It’s not like the bridge will fall down on vehicles and crush them, the engineers claim. They’ve added some anti-vibration and dampening measures to stop falling steel or at least to discourage the steel from falling directly onto cars and bridge surface. If that doesn’t work, the State is self insured, so California could just send an IOU to any motorists who lose the time and bridge collapse lottery.

It’s an important consideration for the analysts who are telling us that the economy expanded last quarter, and that the recession is over. There is still a massive amount of borrowing on our horizon for the repairs and maintenance of infrastructure that has been ignored the past 20 years, in order to allow municipal and government employees to receive raises and pension benefits that cannot be paid from the current tax revenues. As we layoff many, ask productivity increases from those who stay and are unable to borrow enough to repay these bills, how can we ask taxpayers to drive on bridges that are 2-300 feet above large bodies of water, when many bridges are in danger of collapse?

The good news against this stark backdrop of declining tax revenues and decaying infrastructure is unemployment. As it goes up, fewer citizens are driving to work and that will result in lower death tolls, which are the tolls that will be paid for our short sightedness. When you approach a bridge that was built awhile ago, speed over it. The less time you spend on the bridge, the less likely that you’ll be left without roadway under your car when the musical funding game renders some losers.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

At a casino, the house edge is probably blended around 4-6%. It’s low on pass line bets in craps and in Baccarat, low in slots usually (for casinos that get player time) and higher in the stranger, more exotic games. In horse racing, it’s usually pretty high, as much as 20% which is retained from the betting pool to run a racetrack and provide incentive for owners to lose money in the thoroughbred business.  In sports betting it’s usually 10%, with the vigorish (the Russian word for winning I am told by Wikipedia), which is the retained difference between the inbound and outbound money in a balanced book.

I’m curious as to what the vigorish is in financial markets. Is it half a percent or 10%? As I examine the major investment banks, I’m taken with the fact that they earn most of the predictable money that pays their fixed costs from trading. It seems that the trading spreads are small when I look at quote screens. I’m just wondering how they do it. More to follow and Happy Halloween.

Be mindful, be careful, and good luck!

The reason every bank has failed to date is pretty much the same; the practice of real estate lending doesn’t work, combined with a market in which originators don’t hold loans to maturity. “Comparable pricing” is a bad method to lend money against as P.T. Barnum would have told you (history questions his “there’s a sucker born every minute” quote but we’ll assume), because it presumes a fluidity to real estate market and pricing, and doesn’t establish the underlying cost of building a home or building in general. If you tried to get a bank to buy into lending 3 X the cost of a car or some ridiculous amount of money against a coat, a bank would be conservative and suggest a trip to the shylock in your area. This reality is especially evident when the loan is like the child’s game “hot potato,” something taken for an instant by parties, each of whom earns something for the moment they carry the loan.

The comparable system in real estate makes no sense as it lends itself to shoddy lending practices in a market where banks sell into a pool or conduit structure. In the refrigerator business, companies cut price, offer special service and delivery incentives, and have to worry about burdensome fixed costs to be competitive. They also have to sell millions of appliances to earn their keep. The builders in housing can sell a couple of houses a year in a boom market and make what some might call “serious coin.”

Cap rate, the examination of value compared to triple net income on a piece of real estate, is the only true measure of value. Stop listening to your realtor™ and start caring about your money. Your realtor™ is like the scientist in “Schrodinger’s Cat,” a book about quantum mechanics in which we are reminded that observers influence outcomes. When your car salesman says, ” these babies sell for twice list price,” do you break out the checkbook? Why do realtors have credibility that drives markets? If a property earns $20,000 per year, it is worth between $200-300,000. There is no reason to buy real estate if it is higher than these guidelines, as there are “risk free” investments yielding 4-6% and real estate is not risk free.

There are other issues such as likelihood on a rock solid basis for rental income to continue. If an investor sees a Home Depot property in Flagstaff Arizona, the institutional market might have paid as much as 18-20X triple net (which is the term for gross income minus expenses) five years ago. If Home Depot ever went into bankruptcy or if the lease was up and they decided not to renew, the property could be virtually valueless (how many companies would be on the list that you could lease that configured space to?). It’s just that with risk should come a reduction in the multiple, but for some reason there wasn’t any.

