Securities Docket (finance)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES, with reservations

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Securities Docket, by Bruce Carton

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.securitiesdocket.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Securities Docket, the Global Securities Litigation and Enforcement Report, is the industry’s most comprehensive and timely source of news, commentary and data. Continuously updated throughout the day, Securities Docket is the only publication that delivers important news and developments concerning securities class actions, enforcement and white-collar matters as they occur – not days or weeks later. Lawyers, institutional investors, executives, accountants, consultants and professionals throughout the securities litigation industry rely on Securities Docket as their “one-stop” way to quickly and easily stay informed.

MY REVIEW: This is one of those blogs that I'm not really qualified to review, in one sense. This blog is for people who have millions of bucks to play with. And of course, it's about litigation - so only lawyers will really be able to benefit from this. On the other hand, it is pretty interesting to read the entries, to see how incestuous this litigation industry is...people go from one firm to another to another, and sometimes you think that the money they're talking about is play money - it certainly seems to be.

And it's also interesting to see what kinds of things are being litigated - if you invest major money in stocks, I think you'll find this blog of interest.

The blog is based out of England, but it does cover world-wide litigation, so US folks will be interested in it.

The only caveat is that you might find it better to go straight to the website. The blog does use links a lot. They'll give a few paragraphs saying some litigator has joined this firm or that firm, and then provide a link to the press release. Weekend news is strictly links to the web.

Nevertheless, check it out with your two week free subscription option, to see what you think.

RECENT POSTS:
--William Freeman Joins Jones Day in Silicon Valley
--Securities litigator joins Jones Day from Cooley.
--Paul Enzinna Joins Brown Rudnick in Washington, DC
--White-collar litigator joins Brown Rudnick from Baker Botts.
--Lisa Noller Joins Foley & Lardner in Chicago

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Check out the following blogs:
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Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Book Review: Control Your Cash, by Betty Kincaid and Greg McFarlane

There are two parts to this review – the contents of the book itself, and its ease of use on the Kindle. For the content, I’d give it an 8/10. For the ease of use on the Kindle, 6 or 7 out of 10…. (It is also available as a print book.)

First I’ll review the book, then I’ll talk about the Kindle ease of use.

First, here’s the Table of Contents.

1. Bank accounts
2. Credit cards
3. Your credit score
4. Investing
5. Securities
6. Buying a car
7. Buying a house
8. Budgeting
9. Taxes
10. Entrepreneurship

The book originated as a blog of the same name, ControlYourCash, also available on the Kindle. Their description of the blog:

“Control Your Cash is part manifesto and part owner’s manual. It helps the reader move from clueless, passive bystander to active, responsible consumer and investor.”

Their website (as opposed to their blog) is:

a place that caters to both neophyte and veteran, and where common sense prevails. If you don’t know where to start to get your finances in check, or want to learn how to prosper without undue risk (including the risk of inertia), stick around and stay a while. This is financial education for people who want results, not coddling.

The website also has message boards, which readers will find of value.

Here’s the brief bios of the authors of the book and blog:

Betty Kincaid. Semi-retired real estate maven who started with nothing. Former wage slave who eventually figured out that to some degree, entrepreneurship is a vital part of any wealth plan. Fond of cats, dogs, pronghorn antelope, and those who take ownership of their lives.

Greg McFarlane. Advertising copywriter. TV and radio producer. Ex-Canadian. Objective critic of the 9-to-5, work-until-incapacitation lifestyle. Blessed with a gift for demystifying difficult financial concepts and making them easy to understand.

Today more than ever, is is important that people understand how money works. Where it comes from. How it should be used. How to keep it safe. It's important for people these days to be "in control." And the only way to be in control is to have knowledge. The more knowledge the better.

This book gives you that knowledge.

The rule of thumb the authors attempt to drive home is: Buy Assets. Sell Liabilities.

This means, as far as possible, only buy material that is going to do you some good.

“An asset is something of value. For our purposes, an asset is something you own that will help your net worth grow.
These are assets:
-House
-Savings account
-Checking account
-Money market fund
-Certificate of deposit
-Mutual fund
-401K

Liabilities?
-Credit card debt’-Car lease
-Golf clubs (unless you’re a pro)
-Netflix membership
-dinner out with friends, 5 nights a week
-one more round of drinks at the table
-US Weekly subscription
-any money you bring into a casino
-furniture
-cat food
-cat toys
-cat litter

I perceive from this list that the authors are cat haters, but apparently have no such disdain for dogs!

The book is written with breezy humor, and the authors go through the list of financial topics, explaining everything so that the layperson can understand. It may sound preachy to some people (in the very beginning of the book they advocate giving up drinking and gambling - but if you read their explanations it actually makes a lot of sense. Especially the gambling – buying lottery tickets is a waste of money as is going into a casino or playing online casino games.)

But once into the nitty gritty of investing, of buying large ticket items like your house and car and so on, you’ll find plenty of advice that you will want to follow, and you’ll educate yourself as well.

Why 8 out of 10? Well, it's that breeziness. Breeziness is okay for a blog, but for a book, I prefer a more serious approach. However, if breeziness and humor is your thing, you'll enjoy reading the book, as well as acquirng the knowledge therein.

