That Was The Week That Was-4th Week May

Auto Stocks Are Down & So Are Sales…historically speaking. A day doesn’t pass when someone doesn’t ask me why domestic auto stocks are so low. Morningstar analyst David Whiston writes that he, too, thinks that auto stocks are incredibly cheap. He uses a complicated formula based on population and average auto sales data and concludes that sales should total nearly 16.1 million. Using these numbers and going forward he believes that there is a huge pent-up demand. This on top of new products from Toyota and Ford have some analysts predicting about 14 and 1/2 million cars to be sold in 2012. Bob Carter, GM at Toyota, told Bloomberg that investing in the auto industry becomes even more attractive once investors combine the top-down story with the dramatic, but misunderstood, bottom-up story at GM & Ford. PS…Ford upgraded to investment grade. General Motors is next in line. It will make borrowing cheaper and contribute significantly to the bottom line.

The above chart illustrates how many units are being currently sold versus historical auto sales.

A Short Week…and now I know where some clients get the bejebbers scared out of them.    Peter Brimelow commented Monday for Dow Jones MarketWatch that James Dines, of the Dines Letter, thinks that a cataclysmic war on the scope and scale of WW I may be just over the horizon. ( I am not making this up.) He doesn’t name protagonists or offer up sides just that there could be. Maybe, he muses a China-Pakistan versus India; or Afghanistan versus anybody. (What about a vote for our old friends Iran and Israel? Too easy?)  This may not be such a bad idea. In most cases any country that the United States gets into a war with usually finds itself better off financially afterward than it did before. We only have to look at Germany, Japan, Korea and Vietnam to see how industry and success have followed our military prowess. I suggest that perhaps Greece and Spain team up, hold a few reporters hostage in some posh hotel with room service and unlimited access to the mini-bar, and  declare war against the U.S. We denounce them at the United Nations, showing with charts and graphs that they are building a nuclear arsenal. They don’t deny and next we form a coalition and bomb a few out of the way  third or fourth rate Grecian and Spanish antiquaries. As soon as the dust clears Greece and Spain immediately sue for peace. We agree and lend them a trillion or so dollars at current bank rates and then they go back doing whatever it was they did before anyone heard of the euro or Angela Merkel.  The EU is saved. The United States gets to test a bunch of new weapons; and a few reporters go on the Atkins diet while jointly publishing a best seller.  See the movie The Mouse That Roared.

  And… as were coming to the end of the month expect nothing better than what we’ve seen so far. As I wrote earlier in the year- summer may offer little except sideways action for traders.  

Soothing words from president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Charles Plosser said, ‘There’s no reason for people in the United States to get all in a dither.’, in a  Monday WSJ interview. He went on, ‘I think Europe is just throwing a lot of noise into the system right now. It makes reading the tea leaves particularly difficult right now.’ He also isn’t worried about risk. ‘A flood of liquidity into the U.S. as investors seek safer assets is more likely.’ And he concluded, ‘I think we have the tools at our disposal if it becomes necessary.’

Don’t Get Excited About The Short-Term.  Technically, say Dr. Alexander Elder and Kerry Lovvorn, the bears are fully in control. There is some short covering. Other analysts have stated the markets have been oversold. Last week has seen more weakness.  ‘When no new buying comes in the decline will continue.’

Bad Comparison! Facebook Price to Earnings is being compared to Google. At $35 a share FB had a 75-1 P/E. By comparison, cite the naysayers, Google is 13-1. The Price to Earnings ratio is waaaaaay out of line, they exclaim. What talking heads fail to mention is that Linked-In is at a P/E of 663-1, Sales Force is at 71-1 and Amazon is at 180-1. Got it?!

Bad IPOs? Remember General Motors? Zuckerberg is determined to create a monster social organization. In some ways he has a Steve Jobs desire for something more than money.

More On Facebook IPO Losses…Nasdaq’s inability or incompetence created a situation where brokers were advising clients, according to CNBC, to sell shares at a loss on Monday. The lines to get paid from the Nasdaq was huge. Unfortunately the vast majority won’t get paid since the fund is only about $10 million and claims are reported to be in the $100 million range. Jon Najarian of TradeMonster.com said, ‘Nasdaq has blood on its hands from the locked markets they disseminated for over two hours.’ Some hedge funds reported losses in the hundred of millions of dollars.

