A breather or the beginning of a major pullback? Gold is on sale and will soon become a great buy. This is a one-year chart:
Personally I’ve sold some of my gold ETFs and kept only a very little.
My friends with savings wonder to do with their cash.They fear for equities and for bonds. Personally I think equities are cheap. Earnings are rising strongly. P/Es are historically low. We are in the third year of a presidential term heading into the 2012 elections. Third years are usually the strongest years for equities.
But cash remains King. A healthy balance sitting in a bank paying virtually nothing is a comfortable, though boring way, to preserve your capital. Keep reading.
Implications of Middle East Unrest? Oil to skyrocket? Stockmarkets to crash? Unrest is traditionally not good for markets. This unrest could pull down a bunch of governments. Think Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt. Maybe Saudi Arabia? All dictatorships and all supported by our aid and our military. What happens to our foreign policy? Chaos? Do those countries become another Iran and hate us? Uncertainty is the bane of financial markets. My favorite quote:
CAIRO—President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party said it is ready to open a dialogue with the youths who have staged three days of antigovernment protests.
Safwat El-Sherif, the secretary general of the National Democratic Party, also called Thursday for restraint by the security forces and protesters during a rally planned for after Friday prayers.
However, Mr. el-Sharif, a longtime confidant of Mr. Mubarak, didn’t offer any concessions to the protesters demanding the longtime president’s ouster nor suggest that steps would be taken to address their complaints about poverty and unemployment.
“The minority does not force its will on the majority,” he said.
Footnote: Mubarak has been in power for 30 years. He was “elected” by a landslide vote of 80%. Such a popular man.
Spitting blood over Microsoft’s crappy products.I fantasize that Windows 7 is better than XP. I fantasize that Office 2010 is better than Offoce 2003. How can one of the world’s largest companies NOT make its newer products better than its older products? Heck, it’s got 89,000 employees and $50 billion in cash.
Well, my fantasies are nonsense. Wishful thinking.After busted hardware messed up my working XP hard drive, I experimented with Windows 7 and Office 2010. Yuch! That’s my conclusion. Yuch! There’s too much changed without any apparent user advantage. Cosmetic change. Put on a pretty face and the customers will swarm, like bees to the pollen. That’s how Microsoft thinks today.
My needs are simple: Having worked years with XP and Office 2003, I expect an upgrade to be painless. It’s not. I expect some new advantages. There aren’t any.
I used to search instantly in Office 2003 using a brilliant plug-in called Lookout. Microsoft bought Lookout and killed it. I searched for a phone number on Outlook 2010 and got this error message — I don’t make this stuff up — “Outloook is currently indexing your items. It has 23,655 items remaining to be indexed.”
Microsoft just reported its earnings. They were disappointing. It saw a slight drop in net income for the fiscal second quarter on a 5% increase in revenue,This stock is going nowhere until it gets a new CEO — one with Vision.
But I’ve said all this before. Why am I wasting your time?
Stupidity is doing the same thing a second time and expecting the result to be different. My fiddling with new Microsoft software gives stupidity a whole new meaning.
Please don’t email me, “Harry, so get a Mac.”
I have a Mac, an iPad, an iPod and a iPhone. I love Apple’s stuff. But there are real reasons why I continue to use my trusty XP with Outlook 2003, and some software I crafted myself for my dictionary writing.
An amazing world. A friend is unhappy with Obama. She made this clip (her first). She uploaded it to YouTube.
With virtually no P.R., it’s had over nine million hits. YouTube offered her money to run a small advertising clip at the beginning. She declined — but will for her next video. To see the video on YouTube, click here.
The Australian Tennis concludes this weekend. This morning’s incredible match between David Ferrer and Andy Murray will be replayed later today on ESPN2. Please watch the Men’s Final on Sunday.
Fri, Jan 28
3 – 6 pm – Men’s Semifinal #2- ESPN2 – ReAir
11pm – 1am – Women’s doubles final – Tennis Channel – LIVE
Sat, Jan. 29
3 – 5:30 am – Women’s Final – ESPN2– LIVE
9 – 11 am – Women’s Final – ESPN2 – ReAir
10 pm – MID – Women’s Final – ESPN2 – ReAir
5:30am – 7:30am – Men’s Doubles Final Tennis Channel – LIVE
Sun, Jan 30
3 – 6:30 am – Men’s Final – ESPN2– LIVE
10 am – 2 pm – Men’s Final – ESPN2– ReAir
7 – 10 pm – Men’s Final – ESPN2– Re-Air
12:30am – 2:30am – Mixed Doubles Final – Tennis Channel – LIVE
Harry Newton who wonders how Obama can say we’re safer now. I took Susan to Kennedy Airport a few days ago. I was carrying a huge backpack. It had my tennis gear. I made it through the parking lot and the airport to Security. No one checked my backpack. I could have detonated it in the same place the suicide bomber did recently in Russia. Or I could have simply left it in the entrance hall and detonated from outside the airport with my cell phone. The Israelis check you outside the airport. Why not us?
