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Life Tips

What’s your favorite gas station?

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I used to go to Shell gas station. One reason is when I started to driving in 1998, I heard from fellow graduate students that “Shell gas is the best”. Another reason is there is a Shell gas station near my home.

But after I tried the BP (British Petrolum, formerly Amoco) station lately, I changed my mind. It seems to me BP invigorate gas lasted longer than the Shell gas, at least to my 2001 Nissan Altima. I guess it could be one time thing, as BP invigorate contains some additives to clean up the engine, which the Shell could not do for some reason.

Bottom line is, I am going to try it for a while, and see if this effect lasts.

BP invigorate performance pic

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

What’s your leverage ratio?

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I think I found the root cause of this whole financial crisis, just like the Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds, AIG (NYSE:AIG), Washington Mutual (NYSE:WM), the problem is American home buyers/consumers are overly leveraged. Note I used the word home buyers, not owners, because theoritically the banks (oh, to be precise, the Chinese, the Japanse…) owned the mortgages, most American buyers put very little downpayment. This problem is not isolated to the home mortgages, it has been extended to the auto loans and cosumer credit too. So I would not be surprised to see if those two things blow up in the near future.

This also bring an interesting question, related to the current heated debate on the bailout bill: Paulson (aka King Henry) does not want any string attached to his bailout plan, arguing that wihtout bailout the credit market will collapse and we will be all worse off; Democrats argues that we need to bailout the home owners (oh buyers, or speculators) too at the same time we bailout the wall street.

The bottom line is: we are both overly leveraged. While I saw the Lehman Brothers has 40:1 asset/equity ratio, what’s the American consumers leverage ratio? I remember more than 7 years ago I bought a car with zero downpayment, that’s an infinite leverage ratio. Seriously speaking, I think the old rule 3:1 for buying a house should still apply: in others words, people should buy a house about 3 times gross income. OK, I am talking about the solvency measurement here.

The aftermath of bailout

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Categories
Economy Investing

Perspectives on Bailout and Credit default swap CDS

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Ron Paul had an interesting perspective on this topic.

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Categories
Master Series

In Buffett we trust: II

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In this turbulent market, most of my stocks took hits, from China Mobile (NYSE:CHL) to Arch Coal (NYSE:ACI), to Chesepeake Energy (NYSE:CHK), Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO), not to mention the once-high-flyers such as Sohu (Nasdaq:SOHU) and Wuxi Pharma (Nasdaq:WX), both of which I already sold. At the same time, I am happy to see my two shares of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) stood calm, and even went up a bit. Why?

(Fox interview David Sokol, Chairman of MidAmerican Energy, a Berkshire Hathaway holding)

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Categories
Investing

The great bailout of 2008: bail, baby, bail

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aig bsc fnm fre leh mer logo

March 16: Bear Stearns, $29 billon

Sept. 6: Fannie/Freddie, $200 billion

Lehman Brothers: sorry baby no bail

AIG: $85 billion

Who is the next???

Essentially Fed/Treasury are transfering the downside risks from individual companies to the fed/treasury/greenbacks. Note the money pledged to support Fannie/Freddie/AIG could exceed the original number if the problem worsens.

I can only say: gold, baby, gold!

Categories
Stocks

AIG IS too big to fail

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At least that’s what Fed chairman Bernenke and Treasury secretary Paulson think, and the congress and president agree with them. But how about the shareholders and we the tax payers? The AIG shareholders are almost wiped out (slightly better than Fannie and Freddie), and the price tag is $85 billion for now.

So summary, the price tag of recent big financial firms fallout.

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Categories
Economy

Most severe crisis since the great depression

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and here is President Bush has to say this morning (source: yahoo):

“We are working to reduce disruptions and minimize the impact of these financial market developments on the broader economy,” Bush said in the Rose Garden, choosing to address the market turmoil at the top of an appearance with visiting Ghanian President John Kufuor. “The policymakers will focus on the health of the financial system as a whole,” Bush said.