No Market Top! Mark Hulbert at MarketWatch wrote last week. Investor concerns that we’ve reached the zenith, the epoch, the tippy-top of the market is just not so. According to Hulbert he examined the following four indicators and came to the conclusion that only one showed a bearish tendency: Valuations- neutral. Technical – mostly negative. Monetary – No worse than neutral. Sentiment –Bullish. So pack up your worries and go on vacation…things will be better when you get back. Failing that consider…

MetLife Is Reported to ReVamp It’s Strategy in Light of Low Interest Environment. The company says it wants to boost its operating profit in emerging markets and sell to newly minted members of the middle-class in countries like Turkey, Romania and Egypt. I have a suggestion…first get your customer service down pat! Answer the phone in a reasonable period of time, have polite folks answering and cut down on the two days stuck in ‘we’ve changed our voice-mail- menu-customer -no-service hell.’

With Rare Exception- Most Investors Do Better Investing in Mutual Funds or ETFs & Not Individual Stocks. John Gerard Lewis wrote that many investors don’t realize something called specific stock risk. He cites some examples of stock risk that can devastate: (1) Industry Specific Risk (ex: JPMorgan and the autos) 2)Legal Risk (Healthcare suits) 3) Key Executive (ex. idiots who lead HP or Best Buy) 4) Management Risk (ex. Jamie Dimon and his team of investment fools) 5) Material Cost Risk (ex. steel, aluminum, copper and potash to name a few) 6) Government policy risk (healthcare, banks, investment houses, etc). The bottom line, with rare exception and possible one or two ‘pet’ stocks, investors are better to create and build portfolios using professional management.

Gold ETFs Leaking Money…

According to ETF Trends last Tuesday over $900 billion went Sayonara.    It was the single largest outflow day in GLD assets since August 2011. Gold closed at $1555 on Wednesday.

 

Getting There…Wednesday a Few Brave Analysts Put ‘Buys’ on Facebook. The stock stalled at $32.00 but some are now coming out and saying what ‘we’ know about Facebook earnings is only the tip! of the iceberg. For example a mobile Facebook app at $1.00 will add $1 billion to the bottom line in one fell swoop. There’s more and there’ll be more… Not all is as bad as some would have the rest of us believe.

Markets Off Triple- Strong- Digits Wednesday…but came back and closed off only 7 points. Worries over Greece continue. CNBC reportedly spoke of the real possibility of Greece leaving the Euro. CNBC also reported Friday that some Euro stocks will halve upon a Greek default.

Americans are Provincial. Most of us didn’t know where Korea was until a war broke out, and the same with Vietnam. Ditto for Afghanistan which, until a few years ago, for all most of us knew, could have been on the Adriatic. Now we are all becoming self-styled experts on the EU, and their politics. But, we still can’t find Norway  even with a GPS tracker. Some say that is part of our charm. We didn’t start investing in foreign countries until about 20 years ago thinking that the rest of the world lived in mud huts, washed in rivers and got their food from forests and streams. We told ourselves that buying foreign investments was too risky. It wasn’t then -it is now. Today the Europeans have some severe problems. The most striking is that the individual countries within the EU lack the one thing that the good old U.S.A. has and has been using to extreme advantage- printing presses for money. Unlike the USA each country in the EU has to bow to the strongest of the group, aka Germany, and get direction from them. The Germans control the presses and the lending mechanism. If this were 20 years back, pre-Euro, countries in Europe may still have problems but nothing that running the individual currency printing presses wouldn’t cure. Or, at least make the severe problems a lot less so.

Doesn’t anyone remember being here before?

Bit by Bit we are learning how messed up the Facebook IPO was- I was always under the impression that an investor couldn’t ‘short’ an IPO stock, only because logic asks where would the ‘shorter’ borrow stock from in order to short? Would someone buy stock in an IPO and then lend out shares to someone else to see their investment go down at the open? Well? I think not, I thought.  Wrong, it seems I was. While Goldman and JP Morgan were two banks that helped Morgan with the Facebook IPO, and had a vested interest in the company, they were also the culprits that leant shares to hedge funds in order that the hedge fund could short the Facebook IPO. The banks did it for a hefty price- according to the WSJ- equivalent to an annualized yield of anywhere between 10%-40%. This, compared to a typical stock borrowing fee of a quarter to a half a point. Lemme see if I got this…Goldman and Morgan got paid to help a company bring its stock to the public and best efforts to make it successful while at the same time assisted in seeing that the shares would fail while one of their partners was attempting to shore up the price of the shares in support at the open….I got that? Does reprehensible sound right?