Also when you look at cap rate value, don’t buy into the “zero interest rate proposition” that the government is selling. If you demand interest and fair return, you’ll get it. If you accept 1-3%, they’ll be all too happy to oblige. Know what land costs, and be aware of the benchmarks in areas to build, generally between $75 per foot and $300 per foot. I recently saw a home in Hollywood that was 17,000 feet that had been reduced from $12,9 million to $6.9 million. Perhaps you’d have no worries that some rich guy is buried in an extra $6 million profit for the builder (maybe you’re a builder and think that is great), but how about if the builder admitted that he spent $3.5 million to build the home? At the end, a bank (which is insured by the government that derives its ability to insure from tax collections) would make that loan. The builders repositioned trillions of wealth, as did banks with origination and brokers from sales, from an assembly of citizens to themselves. We must stop this from continuing in the future by establishing guidelines and building costs to educate buyers, and banks must lend based on value to ensure even Barnum’s sucker cannot get taken by a method that is more likely than not to happen everyday.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

The Times notes that “the exchange’s” (NY Stock that is) “board took at lot of heat for that” (executive pay to Dick Grasso) “controversy,” according to Sarah Anderson, a Washington based expert on executive pay. The House committee on “Oversight and Government Reform” (could any title be farther away from the wheels of commerce?) looked at pay practices before the explosion of insolvency drew their attention away towards a new shiny penny.

We still lack clear opinions and leadership in this matter, especially in media and in government. Executives are not entitled to private jets, nor are they entitled to pay for Bat Mitzvah’s where Aerosmith performs, with pay earned for running “public” companies. Generals in the United State’s Army earn a touch over $200,000 per year for service and seem to stay happily in their jobs. If you ask student’s at Harvard Business School (which is the mac Daddy of business schools, no?) if they would be happy to earn $1 million per year, it is likely that a resounding percentage (think purity level of Ivory Soap 99.44% maybe?) would say damn yes!

What happens along the way from youthful exhuberance to this surreality?. The headlines keep claiming that the top people will go “elsewhere” if they are not paid $10 or 20 or 50 million dollars per year. The question I have is “Where?”

There are 500 public companies that are listed in the Fortune 500. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions really) of executives have credentials worthy of note, and could easily serve in their area of expertise for many companies (including the one they currently work for). When a CEO, CFO or other top company official dies, replacements are always found, even for founders whose will, personas and visibility would render them legend (Sam Walton is a wonderful example).

So how is it that the supply (the top level employees) have all this power and ability to hold the line while demand (companies that are powerful, influence politics on multiple continents, have strong allies in government, and have billions of dollars) have none?

The whole concept of Supply and Demand was coined in the 1700’s by James Denham Stewart, and is perhaps the most well known idea behind the study of economics. Governments have regulated against “collusion” (the practice of acting in concert to unfairly impact one side of the market to favor the other” so the equity of the market seems likely, yet somehow the CEOs must be paid tens of millions (or hundreds of millions if you don’t mind) of dollars for manning the controls.

The CEO of GE (currently Jeff Immelt, on who’s watch as much as 90% of the market value of the company disappeared) is a credentialed executive. He should earn a salary and a cash bonus if the company does well again. He should be penalized for his performance during his tenure, and the board of directors should be mindful that if the company’s stock rises from its low of $6.00 to $25.00, Mr. Immelt should not be thanked for quadrupling shareholder value, nor should his options be re-priced with such a low baseline price that would allow him to earn in the face of shareholder’s losing (1) the longest running dividend on Wall Street and (2) billions of dollars on his shift.

It makes no academic sense. The supply (the number of jobs running Fortune 500 companies) is fixed, and demand (number of guys and gals with credentials (MBAs, Ph.Ds and so on) is rising (especially as the health and age of able workforce rises). This would on a simple level create a strong argument that the prices for those workers should drop, especially on an adjusted real dollar basis. Ask any farmer who has a bountiful, frost free winter in the orange groves how it works, and they’ll explain why prices fall when supply increases. Somehow in the face of the immutable reality of many educated executives, the pay of workers, providing the unit price labor in the company’s offering shrinks, while in real and adjusted dollar terms, CEO pay soars.

If you asked why Russia minted so many billionaires in the last 20 years it would be simple; the former communist party guys took the state’s assets for themselves (as opposed to just siphoning off a percentage back in the Politburo days). CEO’s did the same. They asked board members to grant massive amounts of options, which are riskless (to them) rights to buy stock at a given price, and then did the things to drive the stock prices up quickly within the option periods, which were not necessarily to the company’s benefit in the long run.

