（本文要隱藏的部分）
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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

By Nikolaj Gammeltoft
April 13 (Bloomberg) -- For the ultimate in liquid investments, try top-quality wine, which has outperformed one benchmark U.S. stock index for 13 years and withstood two recessions.

That’s the conclusion of Philippe Masset and Jean-Philippe Weisskopf, two Switzerland-based economists who compared wine prices with the Russell 3000 Index between January 1996 and January 2009. The researchers studied more than 400,000 prices on regularly traded wines from the 13-year period, which covers two bull markets and two bear markets for stocks, to construct a general wine index and a gauge of top vintages.

“My wine cellars have probably appreciated better than any other investment I have made personally,” said Drew Nieporent, owner of Corton, Nobu and Tribeca Grill in New York. The third restaurant holds a 2009 Grand Award from Wine Spectator magazine. “Great wines are scarce,” he said. “You can’t get them everywhere.”

Demand for alternative investments such as wine and artwork has grown in recent decades as investors seek refuge from inflation, and look for asset classes in which to store wealth beyond traditional methods such as stocks, bonds and gold, according to Peter Boockvar, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York

“It’s the demand for hard assets, and it’s the same reason why gold and oil are rallying,” Boockvar said. Gold futures are advancing for a 10th straight year, and crude trades for about $84 a barrel in New York, a level never exceeded before 2007.

Boosting Returns
Masset and Weisskopf took prices from 144 auctions with a combined value of $237 million to construct the index. They used vintages from 1981 to 2005.

“Our findings show that the inclusion of wine in a portfolio and, especially, more prestigious wines, increases the portfolio’s returns while reducing its risk, particularly during the financial crisis,” wrote Masset, a professor at the Lausanne Hotel School, and Weisskopf, a researcher at the University of Fribourg, in their study, “Raise Your Glass: Wine Investment and the Financial Crisis.”

The general wine index beat the Russell 3000 over the period, largely because it held value over the most recent market downturn -- and did so with lower volatility than equities. Since mid-2008, the wine measure fell 17 percent, while the stocks gauge declined 47 percent.

The index of highest-quality wines, “first growth wines of top vintages only,” in particular from 2005 onward, “hugely outperforms” the other two indexes, the authors said. The elite gauge has a more than fivefold return, while the regular wine index has more than doubled. The Russell 3000 gained about 50 percent.

Drinking More
The increase in prices coincided with an increase in consumption of the beverage. Americans drank a record 304 million cases in 2009 following a 3.2 percent average annual rise since 1996, according to the last year’s edition of “The Global Drinks Market: Impact Databank Review & Forecast. (There are nine liters of wine in a case.) Global consumption has grown 0.6 percent a year on average to 2.65 billion cases during the same period.

The monthly Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index tracks the price movements of 100 of the most sought-after wines offered in the resale market. The index rose 11.7 percent during the first three months of 2010 and jumped 27.6 percent from a year earlier as of March 31, according to data compiled by Liv-ex.com.

Proper Storage
Wine isn’t an investment for the unprepared, said Peter Meltzer, auction correspondent for Wine Spectator magazine. The market is thinly traded compared with stocks. Bottles need to be handled carefully and stored properly to avoid breakage or spoiling. Collectors who aren’t familiar with vintages, varietals and appellations could find themselves saddled with a product that’s much less desirable than they’d expected.

Because wine doesn’t generate dividends or interest like stocks or bonds often do, the only way to calculate its value is to guess how much people will be willing to pay for it in the future, making it a speculative instrument, said Glenn Tongue, a partner at T2 Partners LLC in New York.

‘‘We get no cash from wine and we have no idea what we can sell it for down the road, so we’re not going to invest in it,” said Tongue, whose Tilson Focus Fund has almost doubled investors’ money in the past year, beating 99 percent of peers.
“It’s speculation when you’re buying wine or art. It’s not an investment.”

More Than $400
Top wine vintages have been the best performers since 1996 with wines costing more than $200 a bottle -- and particularly collectible bottles above $400 -- as much as quadrupling their value. That compares with a 170 percent increase in the price of wines selling below $100 and a 120 percent return for those between $100 and $199.

The Internet has made the market for collector’s items more organized and transparent because it improves the distribution of information and lowers transaction costs, according to Jim Halperin, co-founder of Heritage Auction Galleries, the third- largest art and memorabilia auctioneer after New York-based Sotheby’s and Christie’s International Plc in London.

While wine has done better than assets such as stocks, real estate and gold, modern art was the most attractive investment, outperforming credit, equity and commodities between 1994 and 2008, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates Inc., an investment research firm in Westport, Connecticut.

Not All Equal
Not all wines appreciate equally and while lesser-quality wines may increase in value, they will rarely show the same performance as choice Bordeaux like Châteaux Pétrus, Ausone, and Cheval Blanc, or Burgundies from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Henri Jayer, said Meltzer of Wine Spectator.

“Collectibles have become a viable and serious tool for investment diversification,” said Dallas-based Halperin. “I’m investing my own money in art and collectibles, right alongside public stocks, private equity, business loans and real estate.”

Low interest rates and government stimulus measures have helped boost demand for wine, said Miller Tabak’s Boockvar. The Federal Reserve cut its interest-rate benchmark to a record low near zero in December 2008 and has said it will keep it there for an “extended period.” The U.S. government spent, lent or guaranteed more than $8 trillion to end the worst contraction since the Great Depression.

“In a world where interest rates are zero and money is being printed around the world, there’s a demand for hard assets
-- whether it is wine, comic books or baseball cards -- because they can protect the investor from that environment,” Boockvar said.


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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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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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