Kindle Issues
1. The table of contents is not hot-linked to the rest of the book.
2. There’s no hot-linked index [I've never seen a book that had a hot-linked index, but it's be a nice feature.)
3. There’s no Glossary
4. There are notes scattered throughout the book. To access them, you have to move your five-way controller to the note (a number next to the text they wish to explain), and press it. This takes you to the notes section. To get back to where you were in the book, you can’t hit the “prev page” button, you need to move your five-way controller up to the note’s number, press it, and then you’re returned to where you were. So that gets a bit cumbersome. For myself, I wish they’d just put their explanation in brackets right in the text of the book. If I want to read it I can, if I want to ignore it, that’s easy to do, too.

However, those are minor matters. The text is really the thing, and this book is an excellent manual on how to “control your cash” so that you keep as much of it as possible, use as much of it as possible, and give the government and banks (in the form of fees) as little of it as possible.

Retro Review: Financial Armageddon

Reviewed by: Ms. Cairo

Recommendation: YES

Amazon Subscription Page: Financial Armageddon

Website: http://www.financialarmageddon.com/

Blog description: Insights on debt, derivatives, government guarantees, the retirement system, and the coming economic unraveling.

My review: This blog may provide a gloomy view of investing, but it's a must read. Well written, by someone who seems to know the subject thoroughly.

Let me say it again - you've got to read this blog. It's your money - make sure you don't lose it!

Sample post:

It All Makes Sense
I've been somewhat perplexed by how well consumer spending has held up, at least on a relative basis, given that 1) "underemployment" is above 20 percent and the number of long-term employed is at a record; 2) income has not kept pace with consumption; and, 3) the housing industry is nowhere near a recovery (and the foreclosures just keep on coming).

No doubt the government has played an important role in underpinning demand, especially through its emergency unemployment benefits programs and certain other stimulus efforts. But that didn't seem to explain matters fully.

Then I read the following post, "How Obama's 'Extend & Pretend' Mortgage Policy Explains The Apparent Disconnect Between Housing And The Consumer," at Business Insider's The Money Game (citing the excellent HousingWire blog) and, suddenly, it all made sense. The reason why no small number of Americans can afford to keep on spending is because they've got one less (big) bill to pay:

Our screens are filled with signals that the econom""y is recovering, and yet one area where there's no discernable improvement is housing. At best the bleeding has stopped. At worst there's plenty of room to fall.

This should stand in sharp contravention with news that the consumer is coming back, especially given the conventional wisdom that the home is (or was, anyway) the ultimate ATM, and that it was the so-called housing wealth effect that fueled years and years of American spending.

What gives?

Paul Jackson at HousingWire reckons that what we're seeing is the twisted result of Obama's mortgage schemes. Basically, scads of troubled Americans are living in their homes, waiting for some type of modification, not paying their mortgages, and thus freeing up an unusual amount to spend on stuff.

Jackson's logic:

There are 7.4 million non-current loans in this country (a ton of folks living in a home but not paying at the moment for said home).
Most Americans behind on their mortgages have now gone a year without paying a single bill.
As we know, Americans are discontinuing their mortgage payments before other payments.
And he writes:

Consider the following individual as a case study — an actual ‘HAMPlicant’ at one of the nation’s larger servicing shops, as highlighted in a guest post at the Calculated Risk blog. They had an $1,880 monthly payment on their mortgage they’d defaulted on, yet their bank statements for the past 30 days included the following expenses:

visits to the tanning salon
visits to the nail spa
some kind of gourmet produce market
various liquor stores
A DirecTV bill that involved some serious premium programming or pay-per-view events
Over $1,700 in retail purchases, including: Best Buy, Baby Gap, Brookstone, Old Navy, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Macy’s, Pac Sun, Urban Behavior, Sears, Staples, and Footlocker
His conclusion: If half the 7.4 million homeowners are skipping a $1,000 monthly mortgage payment, that provides a potential $3.7 billion boost to consumer spending.

If Jackson's reasoning is correct, it suggests that critics of Obama's mortgage schemes are attacking them from a completely wrong angle.

It's not about, as the Santellis of the world might suggest, that it's some grave evil to be helping your neighbor who may or may not have gotten in over their head. It's more basic: the scheme is creating serious economic distortions, and are bound to unravel in ways that the market isn't properly anticipating.

For all the flaws of "crass Keynesianism" (see today's wankfest between The White House and Edmunds.com over cash-for-clunkers) characterized by charges of pulling demand forward is just as silly. The real economic violence comes from messing with economic signals, which appears to be what's going on here.

Jackson's point also jibes with what we heard when we talked to a Phoenix mortgage pro, who noted the violence to his market that mods were creating.

Until these really filter through the system, these, mortgage mods not only make the housing market suspect, but obviously other areas of the economy as well.

The last four entries:
--Safe, or sorry: Americans investing in municipal bonds. They *used* to be safe, but now more and more cities are in danger of defaulting.
--No Wonder Americans Are Pessimistic: job news isn’t really as good as its been portrayed
--The Next Phase of my Evaluation: Michael Panzer points out that Greenspan, Paulson and Greenspan are not economic experts.
--A Secular Shift: The recession has battered the US economy, but the lobbying industry is humming along in the nation’s capital, even for companies that have shed thousands of jobs in the past year.