Saw this on THE PRAGMATIC CAPITALIST today. That's really an excellent job. You can see many 2010 outlook from various investment bank, hedge funds, ...

Please see the orginal post for more detail.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO 2010 INVESTMENT PREDICTIONS AND OUTLOOKS

Wall Street Banks

Goldman Sachs 2010 Investment Outlook
Deutsche Bank 2010 Outlook
Credit Suisse Is Cautious
Morgan Stanley's 2010 Outlook
UBS 2010 Outlook
RBC's 2010 Outlook
Saxo Bank's Coming Black Swans
2010 Outlook From Northern Trust
Bank Of America/Merrill Lynch Is Bullish On 2010
Prudential's 2010 Investment Outlook
PIMCO's 2010 Outlook
PFG Best's Look Back And Ahead
Wall Street Is Very Bullish About 2010


Hedge Funds & Investment Gurus

Marc Faber's 2010 Investment Outlook
Jim Rogers Is Still Skeptical
Hussman: 80% Chance Of A Market Plunge
Boeckh Investments
Sprott Asset Management: The Rally Is Fake
ECRI: The Recovery Will Continue In 2010
Comstock Is Still Bearish
Jeff Saut Debates Todd Harrison
TCW's 2010 Outlook
Cumberland Advisors 2010 Outlook
Biriyni's 2010 Outlook
Sam Stovall Is Cautiously Optimistic
Steve Keen's 2010 Investment Predictions
Leuthold Turns More Cautious On 2010
Robert Prechter: Stocks Will Fall In 2010
David Tepper's 2010 Outlook
Richard Bernstein's 10 for 2010
20 for 2010 By Doug Kass
2010 Outlook From ISI Group

Actionable Ideas, Alternative Assets & Potential Potholes

RBC's top trades for 2010
How To Prep For An Uncertain 2010
Goldman's Top Trades For 2010
Morgan Stanley's Favorite Stocks
JP Morgan's Top Trades For 2010
More Cost Cuts Could Help These 8 Firms
10 Stocks For 2010
Will 2010 Be 2004 All Over Again?
Where To Invest In 2010
What Does History Tell Us?
The 5 biggest risks to 2010
10 Themes For 2010
The 10 Best ETF's For 2010
Gold Will “Super Spike” In 2010
Gold Is In A Bubble And Could Crash
The Housing Market Is Still In Trouble
The Lumber Market Is Picking Up
The U.S. Remains A Low Beta Investment
Dividends Could Play A More Important Role In 2010
Goldman's 2010 Commodity Outlook

The Outlook Abroad

JP Morgan Expects Emerging Markets To Rise 30%
Nomura On China's Positive Outlook
Morgan Stanley Says Chinese Stocks Are Poised To Rally 30%
Bank Of Canada Says Stocks Are Overvalued
Ignore Brazil At Your Own Peril
The 4 Reasons Emerging Markets Will Outperform

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WHY AMERICA 'S ECONOMY FELL OFF THE CLIFF

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock(MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 am.

While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG)

He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRILANKA),designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE)and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA)

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet(MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today.

After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) filled it with GAS (from Saudi Arabia ) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (made in MALAYSIA ),John decided to relax for a while.

He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL),poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA

AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A PRESIDENT MADE IN KENYA


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Saw this on Wine Spectator website today. It should be good for wine lover.

Only at a Wine Experience can you sit down and taste the world's best wines guided by the estates' owners and winemakers. You'll enjoy outstanding vintages, rare wines from the producers' cellars and top-scoring wines from around the world.

We have planned a weekend program that will engage all of your senses while adding to your wine knowledge. Our goal is always to offer a program that will be educational to both the novice and wine expert.

See original link for more detaol.

October 22-24
New York Marriott Marquis

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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Commentary by Amity Shlaes

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The pay gap between women and men is again in the news. Run the numbers from a July 1 report of White House salaries and you’ll find that the average female staffer in the White House earns $9,168 less than a male.

This gap is a tad embarrassing for President Barack Obama and his progressive Democratic Party, which tends to argue it is nurture, and not nature, that causes such disparities. After all, Obama campaigned on a promise to help women by doing all that is politically possible to make their status equal to that of men. Hiring should be the easy part.

The West Wing gap suggests that cultural prejudices are so deeply ingrained that even the Obama team can’t suppress them. Isn’t it always that the hottest jobs -- White House or hedge fund -- go to men even when the women deserve them?

But maybe the White House didn’t fail. Or maybe it should have done its personnel selection differently, with a ruler to measure the fourth digit of job candidates’ hands.

That at least would be the conclusion to draw from a study published this week by Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago. Attentive readers will note I’ve cited this pair before. To me they are doing the most interesting work in academic economics.

Their latest finding: high-testosterone job candidates tend to seek out riskier, higher return work, while those with lower levels gravitate toward stabler, lower profile, lower-return employment.


Volvos, Race-Cars

To arrive at this determination Sapienza and Zingales noted holders of Masters in Business Administration degrees take jobs with a range of risk. There are Volvo jobs -- stable, reliable, but unsexy. And there are race-car jobs -- jobs in finance, which pay 2.8 times more.

These race-car jobs can also wipe out and deliver distinctly poor pay. The standard deviation in salaries in the finance field is two times as large as in the other positions.

Then Sapienza and Zingales asked 500 MBA students to play games that reveal their willingness to take risks. Next, they sought to capture students’ lifetime exposure to testosterone, a hormone that appears in both sexes, although normally in greater concentration in men. The professors determined subjects’hormone levels through saliva tests and by measures that indicated the rate of exposure to testosterone that the subject experienced in utero.

