ThriftSlut Tops on Google Search!

Amazingly, this blog has appeared at the top of a Google search! Is this recognition or what? Search results for "Thrift Slut" might not last very long once our preeminence becomes apparent to competitors, so if the live search does not show us at the top, you can click the image on the left to see where we were at the height of our fame!

Ford and Toyota in Ohio

Received this in my email with no citation or link, but too good not to pass on. Please send me information if you know source of material so I can attribute properly: _______________________ A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford) decided to have a canoe race on the Ohio River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager and 1 rower. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.. Sadly, The End. Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages while Toyota has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. Here are last quarter's results: Toyota made $4 billion in profits. Ford had $9 billion in losses. Ford folks are still scratching their heads.... _______________________ Also sadly, this fable paints an overly flattering portrait of Ford management. Pity the poor shareholders, not to mention employees, who thought Ford executives knew what they were doing as they hatched their hare-brained schemes to buy Jaguar and Land Rover, deals which resulted in a 67% investment loss for the company. Ford Motor Company represents yet another test of the "buy and hold" folk wisdom: Sold for about $3.00 a share on April 9, 1998, sells for $2.41 today. Oh, yeah, while the company was talking about restructuring and getting concessions from its employees and other such stuff, the stock worked its way up to a high of $26.40 in November, 2005, then descended back into the pits. Yo! You investors who believed this kind of management would be able to hold on to those gains: What were you thinking?

Time to Buy Bonds Before Rates Drop? See Treasury Direct

For safety of your principal and protection against inflation, I Bonds from the U. S. Treasury are an excellent investment. They pay interest in two parts: A Fixed Rate, which lasts for the life of your bond, and an Inflation Rate, which is adjusted every six months to reflect inflation. If you open a Treasury Direct account, you can buy $5000 worth of these bonds for yourself, linked to your Social Security Number, and for others such as spouse or children. We will consider the advantages of Treasury Direct in more detail later. That said, you might not want to wait for that discussion before opening an account. The rates will change at the end of April. If you have ever wanted to buy such bonds, now might be the time to open your account. The Fixed Rate might well drop then, as well as the Inflation Rate. Rate Information. I Bonds. Treasury Direct.

Who's More Informed: Soros or Washington?

Frugal Jay alerted me to an interesting interview with billionaire George Soros. It immediately raises the question of whom you should trust for dependable information about economic matters as you plan your investments: Soros or Washington? Soros Talks (Loads from Marketplace.org) Soros on Marketplace.org Forthcoming Soros Book Connect the dots yourself: Leadership in Washington Since February April 3, 2008: President Steps Aside March 18, 2008: President Upbeat About Economy, President as Cheerleader February 28, 2008: The Gasoline Issue Print Version, Feature, Body Language, YouTube

More on Institutional Decay: The Business Section

Soon or later, every intelligent investor studies the work of enlightened economists and other social critics who have written about the causes of the turn-of-the-century bubble in stocks and the later real estate bubble. Their analyses commonly indicate that the mass media play a critical role in the development of irrational exuberance and market excesses that are bound to lead to eventual market collapses and the loss of middle-class wealth. Examination of stories from periods of excess shows reporters repeating the extravagant claims of Wall Street hucksters without applying critical thinking to the goofiness underlying the mob psychology on which the hucksters thrived. In the turn-of-the-century stock market bubble, virtually all the media expanded coverage of the stock market and thereby continually stimulated irrational behavior on the part of the masses who were misled into believing a "new economy" had been born which was unlike anything known by older investors. A sensible investor was thus confronted with mountains of data that could not be digested and the meaning of events was masked in avalanches of trivia concerning investments. Now we live in different times. Middle-class investors are in dire need of intelligent discourse about financial markets. They need information about corporate malfeasance, executive corruption, governmental incompetency and the undermining of financial institutions by a political ideology which has insisted that government has no role in regulating corporate life. One would think that the media would rise to the occasion and give middle-class investors what they need. Instead, the media are actually cutting back on their coverage of business news. Older readers can probably remember the hefty size of business sections in the paper in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. The business section was a good size on Friday and Saturday, really big on Sunday and papers all over the country produced large Monday business sections which reported on business developments and technology. Younger readers who are new investors might have no memories of those days. To illustrate the changes for them, I made a trip to my local library and inspected the business sections of two newspapers which were widely available in the Chicago area: the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. I wish I had been able to see more papers that were available here, but the library had no microfilms of their issues. although I am not claiming that this was a scientific study of all media, but I remember papers from all over the country in that era and I am confident that my results will be similar to what you will find in your own inspection of your local archives. What I did was to examine the business sections for some significant weekends in terms of market performance: January 14-17, 2000 ,when the Dow Jones hit its then record high of 11, 723 September 21-24, 2001: the Dow had dropped to 8236 after 9-11 September 27-30, 2002: the Dow hit the low point of its crash at 7701 The size of the business sections for those periods were then compared to the size of the business sections of last weekend: March 28-31, 2008. The change in coverage is dramatic. For the New York Times, 33% of the business pages at their high point in 2000 had disappeared by 2008. From the Chicago Tribune's high water mark in 2000, 42% of the business pages had disappeared. What it indicates is a degrading of the press in regard to the coverage of business matters. When you were being overwhelmed by trivia that only stimulated you to behave more irrationally, the press was deluging you in uncontextualized facts and misrepresentations that you didn't need. Now that a deeper understanding of financial issues is critically important for dealing with your investment decisions, the press cuts back its coverage.

Texas Pride

In my email: _________ A Japanese doctor said, "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man ,put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks." A German doctor said, That's nothing, we can take a lung out of one person , put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks." A British doctor said, "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks." A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, "You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brains out of Texas , put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work." _________ I'd find this even funnier if the man who sent it to me was not a conservative who voted twice for Bush. I don't think he would have sent this around two years ago. Neither do I think, in years past, so many the crowd would have booed the President as as they did when he walked out to throw the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opener. The point: Our institutions are taking bad hits from everywhere. As an investor, you have to factor institutional decay into the moves you make to protect your family.

Avoid Gold! Get Into Other Metals for Huge Gains!

A new quarter in the financial year begins today. The Dow will be at 12,263 when the markets open. Last night, gold closed at $893 an ounce. That's good news or bad news, depending on how well your personal finances have been going lately. (More on why this is so in later posts.) Historically, gold trades at a price which is about 1/10 the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If prices are to return to their historical ratio in the next few months, it would mean that the price of gold would rise to $1226.30 (on March 17 gold closed at $1034) or that the Dow Jones industrial average would plunge to 8930, a loss of about 27%. That is, inflation going crazy or market meltdown. Why stay up nights, worried about risking your money in such volatile investments? You can acquire other precious metals and make huge profits while risking little except for your time! This could be the best tip you get this year: Today's strategy for acquiring commodities!