Kunst

Ambac, MBIA: Thinking About Book Value; Looking Forward to Earnings

nyka- Your comment is so trivial and mean-spirited, I will make a point to skip over any future posts with your name on them.

Friday's Turnaround: Raid on the Shorts

Folks, for most of us it doesn't matter much what happens on Friday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or even Thursday. No individual investor has enough information to predict short-term moves consistently. Pick a philosophy, place your bets, and time will tell whether you are right or wrong. When you change your overall view of the future, then adjust your bets -- I mean investments, of course -- accordingly.

Can The Fed Inflate Its Way Out of Housing, Credit Mess?

I was in New Orleans about a year and a half before Hurricane Katrina. It was obvious and acknowledged that NO was at tremendous risk of exactly the kind of catastrophe that happened on August 29, 2005. Yet there were people who basically said, "no serious hurricane has hit here since 1935, so we don't need to worry." If someone warned of this danger for decades, does that mean they were wrong and should be ignored? Winston Churchill was considered a bit of a nut case for being so hung up on the danger posed by Adolph Hitler in the 1930's. Neville Chamberlain was the popular hero because he told people what they wanted to hear; too bad it wasn't true. There will be a big earthquake in California in the not-to-distant future. Geologists have been saying that for decades. Should we mock and disregard them because it hasn't happened yet? What will you say when it does? What will you say when the unsustainable American system of debt-based overconsumption finally crashes? Putting off the inevitable doesn't change the end result.