ATLBob

The Volt May Put General Motors in the Driver's Seat Again

I understand why GM and other electric car manufacturers are citing MPG ratings in marketing their cars, regardless of how meaningless MPG is with an electric vehhicle. The bottom line for consumers will be the RANGE of each car when it's fully charged: how many miles can you get with a single charge?. If you are a daily short-range commuter an electric car might be your future vehicle of choice; however, if you need to take a real road-trip, this won't be the car for you.

Paul Volcker: The Voice in the Wilderness

On Jun 29 07:41 AM Alan Young wrote:

> Mark, you've got to stop with the "money doesn't grow on trees" line.
> We all know that money grows in Fed computers, which require much
> less input (land, water, energy) than trees.
>
> Aside from that, thanks for another powerful piece of history.

Yes: the money does 'grow' from the Fed and is not harvested from trees: however, one can safely say that this particular crop of money has been highly fertilized by the legislative and executive branches.

Nice article, by the way.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Great quote: What is the source/who said it?

On Mar 03 09:25 AM know nothing wrote:

> "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy
> out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another
> person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give
> to anybody anything that the government does not first take from
> somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do
> not have to work because the other half is going to take care of
> them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good
> to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for,
> that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply
> wealth by dividing it."

The Art of Selling Your Stocks

Enjoyed the article: no one should ever blindly 'buy and hold' stocks, investors need to 'buy, watch and re-evaluate' and then react accordingly (buy more, hold firm or sell.) If you aren't prepared to dedicate the appropriate time to analyze and evaluate what you own, then individual stocks aren't for you. Selling is always the most difficult, since we fear recognizing actual dollar losses AND, at the same time, we fear giving up potential future gains if we sell too early.....

Need to Ride the Bear to Get to the Bull

As a retail investor, it was difficult to learn not to panic or over-react in times of rampant market psychosis; however, I have learned that sometimes you simply need to buckle your seatbelt and hold tight until smoother terrain is visible.

Maybe one of the larger financial players in the lending/CDO debacle needs to go belly-up and get 'rescued' by a acquirer before we can see the bottom and start looking toward market stability. Of course, that assumes that a rescurer can calculate a reasonable value, and determine if the target is still breathing. My guess is that at least one of these financials is wearing Mrs. Bates wig and pretending to be alive.

Or....perhaps the market is more like Kane, the character played by John Hurt in Alien. He might be smiling and laughing at the dinner table, but we're all waiting for the CDO Alien to emerge from his chest so that we can kill it and move on with the voyage.