While Some Throw Stones… Kirk Spano writes that he is buying Facebook at and under $40.00. He calls it a bargain under that price and predicts it’ll be where Google is down the road…and on the other side some analyze and say Facebook is worth just $13.00 a share.

Shocking! 48% of all Americans say they are not contributing to any retirement plan. Nay company nor IRA nor stuffing a few shekels in the mattress or the jelly jar buried under the front stoop. Nope- zip. The flip side is that the majority expect to be retired for 20 years and others more. The reason, ‘I don’t have to save because I plan on working longer.’   Lets see how that works out….

The Bobby Layne Retirement Plan…The ex-Lion QB said his retirement plan was to die when his money ran out….and he did. That’s Bobby on the right with Dandy Don Meredith. The original good ole boys…

Markets down Friday but Up Slightly For The Week.  Zacks.com gazes thoughtfully into the future and muses two possibilities: Europe implodes and the US goes into recession with another 20% downside on the S&P. (2) Europe contains their problems and the US economy keeps growing at +2-3% with the stock market making a 20% move to historic highs of 1565.

Finally- FDIC closed one bank in Alabama Friday bringing the total year-to-date to 24 bank closings.

Questions call Paul @ 877 783 7080 or write him at pstanley@westminsterfinancial.com. Share this blog with someone who cares about their money.

That Was The Week That Was – 3rd Week May

Fear we may all catch it. The mess in Europe could be contagious and hiding under the blankie won’t make it go away. Fear of Losing Money has kept many sensible investors on the sidelines for most, if not all, the market run since last October. Some planners would say investors are missing the boat. But, there’s enough scary news out there that has legitimate reasons for folks to keep their dough locked in zero earning fixed accounts. Pick up the newspaper, or go on line to read Wall Street appears to run amok with Flash Trades, and the regulators don’t seem to think there is anything wrong with that. Banks, like JP Morgan, fritter away billions in poorly executed investments and thumb their noses at laws and regulators. European leadership seem to sit back and do little except preach cutbacks. Common sense tells you that austerity cannot create wealth anymore than I can pirouette on the head of a pin. Let us not forget in the last four years not a word from our elected leaders about job creation. And, globally, we are the healthy nation!   Domestic corporations have consistently reported better than expected earnings only because of cost cutting and greater employee productivity. GDP is last reported at a smidge over the 10-year bond. A nudge and we’re in the soup. The future promise, if re-elected, from the current administration is for higher taxes to pay off the deficit and little on job creation. On the other side I hear the promise, if elected, that laws reigning in the Mad Men running the nation’s banks will be rescinded and tax cuts, implemented by a previous administration, become permanent.  Given all that it would appear the world and its lack of sensible leadership is conspired against us- but, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s Not Like We Haven’t Been Here Before: In 1998 we had the Russia/Long-Term Capital Management Crisis (That promised to toss the entire global population into poverty!). In 2000 we had the bust of the dot com bubble. In 2001 we had 9/11. In 2002 we had World com and the other com bankruptcies. In 2008 we had a collapse of global markets. In 2011 we had the cuteness of our elected official’s stand-off doing nothing. Yes, we’ve been through worse.

Today We’re Better Off…Really!

• Residential Building Permits are in Recovery
• Home Builder stocks are off their lows
• Stock evaluations are more attractive today. On a forward P/E the S&P 500 should be around 1450
• The 10-year yield last year was 3.3% versus 2012 a sub-par 2%. That makes stocks attractive.
• Corporations are cash rich
• Finally, according to friends at Minyanville, Sell in  May may have come in April (One of the worst months since 2011). 

Inflation or Deflation?

The economy is at that point where it could fall into either camp, with disastrous results. How should an investor position themselves?

• Equities over bonds if inflation.
• Bonds and dividend paying stocks if deflation.

