I want to talk a little about competition. After all, it was more than a century ago that it took an act of Congress to keep those nasty captains of industry like Rockefeller and Carnegie and their ilk from raping and pillaging the public. The Sherman Anti Trust Act of 1890 pretty much prevented the likes of them from cornering one market or another and raising prices at will. It was thought that, without the government stepping in, the hapless consumer didn’t have near enough clout to fight back and keep from being raped and pillaged.

Now I like to consider myself an entrepreneur, or at least a creative capitalist. I believe strongly in the ability of American innovation and industry to find our way back from the brink —given the opportunity and not being hamstrung by a well-meaning and protective government. But…

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s Current Events, Food for Thought board of directors, fired, golden parachute, obscene compensation, overpaid executives, Shareholder rebellion

Hey, let’s face it! I’m an older guy! “Yup,” he said, sounding like Gary Cooper, “I’m well into the “third third.” And, if you remember Gary Cooper, you’re also one of us.

This morning’s headline shrieked the bad news, and went on to say that “Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.”

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s Current Events, Food for Thought, NAIC Veterans' Lounge benefits, COLA, older people, Ponzi, social security

I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already: that I flunked economics. Today’s paper gave me a real flashback when the financial news, reporting yesterday’s op-ed by Warren Buffett in the New York Times mentioned that the national debt, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, is going to come in this year at a staggering 56%. This represents an increase of 15%—an increase of more than one third in a single year, friends!

This is why I flunked! I could not, for the life of me, see the common sense in justifying the growth of the national debt because it represented “only X percent” of the GNP or GDP!

Going back to “desert island economics,” it just didn’t make sense to me to consider our nation to be in economic equilibrium because there was a steady increase in debt instead of no increase.  Hell, if I allow my own debt to increase (because it’s only X% of my income), does that mean that I’ll be better off when I get older? Or will I just owe more? What it will mean is that I will have committed my survivors’ wherewithal so I could enjoy more goodies in my own lifetime! Duh!

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s Current Events, Food for Thought desert island economics, Keynes, national debt, Ponzi

Yesterday was a big day on Wall Street, wasn’t it! The Dow plummeted more than 186 points (about 2%) and the other indices were hit about as hard.

It’s days like yesterday that make me grateful that I don’t really care what the market does. The newspapers chalked the stampede up to concerns that the consumer-driven economy is not recovering as fast as everyone—read “the herd”—thought it was because people aren’t buying stuff as fast as they need to, to revive the economy!

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s Current Events, Food for Thought, Successful Investing betting on the stock market, earnings growth, economics, the herd

I’ve had several folks ask me about the little ditty I use for the theme for my on-line “radio” show, Take Stock with Ellis Traub. It’s a catchy little tune, I think. And I even use it for my ringtone on my home phone. (I’m trying to get it into my iPhone, but not much luck as yet.)

The name of the tune is Rubber Duck. And it happens to be a tune I wrote and recorded myself. The more I’ve listened to it, the more it’s grown on me.

And now comes the part I expect to hear you “grown” about all the way down here in South Florida: Why did I select this tune for my broadcast?

Well…. I figured, if anyone paid enough attention to what I have to say about selecting quality stocks and long-term investing, there’d never be a need for them to float alone!

s Food for Thought Ellis Traub, groan, growth, long-term investing, Rubber Duck, selecting quality stocks

I think I might have mentioned it once before, but I flunked economics in college. Couldn’t get my arms around those macro-economic concepts or understand their relevance, when I didn’t have a clue where money really came from, what it really was, and what I needed to do to make it. (Of course, I knew how to earn it; but knew nothing about how it was actually created.)

I’ve pretty well figured it out for myself, though—at least enough of it to apply to my daily life. Just like it helps me to understand or explain what’s going on with General Motors or General Electric by comparing it with Lucy’s Lemonade Stand, (the concepts and principles are all the same), it helps me to understand complex economic theory by mentally stranding a couple of families on a desert island. There’s hardly a theory so complex—at least that I have a practical need to understand—that it can’t be modeled after the shipwrecked unfortunates.

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s Food for Thought, Fundamental Investment Views, Investment Concepts barter, earning money, economics, fundamentals, making money, money

We’ve reached a point where even the most liberal side of the political aisle has commenced to show some concern about our being able to afford to throw money around quite so lavishly in the name of resurrecting a fallen economy. And, I’m hearing some voices, other than those on the right, questioning the wisdom of providing funds to enable lenders to override their good judgment and continue to offer credit to those unworthy of it, in the interest of reviving critical sectors of the economy that have taken a beating: housing, automotive, etc.

What do you think, folks? Can we do it? Can we emerge from this economic crisis in some semblance of economic health?

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s Current Events, Food for Thought can do, congress, deficit, Obama, positive attitude

Hey, some of you guys [non-gender-specific] I know and respect have been making arguments that would legitimize TA as a useful tool for investing. And I—wimp that I am—have been claiming to have an open mind about it. Truth be told, my mind’s like a steel trap: rusty and shut!

What I actually say is that my mind is open to change—if someone will only give me an example of any TA method that doesn’t consistently have enough exceptions to make it useless, or has made anyone a lot of money using it consistently. That’s of course, a loaded condition. If any of the hundreds of approaches were to work all the time, or nearly all the time, that’s the only one you’d ever hear about!

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s Food for Thought, Fundamental Investment Views betting on the stock market, fundamental analysis, gambling, long-term investing, selecting quality stocks, technical analysis

The reception we received was great, for a first time out—enough to convince us that the “radio” talk show should be a weekly event! So, for the foreseeable future, you’ll find us “on the air” at 7:30PM EDT (6:30PM CDT) every Thursday evening at our “station.”

But there were glitches to fix. And we’ll fix them. Perhaps the most important one resulted from my giving the wrong instructions to those wanting to call in and join the conversation. The following should be the correct information.

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s Current Events, Food for Thought, Fundamental Investment Views, NAIC Veterans' Lounge audience participation, blogtalkradio, Take Stock with Ellis Traub, talk show