These included the now-famous digit measure in which the fourth finger of both males and females exposed to more testosterone in the womb tends to be longer than the second, or index finger. Finally, after the students graduated, the professors rated their jobs for riskiness.

Hunger for Risk

Some of the Sapienza-Zingales findings weren’t surprising, especially given other such work in the past. The higher testosterone subjects were less risk averse on tests and also landed the riskier jobs. Such data are what motivate Democrats to endorse anti-pay gap legislation.

What was interesting though was that it wasn’t the subjects’ gender, per se, that was relevant. It was testosterone.

In men, variations in levels of testosterone mattered, but less than in women. AND what we might call High-Test women, or females whose testosterone exposure was elevated relative to other females, were as likely as males to go for, and get, those race-car finance jobs.

When it came to determining whether a female student would go into the finance field, it appeared to matter more whether a woman was being exposed to testosterone now (the saliva test) than whether she had been exposed to testosterone in utero (the finger test).

Nurture Matters

This suggests a couple things. The first is that nurture may indeed matter, just as Democrats argue. The fact that men’s choices seemed less sensitive to testosterone exposure suggests that their identity as males, which their cultural and personal experience helps to shape, may have been a factor.

The second is that nature matters too and the finding that the timing of testosterone exposure, in addition to the level, can influence career choices.

Some might argue that comparing MBA jobs with White House jobs is a stretch. But the positions are similar in the scale of their rewards. MBA jobs pay maximum in dollar currency. The words “White House” on the resume are worth millions in another currency, the currency of politics, which is eventually redeemable in old-fashioned dollars.

Former President Bill Clinton, whose second and fourth fingers look to the casual eye to be about the same length, has demonstrated that through speaking fees.

Boosting Pay

What’s the takeaway? There are the flippant ones: Women who long for high-test jobs might do better to go herbal and hunt for supplements that allege to increase endogenous testosterone. They might start popping Estratest pills, a hormone therapy that includes testosterone, than making a donation in support of the Democrat-backed Employee Free Choice Act, union-sponsored legislation that the AFL-CIO promotes with the promise that it will boost pay for women.

There are also more general points: personal experience (nurture, legislation) seems to matter for males. But political efforts to narrow the pay gap may sometimes be futile for females if the chemicals aren’t calibrated. It all suggests a high- est review of assumptions about gender is in order.

(Amity Shlaes, author of “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

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The business is never enough and the boss is never satisfied.

A butcher watching over his shop is really surprised when he sees a dog coming inside the shop. He shoos him away. But later, the dog is back again. So, he goes over to the dog and notices it has a note in its mouth.

He takes the note and it reads "Can I have 12 sausages and a leg of lamb, please? The dog has money in its mouth, as well."

The butcher looks inside and, lo and behold, there is a ten dollar note there. So he takes the money and puts the sausages and lamb in a bag, placing it in the dog's mouth. The butcher is so impressed, and since it's about closing time, he decides to shut the shop and follow the dog.

So off he goes. The dog is walking down the street, when it comes to a level crossing; the dog puts down the bag, jumps up and presses the button. Then it waits patiently, bag in mouth, for the lights to turn. They do, and it walks across the road, with the butcher following him all the way.

The dog then comes to a bus stop, and starts looking at the timetable. The butcher is in awe as the dog stops a bus by pulling its left leg up and gets in it. The butcher follows the dog into the bus. The dog then shows a ticket which is tied to its belt to the bus conductor. The butcher is nearly fainting at this sight, so are the other passengers in the bus. The dog then sits near the driver's seat looking outside. As soon as the stop is in sight, the dog stands and wags its tail to inform the conductor. Then, without waiting for the bus to stop completely, it jumps out of the bus and runs to a house very close to the stop.

It opens the big Iron Gate and rushes inside towards the door. As it approaches the wooden door, the dog suddenly changes its mind and heads towards the garden. It goes to the window, and beats its head against it several times, walks back, jumps off, and waits at the door. The butcher watches as a big guy opens the door, and starts abusing the dog, kicking him and punching him, and swearing at him. The butcher surprised with this, runs up, and stops the guy.

"What in heaven's name are you doing? The dog is a genius. He could be on TV, for the life of me! "To which the guy responds: "You call this clever? This is the second time this week that this stupid dog's forgotten his key."

Moral of the story.....
You may continue to exceed onlookers expectations but shall always fall short of the boss' expectations.
It's a dog's life after all.....


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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

By Mason Levinson and Jeff Kearns
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The New York Yankees’ front-running status might lead to some joyous months in the Bronx and profitable ones on Wall Street.

The CHART OF THE DAY compares the historical performance of the S&P 500 Index, the benchmark index for American equities, from Aug. 12 to year’s end when the Yankees are in first place, as they are today, to when they trail.

During the 33 years since 1928 that the Major League Baseball team led its division on Aug. 12, the S&P 500 had average gains of 3.3 percent for the remainder of the year. That’s five times higher than the 0.64 percent average gains the index had during the 48 seasons the Yankees weren’t in first place.

“As a Yankees fan I can tell you why that happens: because the Yankees are always in the lead and the market goes up two-thirds of the time,” said Richard Bernstein, chief investment officer of New York-based Richard Bernstein Capital Management LLC and former chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch & Co. “You can put it up there with such other notable buy signals as who wins the Super Bowl.

“One shouldn’t underestimate the strength of spurious correlations.”

The Yankees, following a four-game sweep of division rival Boston last weekend, led the Red Sox by 5 1/2 games through Aug. 10 in the American League East.

26 Titles

Of the Bronx, New York, team’s 26 World Series titles, 22 came after holding a first-place lead on Aug. 12.

