Meredith Whitney's claim to fame is her now famous October 2007 prediction that Citigroup would have to raise capital, sell assets or cut its dividend. Since that time she's proven a one-hit wonder. As 2010 came to an end she panicked many an investor during a 60 Minutes interview when she predicted "hundreds of billions" of dollars of [...]
Recently introduced legislation by Senators Carl Levin (Democrat - Michigan) and Sherrod Brown (Democrat - Ohio) would end the ability for corporations to deduct stock option expenses from their taxable income at amounts greater than those reported on their financial statements. Sounds fair, right? Read on. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation the measure known as "The Ending Excessive Corporate [...]
Step 1: Dig hole in sand. Step 2: Bend over and insert head. As the fight over raising the debt ceiling rages on the rhetoric becomes more inflexible - and stupid! Recently Congressional leadership on the Democratic side of the aisle proclaimed entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have nothing to do [...]
If you're a follower of Apollo Wealth Management or one of our longtime friends and clients you know of our affinity for the folks at Third Avenue Management. It should come as no surprise, then, that the following resonates with us. There is beauty in simplicity - a common sense that, sadly, is not too common. We therefore [...]
August is right around the corner and our kids will be headed back to school. Time for us to write those big tuition checks. Who charges the most? It's not who you might think. Lots of small, liberal arts colleges make the list. Without further prefacing here's a list of the 10 priciest U.S. colleges [...]
"I have often wished that Jefferson had not used that phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness' as the third right ... I would rather he had written, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of meaningfulness' or ‘integrity' or ‘truth.' I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, goal of your labors here. I know that [...]
If your cell phone bill has reached the stratosphere it's likely because your teenager is addicted to text messaging. Thanks to texts we're not only paying astronomical fees to communicate we're regrettably learning new "words." Our kids have introduced us to a new language - one where we are happy to LOL, ROFL and LMAO [...]
A friend from the accounting world once shared some interesting insight into her profession. In fulfilling the experience requirement to obtain her CPA license she spent time in her company's auditing department. Upon completing this rotation she surmised, "Auditing is the art of saying a lot without really saying anything." If one person's perspective proves [...]
In one of those "you can't make this up" kind of ironic twists Pandora Media, Inc. went IPO yesterday. In 10 years of operation the company has earned a whopping profit of $0. That's right - zilch, nothing, nada. In fact the company has done a wonderful job of stockpiling losses. Sounds promising, yes? Get real. It's [...]
We live in a society rife with racist and sexist undertones. In the movies "good guys" wear white while "bad guys" wear black. Black cats are bad luck. A male doctor is a doctor while a female doctor is a "lady doctor." The Declaration of Independence tells us "all men are created equal." We could [...]