If you run a car company, as an example, you might act like this: The stock is trading at $10 per share and making $1 per share. You take over and get $2 million dollars per year, retirement benefits, stellar perquisites like a plane and five star travel, and 3 million five-year options to buy stock at $10. The company needs new plants and equipment and workers all joined up because the company had a pension plan (company paid) and health insurance and other benefits. You don’t invest in new plants, but seek a partnership with an off balance sheet subsidiary you formed to handle issues surrounding plant investment and made a deal to allow the investors in that entity (bondholders) to have higher interest and payment six years from now in exchange for lower payments today. You brought in investment bankers who examined the pension fund (does the term “trust” funds mean anything to anybody anymore?), and decided it was “overfunded.” You purchased an annuity from an insurance company to provide “minimum benefits” to pension retirees and used the excess money to buyback stock to “enhance shareholder value by increasing income per share.” The Company earns $2 per share next year and the price increases to $25 (the investment bank recommends it based on growth), so the options are worth $45 million dollars. Five years later the higher fees kick in and the insurance company annuity you bought doesn’t work and the company is losing money and the stock drops to $.20 per share. No penalty, no accountability and completely legal, believe it or not.

These are defensible actions that will result in increased bottom line, increase in your warrant value but may not enhance shareholder value in the long term (see how Toyota, Nissan and Honda’s balance sheets look and the levels of their executive compensation.) Certainly most companies that bought back stock could use the cash to run their businesses in the broken capital markets environment we have today.

So how can we pay these guys? Well there are some ideas: (1) a cash bonus. Lawyers get a cash bonus at every firm in the United States and none of them seem to leave, (2) Lend them money, (an amount that they can pay commensurate with their salary and wealth) at the lowest rate a company can borrow at and let them “buy” shares, or (3) a pat on the back and a hearty “thanks” from the board and the shareholders. If that doesn’t work, studies show disgruntled employees don’t do good jobs anyway.

Stop lying; and take a stand experts. There are so many men and women that could take the roles in sales, operations, marketing, finance and management at the large companies that if they stood on top of each other we might be able to touch the outer rings of Saturn. The great universities turn out more each year and there is no lack of “supply.” Public companies are for the “shareholders,” not for the executives. Stop the excesses, the greed and the madness and go back to 1950s America, where a CEO lived in a nice 6 BR home in a great area, belonged to a country club and drove a nice car.

If that model doesn’t bring the greatest Americans resumes to solve the difficult problems facing us, its great. Those great Americans will start businesses, and because we’ve established their greatness (as we agree we have), jobs will be created, and the economy will benefit. I will never argue that these CEOs turned entrepreneurs will be entitled to the money from building their own enterprises, which their brilliance and risk they will take will afford them; assuming that they actually take that risk of course. If they don’t, they will earn a couple of million dollars running the powerful companies they run and the rest of the formally excessive compensation they earned will be left to hire people, expand and rebuild their businesses. They need lots of rebuilding. It’s win-win.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

It’s a joke if rents increase, home prices go up and your bank decreases interest and increases loan fees in response to the deflation and poor economic conditions It’s more likely to see a car dealer offer “buy one get one free” than to see “owner must pay mansion rent, prices over list, come by today.” So as funds offer an idea to make the bad economy work better for them, redeem all your money and tell them goodbye.

Companies like Vanguard and Fidelity are headed by people who are on the Forbe’s list. They have billions of dollars of wealth and have made that wealth managing growing funds as the fake economy, driven by massive leverage, created an illusory expansion. Now that those funds are shrinking, they need to tell staff, employees and key persons that the gravy train has left the station and that salary and bonus cuts across the board are required to make the business model work.

Not that I’m smarter than the world’s best economists, but supply and demand is a simple idea. There is not that much demand for fund managers who lost a ton of money during the past year and quite honestly, managing funds, trading, reconciling trades and customer service at a financial firm is better from a perspective of quality of life and insurance risk of injury than putting bolts on a wheel in Flint, Michigan or working in a soup kitchen, so if Fidelity says there’s a 20% pay cut across the board, it’s unlikely that employees will go to another Fidelity who is saying pretty much the same thing.

