PrudentMan, CFA

Total Rating:
+21 / -3

93 Comments

    • Wed Nov 19th 09:22 AM | Rating: +1 0
      Commented on:
      Can Central Bankers Prevent a Great Depression?
      The Fed (we are not supposed to have a "Central Bank" as it was designed to be independent) usually exacerbates the problem because they bend (see Greenspan) to Congress, owned by Wall Street, and make stupid economic errors. So, the answer is No!
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    • Wed Nov 19th 09:18 AM | Rating: +1 0
      Commented on:
      Isn't Deflation a Good Thing?
      The question should be "stagflation"... You may have temporary price declines due to temporary demand destruction but you can't have deflation while the money printer is running 24/7.

      As we know from our economic history, it is politically difficult to sop up all this excess money. With the House of Representatives incumbents running every two years they (a good reason for Congressional Term Limits) put tremendous pressure on the "Central Bank" (which is supposed to be independent and fifty years would have opposed the moniker) to keep the spickets of monetary supply flowing.

      It is inflation we must concern ourselves with. Deflation is self correction unless our Administration makes the mistakes of FDR by exacerbating the problems by destroying incentive and then only bailed out by Hitler's invasion of Poland, contrary to what the historical revisonists say.
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    • Mon Nov 17th 08:26 AM | Rating: +1 0
      Commented on:
      Why Paulson and Bernanke's Plans Don't Work
      It is factually wrong to think the current economic situation is even close to 1929. Actually 1932, the year I was born, was terrible and FDR had very little to do with getting us out of the soup. Actually, his policies extended the depression by implying that things were so bad they needed Uncle Sap to get the economy going. Sound familiar? If the truth be told, Hitler's invasion of Poland had more to ending the depression than FDR. That was the first time anyone in our family good get a full time job.

      This economy is stronger than that of the seventies. We also had economic problems in the early nineties that I personally thought were worse than now. Real estate prices were plummeting. The Free Market corrected and even made a clueless Clinton appear to me an economic genius. The luck of the Irish.
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    • Mon Nov 17th 08:14 AM | Rating: +2 0
      Commented on:
      Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
      In my fifty years of professional investment experience, my intuition is that governments should be minimal and usually are part of the problem instead of the solution. It is obvious in this "crisis", which is actually not as serious as the economic situation of the seventies when the people of Kansas had to bail out New York City, calls for less government intrusion rather than more.

      When people are told that any government agency is going to solve their problems those people have a lack of a sense of reality. In the case of derivatives and leverage the government could have easily ameliorated the risks by raising rates and Congress should have given the SEC the tools they need though I believe they already have those tools but, for political reasons, failed to take away the punch bowl. After all, the member of the House of Representatives run for reelection every two years and they like bull markets and never ever want to decrease the money supply.

      If the Administration would have announced in 2007 that the Free Market would have to clean up any messes it got itself into the markets would have corrected accordingly and quickly. Now everyone who made a stupid, greedy or both mistake is waiting for some government organization to bail them out. The line continues to lengthen and the G-20, beings a political organization, is clueless as to the ability of markets to correct their own mistakes.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 15:37 PM | Rating: +2 0
      Commented on:
      Can Obama's Policies Revitalize Traditional Oil ETFs?
      Drill baby, drill is now print, print money now.

      If economies could grow because of governments increasing money supply and not productivity there would be no poor nations.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 09:22 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Obama and the Market: Now Through January
      Predicting economic growth and human nature with mathematical formula results in Long Term Capital Management.

      As Ludwig Von Mises stated decades ago, econometrics is only useful in helping one see where we were and is counter-productive because it gives false security and interferes with sound analysis. In other words it is voodoo science.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 08:57 AM | Rating: 0 -1
      Commented on:
      Cramer's Lightning Round - Obama In, Hercules Out (11/11/08)
      Anyone who pays any attention to this lunatic deserves to lose money. He should run for Congress and join the rest of the egomanical loud mouths who surprise the world the few times they are correct.

      I would be surprised in any of his groupies have any money left to invest.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 08:14 AM | Rating: +3 -1
      Commented on:
      Paul Krugman + Al Gore = The Way Forward
      Paul Krugman?? Give me a break. The economic adviser to Enron!

      Krugman, like Arafat and Jimmy Carter (known for bring terrorists to Iran) won the Nobel Peace Prize - the badge for those who have done most to destroy Freedom.
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    • Wed Nov 12th 08:09 AM | Rating: +7 0
      Commented on:
      Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
      Sophistry of lost jobs in the auto industry.