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interesting post, pretty much covered it all for me, thanks.
OK, I admit to having succumbed to temptation as one of the 9 million who's now viewed “We The People.” Should any of you have stronger constitutions than mine but would nevertheless like a taste of over-the-top, hyperbolic, wildly-exaggerated uber-patriotism, here are some … highlights (so to speak):
Barack Obama is accused of subjugation … and generational theft … and tyranny … and statism … and coercive government. He has violated our Constitution … and seized private industry … and perverted our economy. But wait – there's more! Apparently not content to rest on his laurels after such lofty achievements, he has gone on to corrupt our currency … and curtail free speech … and weaken our national security … and endanger our sovereignty. All of this in just a couple of years. What will become of our blessed Nation if Obama is allowed to serve out the remainder of his term? To arms!!! No? Why not? How can we allow Obama the subjugator and tyrant and Constitutional violator and perverter of our economy and … (I pause to tear my hair and wipe the spittle from my chin) … whatever … to finish the dastardly work of crippling our national security and possibly delivering the death blow to our national security! (Oh and by the way, in 2009 under this radical socialist commie President who pals around with terrorists, we spent $712 billion on national defense – that's almost half of what all the other nations of the world, combined, spent.)
What a bunch of self-important bullcrap, all in the name of crucifying a middle-of the road Democrat and democrat, still struggling to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess of his Presidential predecessor – all the while turning a hopeful and friendly face to his political opponents who excoriate and vilify him. All of you would do more for your country and spend your time more constructively by watching Obama Girl – that video has had over 35 million hits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
I like this post this is good idea for the help of system problems.
Try Xobni for outlook search.
2010 has most of the search features built right in. As far as indexing goes, all these search plug-ins have to index when you first install them.
You're missing something with Win 7. It's far more stable than XP and if you get the pro version, you can run REALLY old software in an XP “window” as a virtual machine. I use it myself for an older program that checks you have the latest operating system before it will install. This was to make sure you had at least XP, but if it finds vista or 7 it won't run. It works just fine.
Switching to a new OS is always a trial. Like fderfler says, it's trying to keep late adopters covered that causes a lot of the problems.
There is talk that MS is going to release an OS that will have little backwards support, and will therefore be truly new and innovative.
Windoze 7 is much better at managing solid state drives (wiper function for weird NAND flash related stuff – multi-level cells and erase in blocks versus reading/writing in pages; and also alignment of page boundaries). It's also useful if you need something like 32GB of RAM, which I don't, so… yeah, I'm still in XP as well.
Thanks for the Youtube inspiration.
Now think about how much financial and economic freedom you have lost: annual tax submissions, restrictions on savings and investments, government gets their money before you get yours, loop holes to punish and reward, taxes that punish good behavior and reward bad behavior with deductions on debt.
Want your economic freedom back? learn about and support the FairTax Bill, HR25/ S13. http://www.fairtax.org
Welcome to call we with questions at 904-735-7565
Harry,
To answer your question (which I'm sure was rhetorical) it is because we are used to levels of freedom that the Israelis are not even capable of recognizing due to their long history of facing daily hostility as well as virtually being surrounded by enemies eager to destroy them. El Al also has uniformed and armed (I'm not talking about a revolver tucked in a holster either) military people on most, if not all, of their flights. Can you imagine a member of the US Armed Forces strapping a machine gun across the shoulders on United, American, Continental, or Jet Blue? Just picture that for a minute and you will get my point. Just picture that image at almost every building you walk into for business or pleasure and that is why we do not do things the way the Israelis do them. Most Americans love and cherish their freedom. However, most do not appreciate how much freedom we enjoy compared to almost any other nation in the world because as a fairly young nation, we do not have the long history that usually serves as the cause of many such conflicts. Most of us or our ancestors came from other places because we got tired of the local crap and were looking for better opportunities – a better life. As one such person who had the luck to witness and survive more than one revolution (got good at ducking under tables in elementary school when riots took place) I can say that leaving in fear and living by reacting to the terrorists' attacks is the first small victory to those who want to disrupt our way of life. I am sure that my view would be quite different, as would our way of life, if Canada and Mexico were enemy states intent on America's destruction. That's when can compare our actions with those of the Israelis.
Regarding Microsoft… I would argue that many of the faults of the present products come from trying to keep backward compatibility with the past products. It is a necessary evil, but a debilitating one.
There are always excuses for lack of creativity and innovation.
The very important link to that very nice “We the People” video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v… It's good to know that you have more than one Conservative friend, Harry.