The S&P 500 gained the most for the period in 1982, rising 37.32 percent. On Aug. 12 that year, Mexico Finance Minister Jesus Silva Herzog notified its creditors, the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department that Mexico was unable to pay the principal on debt due on Aug. 17. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both registered lows that week and launched a five year-bull market.

“As a Red Sox fan,” said Diane Garnick, who helps oversee $403.9 billion as an investment strategist at Invesco Ltd. in New York. “I always thought the Yankees drove up the prices for players, not the market as a whole.”

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Category: Action
Description: AOX is a deceptively simple, extremely quirky and incredibly addictive "avoider game" that takes mere minutes to learn but is impossible to master. With a healthy dose of humor, casual accessibility and hardcore appeal, AOX works with all types and caters to none. With a completely optional but heavy emphasis on strategy, AOX turns the rather mundane "avoider game" equation on it's head and begs you to play just ONE...MORE...TIME!
Control Scheme:
S: Scroll downwards through avilabale abilities
E or Space: Purchase highlighted ability.
W: Scroll upwards through available abilities
Movement: mouse

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This must be the most traditional way to forcaste weather.


Stone is Wet: Rain
Stone is Dry: Not Raining
Shadow on Ground: Sunny
White on Top: Snowing
Can't see stone: foggy
Swinging Stone: Windy
Stone Jumping Up and Down: Earthquake
Stone Gone: Tornado

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Why Inflation Isn't the Danger

By ALAN S. BLINDER
Published: June 20, 2009

SOME people with hypersensitive sniffers say the whiff of future inflation is in the air. What’s that, you say? Aren’t we experiencing deflation right now? The answer is yes. But, apparently, for those who are sufficiently hawkish, the recent activities of the Federal Reserve conjure up visions of inflation.

The central bank is holding the Fed funds rate at nearly zero and has created a mountain of bank reserves to fight the financial crisis. Yes, these moves are unusual, but these are unusual times. Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy. Let me explain.

First, the clear and present danger, both now and for the next year or two, is not inflation but deflation. Using the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index as the measure, inflation has now been negative for three consecutive months.

It’s true that falling oil prices, now behind us, were the main reason for the deflation. Core C.P.I. inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, has been solidly in the range of 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent for six consecutive months. But history teaches us that weak economies drag down inflation — and ours will be weak for some time. Core inflation near zero, or even negative, is a live possibility for 2010 or 2011.

Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, is a keen student of the 1930s, and he and his colleagues have been working overtime to dodge the deflation bullet. To this end, they cut the Fed funds rate to virtually zero last December and have since relied on a variety of extraordinary policies known as quantitative easing to restore the flow of credit.

These policies basically amount to creating new bank reserves by either buying or lending against a variety of assets. But quantitative easing is universally agreed to be weak medicine compared with cutting interest rates. So the Fed is administering a large dose — which is where all those reserves come from.

The mountain of reserves on banks’ balance sheets has, in turn, filled the inflation hawks with apprehension. But their concerns are misplaced. To understand why, start with the basic economics of banking, money and inflation.

In normal times, banks don’t want excess reserves, which yield them no profit. So they quickly lend out any idle funds they receive. Under such conditions, Fed expansions of bank reserves lead to expansions of credit and the money supply and, if there is too much of that, to higher inflation.

In abnormal times like these, however, providing frightened banks with the reserves they demand will fuel neither money nor credit growth — and is therefore not inflationary.

Rather, it’s more like a grand version of what the Fed does every Christmas season. The Fed always puts more currency into circulation during this prime shopping period because people demand it, and then withdraws the “excess” currency in January.

True inflation hawks worry about that last step. (Did someone say, “Bah, humbug”?) Will the Fed really withdraw all those reserves fast enough as the financial storm abates? If not, we could indeed experience inflation. Although the Fed is not infallible, I’d make three important points:

•The possibilities for error are two-sided. Yes, the Fed might err by withdrawing bank reserves too slowly, thereby leading to higher inflation. But it also might err by withdrawing reserves too quickly, thereby stunting the recovery and leading to deflation. I fail to see why advocates of price stability should worry about one sort of error but not the other.

•The Fed is well aware of the exit problem. It is planning for it, is competent enough to carry out its responsibilities and has committed itself to an inflation target of just under 2 percent. Of course, none of that assures us that the Fed will hit the bull’s-eye. It might miss and produce, say, inflation of 3 percent or 4 percent at the end of the crisis — but not 8 or 10 percent.

•The Fed will start the exit process when the economy is still below full employment and inflation is below target. So some modest rise in inflation will be welcome. The Fed won’t have to clamp down hard.

SKEPTICAL? Then let’s see what the bond market vigilantes really think.

The market’s implied forecast of future inflation is indicated by the difference between the nominal interest rates on regular Treasury debt and the corresponding real interest rates on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS. These estimates change daily. But on Friday, the five-year expected inflation rate was about 1.6 percent and the 10-year expected rate was about 1.9 percent. Notice that the latter matches the Fed’s inflation target. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

But if the inflation outlook is so benign, why have Treasury borrowing rates skyrocketed in the last few months? Is it because markets fear that the Fed will lose control of inflation? I think not. Rising Treasury rates are mainly a return to normalcy.

In January, the markets were expecting about zero inflation over the coming five years, and only about 0.6 percent average inflation over the next decade. The difference between then and now is that markets were in a panicky state in January, braced for financial Armageddon; they have since calmed down.

My conclusion? The markets’ extraordinarily low expected inflation in January was both aberrant and worrisome — not today’s. As long as expected inflation doesn’t rise much further, you should find something else to worry about. Unfortunately, choices abound.

Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He has advised many Democratic politicians.


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An advertisement in Sainsbury's Magazine depicting a nun and a priest in a sexualised pose - in which the priest is partially clothed and about to give in to the temptation of kissing the nun - has been banned by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA). The advertisement was for ice cream.

The company who manufacture the ice cream, Gelato Italiano, said the picture was meant as a "light-hearted, tongue in cheek portrayal" that they felt contained nothing that would cause "serious or widespread offence".

But readers of Sainsbury's magazine disagreed, and the ASA upheld their views, saying that the ad was particularly liable to give offence to those in "religious vocation", and particularly to Catholic believers. The image of the priest's exposed rippling torso and his rosary resting upon it proved a little too incongruous with those who respect the sanctity of religious vocation.

The publishers of the advertisement have apologised and have vowed not to use the ad again.



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Sending my prayers and regards to a brilliant singer who is gone too soon.

“Gone Too Soon” (Michael Jackson 1993)

Like A Comet
Blazing ‘Cross The Evening Sky
Gone Too Soon

Like A Rainbow
Fading In The Twinkling Of An Eye
Gone Too Soon

Shiny And Sparkly
And Splendidly Bright
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like The Loss Of Sunlight
On A Cloudy Afternoon
Gone Too Soon

Like A Castle
Built Upon A Sandy Beach
Gone Too Soon

Like A Perfect Flower
That Is Just Beyond Your Reach
Gone Too Soon

Born To Amuse, To Inspire, To Delight
Here One Day
Gone One Night

Like A Sunset
Dying With The Rising Of The Moon
Gone Too Soon

Gone Too Soon



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Got the email today. Very Funny!!!

This was an awfully thougtful son concerning his Father, wasn't he?

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent:
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant! my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over? I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Pop:
Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.
Love,
Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Pop:
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love you,
Vinnie


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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Commentary by Matthew Lynn
June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Plenty of people will dismiss the recent stock-price recovery as a dead-cat bounce. Even more will call it a bear-market rally.
Yet as equity prices creep higher, the bears may soon have to concede defeat. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index has gained about 15 percent since early December and most other major benchmarks have made solid gains in the same period. At some point, it will become known as the 2009-2013 bull market.
Only one thing is missing: a story. A real bull market needs a simple narrative that convinces investors that equities are worth double what they were valued at only a few months ago.
So what could be the story this time around? There are four plausible candidates: rising savings, accelerating inflation, a takeover boom, and the scarcity of capital.
Markets need stories as much as any Hollywood scriptwriter does. Stock prices go up, down and sideways for reasons we will probably never quite figure out. Human brains find that hard to handle, so we like an easy explanation that puts things in order. Chaos and randomness are the scary alternatives.
During the bull market of the 1990s, we had the dot-com, New Economy story to explain the surge in stock values.
During the 2003-2007 bull market, we had globalization and the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
And for the next bull market? Here are four “stories”that could be used to justify it.

Save Money

The Savings Story: People are putting money aside again. The U.S. savings rate in April jumped to 5.7 percent, the highest rate for 14 years. Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners LP in Greenwich, Connecticut, estimates it will reach 9 percent, compared with a low of minus 2.7 percent at the peak of the housing boom. There's no mystery about that. Households, much like banks, are repairing their balance sheets, and they can only do that by saving more.
The same will probably be true of other heavily indebted economies such as Britain. All that saved money has to go somewhere. With interest rates close to zero, there’s no point keeping it in the bank. Instead, a wall of money is about to descend on the market, creating huge demand for equities.
The Inflation Story: Central banks around the world are following the policies of “quantitative easing,” or what used to be known as printing money. At a certain point, it is bound to cause high inflation rates, or at the very least an investor fear of surging prices. It may already have done so.

Real Assets

You don’t want to be holding cash while inflation makes it less valuable by the day, and central banks keep creating more of the stuff. Instead, investors will switch into real assets that can hold their value, such as stocks, real estate or commodities. Equities are the simplest to trade, and more demand equals higher prices.
The Takeover Story: The last rally was all about the emergence of the BRIC economies. This one will be about them buying North American and European assets. The rising BRIC giants are going to need technology and brand names, and they
will want to buy them. That is already happening -- Russian interests just acquired a big stake in General Motors Corp.'s European unit Adam Opel GmbH.
Expect a massive takeover boom as the BRIC giants clamor for the prizes. They will end up paying a premium for trophy assets, another good reason to push up the value of equities.

Access to Capital

The Shareholder Story: Over the last decade, chief executive officers loved to talk about shareholder value. Mostly it was just nonsense. CEOs didn’t need stockholders because capital was easily accessed from banks or the bond market. If that didn't work, they could get a friendly private-equity firm to buy them out, or pay a crazy price for a unit. Shareholders were about as influential as the cleaners or the secretaries, and ranked about as high in corporate priorities.
Now that is about to change. In the coming years, capital will be in short supply. The only place that companies will be able to get it will be from their shareholders. In return, they will have to be rewarded with higher dividends and stock prices.
Now all we need is for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to pick one of those stories, put it into every research note, and this bull market can get some real momentum.
Who knows, investment bankers may be out buying Bentleys again this year if this rally has legs.

(Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)



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Saw this on Wine Spectator Today.

Moderate wine consumption extends life of female patients in Yale study

While scientists struggle to find common ground on alcohol consumption and its relationship to breast cancer, moderate wine drinkers may find comfort in a new study that links the beverage to lower death rates among female non-Hodgkin's lymphoma sufferers.

