The Street is pricing Qualcomm (QCOM +1.2%) as if its business model is broken, says Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon. At a sub-$60 stock price, he thinks investors are pricing in a major decline in Qualcomm's royalty payments, either due to a lower rate or declining 3G/4G phone prices, and/or a drop in its chip margins. Rasgon, who has a $75 PT on Qualcomm, doesn't see either scenario as likely. (earlier) [View news story]
Agree with osvold that Qualcomm is in trouble long-term. Intel is coming on strong and is moving faster than most realize but there are those that are catching on: http://bit.ly/yWBUg8
Intel is competitive at 32nm in mobile, and will overtake at 22nm. And then there is 14nm which is being aggressively accelerated (into 2013 if I recall). http://bit.ly/JoB7Eu
Add to that the current woes that Qualcomm is having at the 28nm node and even the near to mid-term doesn't look promising. I hold both Intel and QCOM but am looking to get out of QCOM before the market recognizes the depth of this changing of the guard.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Not sure what you're referring to by borrowing from SS, as that's always been the case. For most of history the trust funds have been in annual surplus. It was during the early 1980s that the funds were in danger of depletion. You can find the account history here: http://1.usa.gov/LpjYcN
Contrary to what Al Gore would have us believe, there's no lock-box. The surplus has always been "invested" in federal gov IOUs and thus spent on current consumption (http://1.usa.gov/JPmdfc ). That's why when the trust funds go into deficit it's going to be something between severe and catastrophic, as not only will the SS surplus no longer be funding current government expenditures, but the repayments into the trust fund have to come from raising general tax receipts, or even more borrowing. Last time I looked the trust funds were expected to go into annual deficits before 2020.
Will all this going on George's dream of a lower retirement age is a fairy tale.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
George, you're blowin' smoke. Your piece here claims you haven't worked in four years. Your blog claims you never worked more than a couple of days a week for the 10 years prior to that. You've repeatedly complained that the retirement age should be lowered so your wife could retire with full benefits. Everything here is consistent with you living off of your "sugar momma" and needing her to work until you can both live off of her benefits. That's the motivation for this nonsense about jobs being finite and attempting to justify a lower retirement age. You haven't a clue about the job market as you've spent as little time as possible in it.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
George, in Greece they retire early, they have high unemployment, and they riot a lot. Promoting early retirement for those not financially fit for it doesn't solve what you claim it to solve, and will only bring what's transpiring in Greece here.
Referring to our discussion above, structural unemployment is really the issue, and that won't be solved by booting the productive from the workforce and placing them on SS, Medicare, and other systems that are already effectively insolvent.
If down the road we get to social unrest by the younger workers it's going to be because they will have figured out that they're being pillaged by retirees through a pyramid scheme that was always expected to run dry by the time they came anywhere close to retirement age.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
George, you couldn't be more confused. The 4% rate I mentioned is generally referred to as "frictional" unemployment. It isn't the same as structural unemployment.
Structural unemployment is exactly the opposite of what you're claiming. Structural unemployment posits that the jobs are there, but the jobs don't fit the skills of those that are unemployed. Thus your argument for having productive folks retire and become unproductive and drawing upon assistance isn't going to fill jobs that are empty because of the lack of a skilled workforce. What you're arguing for isn't just zero-sum, it's a negative outcome. Not only do you not solve the structural unemployment problem, but you greatly exacerbate the nation's fiscal mess.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
The anomaly I referred to were those financially able to retire early without assistance. That's the only group for which early retirement wouldn't place a strain on systems that have huge unfunded liabilities as it is. Early retirees are a greater drain on these systems, which is why the retirement age has periodically been raised, and will continue to rise in the future. It's the only way to push out the date of exhaustion of these funds.
