Tell It To Al

I am still formulating my predictions for 2010. My Magic 8-Ball keeps telling me to ask again later. If you have any thoughts, please send them my way.

Meantime, many of my predictions for 2009 have come to pass. Or missed the mark by merely a tad.

For instance, last December, when the Dow was not far from 9,000, I predicted it would fall below 6,000. But it only fell to 6,547.05 in March.

I did not foresee the extent to which the Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury would commit taxpayer dollars to prop up our failing banking system, and by extension, the stock market.

Anyway, you be the judge. Here’s word-for-word what I wrote in my column last December:

“For 2009, I predict that housing foreclosures will continue to rise, causing almost everything else to keep declining.

“Problem loan portfolios at our biggest banks will become bigger than the federal government’s ability to bail them out. Auto makers will not magically turn viable, and at least one of them will have to undergo either a forced consolidation or a bankruptcy.

“The recession will continue through most, if not all, of the year, and when it’s over we will still be in a global economic malaise.

“Unemployment will come close to double digits by year-end. The Dow will slip below 6000. Gold will easily eclipse the $1,000-an-ounce mark.

“Oil prices will remain well below $100 a barrel for long enough to silence most serious talk about alternative energy and electric cars.

“Watch for suckers’ rallies. Stocks will spike. Low-interest rates will even encourage home sales. But most optimism will prove short-lived.”

Now if only I had this much insight for 2010. Be back to you with my Magic 8-Ball later.

I’m not complaining.

2009 was a great year for me: Every morning I’d wake up to a fresh calamity to write about.

1999 was just the opposite: Every morning I’d wake up to yet another Internet company raising a billion dollars to allegedly revolutionize something.

For most people, though, 2009 was no where near as fun as 1999. Click here to read my column.

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, seemed a lot more crowded when I came here for the week between Christmas and New Year’s 2008.

The yachts in the marina look smaller. The shops and restaurants, less ambitious.

Clearly, the U.S. economy has taken its toll on local tourism, despite some great deals on resort packages and nearly 13 pesos for a dollar. The whales keep coming, though. Despite their huge brains, or maybe because of them, they don’t care what the economy does.

I’m trying not to work too much on vacation, but thought I’d share these shots of humpbacks that I took from a boat while on a snorkeling trip on Sunday.

2009 should go down as the year of the Ponzi.

Not just because of Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford, who allegedly fleeced billions, but also for the scores of smaller schemes uncovered all over the globe.

Barry Minkow, who ran one of the best known Ponzi schemes in the 1980s, is now on a mission to uncover Ponzi schemes himself. They’re not hard to find: So far he’s unraveled about two dozen of them.

Click here to read about the latest he’s undone.

So here’s how they want to help pay for health care reform: tax the tanning salon industry.

As you can tell by my pasty, white skin, I am a hardly a fan tanning beds. But complaints that they may cause cancer – like the sun itself if you lay in it for too long – are lost on me. If people want to lay in the sun, or on tanning beds, and grill themselves like strips of bacon, they should be able to do that without incurring more than the usual amount of taxation.

This tax unfairly singles out a cottage industry. Are our leaders in Congress are too conflicted to tax anything else? Click here to read my column.

Another day, another Ponzi.

Today, a front page story in The Wall Street Journal heralded a Ponzi investigation into Indiana businessman Timothy Durham, who has been a large benefactor of Republicans, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Mitchell.

Durham professed his innocence. But it’s the usual set of allegations about a guy with way too much stuff – including a car collection, a 30,000 square-foot mansion, and a Peter Max portrait of himself – and a financial business that could be used as a personal bank to pay for some of this stuff as well as other personal business interests.

What makes this alleged Ponzi different, though, is that some of its victims are Amish, according to a report in the Akron Beacon Journal.

A group of anonymous investors, some of whom are said to be Amish, have sued Durham’s Fair Finance Co., attempting to recover $2.2 million, the newspaper reports.

The Amish have long been known for their separation from the non-Amish world, going so far as to shun the automobile and even electricity. They’ve even stayed away from such modern financial arrangements as insurance.

But today even the Amish can get taken in an alleged Ponzi scheme? And what kind of guy takes advantage of the Amish, who are always so industrious, making furniture and quilts?

I can only shudder.

President Obama’s bizarre comments that insulation is “sexy stuff” will either be quickly forgotten, or they will spark an industry.

Website EnergySaavy.com is already selling this T-shirt. Click here to see the merchandise.

I must confess, when I heard Obama say pumping the attic full of new insulation was sexy, well, I started having some pretty strange thoughts.

Click here to read my column on how I came to think of insulation as sexy, too.

General Motors Corp. is shutting down Saab after a deal to sell the Swedish auto brand crumbled.

Click here for the details from the Associated Press.

GM has failed to sell Saturn, Pontiac and Opel, too. At least the Chinese bought Hummer.

My wife and I leased a $42,000 Saab in the mid-1990s. It was the only new car I ever drove that died along the road, requiring tow-truck revival. So much for the reliability reputation. And nobody seemed impressed. Friends told me I was basically just driving a Chevy.

I am so much happier in my bought-and-paid-for, $17,000, 2005 Toyota Camry.  The last Saab I drove belonged to my brother in law, a convertable with the ignition between the seats. Drove me crazy, always looking on the steering column for the key hole.

Saab’s looming demise is a deal that makes you wonder if maybe socialists are better capitalists. GM paid $600 million for half of the Swedish car maker in 1989. It bought the rest in 2000 for another $125 million. Now all it can do is part out the assets.

It’s not a good time to unload an automobile company, but GM has got to repay U.S. taxpayers. And that’s a deal that makes you wonder if maybe capitalists make better socialists.

Collectors never stop collecting no matter how tight the economy. Even collectors of children’s books.

A copy of “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,” once owned by the girl who inspired the story, sold for $115,000 on Wednesday.

Author Beatrix Potter’s personal copy of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” sold for $92,000, and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” brought in $51,750.

The seller was former Cincinnatti Bengals wide receiver and punter Pat McInally.

Click here to read column.

Fidelity Investments has fired four employees for fantasy football, citing its anti-gambling policy according to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Taking other people’s money and sticking it in the stock market apparently isn’t considered gambling under the policy.

Maybe Fidelity has a point. Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that companies suffered $615 million a week in lost productivity time to fantasy football last year.

Still, Fidelity’s action seems a little harsh, considering how little, if any, work time is said to be involved in this case.

Besides, I’d rather have an investment advisor whose fantasy life is about football than, say, the prospects for some mutual fund.