In Search of the Perfect Investment

China is rebounding. We are rebounding. This weekend should stop the Greek contagion.

Either they get to reduce their debts or they pull out of the Euro. My preference is always for control over your own destiny — get out of the Euro, called Greexit.

To assume that someone else will take care of you is the height of folly — for Greece and for us. Imagine if Germany were your employer?

How conveniently we forget. In 1953, Hermann Josef Abs, center, signed an agreement with Germany’s creditors that effectively cut West Germany’s post-World War II debt in half.

Writes the New York Times,

The main creditor demanding that Greeks be made to pay for past profligacy benefited not so long ago from more lenient terms than it is now prepared to offer.

But beyond serving as a reminder of German hypocrisy, the image offers a more important lesson: These sorts of things have been dealt with successfully before.

The 20th century offers a rich road map of policy failure and success addressing sovereign debt crises.

The good news is that by now economists generally understand the contours of a successful approach. The bad news is that too many policy makers still take too long to heed their advice – insisting on repeating failed policies first.

“I’ve seen this movie so many times before,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on sovereign debt crises.

“It is very easy to get hung up on the idiosyncrasies of each individual situation and miss the recurring pattern.”

The recurring, historical pattern? Major debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt’s face value. The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down will turn out to be.

Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It’s not just that they benefited from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany’s postwar economic miracle. Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to power.

My favorite Photoshop of a Greek ATM machine:

Stocks on sale?

Who knew that stocks have been “on sale” this week? Hard to predict where the bottom is.  But… Apple looks cheap. The Apple Watch is a dud, until we get some serious third-party apps — maybe a decent health app to compete with Fitbit? Apple’s future is bound to China, where its iPhone sales are strong.

Some of the financials are now yielding nicely: BX (Blackstone Group) is 6.9%; LADR is 6.1%; STWD is 8.7%. NLY is bouncing back. It’s yielding over 12.4%.

Sell the railroads short. Cramer’s right: The railroads are in secular decline, now that carrying coal is cratering.

Railroads are KSU, CSX, NSC, DJT and UNP. I need to figure which ones are (or used to be) the biggest coal carriers. I wish there were a railroad ETF I could short. I can’t find one yet.

What’s happening with cybersecurity in your IT department?

Most companies (a) ignore cybersecurity, and (b) think the IT department has it all in hand.

On both counts they’re wrong.

Yesterday, The NYSE, United Airlines and the Wall Street Journal’s web site stopped working — each for several hours!

Were the sites hacked? No one is saying. Which is ominous. They owe us an explanation.

Read the Fortune Magazine story on the Sony hack:

Click here.

YouTube is a vast resource:

Your laptop keyboard or screen needs replacing? Check YouTube for a helpful do-it-yourself (DIY) video.

Your computer needs more memory. YouTube has a helpful DIY video.

You get the idea.

If your laptop’s keyboard is giving trouble, here are some tips from PC Magazine. Click here.

There are two ways to speed up your laptop or desktop — more memory and replace your spinning platter hard drive with a solid state one. YouTube will show you how.

Don’t weep for me.

Dick Fuld is the arrogant a**hole who ran Lehman Brothers, driving it into bankruptcy in 2008 (the largest ever in U.S. history), almost bringing down the entire world financial system.

He stepped from Lehman’s bankruptcy with huge personal assets, including a 71-acre ranch in Sun Valley which he’s now selling:

At one stage his Big Wood River Estate was listed for $59 million. At auction, it will get between $30 million and $50 million. It has views. It has a wonderful fly-fishing river, etc. For more, go to the auction web site — Make sure you watch the video. Gorgeous location. Do I want it? Yes. Can I afford the maintenance? No. Click here.

The market is plummeting. Guess who chooses to advertise?

Is this what the new science of data analytics produces?

Why do I think this funny?

For your protection go to http://www.alwaysdiscreet.com/

Favorite “Laws”

+ Law of Physical Surfaces – The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet.

+ Law of Logical Argument – Anything is possible IF you don’t know what you are talking about.

+ Law of Physical Appearance – If the clothes fit, they’re ugly.

+ Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy – As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

Harry Newton who remains incredulous that his bank, which has been hugely hacked, refuses to institute two-factor authentication. When my blog was attacked a year or so ago, we put in two-factor authentication and it stopped the attacks in their tracks. We haven’t had a problem since. I told my friendly banker yesterday that my laptop logged instantly onto her bank site — without my inputting a password, or doing anything except opening a browser. This shouldn’e happen. This morning I emailed, “I have nearly $2 million in my checking account. When you get hacked again and I possibly lose some of that money, is it insured? If so, how much? Only $500,000? Should I move it from a checking account to a brokerage account where it is insured? This is important, given how little attention your bank seems to pay to cybersecurity…” No reply yet.