Perspectives

For at least 60 years, it has been an article of faith to invest one’s assets along the lines of 60 percent stocks, 40 percent bonds.  This formula was originally coined by the Ford Foundation; they advocated the allocation to endowments and large charities who...

Warren Barnett 30 December 2021 The New Year will bring all sorts of changes.  A stock market floating on cheap money and excess funds will learn to float with less or capsize in the process.  Many speculative enterprises like cryptocurrencies, electric...

Can Crypto Go to Zero? You Betcha! Of all the asset classes traded today, none has the need for a collective set of beliefs as much as cryptocurrencies.  These virtual assets fluctuate widely in value, which is set supposedly by supply and demand.  The...

Warren Barnett 24 June 2021 Back in the day when Russell Long of Louisiana was chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, he used to tell a ditty to his colleagues: “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, go tax that fella yonder under the tree.”  Long was in...

Warren Barnett 19 October 2021 Otto Von Bismarck, the man credited with uniting various fiefdoms into what is today Germany, once said there are two things the public must never see: one is sausage being made; the other is how legislation is passed into law. The...

By now, most of the public has at least heard of the Ponzi scheme of John Woods, majority owner of Southport Capital, a Chattanooga, TN brokerage firm which has, in a complaint filed with the SEC, received $110 million from some 400 investors over the last ten years....

here is an old maxim in China: “He who chooses to ride the tiger goes wherever the tiger goes.” This has gained relevance for investors after China decreed over the past weekend that private schools set up to tutor Chinese students will have to become non-profit in...

A grim milestone was reached this week as this country recorded 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 and its offshoots. Still, the trend is decelerating rapidly, vaccinations are being accepted no matter how unevenly, and there is an air of, if not victory, at least hope in...

Speculators who treat the stock market as a casino love concepts. They are new, unburdened by history, can be projected far into the future, and thus can justify almost any stock price. For those who foist stock ideas on an unsuspecting public, it is a rich vein to...