Aln

So here’s a company with actual sales and profits (I know!  What’s come over me?!) – and growing, no less (or at least so they report) – selling at barely 5 times earnings.  A way to own a little piece of the Chinese economy, on the cheap?  With money I can truly afford to lose, I do.

 

TOUGH NEWS FOR THE PLUTOCRACY

The latest Stribling & Associates newsletter (“an insider’s view of the latest trends in luxury residential real estate”) gives you a sense of just how rough it is in New York right now.  Madonna snagged an asking-price $45 million double-width townhouse for just $32 million; a Russian billionaire snagged an asking-price $65 million 8,400-foot penthouse for just $37 million (barely $4,400 per square foot); and ex-Lehman chief Dick Fuld had to take a $6 million haircut on the $32 million asking price for his 16-room Park Avenue apartment. It’s truly bargain time.  A 5,276-foot four bedroom penthouse at 15 Central Park West, was pegged at $80 million but went for (again) only $37 million.  (Is there something about $37 million that just sounds “right” to penthouse bargain hunters?)  It’s a good thing the Republicans lowered taxes at the top, and stand ready to fight not to see them raised – things are tough at the top.

 

HEALTH CARE

Serious health care discussion: here.  Twenty leading economists say the Senate Finance Committee’s health legislation “will reduce long-term deficits, improve the quality of care, and put the nation on a firm fiscal footing.”

 

Affront group bizarro opposition:  here.  The “Center for Medicine in the Public Interest,” which advocates against the public interest; “Americans for Quality and Affordable Health Care,” which opposes affordable health care; and the “Association for American Physicians and Surgeons,” who hold that it’s “evil” for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.  Don’t miss this one.