Don’t allow companies you do business with to increase fees to keep their revenues constant in a shrinking GDP. If they send you a notice marking a fee increase, transfer your account to another firm that is not stupid, and if they all act to increase fees in collusion with one another, put your money in a safe in your closet. The catchphrase of the day is “redeem it all.”

Be mindful, be careful, and good luck!

Fiat currencies are all worthless when you get down to it, but people need a means of exchange and the truth is there’s no way to hedge against any risk. If the entire world economy collapses and China comes to collect moneys owed, I don’t think a single expert believes that a window somewhere would open and any item of value would be paid out.

That’s the problem really. The Chinese have surpluses or cash inflows from the inexpensive labor they provide, but have no safety or confidence in the likelihood that communist rulers will give capitalists free, unfettered access to investments in their country, so they invest abroad. Every beautiful woman in the world of nations has a fake leg, glass eye, push up bra or a wig. Each incredible strength is offset by some weakness or weaknesses that render that advantage away.

Diamonds are a great way to insulate wealth. They’re small, portable, don’t set off metal detectors and a small bag of them can contain a hundred million dollars in value or more. A billionaire with a bad back can carry a billion dollars worth of diamonds (it’s Bid Laden’s bank of choice). It’s easy, however for an expert to “beat” a neophyte, so trust in the value is not easy to determine. Imagine the fear you feel when you walk into the diamond district to buy a stone. You have no idea what D, E or F color looks like, or the difference between vvs and si2.

Oil is better than gold as a wealth hedge. It’s a useful industrial material with a growing requirement as population grows. You can sell oil in any currency and live well, as oil tends to move inversely with currencies, providing some synthetic and real hedges against economic issues. Gold is pretty, but heavy to carry and has an intellectual history as a hedge against the perils that have occurred throughout history.

I guess Nickel, Copper or Tin would make good hedges also. They’re industrial metals that have practical application always and are for the most part in greater demand due to increasing population. It’s just a silly world where such synthetic hedges are needed, especially physical ones because they are just plain heavy.

I’d advise using a derivative instrument with a matching counter party risk that would enable you to carry the hedged risk in your pocket. Trouble is those things aren’t worth the paper they’re written on these days, much like the currencies we’re worried about in the first place.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

It would seem no one is watching. Over the last few weeks, AIG has been in the headlines for:

1) Being in more financial trouble than a long tailed cat at a rocking chair convention,

2) SIngle handedly taking Maurice Greenberg off the Forbe’s list,

3) Making shadowy payments to a bunch of financial, insurance and other corporate entities to meet “counter party” obligations without so much as a hint at who received the booty,

4) Being the single lynch pin in the machine of deceit, fraud and doom that has been manufacturing croupier sticks and using them to ferry money from many to few, and

5) Giving out $165 million dollars of “contractually” obligated bonuses to persons who were essential to AIG’s survival (although a good number of those people left with a box and a bonus check within minutes of receiving it.)

So Obama yelled fire after the embers smoldered to a glow, and yelled thief and closed the barn door after the horse had been stolen. I want to be angry at him but I can’t. He’s too smart, too good looking and speaks too well to hold enmity towards him. His staff is fast becoming a platoon of fools that even Shakespeare couldn’t suffer kindly. I’m looking for a girl from Staten Island, Long Island or Brooklyn who used to work in compliance at a brokerage firm. Those girls wouldn’t take crap from anyone and would only give out money where it was logical to do so.  Grab a couple of U.S. Citizens with nothing to gain and let them sit on the panel of experts, it can’t hurt.

One truth that must be stopped is “these people will go elsewhere if we don’t pay them huge bonuses.” The entire financial market is in a cesspool and the people that have been running things, credentialed as they are, are not imperative to operations. Pay them fair wage, as any troubled company does.

If they want to buy stock at these low levels, lend them money on a recourse basis to buy some amount that fits with their compensation levels. There is no “other AIG” to work for, and most of the big financial companies are owned by the government, so tell them to work for the salary they earn or wish them well. Of the 8-9% of persons that are unemployed, many are well educated persons with a background in finance, and some would work for less. It’s not so bad if the people that put the financial industry here are excessed because we can’t afford ten million dollar paydays. Take a risk, it can’t get much worse than it already is.

