Billionaire humor

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Surf's up

As I mentioned in the last post, I had some video from the wake surfing safari. Here is one:



Btw, I once again write this high above Londonderry, NH on a Delta plane. Well done GoGo Internet Wifi!

The View from 30,000 feet

Everyone talks about seeing the big picture or the view from 30,000 feet. Well... I really do have a view from 30,000 feet. I write this as I sit on a Delta jet traveling somewhere high over the Great Lakes on my way to Boston. This is my first time using in-flight WiFi, and I have to say it's pretty cool. I'm stuck in the middle seat (albeit in the exit row), but have endless entertainment surfing the web. I can communicate with multiple people over Instant Messenger. $10. Seriously, what took the airlines so long.

I'm headed to Boston to visit a company we have a debt investment in. However, Thursday night I will get a chance to see my brother and niece at a Red Sox game.

Spring has officially arrived in that yesterday was the first day going into the lake. After work, three of us hit the lake to go wakeboarding and wake surfing. I have a 3/4 wetsuit, but I still expected the water to be frigid. I brought a winter jacket along in case I needed to warm up. I couldn't have been more wrong. The water was awesome! The air was 75 +/-, and it was a complete blast. I have wake surfed before (surfing on the wake of the boat), but it is the first time I have ever wakeboarded. I'll being doing that more often. I have video coming...

Dunk of the Series

And it wasn't by LeBron.



Fly Tony, Fly

Buy Mortimer Buy!

Wild day in the markets today. With images of Greek Police literally cracking heads of protesters and cameramen alike on TV, the stock market began to tank. Down 30 S&P points ….. down 40…. 50…60..70.80.90. The S&P was almost down 100 points or 10% (half of which occurred in a period of five minutes). The Dow Jones was down almost 1,000 points. As part of our strategy, we buy and sell stocks – net short on average. With stocks getting killed, I was buying them like crazy. I couldn’t get orders in fast enough. At one point, I told my equity salesman – just take whatever order you have…and DOUBLE it. Just buy whatever you can. As can been seen from the graph above, the panic was over in a few minutes. After weeks (if not months) of sleepy boring markets, it was quite fun and the fund made some money in the meantime.

Word is that the major decline came when a single trader placed a $16 Billion S&P futures trade instead of a $16 Million by mistake. Whoops. However, the selling wasn’t all due to that. The market was for sale before that trade, and people are worried about Europe. The steady decline is a prime example of complacency v. fear in this market.

MSNBC is reporting that Obama blames today’s decline on the Bush Administration.

Boxer Amendment

From Bloomberg:

"Lawmakers voted 96-1 for an amendment offered by Senator
Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, to bar use of government
funds to rescue failing financial companies. The move revises a
provision that Republicans said would perpetuate bailouts."

This is about the dumbest piece of legislation I've ever seen. Both sides of the aisle hail their efforts to save the economy by touting how things could have been worse. Pres. Bush and Sec. Paulson, who both abhor government intervention in free markets saw how awful things would have looked without the saving of the financial system. Without the help of the Fed and the U.S. Treasury, things would have been disasterous.

People talk about "Too Big to Fail" as if there is some written code or law. It's not. It's a concept that says if this company fails it's easier to save them than to let them fail and pay the consequences. You don't legislate the concept away. You create systems that 1) either prevent firms from being too big or too interconnected, or 2) you create legal ways to wind down these institutions without the normal repurcussions of a traditional bankruptcy. I favor #2 by a wide margin. #2 allows capitalism to work without creating some government oversight using vague concepts of largeness.

So, to create legislation that bans the use of government funds in cases where it may help us is MORONIC. The phrases "unintended consequences" and "best intentions" might be used here. I'd chose "stupid decisions" instead.