Everyday Freethought

Stuff I found while cleaning my apartment:

• old poetry
• 2 dollar bill from 2003
• 2 dollar bill from 1976 (they have not changed much)
• south vietnamese 20 dong note
• 1973 west german coin
• pictures of my sister taken when she was a baby
• A nickel that I used a few times as a guitar pick that flattened by putting it on a train track and letting a train run it over

Here are a few dividend updates.

I bought more shares of Emerson (EMR). I also bought some shares of ConocoPhillips (COP).

Eaton (ETN) announced that they will raise their dividend 12%.

I have started listening to the “Sound Investing” podcast from Merriman. One of the hosts has said a couple of times that companies are making dividends a lower priority, and that you should not invest looking for dividends. I generally agree with what they say, but I think that dividends are the way to go. I also think that companies that pay dividends are commited to paying them. Just tonight I saw the CEO of Eaton on “Mad Money”. He said that Eaton is commited to paying out increasing dividends year after year.

I tweeted this thought to @PoliticsUSUSA after reading one of their articles on PoliticsUSA: One of the big deceptions of the Republican Party is that their policies make it easier to become rich. But they do not. Their policies make it nicer to be rich.

Another random thought: I wish fat people would realize that if they walked faster, then maybe, just maybe, they would not be so darn fat.

There is a typo on the RSS feed entry for today’s episode of “Mad Money”:

The Dow closed down 33 points, still on pace for its biggest monthy gain since October.  Cramer examines AAPL’s bite into the competition and gives you the 5 best places to invest in 2012.  Then, do FPE and BMY have what it takes to resuscitate your portfolio?  And, Jim puts GOOG and MSFT in teh ring for a battle of the tech titans.  Plus, could KMP be a pipeline to profits?

There is also another huge error in the RSS feed: The file link was to yesterday’s file. I had to copy the link, edit it and use wget to get the file. I think a lot of people who use the RSS feed in iTunes are stuck with the old episode until the entry is fixed.

Update 2012-01-25_10.10.21:

It looks like the file link was updated, but the typo is still there. Perhaps Cramer or his staff actually read my tweet.

I am always looking at articles that I come across about different cities in the USA to help me decide if I should stay in Chicago or leave for some other city.

Main Street came up with a list of 10 cities that they think will do well in 2012. For the most part I can agree with some of their findings. Some of the cities on the list are Chicago, Austin and Houston. So it is pretty interesting.

The positives for Austin are the usual: the University of Texas, state government, and increasing employment in the private sector. The positives for Houston are the energy sector and a more stable housing market.

The reason that Chicago will do well in 2012 is because the next G8 meeting will be here. So there will be a lot of spending on security and because of all of the people coming in for the meeting. So while that means Chicago will see an uptick in 2012, there is no long-term trend as we see for Austin and Houston.

Many of the other cities are also on the list because they are the sites of one-time events: the Super Bowl (Indianapolis), the Democratic nominating convention (Charlotte) and the Rescumlican convention (Tampa). So what happens to all these cities in 2013? Will they rise or decline? If I leave Chicago, it will not be a short-term change.

Republicans only care about three kinds of people: billionaires, corporations and fetuses. I don’t know why they care about fetuses since fetuses do not have any money.

New Blog Title: Now Legal In All 50 States

New blog title: Reconsider Spain

Update 2012-01-25_10.09.39:

If you reconsider Spain, you should reconsider everything.

I think the RSS entry for tonight (2012-01-13) has two typos:

The Dow dropped 49 points in anticipation of a European sovereign debt downgrade that hit after the close.  To kick off the market’s long weekend, S and P slashed the credit ratings of 9 Eurozone nations including France, Spain, Italy and Portugal.  In this new market, Cramer’s giving you some new rules for disiplined investing.  Get some financial self-restraint to help your portfolio turnover a new leaf in 2012.

I am pretty sure that it should be “turn over a new leaf.” They must have some Ivy Leaguer typing this stuff.

New blog title: Contained Rage