According to an unpublished epidemiology study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting, held April 18–22 in Denver, those stricken with the ailment who drank wine regularly for 25 years before diagnosis enjoyed better survival rates five years after being diagnosed compared to nondrinkers. Wine drinkers were also more likely to be disease-free after five years.

Lead author Xuesong Han said that repeat studies are necessary before making any health recommendations. "This conclusion is controversial, because excessive drinking has a negative social and health impact, and it is difficult to define what is moderate and what is excessive," said Han in a statement. "However, we are continually seeing a link between wine and positive outcomes in many cancers."

This study, conducted at the School of Public Health at Yale University, was the first to examine the link between alcohol-consumption patterns among female patients and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. According to the National Cancer Institute, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma afflicts lymphocytes or white blood cells. The disease can occur at any stage of life and can progress at varying rates. The institute estimates that 66,120 new cases were diagnosed in the United States in 2008, with nearly 20,000 deaths in the same year.

Han and her team examined data on 546 women who had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and found that those who drank wine had a 76 percent five-year survival rate, compared with 68 percent for non-wine drinkers. The wine-drinking survivors were also more likely to be cancer-free after five years—70 percent of those studied who drank wine were disease-free after five years, while 65 percent of non-wine drinkers showed no signs of cancer. Han said this is equal to a 25 percent to 35 percent reduced risk of death.

The women were typically lifetime wine drinkers who responsibly consumed the beverage for at least 25 years prior to getting cancer. Women who showed a preference for beer or spirits did not see an added benefit.

Han told Wine Spectator that since the epidemiological study had an observational design, the researchers found a clear association between wine and lower death rates among the study population, but they don't yet know the exact reason behind the protective effect.

Considering the emerging evidence from cell and animal studies that certain polyphenols such as flavonoids and resveratrol from grapes act as antioxidants, this could play a protective role against tumor initiation and progression, Han said.

"The chemical composition is definitely a possible underlying explanation for the association we observed," she said. "We also could not exclude the possibility that wine drinkers may have a better lifestyle in other aspects, which may work together for their better health."

Han said more research is needed and added that personally, she would like to see if measuring white wine versus red wine shows a different result. She added that the importance of wine should not be overlooked. "I think if you are already in the habit of drinking wine moderately, then don't worry about changing, especially given the established protective effect of moderate drinking and heart disease, and the emerging results of protective effects for certain types of cancer and cognitive functions."

"However, if drinking alcohol could put you on any other risks, for example, if you have liver disease or breast cancer family history, then it's better not to drink any type of alcohol," she said.


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F1 for Help





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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Commentary by Matthew Lynn
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Smart investors know that if you can pick the start of a bull market, you can make a lot of money. The problem is that these points aren't easy to identify, so it may be best to choose investments that follow a general pattern based on national habits.

Last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentoffered some indirect help by publishing its findings on social trends in the 30-nation grouping. So what are the big bets for the future that we should be making now? Here are eight to consider:

French coffee producers: The French sleep more than people in any other country, catching 9 hours of shut-eye a night on average (with the U.S. ranked second). In a competitive global economy, France will have to wake up as its working day gets longer and falls into line with the rest of the world. Its people will need some coffee to get them going.

Italian pay-per-view sports broadcasters: If you are going to be a guy, Italy remains the country of choice. Italian men, three decades after the arrival of mainstream feminism, grab 80 minutes more leisure time than Italian women. The reason: Men do less housework. If you include the few minutes it takes to stack
the refrigerator with beer, you get the duration of a soccer game. So there are no prizes for guessing why Italian guys never get out the vacuum. Broadcasting AC Milan matches looks like it will be a great business for a long time to come.

Finnish technology companies: Maybe you think it is just a quirk of fate that mobile-phone maker Nokia Oyj, Europe’s most successful technology company, happens to come from one of the region’s smallest countries: Finland. Think again. The Finns are just about the smartest people in the world. Finnish students get the highest scores for math and science, just ahead of Koreans. Smart people equal smart companies. There will be plenty more Nokias in the decades to come.

British burglar alarms: With the U.K. economy going down the tube, and with unemployment rising, there isn’t much prospect of a drop in crime, which is already a big concern. In the U.K., 10 percent of male teenagers aren’t in school, employment or training, a rate second only to Italy within the OECD. One in three girls aged 13 to 15 said they got drunk regularly, the highest in the world, while the boys were only just behind the Danes when it came to consuming alcohol. With figures like that, crime can only rise. Any company making alarms, locks or closed-circuit television cameras will have a strong tide of demand to tap into.

U.S. fast-food companies: President Barack Obama may be trying to revamp the image of Americans in the rest of the world, but there are some things that will never change. Typical Americans remain determined to get as many calories down their throats in the shortest amount of time. They spend 75 minutes a day eating -- only Canadians and Mexicans dedicate less -- while maintaining the highest obesity rates. There is only one way to keep up that kind of performance: more burgers, fries, pizza and cookie-dough ice-cream. Ignore the anti-obesity campaigns. The fast-food industry promises a healthy future -- for its shareholders, not its customers.

Portuguese drink companies: Most of us might think of Portugal as a fairly cheerful place with plenty of sunshine, beaches and some great soccer players. Not so. The Portuguese are getting more miserable every year. So are the Hungarians, the Canadians and the Americans. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been growing more satisfied with life, with the Turks leading the way. Everyone knows that miserable people drink more alcohol. Some beer producers should be a good bet.

