In Search of the Perfect Investment

Amazing chart. The Euro has gotten cheaper and cheaper.

Who knows if the Euro will even survive. For the time being there are huge implications: Among them, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Iceland will be cheap to visit this year.

Meantime, investing in the good old USA looks increasingly attractive.

Levin to Goldman Sachs: ‘You Knew It Was a S–tty Deal!’

Senator Carl Levin.

I didn’t watch all seven hours of the Senate’s grilling of Goldman executives. What I saw was fun. Here’s the best report on it. From Newsweek:

After two years of hemming and hawing in Washington about the real culprits on Wall Street, Sen. Carl Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations finally got to the heart of the matter this morning. Drawing on a voluminous collection of internal Goldman e-mails and other exhibits, Levin and the ranking acting co-chair, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, tore into an array of current and former Goldman mortgage traders, including Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre, over the one fundamental question hanging over the whole financial catastrophe. Was Goldman honest with its clients about what was happening in the markets?

The answer to come this morning is obviously no. The internal communications at Goldman about the various deals they were peddling—including one called Timberwolf, described by a Goldman e-mail as “one s–tty deal”—show that what they were telling themselves and what they were telling clients were two completely different things.

Daniel Sparks, the former head of Goldman’s mortgage department, repeatedly declined to utter the simple statement that he had acted in the clients’ best interests, as did two other Goldman witnesses including Tourre (who took the opportunity to deny all the SEC charges against him). “You knew it was a s–tty deal,” Levin told Sparks, repeating again and again a word seldom heard on the record from high public officials. “How much of that s–tty deal did you sell to your clients?”

Sparks refused to say. When Collins asked him whether he felt an obligation to “act in the best interest of your clients,” Sparks couldn’t answer that directly either. “I had a duty to act in a very straightforward way and very open way with my clients,” he responded, prompting gasps of incredulity in the room.

And yet the e-mails show that Goldman wasn’t terribly open or straightforward either, looking to avoid sophisticated hedge funds as clients because they’d want to take the short side of many of these bad deals along with Goldman.

Goldman Sachs today became a laboratory specimen of greed wriggling pathetically under the needle that Carl Levin just stuck in it. Good for him!

For the best (and mercifully short) video clip, go here.

The clubbiness at Goldman Sachs. Once Goldman Sachs was a close partnership, not a public company. It still acts like a close partnership. It prides itself on staying close to its present “partners” (i.e. senior management)  and retired partners, especially those who moved into politics and government service. It organizes dinners and family get-togethers, etc.  This all has huge benefits. An example from the May 3 issue of The Nation magazine:

FRIEDMAN FOILED? In February The Nation reported on questions being raised about Stephen Friedman, former chairman of the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank and a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs. On December 17, 2008, just over one month after the New York Fed directed AIG to pay its counterparties full value for insurance on mortgage-backed securities, Friedman bought 37,300 shares of Goldman stock for about $3 million. (By my calculation, that’s $80.43 a share. They closed last night at $152.93. — Harry Newton)

Friedman purchased the stock at a time when Fed policy prohibited him from owning Goldman shares, and before AIG’s payment to Goldman was disclosed to the public. Friedman and other Goldman board members had been regularly briefed in late 2007 and early 2008 regarding how much money AIG owed Goldman.

The Nation suggested that further investigation from the House Oversight Committee and the Justice Department was in order–not only to determine whether Friedman profited from inside information and violated Fed rules but also to shed light on the arcane regulations and conflicts of interest that riddle the Federal Reserve system.

After completing a review of internal Fed documents in early April, committee chair Edolphus Towns and member Stephen Lynch issued a joint statement saying that “closer examination of this issue is necessary, especially when Congress is considering increasing the Fed’s powers.” A hearing will take place “to learn more from Mr. Friedman and senior Fed officials about how he was permitted to make windfall profits by trading stock in a company he had a role in regulating.” Stay tuned. GREG KAUFMANN

Are you near-sighted? You can focus 12 inches. But 12 feet is blurry. Go to an eye doctor. He’ll prescribe you glasses for infinity.

Infinity glasses are great for playing tennis. But lousy for reading or seeing your computer. My solution: Four sets of glasses:

+ One for infinity long distance — for driving, for tennis, for skiing, etc.

+ One for walking around and working with your computer. this prescription is +0.50 on your long distance glasses.

+ One for reading and working with your computer — depending how dense your screen is. Add another +0.50.

+ One for ultra-pleasurable longer reading bouts. Add +0.75.

Don’t spend $400 on spectacles. Expensive frames are a ripoff. Go to Wal-Mart or stores like FourEyes, which will sell you two complete frames and lenses for $99. Your friends won’t know if you paid $50 or $500. Trust me on this one.

As you get older, check your prescriptions more frequently.

I spent another $2,000 at the dentist yesterday. My mouth breeds bacteria and decay. But so does yours — if you’re not careful.

I forced my dentist yesterday to go through each and every tooth in my mouth and show me how to clean them. Upshot: I need a variety of tools. The four most important are the SoniCare electric toothbrush, dental floss (in all its forms), Act flouoride mouthwash, the proxibrush — my dentist’s generic name for these things:

These brushes come in many widths. The thinnest one works best for me.

My dentist says be wary of the Water Pik. Most people don’t use it correctly. They force food particles into their gum, as against away from their gum.

Visiting the dentist. The dentist pulls out a numbing needle to give the man a shot.

‘No way! No needles. I hate needles’ the patient said.

The dentist starts to hook up the nitrous oxide and the man objects. ‘I can’t do the gas thing The thought of having the gas mask on is suffocating me!’

The dentist then asks the patient if he has any objection to taking a pill.

‘No objection,’ the patient says. ‘I’m fine with pills.’

The dentist then returns and says,  ‘Here’s a Viagra.’

The patient says, ‘Wow! I didn’t know Viagra worked as a pain killer!’

It doesn’t’ said the dentist, ‘but it’s going to give you something to hold on to when I pull your tooth.

Harry Newton, who apologizes for focusing on Goldman Sachs. Their success at making money is awesome.  Their strategies will be studied for years at every business school in the country. In fact, I remember sitting in on one of Michael’s Harvard Business School classes a couple of years ago. It was a brilliant class, taught by — who else — an ex-senior Goldman Sachs executive. Don’t forget to watch David Letterman Top Ten Goldman Sachs Excuses. Click here.