immigrant. I’ve paid the Federal Government over $60 million in taxes. I got my green card i the late 1960s after I graduated from an American university. They didn’t send graduates home in those days. I don’t know why we do now.