In Search of the Perfect Investment

Matt Taibbi strikes again. He’s Rolling Stone’s financial writer. He’s been writing better stuff than most of the financial rags. His latest piece starts:

Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle
Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash.

The piece talks about  seven Cons, with great delicious names:

CON #1 THE SWOOP AND SQUAT

CON #2 THE DOLLAR STORE

CON #3 THE PIG IN THE POKE

CON #4 THE RUMANIAN BOX

CON #5 THE BIG MITT

CON #6 THE WIRE

CON #7 THE RELOAD

His article ends:

To sum up, this is what Lloyd Blankfein meant by “performance”: Take massive sums of money from the government, sit on it until the government starts printing trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to restart the economy, buy even more toxic assets to sell back to the government at inflated prices — and then, when all else fails, start driving us all toward the cliff again with a frank and open endorsement of bubble economics. I mean, shit — who wouldn’t deserve billions in bonuses for doing all that?

Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they’ve been scammed. They call it the “True Believer Syndrome.” That’s sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn’t so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. The real problem is that it doesn’t matter what regulations are in place if the people running the economy are rip-off artists. The system assumes a certain minimum level of ethical behavior and civic instinct over and above what is spelled out by the regulations. If those ethics are absent — well, this thing isn’t going to work, no matter what we do. Sure, mugging old ladies is against the law, but it’s also easy. To prevent it, we depend, for the most part, not on cops but on people making the conscious decision not to do it.

That’s why the biggest gift the bankers got in the bailout was not fiscal but psychological. “The most valuable part of the bailout,” says Rep. Sherman, “was the implicit guarantee that they’re Too Big to Fail.” Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures. And what should really freak everyone out is the fact that Wall Street immediately started skimming off its own rescue money. If the bailouts validated anew the crooked psychology of the bubble, the recent profit and bonus numbers show that the same psychology is back, thriving, and looking for new disasters to create. “It’s evidence,” says Rep. Kanjorski, “that they still don’t get it.”

More to the point, the fact that we haven’t done much of anything to change the rules and behavior of Wall Street shows that we still don’t get it. Instituting a bailout policy that stressed recapitalizing bad banks was like the addict coming back to the con man to get his lost money back. Ask yourself how well that ever works out. And then get ready for the reload.

You can and should read the entire Rolling Stone article.

Happy Birthday Claire.

It was your 30th. Ted, your wonderful husband, organized a surprise party on Saturday night.  This is Claire entering the hotel ballroom which Ted rented for the party.

Claire was genuinely surprised. It was also Ted’s birthday (he’s 32), but all the attention was on Claire. Ted had invited our entire extended families — around 125 came. It’s amazing when you think I arrived in America all alone in 1967. Now there’s enough family to fill a hotel ballroom. Ah, the wonders of compound interest.

Two more magazine subscriptions closed:
I cancelled two more — Time and BusinessWeek. I closed Time because it has gotten boring. And BusinessWeek because Bloomberg hasn’t improved it. My favorite magazine remains The Economist.

Fortune in  a small bottle:
Think New Skin. Think No Crack. Think WD-40. Wonderful, useful things that come in small containers and bring big fortunes.

The day of the Bar Mitzvah, the father and the son were nervous. The mother presented both a tiny aerosol can of Rescue Spray.

Here’s the product description off Amazon. Can you believe this nonsense:

Rescue Remedy contains a combination of five flower essences including impatiens, star of Bethlehem, cherry plum, rock rose, and clematis to help balance the emotions, relieve stress, and reduce fear and nervousness in stressful, traumatic or emergency situations such as receiving sudden bad news, family upset, bereavement, before an exam, meeting, interview, performing, giving a speech, and going to the dentist or hospital.

When you get stressed, you squirt into your mouth. It’s brilliant. Read the label of the tiny 20ml spray container.  You’ll find 27% alcohol. You get 20 sprays for $16.11.  You’re not de-stressed. You’re drunk. this thing is more expensive than the most expensive Scotch. In search of the perfect tiny bottle.

Figuring improvements to this web site.
Courtesy my son, Michael, the genius, we now have a favicom — , which should show up on your browser line and in your favorites.

Michael figured what’s wrong with the charts. I’ve been making them too large for readers with 1024 x 768 and smaller screens. In future, I’ll make them smaller.  Sorry about that.

Tasteless cartoon. So what’s new?

An oldie, but goodie:
A modern Orthodox Jewish couple, preparing for a religious wedding meets with their rabbi for counseling.

The rabbi asks if they have any questions.

The man asks, “Rabbi, we realize it’s tradition for men to dance with men, and women to dance with women at the reception.But, we’d like your permission to dance together,like the rest of the world.”

“Absolutely not,” says the rabbi. “It’s immodest. Men and women always dance separately.”

“So after the ceremonyI can’t even dance with my own wife?”

“No,” answered the rabbi.”It’s forbidden.”

“Well, okay,” says the man,”What about sex? Can we finally have sex?”

“Of course!” replies the rabbi.”Sex is a mitzvah, a good thing within marriage, to have children!”

“What about different positions?”asks the man?

“No problem,” says the rabbi”It’s a mitzvah!”

“Woman on top?” the man asks.

“Sure,” says the rabbi.”Go for it! It’s a mitzvah!”

“Doggy style?”

“Sure! Another mitzvah!”

“On the kitchen table?”

“Yes, yes! A mitzvah!”

“Can we do it on rubber sheets with a bottle of hot oil, a couple of vibrators,a leather harness,a bucket of honey and a porno video?”

“You may indeed. It’s all a mitzvah!”

“Can we do it standing up?”

“No.” says the rabbi.”

“Why not?” asks the man.

“Could lead to dancing!”

Harry Newton, who spent a wonderful weekend with the family, but didn’t do much thinking about investing.