Jerry --
First, a good article, thanks to Larry:
satellite.nikkei.co.jp
As for Christmas, it's winding down. The girls were here for Christmas Eve and morning and are now with their dad till tomorrow so my girl friend and her three daughters and I went out to see the latest Bond movie. Being no 007 expert, I thought it was great, besides Pierce Brosnan, who's not hard to look at, I thought the the female star was especially good. She knows karate, has a brain, and not so incidentally is beautiful.
The moral of the film? Hmmmm. . . let me see. . . not sure it had one. Well, maybe, don't trust media moguls. Or, BMWs rule. :))
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As of Wednesday, there were over 15M Amati shares tendered to TI at $20 that will release appx. $300M into the market, some of which may very likely end up in TI stock. The second stage of the merger (for shares not tendered by Dec. deadline) will be complete early in the year, putting another $100 to 180M on the open market (depending on how many options/warrants are exercised) --- again, some of it likely to make its way into TI shares.
At any rate, this is one of those unknowns Paul Orr Jones referred to when he said TA has its drawbacks.
Christmas was especially pleasant this year. My daughters know me so well they can practically read my mind when it comes to choosing gifts. And better than that, they liked everything I gave them. Of course their lists were fairly specific --- "eyeshadow, #12, the Body Shop. . .panties, Victoria's Secret, no wide bands . . .saucepan, 1 1/2 qt, Crate and Barrel. . ."
To my way of thinking, there's no way you can ever express anyone's true worth through a gift --- you get into the jewelry routine and you'll be upping the karats every year --- so the best you can do is give something that says you've heard and understood. One of my favorites was the year a Scottish friend gave me an 1872 Chambers dictionary because he knew I needed it for my Muir work. This year one of my daughters gave me a calculator with a ten-digit display because she'd heard me say my other didn't go up high enough. Talk about feeling special, these are the gifts that when you open them, you say, "Yes!!"
I hope your Christmas was full of yesses.
After all, I think this is the whole point of the season --- through the metaphor of gifts, or if you believe the myth, through the Gift, to be told we're loved.
Cheers!
Pat |