The 1960’s race riots were not due to lack of early retirees, and they didn’t cease because folks started taking early retirement. You’re grasping at straws to maintain an absurd fiction that you solve our national financial issues by increasing the number of folks that are unproductive and require assistance. It hasn’t worked in Greece, and isn’t working here. In fact we’ve done a great job of getting people to leave the workforce, which is the root of the problem. Your prescription does nothing more than play musical chairs in a zero-sum game. The number of jobs is a function of economic activity and growth, not the number of retirements.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
There are plenty of jobs being created, it's just where they are being created. US government policies in many cases prevent them from being created here. My wife started a 2nd side business which has grown into her main business that involves manufacturing. She found it prohibitive on a number of fronts to manufacture locally as opposed to contracting out overseas. Just dealing with the State unemployment agency and a revolving door of employees constantly trying to milk unemployment benefits from a State bureaucracy that doesn't care and seems to outright favor fraud is reason enough to go overseas.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
"Pardon me, but where exactly did I insist that any one else should carry anyone else's burden."
George, your entire piece is full of statements that imply exactly that. Either that or you believe most of these folks that you would have be early retirees are sitting on multi-million dollar portfolios - which isn't even close to reality.
I'm beginning to wonder if you even read your piece.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
George, the problem with your prescription is that you are considering only the anomaly, and not the norm. This idea that we can be like Greece, and that the retirement age should be kept as is or lowered (you seem to be arguing that) because there are a finite number of jobs so we need folks to retire to open them up is a prescription for disaster (a la Greece). Quite the opposite. We need to raise the retirement age and reset expectations because the fact is that most can't afford to retire, at least without the promise of a big handout from subsequent generations.
And as I said above in reply to Dicky, I'm not going to participate in this snow-job that my retiring at 52 is noble and going to benefit society overall versus if I were to continue to work. I will comparatively (to the present) be a lump of flesh. My productive capacity will not be fully utilized. Pay-as-you-go systems like SS and Medicare will cease to receive my sizable contributions, and someone will have to make that up. Note that this doesn't have anything to do with morality. I have no problem with not contributing to these systems as I regard them as frauds to begin with, but I'm under no delusion that they'll be better off without me paying into them and I'm not going to sit here and attempt to rationalize that they're better off without me contributing.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Ducky, you have worse powers of mental telepathy than even The Amazing Kreskin.
I'm going to be retiring before George (in 18 months at 52), but my personal situation has nothing to do the economics of the issue here. I'd have to be a complete putz to claim that I was doing anything noble or doing society a favor by exiting the workforce when I'm still capable of contributing my productive capacity. I'm doing it because I can (and without any expectation that SS is going to provide me anything) - nothing more and nothing less.
George's attempt here to ingratiate himself is based on a fallicious and outright goofy premise that jobs are finite and if you're working you're taking someone else's job from them. Not only is there nothing to back up that claim, but were it true one could go back to any arbitrary point in the past and claim that all the jobs that could be created were already created, so don't grow the population further. It's complete nonsense. The only limiter that's shown to be consistent is that a lower than about 4% unemployment rate for those seeking work isn't attainable due to the nature of the dynamic force of creative destruction in the economy.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
The basis for the comment is that you are being supported because you're not participating in wealth creation and raising the standard of living for yourself, and thus indirectly for all. You are effectively a lump of flesh that needs to be fed and taken care of.
Your basic premise here that there is a fixed and finite pool of jobs is a fallacy, and it's a crude attempt to rationalize your dependency on the labor of others. In fact it's quite the opposite of what you claim. By not working you are shrinking the available pool of jobs. If you were working you'd be creating wealth, and you'd be recycling that wealth back into society and creating the demand for jobs in addition to the one you would occupy.
Do a simple thought experiment. On the first of two islands you have ten people and they're all working and contributing. On the second island you also have ten inhabitants, but five of the ten are oh so noble in "giving up" their jobs so that the remaining five working souls may toil away to the benefit of all ten. Which of these two islands is producing more wealth and achieving a higher standard of living?
