The Wall Street Journal reports that "the Dow dropped sharply Friday after Dubai World asked creditors for a six-month stay on repayment of $60 billion in debts" and that "Stocks were lower around midday Monday [today] as mixed Black Friday sales results sparked concerns about consumer spending and unease about Dubai World's debt headaches lingered."To...
Monday, November 30, 2009
Would you sell your successful local restaurant because of a debt hiccup in Dubai?
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving 2009
We'd like to wish all our readers a warm and happy Thanksgiving.As we gather with family and give thanks for our blessings, we are mindful that for many around the world, conditions are still as dire as they were for those first ragged settlers who clung to existence after crossing the Atlantic to the New World in the 1620s.What made such a difference...
Friday, November 20, 2009
What about commodities? (part 3)
We've written at least two times previously on the topic of commodities (see here and here). When commodities such as gold and other metals begin to skyrocket, gold advertisements begin to flood the radio stations and financial television shows, and investors inevitably begin to ask themselves, "What about commodities?"Investors are understandably...
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Dismal Science
We recently attended a business conference where we heard an economist making extensive predictions about where the economy was headed. Our concern immediately turned to the many attendees who left the conference with a conviction that this particular view of the future was accurate (after all, they just heard it from an economist). The problem...
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall
The night of November 9, 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall at the hands of the people it had isolated for twenty-eight years. In the famous speech (available here) that former US President Ronald Reagan gave at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, he correctly declared that the Wall represented "the question of freedom for all mankind." Its downfall...
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Voting With Their Wallets!
While much attention has been focused on the election results in Virginia and New Jersey last night, perhaps the bigger story is the election results announced in Michigan yesterday where Ford Motor Company announced a profit of almost $1 billion.* Ford, the lone of the Big Three Automakers to not accept government bailout money, is demonstrating...
