Reading Time: < 1 minute Maybe things are not as bad as it seems. This afternoon we visited West County mall to check out things. We have not been to the malls for quite a while. Apple Store At the Apple store, I saw a big crowd as usual. This made me wondering: what recession? Although I am happy with

Reading Time: < 1 minute Here is the Google video. He also talked about the financial crisis, human psychology in terms of bubble, herd mentality etc. which is my favorite part (but I have to admit I am one of the herd). The interview last about 54 min.

Reading Time: 2 minutes According to Chinese news, China Mobile’s ultimate parent, the China State Asset Management Co. (CSAM), took 50 billion Chinese Yuan (about 7.30 billion USD) from China Mobile Group (the parent of China Mobile Limited, NYSE: CHL; HKSE:0941), and gave it to China Telecom. For CSAM, this is merely put money from left pocket to right

Reading Time: 2 minutes Think you are unlucky being US tax payer, paying $700 billion to bail out wall street. Think the poor Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) shareholder and bond holder, they are left with almost nothing. And yours truely, after been in the US stock market for almost 5 years, is one of the WM shareholders. Looking back,

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: 2 minutes 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute Ron Paul had an interesting perspective on this topic.

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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