KIDS PLAYING WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY Henry Blodget said Monday that the JP Morgan $2-3 billion dollar trading fiasco proves that kids working at banks are playing with dynamite. If they win they get bonuses, if they lose they go to work for a hedge fund at twice the pay. Jimmy Cramer said on the Today Show that it’ll be business as usual and don’t expect our legislatures to get tough on banks. They have too strong a lobby. JP Morgan alone spent $21 1/2 million lobbying Congress the last few years. Rana Foroohar, writing in Time’s ‘The Curious Capitalist’, called the JPMorgan goof ‘The $2 Billion Boo-Boo.’ And Morningstar wrote, ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ Meaning more banks will be uttering mea-culpa’s.

Ouch! Bad Day Monday. Market closed off 125 points. Fear of Greece and JP Morgan blowback was all that the markets needed to continue their run to safety. The dollar was up. Gold off as was oil. Oil finished under $95. Gas prices keep going down. Off 18.7 cents from last year’s peak there doesn’t seem to be a stop on the price of gas. Good news for consumers. Saudi Oil Minister said that Brent crude was over-priced at $111 a barrel and should be selling for no more than $100.Gold also off and finished at $1558. an ounce. Fear is the trade du jour. VIX up. The volatility index may indicate, according to chatter on CNBC, that the S&P dives another 15%-20%.

Bad Tuesday…markets up until the last hour when Greece reared its head- again- and everything fell apart. Gold off another $23 and oil was off a whooping $1.76 to $92.22 a barrel. As of Wednesday morning the whole world was more worried about Greece than Greece is worried about Greece.

Buffett added General Motors to its portfolio last quarter. Berkshire Hathaway took a big bite of the stock- some $10,000,000. General Motors announced it would not be advertising on Facebook as the ads appear not to be effective. And this just a few days before Facebook’s Big Public Debut. With friends like GM…

Worst Week Of The Year! It was ugly and no amount of perfume could mask the stink. Traders acted like they never met a stock they didn’t like.

The Topper Was Friday’s Facebook IPO. Bring in the clowns, dear reader. It was a Hall of Fame jumble of mistakes and errors that was just the perfect topping to a miserable week. First Nasdaq couldn’t handle the trading of Facebook and delayed the issue until around 11 am. There was so much chaos even when they got it started that investors who had orders they thought were filled were not confirmed until late that day after the markets had closed! According to the WSJ some investors sold their positions taking enormous losses. Nasdaq called it a technical glitch. This on the day when Facebook was advertised as the biggest IPO of the year. Others, as reported in the WSJ, tried to confirm or cancel their orders and were prevented from doing so.

Some Investors Stayed On The Sidelines…Not enough information and enough fear from talking heads had investors worried about taking a bite of Facebook on Friday. The gentle folk at GM said they were pulling their ads from Facebook but neglected to add that they were also pulling their ads from the NFL, too. Some stone thrones at Morgan Stanley for being… and having a huge amount of shares offered at the high end of their offering. Still Morningstar came out and liked the company at $32 a share (some talking heads whispered $45). They believe, and call, Facebook a future advertising force! A few words from Morningstar…1) Facebook may not gain ten times more ‘friends’ but they can double their numbers and maybe double again. 2. They have proved they can generate excess returns even in an environment where ad pricing is pretty weak. 3. They, and no one else, has really figured out how to advertise using social networks. 4. Those that criticize and say that Facebook doesn’t know how to use mobile applications don’t realize that no one else does. 5. The company has a 50% level of profitability. There was more, dear reader, but that’s the basics. The disgruntled carried over to Monday where Facebook was beaten up another 11% as investors headed to the exits. And, finally, yes, I did buy and own shares in Facebook.

Questions, call Paul @ 877 783 7080 or write him at pstanley@westminsterfinancial.com. Share this blog with someone who cares about their money.

That Was The Week That Was-2nd Week May

 There was a popular mutual fund family back when I started in the business ( It was eventually bought out by another fund family and then that fund family was sold to another and that to another and now I have no idea who owns it). –They had  a gold fund that invested client’s money in gold mining shares and other precious metal associated companies. It did not invest directly in gold as we can today in the Gold ETF -GLD. There were lots of funds like that then, as there are now.  The wholesaler rep of the fund family told me that investing in gold was merely having money keep pace with inflation. Gold, he explained, tracks the price of a good suit. When gold was $35 an ounce a person could buy a very nice man’s suit for $35. Then gold popped to $200 and, again, you could buy a nice suit for $200. Now gold is trading in the $1600 range  and folks can still buy a very nice Mitt Romney-like-suit for that price but the average cost of a man’s suit is around $400-$600, not the triple digits we see on the chart below. Is the price of gold out of whack with the real world? Probably, but selling and buying anything that doesn’t have a real value tied to it- it’s whatever folks will pay.

