To All, Barron's review: Pretty good issue this week. Way bullish, but good: 1. A good article about Japan where the author takes issue with the great recovery theory. He believes this year will be worse than expected and that next year may be a carbon copy. Of course, this would have been total crap when I owned EWJ, but now it makes sense. <g> Actually, I love Japan if I can buy it cheap. I can't right now. And they do have real problems.
2. Peter Eliades has a nice article about the curse of 100 and 1000 and whether or not it will be repeated on 10,000. One thing disappointed me, and that was the fact he only mentioned nominal tops, not spending power tops. In other words, yes, the move from 1968 to 1974's bottom took the Dow down nearly 75%, and it took until late 1982 to get back to 1968's levels. But 1000 points in 1982 represented much less spending power than in 1968. So getting even is not always getting even.
3. A Fed Gov. talks about how wonderful productivity is and how the new pair of dimes has made things different this time. He got everything wrong, and he is from Houston. Sigh! <g>
4. They rate the 500 best companies for investors. Most would rank at the top of the list of lowest quality of earnings. <g> I guess the Mushroom Theory, keep investors in the dark and dump horsesh-t on them, gets you kudos from Barron's.
5. Laszlo "Gonna" Burnyee says to buy what went up yesterday. Really dumb stuff.
6. Gene Epstein talks about credit and almost gets it right. He says that borrowing is as strong as it ever gets. I think we are way past that level.
7. In Market Watch, The Liscio Report talks about the savings investment gap, one of the benchmark of Austrian economics. He also takes a shot at Paul Krugman. Does anybody like Krugman? The Wellington Letter pokes fun at the Asian recovery.
8. A portfolio manager from Putnam talks about IBM and says it is only important that IBM generate operating profits from somewhere and enough cash flow to buy back shares. Really a brainiac, this one. <g> So, the co. is generating operating profits from slick accounting and cash flow from taking down massive amounts of debt. And Put-Put doesn't see it.
9. Pesek in Current Yield talks about the deflationary crisis being over and time to lend money to bankrupt countries and poor corporate credits at low rates. Good stuff if you want your money to commit seppuku.
As Barron's turns more bullish, bear capitulation cannot be far behind.
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