But
first . . .
ARMAGEDDON
Warren Kaplan: “Republican leader John Boehner has declared that
the passage of the health care reform law will lead to Armageddon.
Although I have never found myself in agreement with
Boehner in the past, I now find myself in total agreement. Notwithstanding the
president’s many arguments to the contrary, we are now clearly at
the point of Armageddon, as in Ah'm a geddin' sick and
tired of all the Republican hypocrisy, fear-mongering and scare tactics, and I
hope we can soon move on to addressing all the other serious challenges that
face our country.”
REPEAL
AND REPLACE?
From
Bill Press’s latest column,
this reminder: “In 1936, one year after Franklin Roosevelt made Social
Security the law of the land, Republican Alf Landon ran against him on the
slogan: ‘Repeal Social Security.’ He carried two states.”
OUR
EVOLVING BASKET
Last
October 29:
A basket of mini-drug-stock speculations
that might double a year or two from now – to be bought only with
money you can truly afford to lose – is INCY (suggested June
11 at $3.40 or so, $5.62 last night) and DEPO
(down to $3.02 from $4.50 or so when suggested here the first of this month, so
I’ve bought more) and DYAX,
yours yesterday for $3.17.
In
January, we sold INCY at $10.81 – so that one had pretty much doubled
– and replaced
it with DCTH at
$5.37 (or $4.61)
and in February added
NBIX at
$2.60 – as always, only with money you can truly afford to lose.
Last
night, DCTH was $6.77, but my guru expects an upcoming F.D.A. ruling to send it
higher and thinks it could top $30 in three or four years. Which is a
fate-tempting* way to say: “don’t rush to sell this one.”
DEPO,
DYAX, NBIX are up only marginally. Guru advises “hold on.” And
– while we’re at it – guru suggests you hang on to your DNDN puts. They
will go to zero and you will lose everything if the F.D.A. gives the company
the upcoming ruling that the market expects, or – more likely, in his
view – zoom if it does not.
*Famous last words? “Don't worry...it's not loaded.”
– Terry Kath, rock musician as he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. (And I like this one, even though it makes a different point: “Now,
now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” –
an expiring Voltaire, allegedly, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.)
And
now . . .
HOW TO
FIX WALL STREET – I
As usual, per this
from the Miami Herald (thanks, Paul!), Warren Buffett has it right:
.
. . Despite the recent legislation proposed by Sen. Christopher Dodd,
Buffett believes too-big-to-fail will never go away. Given that, he says,
“If an institution had to go to society and say ‘save me because if
you don't save me, I'm going to topple society,’ I would have it so that
that person, the CEO and his spouse at least come away broke.”
In other words, if the bank needs a bailout, the CEO
and his top aides should go bankrupt. Never mind bonuses. Buffett sees
the risk of personal financial ruin as the penalty that will keep bankers from
gambling with our futures. And he says the risk should not be covered by
insurance or by the corporation. .
. .
☞ If you have a chance
to read the full piece, you will also learn about the volcano erupting
in Iceland – and I don’t mean this
one.
HOW TO
FIX WALL STREET – II
Someone
sent me a copy of Jim Stone’s March 19 Boston Globe op-ed,
from which a snippet follows.
But
can I just say first – in the spirit of, “we have hot water!”
– that to find the link to the op-ed (which had not been included with
the copy I was went), I entered nothing more than BOSTON GLOBE ADMIXTURE
(figuring that Stone was one of relatively few to use that word recently,
albeit buried near the end of the piece) and somehow – in ways I will
never understand – one second later, there it was. What a time to be
alive!
Snippet:
.
. . Leading Wall Street firms no longer think of themselves primarily as
investment banks and commercial lenders, channeling money to growing companies
and spurring free enterprise. Their big profits now come from trading, defined
broadly to include the securitization of debt and simultaneous repurchasing of
similar debt securitized by others.
Washington has been slow to consider whether the
furious level of trading activity, in addition to exacerbating America’s
corrosive income disparities, is a result of ill-conceived policies. The
public may see the realities more clearly than the policymakers, too many of
whom are mired in the fallacy that boosting Wall Street profitability to its
prior levels is both necessary and sufficient to bring the rest of the
economy back to prosperity. It is neither necessary nor sufficient, and it
is fair to inquire whether such a course may even be counterproductive. .
. .
☞
Have a great weekend.