Austrian cigarette suppliers: In the Anglo-Saxon world, we think smoking is on the way out, or at least restricted to developing nations. Wrong again. The Austrians report the highest rates of teenage smokers in the OECD: 24 percent of 15-year-old Austrian boys smoke and 30 percent of 15-year-old girls. Since smoking is addictive, and no one takes it up in their 30s, Austrian cigarette suppliers should do well for decades. And so will the pension funds: Not too many Austrians will be drawing payments into their 90s if they are all puffing away in the playground.

Turkish pre-schools: As countries become richer, more women work and the kids get bundled off into childcare. If that holds true, the Turks have a long way to go. Less than 20 percent of Turkish toddlers aged 3 to 5 are in childcare, compared with an average of 73 percent for the OECD as a whole. Korea and Poland also have very low rates. If Turkish, Polish and Korean mothers start going out to work the same way women do in the rest of the developed world, there will have to be a huge expansion in the childcare industry.
These social trends should help put your portfolio in decent shape, as markets fluctuate over the next 20 years.

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Category: Puzzles
Description:
This puzzle game is about harmony. Solve the entagled loops until perfect harmony is reached.
Instructions:
Click to start. When left clicking a tile it will rotate 90 degree. With the left and right cursor keys you can navigate between already solved levels.
Control Scheme:



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Saw this on IndiaTimes. Cast your vote and Enjoy.

The Government of India wants your help. It has invited the public to suggest a symbol for the Rupee. Just as the Dollar is universally denoted by $‚ the government thinks the Rupee should also have its own unique symbol that captures a sense of India’s history and culture.Listed below are 19 suggestions from ET’s team of designers. Please vote for the one you find best. ET will present all these symbols ‚ along with the ET viewers’ preference‚ to the Ministry of Finance . And‚ if you don t like these and have a symbol of your own to offer, mail it to us at editoret@indiatimes.co.in So hone your design skills and choose the right symbol for the Rupee.
For more details, please see "Ropee Symbol"


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Saw this on Wine Spectator Today. We have one more reason to drink wine.

Study finds that a glass or two a day lowers risk by more than half

Drinking wine in moderation may offer protection from the onset of Barrett's Esophagus, a precursor to esophageal cancer, according to a study released Monday. Researchers found that subjects who consumed between seven and 14 glasses of wine weekly lowered their chances of developing the disorder by 56 percent. Those who drank beer showed no reduction of risk, and moderate to heavy consumption of spirits may raise the risk, according to the research conducted by Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., and published in the March issue of Gastroenterology. Heavy consumption of any alcohol may raise the risk.


Barrett's Esophagus (BE) occurs when gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or chronic heartburn, permanently damages the cells of the esophagus, the tube that transports food from the mouth to the stomach. Overflowing stomach acid burns the lining of the esophagus and, over time, the tissue is replaced by cells similar to those found in the intestine, explains Dr. Douglas Corley, a gastroenterologist and one of the study's leaders.

This abnormal healing of the esophagus may lead to a kind of cancer called an adenocarcinoma. "People with Barrett's Esophagus have a 30- to 40-fold higher risk of developing esophageal adenocarcinoma because the Barrett's Esophagus cells can grow into cancer cells," said Corley. Esophageal cancer is now the United States' fastest growing form of cancer, with the number of reported cases rising 500 percent in the past 30 years

BE currently affects 5 percent of the population, the study claims. There are no symptoms or warning signs, and doctors only discover the condition after an endoscopy, usually to monitor another ailment, such as anemia, heartburn or a bleeding ulcer. There are currently no treatments for BE.

To test if alcohol habits may have an impact on the development of BE and, therefore, a link to esophageal cancer, the scientists looked at data from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California population study, an ongoing long-term survey of the insurance plan's more than 3 million patients in the region. Corley's role in that study is to look at abdominal obesity and the consumption of dietary antioxidants in connection to BE. Corley previously found that eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day helps maintain a normal body weight and reduce the incidence of BE.

For the current research, Corley and his team examined 953 male and female patients, who were asked about their drinking habits as part of a litany of tests. They were categorized as nondrinkers, those who drink up to seven servings a week, those who drink seven to 14 servings and those who drink 14 or more. A standard drink was defined as a 4- to 5-ounce serving of red or white wine, 12 ounces of beer or a 1-ounce shot of liquor. If the subject drank one type of beverage more than 50 percent of the time, the team classified them as preferring that drink over others.

When Corley looked over the incidence of GERD and BE and compared it to drinking habits, he found that moderate wine drinkers were the group least likely to develop BE. In fact, wine drinkers who drank up to seven servings a week were 19 percent less likely to develop BE than nondrinkers, and 56 percent less likely if they drank seven to 14 servings of wine a week. Drinking anything more than that was associated with a higher risk overall (44 percent greater), but the scientists did not classify the subjects with the highest consumption rates by preferred beverage as the numbers of participants in those categories were too low to make a significant comparison.

Beer drinkers in the low and moderate categories showed no significant risk increase compared to nondrinkers. However, spirits drinkers showed an increase of 67 percent if they drank more than seven drinks a week. Drinking less than seven servings of spirits showed a protective effect, with a 19 percent lower risk than nondrinkers.

The study concludes that alcohol may not have a direct relation to BE, noting that the liquor drinkers tended to have the poorest diet and highest rate of obesity. "It's not actually clear that treating the acid reflux will necessarily prevent someone from getting Barrett's Esophagus," said Corley, in a statement. "The best way to prevent reflux is to maintain a normal weight."

The recent findings also echo an earlier meta-analysis that found drinking wine is not linked to the incidence of GERD. But Corley added that, in the case of BE, wine may offer an additional benefit. "Red wine and many foods, such as fruits and vegetables, contain antioxidants. It appears antioxidants may decrease the risk of getting Barrett's Esophagus."