A recent Gallup survey had middle income earners thinking that gold was the safest investment they could own, followed closely by real estate.

There are planners and less than thoughtful scribblers that suggest the average person hold some percentage of the metal in their portfolios. For the most part gold doesn’t do anything except look pretty. ( It’s a lot like a few ladies I dated.) It doesn’t work, earn a dividend, buy back shares or do anything except glitter. For all it’s prettiness gold is called a portfolio ‘staple’. On average it gets more expensive as it ages. It also has a nasty habit of self-destructing at the oddest times. Unlike most equity or bond investments gold can decide to do absolutely nothing for the longest periods of time and then it will do ‘something’ quickly and without warning. To me that’s not a staple. Today gold moves almost in correlation with the stock market. What gold should be used as is a fear or inflation investment, as people worry about the loss of their paper money’s purchasing power. In the last several years it hasn’t worked out that way. (In a ‘matter of speaking’ it has followed ‘Fed Policy’ and has pulled back because the Fed has not signaled it would accommodate lower rates). Its for those reasons that I look at gold as a ‘trade’, and should be bought only when economic conditions merit and not held to ‘clutter’ up portfolios for long periods of time.

For the week Gold has broken support levels and according to ETF Trends has seen a 4% loss. Gold has declined more than at any other time since 2008.  It threatens to go negative in 2012.

A Rich Person Says Something Outrageous and They Are Thought of As Being Insightful or Wise or Both. I Say The Same Thing & I’m A Crack-Pot. Uber-Rich Warren Buffett said at the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting, …’The market is a psychotic drunk, and sometimes Mr. Market does some very strange things. The stock market is the most obliging, money-making place in the world.’

CNBC Technician Said Stocks Could  Sell-Off but Not Swoon! Oppsy-Daisy! Maybe the poor fellow meant ‘further selling or tumble’. But swoon is what was said and reported.  Carter Worth from Oppenheimer said on CNBC that Monday the markets were more ‘buying the news’.  Rich Ross said, ‘I still think we’re pretty vulnerable here. I think technically speaking we’re setting up for that type of ‘sell in May’ situation to unfold again.’ The defensive utility sector is on a steady uptrend.

So What’s With Oil & Energy? Technical expert Michael Kahn expects that the price of oil (Monday’s price $96.42) is near its bottom but many stocks in the sector have more to give up. Encouraging signs are being seen in the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG- ETF). Prices may go slightly lower but the charts show the Bears have lost their grip.  Investors well could follow UNG for a reversal.

Whispers …Greece has no stomach for further austerity measures. Word from Behind The Money CNBC is that Greece may be allowed to leave the EU. Germany would offer a helping hand, help them pack their bags, hold the door open and slip a few bucks into the coffer. ‘Long-term,’ Mark Goldberg at ClientFirst Strategy, said, ‘a Greek exit from the EU would be bullish for everyone.’ In the short term it would create a mess. Portugal may decide to go,  as well could a few more southern neighbors. The euro would be in jeopardy. Still, out of the mess several European stock- multi-nationals, would be beaten up and offer significant value, said Hillary Kramer. She offered up a list that included Vodafone, GlaxoSmithKline and Total.

Dump! The first six hours of the trading day Tuesday was spent bailing and tossing anything and everything overboard. Consumer staples, gold, energy, banks and small caps were all tossed until the final hours when things looked a bit calmer and markets settled down. At one point I saw the Dow down 160 points. It closed down 76. Gold was down $30 an ounce, the biggest drop in a long time. It finally closed at $1591. Oil closed at $96.50. The pain at the pump should be eased somewhat in the coming weeks if the price holds. The Saudis promised to fill any gap and experts say plenty of oil held by them in reserve. Mark Hulbert, writing for MarketWatch, said that a major correction is unlikely.  Investors should be aware that more up-down-sideways action could continue for a month or two.

 Facebook ends its Dog & Pony in front of prospective investors and shares come to the public May 18th. The company will trade under the symbol FB. Arvind Bhatia, analyst at Sterne Agree, starting covering Facebook early and last Monday issued a Buy rating with a price tag of $45.00!

