?America?s colleges and universities churn out lots of liberal arts graduates?.By and large, the economy doesn?t need all these generals. We?re not training enough scientists and engineers. The high schools used to churn out enough people with technical skills in the fifties and sixties, but not so today. It?s cheaper just to prepare everyone to
I am writing this report from a first class cabin on Amtrak?s California Zephyr en route from Chicago to San Francisco. The majestic snow covered Rocky Mountains are behind me. There is now a paucity of scenery, with the endless ocean of sage brush and salt flats of Northern Nevada outside my window, so there
I am constantly barraged with emails from gold bugs who passionately argue that their beloved metal is trading at a tiny fraction of its true value, and that the barbaric relic is really worth $5,000, $10,000, or even $50,000 an ounce (GLD). They claim the move in the yellow metal we are seeing is only
In Despicable Me, the latest animated children?s? film from 20th Century Fox, the Bank of Evil, used to finance the nefarious deeds of villains, has listed under its name ?formerly known as Lehman Brothers.?
When I wake up at 4:30 am each morning to check the overnight markets and review the opening salvo of incoming emails, I often have trouble focusing in my groggy state. So I had to blink twice when the first message in my inbox politely inquired if I had time to meet the Secretary of
?If You?ve lived long enough on Wall Street, you know that we shoot our wounded and eat our young,? said Brad Hintz, an analyst with Sandford Bernstein.
?Oh, how I despise the yen, let me count the ways.? I?m sure Shakespeare would have come up with a line of iambic pentameter similar to this if he were a foreign exchange trader. I firmly believe that a short position in the yen should be at the core of any hedged portfolio for the
?At some point in 2012, knuckles are going to be turning white, and we?ll see whatever rabbits Ben Bernanke is going to have to pull out of his hat," said David Rosenberg of Gluskin, Sheff in Associates
There are a lot of belles at the ball, but you can?t dance with all of them. While a student at UCLA in the early seventies, I took a World Politics course which required me to pick a country, analyze its economy, and make recommendations for its economic development. I chose Algeria, a country where
I always thought that a great strategy for a new hedge fund would be to only buy positions from existing hedge funds that were blowing up. That fund would buy securities subject to margin calls and distressed liquidations, which are by definition at six standard deviation extremes. It would not trade very often, but few