The study adds to the conflicting evidence of wine's relationship to cancer. A recent Oxford University study found that wine increased the risk of women developing breast cancer and rectal cancer, while decreasing the risks of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, thyroid cancer and renal cell carcinoma. Past studies have found that wine can reduce the risk of lung cancer.


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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Review by James Pressley
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- The end for Bear Stearns Cos. proved swift and brutal.

As the scrappy U.S. securities house slipped into a sudden death spiral a year ago this month, Chief Executive Officer Alan Schwartz was hosting a media conference in Palm Beach.
Chairman Jimmy Cayne was playing tournament bridge in Detroit and didn’t fly back to New York right away.
The man who would pick up the pieces, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co., was preparing to celebrate his 52nd birthday at Avra, a Greek restaurant in Manhattan.
These are just three snapshots from the opening chapters of William D. Cohan’s “House of Cards,” a masterly reconstruction of Bear Stearns’s implosion -- a tumultuous episode in Wall Street history that still reverberates through our economy today.
Cohan is a former reporter and Lazard Freres & Co. banker best known for his bestseller about that storied firm, “The Last Tycoons.” He now has turned his hand to chronicling the cocky rise and meteoric fall of Bear Stearns, whose swoon into the arms of JPMorgan in March 2008 underlined the greed, hubris and madness that have plunged the world into its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The inherent precariousness of Wall Street is now clear. Investment banks like Bear were borrowing tens of billions of dollars a day on the strength of their reputations and assets, many of them illiquid, mortgage-related securities, Cohan says.
“The dirty little secret of what used to be known as Wall Street securities firms,” he says, “was that every one of them funded their business in this way to varying degrees, and every one of them was always just 24 hours away from a funding crisis.”

Meticulous Reporting

That assertion is as close as Cohan gets to editorializing in this meticulous piece of reporting. Drawing on interviews with bank executives, central bankers, government officials, investors and analysts, he weaves a narrative from published accounts, e-mail exchanges, court documents and direct quotations from the likes of Cayne, Dimon and Timothy Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now U.S. Treasury secretary.
Cohan, to his credit, persuaded a number of bankers to go on the record about topics ranging from tantrums -- picture a Bear Stearns executive flinging his jacket on the floor in a huff -- to the company’s refusal to join a bailout of Long-Term Capital Management LP. Cayne, with his cigars and mini- blowtorch lighter, unleashes a stream of profanities when asked about Geithner’s decision not to open the Fed’s discount window to Bear Stearns.

Lingering in Detroit

We also learn why Cayne didn’t fly back to New York as soon as he heard about the meltdown. The man who grew rich at Bear Stearns -- with a net worth of more than $1 billion in 2007 -- lingered in Detroit to play in minor events with Alfredo Versace.
Some outsiders, according to Cohan, viewed the board’s lack of involvement to this point as an abdication of its fiduciary duty. I’ll say. Insiders shrugged it off as a classic example of the insular culture at Bear Stearns, which “continued to operate as a small partnership despite having been a public company since November 1985,” Cohan writes.
Throughout, Cohan is scrupulously fair. He gives Dimon, for example, ample space to explain the hard bargain that JPMorgan drove on Bear Stearns: “I tell people, buying a house and buying a house on fire are two different things,” Dimon says.
“House of Cards” is three books in one. The first presents an hour-by-hour account of the 10 days in March 2008 when Bear Stearns was overwhelmed by rumors, short sellers, cash withdrawals and margin calls.

‘Armies of the Night’

By the time Schwartz asked Dimon for help on Thursday night, March 13, Bear Stearns’s cash balance had plunged to $2 billion from $18 billion that morning, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Soon, teams of bankers and lawyers -- “the armies of the night” -- converged on Bear Stearns’s octagonal granite-and-glass tower at 383 Madison Avenue.
Part two of the book is a brisk history of the company, from its founding in 1923 to its golden age as a swaggering outlier throwing off money from trading and clearing. Part three returns to tick-tock mode, describing the devastating consequences of Bear Stearns’s decision to set up two hedge funds that invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities, much of it subprime.
Along the way, we meet Bear Stearns legends such as Alan “Ace” Greenberg, described here as “a tough-minded Midwestern Jew with a gambler’s instinct and a serious itch to get rich.” As the company struggled to stay afloat in March 2008, Greenberg tried to keep people amused by performing magic tricks.

Mooning Traders

We also get to know some impressively frank executives from lower down the chain, including Paul Friedman, a senior managing director and chief operating officer of the fixed-income division. His recollections give this narrative much of its fly- on-the-wall appeal, as when he relates how he and his colleagues commiserated over Glenlivet and wine after Bear Stearns’s board approved a JPMorgan takeover, originally for $2 a share.
“We’re now holding our wake,” he says. “We’re crying and drinking and working on getting pretty drunk.” They were also, Cohan adds, “mooning the JPMorgan traders who were just opposite them on the north side of 47th Street.”
Bear Stearns survived the Great Depression, World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Until December 2007, the company had never posted a quarterly loss in its 85 years. Then, poof, it was gone.
Cohan’s skittishness about editorializing makes for a frustrating and inconclusive epilogue: Everyone, by this account, was to blame for Bear Stearns’s demise -- the company itself, the government, the Fed, hedge-fund managers, ratings companies, you name it.
Yet first drafts of history don’t get much better than this.

“House of Cards” is from Doubleday in the U.S. and Allen Lane in the U.K. (468 pages, $27.95, 25 pounds). The book will be available in stores starting March 10.

(James Pressley writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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Saw this on Telegraph.co.uk today. A doll of the financier Bernard Madoff has gone on sale complete with its own hammer to smash it.