      Consumers will buy cars and they need workers to build them. The company's name makes no difference as the quality and cost of the product is most important factor to the consumers.

      The jobs lost by one company will be picked up by another. Like the makers of buggy whips getting jobs in the auto industry. This is the natural dynamics of the Free Enterprise System. Any government intervention tends to pervert this natural process.

      President Bush asked congress for programs to retrain workers. Like the oil legislation he proposed in 2001 they not only ignored him but vilified him. Time for Congressional Term Limits as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have overstayed their welcome and though they are good at providing "pork" to their constituents their continuance in office are detrimental to the economy of the U.S.

      If Congress treated Medicare and Social Security like they treat Wall Street mismanagement and greed, those programs would have been solvent twenty years ago.
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    • Mon Nov 10th 13:12 PM | Rating: 0 -1
      Commented on:
      An Opportunity in USD/CAD?
      Interesting that no mention of inflation due to the "printing presses" being run worldwide.

      Will we have worldwide "stagflation"... How will the governments deflate the money expansion. Those are questions that should be addressed now. Is then medicine worse than the disease?
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    • Mon Nov 10th 12:01 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Market Not Risky Enough for You? Try These Two New Triple-Levered ETFs
      I can see why Vegas is having trouble.

      One thing I learned as a depression baby, you can't be put in bankruptcy unless you have debt. Three to one debt to equity is certainly fun but remember there is negative leverage as well as positive leverage. I even heard that they might be teaching the risks of negative leverage at Harvard, MIT, Wharton, Yale and Stanford.

      When students are taught that they can walk on water with and elite degree, a taste of reality should be in curriculum before they go into investment banking and crush pension fund investments.
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    • Mon Nov 10th 11:53 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Welcome to Wall Street, Barack Obama
      Of course, the most important issue for a president usually should be National Security as, in reality, Congress, especially the House where all spending bills must generally be introduced, have much more power of the economy than the president.

      Barack Hussein Obama, Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America just doesn't resonate with this Korean Veteran, nor my deceased disabled war veteran father or WWII brothers, who are probably spinning in their graves. But, Obama has been elected by his groupies who equated the presidency with the head of the student union. Then, again, there were about twenty-five people who started out this year to become president and the least experienced won.

      The question isn't what a clueless Obama will do, the question is what will George Soros and his One World Government elites tell him to do.

      Welcome to Disneyland.
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    • Mon Nov 10th 09:38 AM | Rating: +4 0
      Commented on:
      Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
      Print money. Keep filling the punch bowl. Don't make anyone responsibility for their reckless greed. This make countries great? Ask the Soviet Union when the made jobs and entitlement.

      None of this increases production of goods and services but gives us more inflation than LBJ's "Guns and Butter" of the sixties. We paid the price in the seventies.

      So drink now and be merry. The hangover will come sooner than you want. The sophistry of the politicians are pathetic and detrimental to the now Democratic Socialism of the U.S. whose Commander in Chief will be Barack Hussein Obama who only has shown he can get elected by those idiots who thought they were electing the president of the Student Body.
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    • Sun Nov 9th 14:28 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Coming Soon: The Zombie Condos That Ate New York
      A developer in Florida wants told me that they build condos as long as they can get money to do so. In other words, marketing research is not a thing the industry do. If it is determined that 100 units are needed five developers will each build 100 units. What is going on in the real estate market is not very different than what has happened several times in the past fifty years. Unfortunately, the media, Administration and Congress are panicking (it was a presidential election year and the panic paid off) are recklessly throwing tax payer money at a problem that would have solved itself.

      Assets have a tendency to revert to it real owners which are the lenders to day and they don't want them. Too bad. Eat the mistakes you made because of your greedy stupidity.
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    • Sat Nov 8th 20:12 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Buffett on Investing vs. Business
      I have found in my close to fifty years as an investment professional that virtually no retail clients understand the stock/equity business ownership risks. I also know of some money managers and hedge fund traders who are completely clueless about business and they have MBAs or law degrees from Harvard. This past year is proof that Investment bankers don't understand how to run a business, but most of us old timers knew this in the late sixties and early seventies and they have continued to make the same mistakes over and over again.

      This is good stuff and should be included in the "Know Your Customer Questionnaire" when brokers open client accounts. Of course, nobody expects the media to understand any of this as few market commentators can balance their own checkbooks.
      View article »
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