Big U.S. multinationals are holding at least 60% of their cash offshore - ~$588B - with some keeping nearly all of their corporate cash balances in foreign accounts, according to a J.P. Morgan study. Apple (AAPL) had the most at $74B, or 67% of its total cash holdings; as a percentage of total cash, MSFT, CSCO and HPQ held 89% or more of their cash overseas. [View news story]
They need to bring it back home so they can turn it over to Obammy. Obammy could finance quite a few more Solyndra's and re-cycle the loot back into his campaign war-chest if these corporations would only pay their Fair Share™.
For the past three years, traders have made a killing buying the dips. Not today, says CNBC's Bob Pisani. After days of trying, buyers have now stepped away, staging a sort of "buyers strike" and leaving stocks to drift lower. That can be dangerous, Pisani warns, because spikes in the VIX, like what we saw today, leave the markets extremely vulnerable to big moves down over the coming days. [View news story]
CNBC needs to buy some charting software, or maybe just open an account at TD Ameritrade and use their charts. I'm looking at charts of the S&P 500 and VIX and I see plenty of spikes in the VIX, and downward moves in the SPX, that are of greater magnitude than the present over the last three years.
Silver Wheaton's (SLW -5.7%) 20% Y/Y increase in earnings and 26% gain in revenues during its Q1 isn't enough to satisfy investors, as both readings came in below expectations. CEO Randy Smallwood voices concern that "challenging global financial markets have made access to traditional forms of capital, such as debt and equity, much more difficult." [View news story]
Very odd that SA tries to spin Smallwood's statement as negative, when in fact he was stating it was a positive and strength of SLW. The full quote is in the press release that you can even find on SA, no less.
The Street is pricing Qualcomm (QCOM +1.2%) as if its business model is broken, says Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon. At a sub-$60 stock price, he thinks investors are pricing in a major decline in Qualcomm's royalty payments, either due to a lower rate or declining 3G/4G phone prices, and/or a drop in its chip margins. Rasgon, who has a $75 PT on Qualcomm, doesn't see either scenario as likely. (earlier) [View news story]
http://bit.ly/yWBUg8
Intel is competitive at 32nm in mobile, and will overtake at 22nm. And then there is 14nm which is being aggressively accelerated (into 2013 if I recall).
http://bit.ly/JoB7Eu
Add to that the current woes that Qualcomm is having at the 28nm node and even the near to mid-term doesn't look promising. I hold both Intel and QCOM but am looking to get out of QCOM before the market recognizes the depth of this changing of the guard.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
http://1.usa.gov/LpjYcN
The 1983 amendments to shore up the funds is summarized here:
http://1.usa.gov/JuBPF4
Contrary to what Al Gore would have us believe, there's no lock-box. The surplus has always been "invested" in federal gov IOUs and thus spent on current consumption (http://1.usa.gov/JPmdfc
). That's why when the trust funds go into deficit it's going to be something between severe and catastrophic, as not only will the SS surplus no longer be funding current government expenditures, but the repayments into the trust fund have to come from raising general tax receipts, or even more borrowing. Last time I looked the trust funds were expected to go into annual deficits before 2020.
Will all this going on George's dream of a lower retirement age is a fairy tale.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Referring to our discussion above, structural unemployment is really the issue, and that won't be solved by booting the productive from the workforce and placing them on SS, Medicare, and other systems that are already effectively insolvent.
