The French banks are collapsing. Bank of America is firing everybody and their uncle — a prelude to their imminent bankruptcy. The IPO market is beyond dead, well into rigormortis. The big private equity firms will never get out of their miserable investments.
Daddy, what’s a guaranteed way to make a small fortune?
Son, there is only one way. And that’s to start with a large fortune.
Here’s a quick list of industries and companies that won’t exist in two weeks because the world is slowing down, markets are seizing up and politicians are useless turds, who can’t make needed decisions.
- French banks
- American banks, especially BofA
- Mining and farm machinery companies like Caterpillar, Cummins and Deere
- Private equity companies
- PC makers (a la HP)
- Smartphone companies (RIMM, HP, Nokia)
- Book publishers because eBooks are the way to go and Amazon is about to become the largest publisher ever
- Mining and oil companies (as the world economy slows down)
- Mall and store-based retailing
- Store based electronic purveyors, like Best Buy.
You get the message.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans.
The Germans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much.
He tuned in, turned on and dropped dead at 76. … not from smoking, from LSD or anything exotic. But from the horribly mundane cause — prostate cancer.
The VIX reflects the present mayhem. It’s going up and down faster than an Australian whore’s drawers.
The point of all this nonsense? While the world burns, follow my continuing (and ultra-boring advice)
1. Buy gold. Chavez of Venezuela plans to nationalize his gold industry and bring home all the gold his country has in overseas banks. That sounds idiotic for Chavez, but bullish for gold.
2. Use tight stops. Down 8%, get out. Don’t even ask why. Everything is being crushed — except gold and high dividend paying mortgage REITs. They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You’ll be able to pick up your favorite stocks cheaper later.
3. Don’t look at it. Leave this morning for a long weekend. See below.
4. Re-read yesterday’s column for a sane, intelligent explanation. Click here. This morning I’m a little giddy.
5. Put a little money into an Australian bank CD at 6%+.
Guzaarish is a great movie. Watch it on Netflix. I watched it on Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong recently. It was my second Bollywood movie ever. And it was great.
After an onstage disaster leaves illusionist Ethan Mascarenhas (Hrithik Roshan) a quadriplegic, he channels his magic into a hit radio show. But on the 14th anniversary of his accident, Ethan again elects to take his life into his hands — this time irrevocably. Against the wishes of his faithful nurse (Aishwarya Rai) but supported by his mother, Ethan fights for the right to die just as a young man approaches him for tutelage. And then the movie gets interesting and teary. I cried. The nurse is gorgeous.
For my adventurous fiends.
A circus owner runs an ad for a lion tamer and two people show up. One is a retired golfer in his late sixties and the other is a gorgeous lady in her mid-twenties. The circus owner tells them, “I’m not going to sugar coat it. This is one ferocious lion. He ate my last tamer so you two had better be good or you’re history. Here’s your equipment — chair,whip and a gun. Who wants to try out first?”
The girl says, “I’ll go first.”
She walks past the chair, the whip and the gun and steps right into the lion’s cage. The lion starts to snarl and pant and begins to charge her. About halfway there, she throws open her coat revealing her beautiful naked body The lion stops dead in his tracks, sheepishly crawls up to her and starts licking her feet and ankles. He continues to lick and kiss her entire body for several minutes and then rests his head at her feet.
The circus owner’s jaw is on the floor. He says, “I’ve never seen a display like that in my life.” He then turns to the retired golfer and asks, “Can you top that?”
The tough old golfer replies, “No problem, just get that lion out of here.”
For my Jewish friends
In ancient Israel , it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com.
And she said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?” And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, dear?”
And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).”
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent. To prevent neighboring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures – Hebrew To The People (HTTP).
And the young men did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. And indeed did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.
And Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.” And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or eBay as it came to be known. He said, “We need a name that reflects what we are.”
And Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.” “YAHOO,” said Abraham. And because it was Dot’s idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.
Abraham’s cousin, Joshua, being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot’s drums to locate things around the countryside.. It soon became known as God’s Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).
That is how it all began!
(And that’s the truth…Kind of…Or, Alternatively, One Version of The Truth!)
For my Irish friends
A tourist in a bar in Florida asks an Irishman sitting at the bar,
“Why do Scuba divers always fall backwards off their boats?”
To which the Irishman replies:
“If they fell forwards they’d still be in the boat.”
Harry Newton who escaped it all by leaving New York City last night — I think it’s burning. And is now in bucolic Spencertown, where the major activity is walking Rosie:
And watching the clouds roll on by:
There’s something supremely comforting in watching Rosie pooh outside. Today’s big accomplishment: she did it at 6:15 AM. Welcome to Maslow.
Talk about a haircut –go see Rocco for a two way haircut your hair and your checkbook….PS– he buys scrap gold
People will lose their shirt with gold too! The smart money is selling —-I know its time to sell when my barber is buying and rocco is buying and telling his clients to invest–Look out 900.00 gold on the way……
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”……Margaret Thatcher
“Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, the the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.”……Ayn Rand
Harry if you're extremely lucky some day you'll be able to sit down with your grand daughter and have a little tea party.
Rand often spoke of moral absolutism, saying “There can be no compromise on basic principles”
…the same Rand who spent the last years of her life supported by Medicare and SS.
I'm glad the government support was there for her, regardless of the hypocrisy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
I wonder how much in taxes Ayn Rand paid, after all The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged sold millions of copies and The Fountainhead was made into a popular movie staring Gary Cooper….can you say “royalties”? Gee I wonder if she had that money if she would have needed, as you say, Medicare and SS? …………..The Huffington Post—–please, give me a f*****g break.
Harry — you gotta make the headline bigger. Some people obviously missed it.
Harry, you really think B of A is going out of business. As the world's largest bank, I doubt the gov't would let that happen. At these prices for the stock, it looks like a long term buy. The stock is very oversold on technicals.