Green Mountain Founder  Caught in Margin Call. He was forced to sell 5 million shares under a margin sellout. When investors buy shares on margin they must put up a certain percentage of the price to borrow from a broker. If the share price falls a margin call may be made for additional liquidity. Starbucks had announced in March it would enter the single serve coffee brew market causing Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to fall 16% that day. Additional bad news and perma-bears have hounded the company. The board forced founder Robert Stiller to resign from his post as chairman after he sold 5 million shares to satisfy his margin, the NY Times reported. Related were shares of Krispy Kreme Donuts that fell 9% on fear that Stiller would sell his positions to cover his Green Mountain losses.

Wynn Resorts Fell 5.4% Tuesday. Analysts said that even though the gaming company reported a disappointing first quarter investors should not give up on the stock. The company is a major player in Vegas and in Macau.

Ford Announced it would expand U.S. Output. It will reduce its normal 2 week shutdown at 13 plants in the U.S. to one week. Strong domestic sales have contributed to the decision. Higher taxes and losses in Europe have caused earnings to fall in half compared to last year. Ford shares traded around $10.75 Wednesday with a P/E of 2.9 (that’s not a misprint- Toyota has a P/E of 107.75). Hillary Kramer wrote that of all the car companies she likes Ford Best of All.

Wednesday was Groundhog Day…! Repeating what happened Monday and Tuesday markets opened lower again on Wednesday and recovered ground in the afternoon to close off their lows. Gold finished $1591 and oil was off its feed to $96.45.  (It was the 7th straight day for oil to fall, the longest streak since 2009). The WSJ called the early morning trading as ‘Amateur Hour’. Funds and institutions seem to be piling in late in the day, cherry picking stocks that were battered beyond reason. Leading the turnaround late in the day were Apple and Caterpillar. The Dow lost 97 points, S&P was off  9 and the Nasdaq fell 12 points.

Cisco & Priceline offered up poor guidance going forward, after the close of markets on Wednesday. The two diverse companies were sour on futures with Priceline saying the bookings would be at a slower pace. Cisco offered that customers told them they would be spending more on IT if Europe doesn’t get worse and government policy doesn’t impede growth.  That guidance sank the tech side of the market on Thursday! The Dow ended up +20 but the Nasdaq was off a point and Gold ended down $11.

Still markets ended a week long skid…Cisco closed under $17 a share and Morningstar allows fair value for the stock at $24.

After-Hours Bombshell… JPM Chase takes $2 billion trading loss…! The trading mistake was said to be made in a long bet on the economic recovery using derivatives (Yes, dear reader, the same type of investments that started the entire global mess!) The CEO, Jamie ‘Golden Boy’ Dimon, in a hastily arranged conference call said that the bank remains profitable despite the trading loss. He said the bank earned, more or less, $4 billion after-tax this past quarter. The banking unit responsible for the losses had under management, according to the WSJ, some $100 billion in derivative positions. Dimon is said to have known about this since the end of April.

Too Big To Fail…and using OPM ( Other People’s Money)! The Bank traded on increasing yield or the was it hedging its European holdings? The bank says it was hedging risk but we won’t know until regulators finish an investigation. What we do know is that banks lie and its been business as usual at JP Morgan Chase, and probably the other major financial institutions as well. It’s time to regulate them closely since they cannot be trusted. The fact that Dimon has said that financial regulations are too harsh and restrain the bank’s ability to do business is just smoke blown up our collective passbook savings. If regulators can’t get these people on a short-leash then maybe its time to start breaking up the majors into smaller more manageable banking units. Elizabeth Warren, over the weekend, called for Dimon to resign. She also called for tougher financial handcuffs for the banks.

Dow has worst week in five months… The bright spot was telecomm with Verizon and AT&T both up and Credit Suisse analysts recommending buying shares.

Why? Do we have a problem breaking up banks that threaten to destroy our civilized way of life in order for them to prosper using methods most business people would be tossed into the pokey for? The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was instituted in 1890 to protect the public from ‘arrangements designed to advance the cost of goods to the consumer.’ The United States had no problem breaking up railroad and oil companies when they threatened our way of life. With the latest news from JP Morgan Chase it’s time that banks were broken into many different units with a whole set of new rules.Our elected officials understand where the problem is –only lack the backbone to do what’s right.

Questions call Paul @ 877 783 7080 or write him at pstanley@westminsterfinancial.com. Share this blog with someone who cares about their money.