I am a notorious seeker of great bargains. I buy sun hats in the winter, umbrellas in the summer, and Christmas ornaments in January when Costco sells them for ten cents on the dollar. I even go into the barrio to buy Japanese sake where no one knows what it is, and it is sometimes
?If I relied on my customers to tell me what they wanted, they?d ask for faster horses,? said Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors.
If you feel like this market has sucked you down a rabbit hole, you have plenty of company. I have never seen such a profusion of contrary cross market indicators. Traders are running up shares prices while companies are cutting earnings forecasts. Economists are raising GDP forecasts as rising energy prices are taking them the
When I visited the local Safeway over the weekend, I was snared by some uniformed pre-teens, backed by beaming mothers behind a card table selling Girl Scout cookies. I was a pushover. I walked away with a bag of Thin Mints, Lemon Chalet Creams, Do-Si-Dos, and Tagalongs. I have to confess a lifetime addiction to
When I left the Treasury Department, 92% of the American public were against the TARP, but only 60% were against torture. That gives you some idea how much Americans are against bailouts,? said for Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson.
Wednesday will be all about the Euro. That is the day that the European Central Bank announces the result of the next tranche of its quantitative easing program, the LTRO, or Long Term Financial Reorganization policy. This is the program that allows European banks to borrow unlimited funds at 1% with no questions asked. This
There is no limit to how far president Obama is willing to go to stimulate the economy and reassure his election. So I had to be amused when a friend sent me a link to his latest proposal. Warning: the source is a college humor website, so I would take it with so many grains
I don?t know that the retail investor matters anymore. They didn?t come back to the market after the 2000 crash. The idea that the individual investor believes in the stock market now is challenged. We have a market that is increasingly institutional investors trading back and forth with each other?, said Dan Greenhouse, chief global
Elon Musk certainly came up with a winner with his unveiling of Tesla?s Model X on February 9. When I first heard the specifications of Tesla?s new Model X, I was floored. The all- electric vehicle offers four wheel drive. It has spacious seating for seven. It accelerates from zero to 60 miles per hour
I rely on hundreds of 'moles' around the world whose job it is to watch a single, but important indicator for the world economy. One of them checks for me the want ads in the manufacturing mega city of Shensen, China, and what he told me last week was alarming. Wage demands by Chinese workers