Cyprus is solved. Maybe. But the perception that it’s solved should help U.S. markets.
For the life of me I can’t understand the Cyprus deal. You got to be a lot smarter.
Why the Russians dumped so much money into Cyprus, a tiny little place with mismanaged banks beats me.
But then, the English dumped much money into Iceland for reasons I never understood. They also had mismanaged banks. Michael Lewis wrote a great piece on it. I bet he’s in Cyprus writing another great piece.
I’ve been eying Canadian banks. I already own BMO.The others seem to be ebbing. I don’t know why.
How often are you meant to have a good idea?
DXJ is a good one. It’s moved strongly. Should do even better. Japan stocks are coming back.
Fascinating weekend reading and watching
+ Inside a star hedge fund (SAC): Lots of Big Bets, Built Fast. From the Wall Street Journal. Click here.
+ Gina Rinehart became the richest woman in Australia in 2010, the richest person in Australia in 2011, and the richest woman in the world in 2012, with an estimated net worth of nearly thirty billion dollars. Read her profile in New Yorker. Click here.
+ It’s hard to feel positive about Israel’s future, given their idiotic policies on settlements and their on-going cruelty towards the local Palestinians. “Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start?” is a cover story from the New York Times Magazine. Click here. Want more, go see the documentary “The Gatekeepers.” Five former heads of Israel’s Secret Service, Shin Bet, reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security, even while violence flares up again and again. The men reconsider their hard-line positions and advocate a conciliatory approach based on a two-state solution. “We won the battle, but lost the war.”
+ The world’s greatest card trick. Click here.
+ Photographs of the world’s most beautiful women.I have no idea how this immense portfolio ever got assembled, nor why. Fact is that they are the most beautiful women in the world and there are zillions of them. In my youth, I made a living with photography, mostly weddings and corporate stuff, like annual reports. I messed around with photographing women. It’s hard, really hard to produce great images. That’s why I’m so impressed with this collection. Hit high-res for the best image. Click here.
+ Lessons from the Iraq War. From John A. Nagl, a retired Army officer and a research professor at the United States Naval Academy. Click here.
+ Herschel, the magnificent Jew. Wonderfully silly joke. Click here.
Simplest PC tips:
+ Update your BIOS. That’s particularly critical with laptops, where an old BIOS can mess up useful functions like sleep and resume.
+ Buy yourself an additional monitor. Having two or three monitors is a real productivity booster.
+ Turn off Windows Search. It’s useless and chews up you hard drive unnecessarily. Go to Control Panel/Programs and Features. On left, you’ll see “turn Windows features on or off.” Click there. Turn it off. Ignore the silly warning. You can always turn it on later f you find you need it. You won’t. I prefer a free program called Search Everything. It works flawlessly. I use it every day. Download it here.
10 Important Ways Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 Is Better Than The iPhone 5. Bigger screen. Faster processor. Better camera. More memory. Removable battery. Better “Siri.” etc. I remain unimpressed with Apple’s present management. Click here.
From Australia comes perfect logic:
The best redneck story ever.
Two Tennessee rednecks are out hunting, and as they are walking along they come upon a huge hole in the ground. They approach it and are amazed by the size of it.
The first hunter says, “Wow, that’s some hole; I can’t even see the bottom. I wonder how deep it is.”
The second hunter says,” I don’t know, let’s throw something down and listen and see how long it takes to hit bottom.”
The first hunter says, “There’s this old automobile transmission here, give me a hand and we’ll throw it in and see”. So they pick it up and carry it over, and count one, and two and three, and throw it in the hole.
They are standing there listening and looking over the edge and they hear a rustling in the brush behind them. As they turn around they see a goat come crashing through the brush, run up to the hole and with no hesitation, jump in head first.
While they are standing there looking at each other, looking in the hole and trying to figure out what that was all about, an old farmer walks up.
“Say there,” says the farmer, “you fellers didn’t happen to see my goat around here anywhere, did you?”
The first hunter says, ” Funny you should ask, but we were just standing here a minute ago and a goat came running out of the bushes doin’ about a hunnert miles an hour and jumped headfirst into this hole here!”
The old farmer said, “That’s impossible, I had him chained to an old car transmission.”
Harry Newton’s friend is buying a fancy, expensive house with lots of problems. He and his wife have fallen in love with the place. Big mistake. Personally, I hope the new house provides all the pleasure they are looking for. I have found that extra houses tend to become a milestone around your neck. One often spends too much time maintaining them and not enough time enjoying them. Susan, my eminently logical wife, likes renting. She loves enjoying the place, then handing the keys (and all the problems) back.
Your collection of “beautiful women” photography is just porn man. Would have been nice to label it as such.
“Cruelty towards Palestinians” never mind the thousands of rickets which terrorise Sderot and the south of Israel, you are a real US Jew stereotype
Time to take the climb out of the ivory tower and go see how your poor fellow Jews live in Israel
Don’t be so rough on Harry, I am sure he donates at least 10% of his income to charity, like the bible says. It must be tough to be an American these days.
Maybe US needs another missile crisis as a reminder what it is like I’m Israel on a daily basis
The worst thing you can do to your PC is update your BIOS. My $700 HP locked up during the
update from the HP website and was completely destroyed. HP helped me out by telling me to stick it up my ass as the warranty was two weeks out.
NEVER, NEVER update your BIOS unless you want to take a chance on being
completely screwed over. The BIOS often cannot be removed or repaired. HP will
never see a dime from me again.
WTF??? That’s a little harsh, people. The key word that seems to have been overlooked is “extra” – as in a vacation or second home, not a primary residence. Thus Harry’s comment about “…too much time maintaining and not enough time enjoying…” If you are spending a limited amount of time (summer, winter, or whenever you take your vacation) at that extra home, chances are a good chunk of that time is spent dealing with maintenance issues – perhaps some of them deferred since you are not there all year – instead of skiing or kicking sand with your feet. The expenses do not stop just because you are not there. Having plugged that money pit myself, I currently rent the same town-house I used to own and it now costs me a fraction of what it used to and I am actually spending more time every year and not spending a single minute dealing with maintenance or HOA issues. I cannot imagine anyone can make a valid argument that owning a second home makes more sense than renting it unless a significant amount of the year is spent there or it is a beach house or a ski chalet with killer locations.
Amen
You mean millstone, not milestone. How long have you lived in this country?
AS dumb as it is to buy a home with lots of problems, it’s probably stupider to rent, if you’re talking about a primary residence. Renting is throwing money away, unless you’re waiting for the right entry point to buy. If one has trepidation about buying a home, it’s better to buy something beneath your means than to rent indefinitely.
It wasn’t a primary residence. It was a vacation / weekend home.
Cliff, why so rude? Milestone was a simple typo. As per renting versus buying, Harry mentioned extra houses when it comes to renting not ones primary residence.
Lame, lame, lame.
As Harry’s friend buying a house I wonder where, between this advice and renting is the crack that his country mansion falls into?
My country “mansion” is way under water. And very expensive to maintain.