The bottom line is we live in the midst of a serious crisis and if we don’t watch closely, this will turn into our “little bighorn.” Battles are won and lost before they’re fought and this one is not moving along as planned. Head back to the drawing board, President Obama, and try something different. Look closely, set limits on all salaried and bonus payment to all persons taking TARP money. If the top people leave, hire others and see what happens, and don’t forget to hire somebody for the switch, the last guy fell asleep at it.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

The Drudge Report quoted  Texas representative John Culbertson who said, “Nancy Pelosi needs the vote to be done for the weekend, so she can head out for her European Vacation,” and everything seems set for the historic vote casting the boulder rolling down the hill of trillion dollar annual operating deficits.

The Democrats, unable to garner ANY Republican votes, have a small problem. Of course it’s fortunate that the recount in Minnesota got Al Franken elected. This creates a 60 person “super majority” in the Senate that stops any attempts that might be made at the old fashioned “filibuster,” a blustery effort to speak for as long as is necessary to secure debate and discussion on a topic that requires it. Without Franken, we’d have to have political debate and public hearings on all topics, and lord knows if we don’t get these pork laden legislations out within minutes (especially the stimulus bill which expires the same day as the milk I bought Saturday), they might burn in the oven (Sorry, I think I am thinking about my pillsbury crescent rolls). The problem is that Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown’s Mother passed away last week.

My condolences to Senator Brown and his family. Also some suggestions. As a Senator, he could ask his family to delay the funeral services until late Sunday. I’m only suggesting this because the government (yes, the same government that’s telling all the big companies to stop spending taxpayer dollars foolishly) is going to send a military jet to ferry him back and forth to Ohio because he can’t fly back and forth in time for the vote, while making his Mom’s funeral on time with commercial air transportation. Delta has a flight from Cincinnati at 12:40, arriving in the capital at 2:01PM, with a 6:10AM, arriving at 7:54AM on Sunday. Even if the Senator is in Columbus, he’d be available for a 11AM funeral without incident. It’s a 7 hour drive to Columbus. How many small businessmen have made the all-day drive to get back for a kid’s soccer game the next morning. The whole thing is beyond comprehension.

If this delay idea doesn’t work, perhaps he can call someone on the telephone to cast his vote for him. Can’t a Senator “trust” other Senators to vote as instructed? I transfer money from one bank account to another by phone. Also the internet. It’s more recently invented, but has government level encryption (Al Gore invented it so it’s environmentally friendly also) and you can do a bunch of secure things on this world wide web thingy. If that doesn’t work, Verizon does this call in thing to vote on “American Idol,” and I’m sure they’d set up a special text number to tabulate his vote. Whatever they do, they have no reason to fly this man to Washington and back to vote on the stimulus package. It’s not going to change the direction of the river we’re rafting on.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

Real estate as an asset class has a classic growth story. The worldwide population continues to grow and, absent major war, shows no signs of trailing off. Aside from some of the underlying sub trends; such as employment migration, or better quality of life issues that are created from movement from the colder, industrial cities to warmer locales, the asset class should keep pace with expansion of population. How could such a rapid adverse trend take the pundits and the experts by surprise?

The market by which real estate lives and dies is a “closed market.” Buyers and renters don’t really drive the metrics as Adam Smith explained. Their “invisible hand” is really invisible. The participants that build, foster and ensure that trends have moved in lockstep with plans are the brokers, builders and the banks. The triumvirate of Bs starts with an interesting little story.

Homes in a fictional town are selling for $400,000. A builder buys a piece of land that is zoned to build 10 houses for $500,000. Building a home costs $110 per foot in this fictional town, so the builder creates 3,500 square foot homes for $435,000 cost and lists the homes for $1,000,000. The builder hires his brother to buy the first home for $1,000,000, and lends him $500,000 as down payment which allows the bank to make a loan to him easily. The builder makes $565,000 on this home, a $65,000 profit, and the market establishes a “comparable” value, the value used by appraisers to validate bank lending. When realtors get qualified buyers, they show this development and one by one the homes are sold until the builder has doubled their money.

The banks are not as fortunate. When the music stops this house really only cost $435,000 to build, which is its value. When the market is cooling, builders will build for lower margins, and ultimately through the cycles of building, for little or no margins to keep their assets working and to cover fixed costs. They will sell new houses for less and less money, each “comparable” sale reducing the value of the bank’s collateral. It’s worse in big cities and in giant developments, in which builders more than double their money on a leveraged basis. For banks it’s a horrid “Ponzi” circle that results in higher loans on developments, construction in progress and finished mortgage loans. In the savings and loan crisis it was bad, but in this consolidation the leverage, zero credit quality and loan diligence, will result in losses that are catastrophic.