If down the road we get to social unrest by the younger workers it's going to be because they will have figured out that they're being pillaged by retirees through a pyramid scheme that was always expected to run dry by the time they came anywhere close to retirement age.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Structural unemployment is exactly the opposite of what you're claiming. Structural unemployment posits that the jobs are there, but the jobs don't fit the skills of those that are unemployed. Thus your argument for having productive folks retire and become unproductive and drawing upon assistance isn't going to fill jobs that are empty because of the lack of a skilled workforce. What you're arguing for isn't just zero-sum, it's a negative outcome. Not only do you not solve the structural unemployment problem, but you greatly exacerbate the nation's fiscal mess.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
The 1960’s race riots were not due to lack of early retirees, and they didn’t cease because folks started taking early retirement. You’re grasping at straws to maintain an absurd fiction that you solve our national financial issues by increasing the number of folks that are unproductive and require assistance. It hasn’t worked in Greece, and isn’t working here. In fact we’ve done a great job of getting people to leave the workforce, which is the root of the problem. Your prescription does nothing more than play musical chairs in a zero-sum game. The number of jobs is a function of economic activity and growth, not the number of retirements.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
George, your entire piece is full of statements that imply exactly that. Either that or you believe most of these folks that you would have be early retirees are sitting on multi-million dollar portfolios - which isn't even close to reality.
I'm beginning to wonder if you even read your piece.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
And as I said above in reply to Dicky, I'm not going to participate in this snow-job that my retiring at 52 is noble and going to benefit society overall versus if I were to continue to work. I will comparatively (to the present) be a lump of flesh. My productive capacity will not be fully utilized. Pay-as-you-go systems like SS and Medicare will cease to receive my sizable contributions, and someone will have to make that up. Note that this doesn't have anything to do with morality. I have no problem with not contributing to these systems as I regard them as frauds to begin with, but I'm under no delusion that they'll be better off without me paying into them and I'm not going to sit here and attempt to rationalize that they're better off without me contributing.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
I'm going to be retiring before George (in 18 months at 52), but my personal situation has nothing to do the economics of the issue here. I'd have to be a complete putz to claim that I was doing anything noble or doing society a favor by exiting the workforce when I'm still capable of contributing my productive capacity. I'm doing it because I can (and without any expectation that SS is going to provide me anything) - nothing more and nothing less.
George's attempt here to ingratiate himself is based on a fallicious and outright goofy premise that jobs are finite and if you're working you're taking someone else's job from them. Not only is there nothing to back up that claim, but were it true one could go back to any arbitrary point in the past and claim that all the jobs that could be created were already created, so don't grow the population further. It's complete nonsense. The only limiter that's shown to be consistent is that a lower than about 4% unemployment rate for those seeking work isn't attainable due to the nature of the dynamic force of creative destruction in the economy.
Turn The Key On This Retirement Strategy [View article]
Your basic premise here that there is a fixed and finite pool of jobs is a fallacy, and it's a crude attempt to rationalize your dependency on the labor of others. In fact it's quite the opposite of what you claim. By not working you are shrinking the available pool of jobs. If you were working you'd be creating wealth, and you'd be recycling that wealth back into society and creating the demand for jobs in addition to the one you would occupy.
Do a simple thought experiment. On the first of two islands you have ten people and they're all working and contributing. On the second island you also have ten inhabitants, but five of the ten are oh so noble in "giving up" their jobs so that the remaining five working souls may toil away to the benefit of all ten. Which of these two islands is producing more wealth and achieving a higher standard of living?
Big U.S. multinationals are holding at least 60% of their cash offshore - ~$588B - with some keeping nearly all of their corporate cash balances in foreign accounts, according to a J.P. Morgan study. Apple (AAPL) had the most at $74B, or 67% of its total cash holdings; as a percentage of total cash, MSFT, CSCO and HPQ held 89% or more of their cash overseas. [View news story]
For the past three years, traders have made a killing buying the dips. Not today, says CNBC's Bob Pisani. After days of trying, buyers have now stepped away, staging a sort of "buyers strike" and leaving stocks to drift lower. That can be dangerous, Pisani warns, because spikes in the VIX, like what we saw today, leave the markets extremely vulnerable to big moves down over the coming days. [View news story]
Silver Wheaton's (SLW -5.7%) 20% Y/Y increase in earnings and 26% gain in revenues during its Q1 isn't enough to satisfy investors, as both readings came in below expectations. CEO Randy Smallwood voices concern that "challenging global financial markets have made access to traditional forms of capital, such as debt and equity, much more difficult." [View news story]