In the weekend, the No. 4 US invesetment bank Lehman Brothers went under, the No. 3. US investment bank Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America under recommendation by Fed (Bloomberg news). The goal was to make the buck stop at the Merrill. No one wants to see the No. 1 Goldman and No. 2 Morgan Stanley go under.

But they only got a temporary break. The focus now is on AIG and Washington Mutual. The problem for GS and MS, with BoA got Merrill, no company in the world has the resource to buy GS/MS without any goverment help. And the US goverment set a precedent they are not going to bail out anyone (Lehman, for example).

Categories
Investing

Thinking GOLD now

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With the Lehman Brothers discussion underway in its 3rd day, and Asian market is anxious waiting for positive outcome. I am thinking otherwise. Regardless Lehman gets sold (as a piece or in several pieces), continue its business with bankrupcy in mind, this Lehman thing is just a tip of iceberger we are going to see. What? You may ask we already see Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie bailout, and that’s only the tip of iceberger? The problem is not only AIG, WaMu: the next two in the line; the problem is now I am afraid the dollar and the world financial market will collapse.

As we have seen from the difficulty of Lehman discussion, the key is US goverment is not going to provide any kind of finance support, as they did in the Bear, Fannie, Freddie deal (total $229 billion). For the goverment, they don’t want to do this due to two reasons: 1) Moral hazard; 2) The increasing debt on the US goverment and tax payers, and the the pressure on USD comes with it.

If the worst happens, nothing will be spared, except the gold (Wiki: ways investing in gold). Because before the 1970s un-pegging of dollar and gold happened, gold was the central banks reserve/deposit to print paper money. And if we could go back history a bit more, we know gold is the most widely used precious metal for money.

So, I am seriously thinking about the Gold ETF (GLD). Another way, if you are like my friend Sun, you can buy the gold bar from bullion direct.

Bullion direct gold bar

I am trusting the good old gold much more than the Lehmans, the wall street, the US goverment (treasury department, the federal reserve), will you 🙂

Categories
Stocks

Lehman is NOT too big to fail

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This is the message Paulson sent to the street this morning. In other words, Paulson was saying “speculators, you should know this coming in last 6 months, sorry but I can not help you out this time, because in doing so I could lose my job too”. Pauslon gave two reasons he won’t bail out Lehman Brothers: 1) Since the Bear Stearns crisis, Lehman has been in the news for almost 6 months, the partites should have taken steps in the case of “go under” of Lehman; 2) Since the Bear Stearns Crisis, Fed has opened the discount windows to investment banks. Lehman should have done its own job to raise capital, keep its house in order.

No cofffee for reporters of Lehman
(Obviously, the reporters are not welcomed in the Lehman building)

Categories
Economy

The declining of world only super-power: I

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Today is a special day, the seven anniversary of 9-11. I still remember that morning, when I watch the morning TV as usual, I saw the smoke coming out of World Trader Center Tower, and wondering “what absent-minded pilot fly his/her plane into the tower”?

We all know what happened after that. The war against Talian in Afganistan, the war for “weapon of mass distruction” in Iraq. More importantly, the gas price went from around $1.50 (I still remember some gas stations price gauging in the evening of 9-11) to $3.50, the US federal deficit and trade deficit grew significantly, and last but not least, the housing and credit crisis in the last year. Since my interest is mainly in economy and finance, let me go there for a minute.

This week (last Sunday) marks another hard-working weekend for US treasury secratery Henry Paulson, because of the goverment take over of Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac. The two Goverment Sponsored Entities have $5 trillion of US mortgages, half of US mortage size. Interestingly, roughly $1.5 trillion of that $5 trillion was purchased by the foreign goverments: China, Korea, Japan and Russia etc. This is the direct reason for the US goverment take over, because the foreign goverment lost confidence on the Fannie and Freddie. On the surface, with the take over, now the mortgage has the full faith of US goverment, now things are goody and dandy again. But wait a minute, the US goverment itself has $10 trillion deficit, what if the US goverment fails to pay its own debt? Well, there are two ways out of it:

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