So how do you stop the lies in real estate from ever happening again? Math. Lend against a home based on the “rental income.” Whatever a home, apartment or building would rent for, impute a cap rate against that based on economic assumptions and you’ll be fine. This allows investors to always come into distressed environments and obtain passive investment return, which brings buyers to the table in a distressed market. If you advertise real estate at ten times triple net (NNN) rental income, there will be a line of investors, at 14X, still interest and many potential suitors for an investment. The interest bleeds off as the multiple gets higher, but if you’re in that ballpark your losses will be nominal. Return to the old way and things will be fine.

Don’t be surprised if Case, Shiller continues downward revision of the pricing trends in real estate. They must know they will, they just don’t like to give bad news (the truth) all at once.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!

I watch quite a bit of television and there really are very few people that can speak intelligently on the economy, and what on Earth caused the GDP to shrink so quickly and so explosively. I’m a capitalist, mostly. Many ask what I mean by mostly and I monologue as follows,”I like free markets but only when they operate.” Just as teenagers left unsupervised may drink the entire liquor cabinet, capitalism left unfettered by smart babysitters will burn the fertile field in which it lives.

It all started for me on March 20, 2008. I’m sure the writing was on the wall the previous week with Bear Sterns falling into Chase’s safety net, pushed off the cliff by the U.S. Government, but CIT tapping its entire credit facility on the 20th was a sign that the problem could not be contained, and that even a company with broad exposure, a bullet proof commercial paper history, and millions of small and mid sized debtors in its pool of business was not able to finance its operations. I knew that many more issues would follow, as CIT was an old time, easy going conservative commercial financing company.

The issue is simply that people rely on business being done in a certain “way.” In 1950 if you announced that car loans could no longer be made, auto manufacturing companies wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. People paid cash for cars, put down payments on homes and lived within their means. If you cancelled someone’s credit card in 1960, they had a small limit and usually paid off the balance. The world was unlevered and cash or check was the business choice of all.

Today the cash flows are different. It’s hard to explain to most how American Express, a company that made $4-5 billion a year over the past years would be in jeopardy six months ago or three months ago, but they were. Their business cash flows in a negative way, meaning that they extend 30-60 day money to customers on massive amounts of “charges” and issue “commercial paper,” which is 2-270 day IOUs to the capital markets (insurance companies, corporations and governmental entities) for rates that are better than CDs. They don’t have hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, nor are banks able in this market to syndicate the loans needed for them to access this money. They have a mature way of doing business that’s been standard to them for years.

The reason that the government has to “backstop” all these finance companies and banks is without them no one can do any business. Credit card companies are looking at people with good credit histories and reducing their limits. Business credit lines are being shut down. It’s like a bad dream, with the citizens providing $4-10 trillion dollars of capital once the dust has settled, and banks using it to give bonuses and laying off workers to preserve “shareholder” interests (who should in capitalism have been zeroed out by now).

It’s hard to deal with the people who don’t understand the truth. Everyone is pointing out some reasonable period of time and saying,”it will start to turn in the fourth quarter, everything will correct itself,” but there is no one telling the truth. Here’s some logical analysis from a simple guy, If the government put $9 trillion dollars in gross into the market and nothing happened, it’s much worse than you believe it is. Derivatives are supposedly a “zero sum game” meaning that if party A writes protection insurance and party B buys it, party A’s loss is party B’s gain, so everything should level out. If it doesn’t, it means, like in Bernie Madoff’s case, that the money all along was a lie and fraud doesn’t correct with infusion of money easily.

We need governmental intervention to stabilize the platform. We need manufacturing in this country and to correct the ridiculous economic choices made in the past 20 years that have trended us almost entirely towards service. We need to stop, as citizens, “croupier economics,” systems that are designed to move money from many to few, and stand up for rules that don’t allow large wages for people controlling public companies, especially companies that have lost billions of shareholder equity over the past 3 years. The companies and the money controls the market and the job holders, not the other way around. People need to call their pension funds and get involved in their own lives because 650 elected officials will only speak for the large donors who demand their voices be heard.

Be mindful, be careful and good luck!