Bernard Madoff doll: Its Australian creator, Graeme Warring, said that it was inspired by the experience of a friend Photo: GETTY

The Smash-Me Bernie action figure holds a pitchfork and is dressed in a red devil's suit, and comes with a gold hammer so that investors in his doomed scheme can take symbolic revenge on the $100 (£70) doll for losing out in Mr Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.

Its Australian creator, Graeme Warring, who unveiled the doll at the New York Toy Fair this week, said that it was inspired by the experience of a friend had lost money in Mr Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud.

"He lost quite a bit of money and he was pretty grumpy about the whole thing," said Mr Warring.

"So I made him this little action figure of Bernie Madoff ... I put a hammer in the box and I said, 'Listen, when you get this thing, just smash it to pieces - it'll make you feel better, and then go bury it in the backyard and put it behind you'.

"So he did it, thought it was terrifically funny, and then he started telling some of his mates about it and before you know it, everyone's started to order these things."

The 70-year-old financier and former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, who is under house arrest in Manhattan and is yet to make a plea, faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a substantial fine if he is convicted.

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Category: Puzzles, Adventure
Description: Fun new ninja kiwi game. Pop as many bloons as possible with the darts you are given each level.



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By Floyd Norris
Published: January 17, 2009 International Herald Tribune Weekend Business

World trade, a booming source of growth for most of the past five years, is suddenly shriveling, with exports declining in almost every country as the world endures a recession.

The decline in trade, which began last summer, accelerated after Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September. In the aftermath, credit became harder to obtain for importers and confidence waned among would-be buyers of many products.

That exports are down in almost every country shows both the international nature of the recession and the fact that it has been impossible for any country to export its way out of trouble. Nonetheless, there may be protectionist efforts in a number of countries this year, aimed at improving each country's trade position at the expense of others.

China, the largest exporter in the world, reported in the past week that its December exports of $105.7 billion were down 3 percent from that month in 2007, following a 2 percent decline in November. Before that, China's official export figures had shown double-digit percentage gains in every month since March 2002.

The United States, the second-largest exporter, said its November exports of $98.1 billion were down 4 percent from a year earlier. Germany, the third-biggest exporter, reported its exports in November were off 21 percent at $96.1 billion.

For the United States, it was the first year-over-year decline in exports since 2003. For Germany, it was the largest year-over-year fall since 1993.

The figures are all in dollars and are seasonally adjusted. They are not adjusted for inflation, and some of the decline for some countries reflects lower prices for many commodities, including oil, rather than decreasing quantities of exports.

None of the eight major exporters shown in the accompanying graphic, however, get a significant proportion of their exports from oil. The declines reflect a sudden weakening of orders.

Over all, November trade figures were available for 43 countries. That is not the entire world, because some countries do not report trade in dollars and others, like Italy, Spain and Russia, have not yet reported November figures. Figures for most of the major oil exporters were not available.

Of those 43, only three reported higher exports in November than a year earlier. They were Australia, Brazil and Lithuania. The only one of those to have reported December numbers, Brazil, showed a decline that month.

Overall, the total reported exports from those 43 countries peaked in July, at $1.03 trillion. By November, the figure was down 26 percent to $766 billion. Since the figures are seasonally adjusted, the monthly figures should be comparable.

Some of the worst-hit exporters have heavy exposure to industries that are suffering. Taiwan has built a strong business in computer components. Germany is a major exporters of both cars and machine tools. South Korea also has been a substantial exporter of cars and technology products.
World trade, a booming source of growth for most of the past five years, is suddenly shriveling, with exports declining in almost every country as the world endures a recession.

The decline in trade, which began last summer, accelerated after Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September. In the aftermath, credit became harder to obtain for importers and confidence waned among would-be buyers of many products.

That exports are down in almost every country shows both the international nature of the recession and the fact that it has been impossible for any country to export its way out of trouble. Nonetheless, there may be protectionist efforts in a number of countries this year, aimed at improving each country's trade position at the expense of others.

China, the largest exporter in the world, reported in the past week that its December exports of $105.7 billion were down 3 percent from that month in 2007, following a 2 percent decline in November. Before that, China's official export figures had shown double-digit percentage gains in every month since March 2002.

The United States, the second-largest exporter, said its November exports of $98.1 billion were down 4 percent from a year earlier. Germany, the third-biggest exporter, reported its exports in November were off 21 percent at $96.1 billion.

For the United States, it was the first year-over-year decline in exports since 2003. For Germany, it was the largest year-over-year fall since 1993.

The figures are all in dollars and are seasonally adjusted. They are not adjusted for inflation, and some of the decline for some countries reflects lower prices for many commodities, including oil, rather than decreasing quantities of exports.

None of the eight major exporters shown in the accompanying graphic, however, get a significant proportion of their exports from oil. The declines reflect a sudden weakening of orders.

Over all, November trade figures were available for 43 countries. That is not the entire world, because some countries do not report trade in dollars and others, like Italy, Spain and Russia, have not yet reported November figures. Figures for most of the major oil exporters were not available.

Of those 43, only three reported higher exports in November than a year earlier. They were Australia, Brazil and Lithuania. The only one of those to have reported December numbers, Brazil, showed a decline that month.

Overall, the total reported exports from those 43 countries peaked in July, at $1.03 trillion. By November, the figure was down 26 percent to $766 billion. Since the figures are seasonally adjusted, the monthly figures should be comparable.

Some of the worst-hit exporters have heavy exposure to industries that are suffering. Taiwan has built a strong business in computer components. Germany is a major exporters of both cars and machine tools. South Korea also has been a substantial exporter of cars and technology products.


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