Eiffel Tower opened 100 years ago today

100 years ago today, the Eiffel Tower opened. I was there 3 weeks ago and took this photo

UBS writing down another $18 billion

it's amazing how difficult this is becoming - from the Financial Times . . .

UBS is poised to reveal further writedowns of up to $18bn and seek a capital increase of about $13.1bn just weeks after shareholders approved a similar-sized injection from outside investors.

Times they are a changin'

Whole new ballgame: After years of free invites to the Giants' Opening Day, San Francisco supervisors got a decidedly less enticing offer to this season's home opener April 7 against the San Diego Padres.
"I am pleased to extend you the opportunity to purchase two tickets to Opening Day," team Senior Vice President and General Counsel Jack Bair wrote to each of the 11 supervisors.
"As you may know, it has been our custom for many years to invite our public sector guests to the game and to our pregame party on a complimentary basis, as we do our sponsors and key vendors," Bair wrote.
He reminded the supervisors, however, that all that changed last year when the board adopted an ordinance prohibiting officials from accepting gifts from anyone doing business with the city.
"As a result, we are required by law to charge you for the value of the tickets and benefits received," Bair wrote, including "the approximate pro-rata cost of the food and refreshments offered at our pregame party."
From what we hear, all but two of board's 11 members have taken the Giants up on their offer, with most opting either for a pair of lower box tickets ($49 each) or club level seats ($82 each).

thanks to (SF Chronicle) Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross

Here's an Idea - Reform retirement-savings

It's time to convert retirement savings from an IRA to a Roth IRA model. Collect the estimated $5.8 trillion of deferred taxes now and apply this to resolving the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls.

If we wait, expect as much as half of that money to disappear. The Treasury and Congress can simplify rollovers from mediocre investment choices to brokerage accounts, and simplify conversions to Roth IRAs. This way, the government could collect trillions in deferred taxes before the money is lost to a bear market.

The rollover and conversion choices should be voluntary, and premature withdrawals should be discouraged. Investors would be wise to remember that the reason they lost money in the last bear market was the rigid buy-and-hold investment strategies forced on them by traditional advice.

Congress could provide incentives to simplify the process by spreading the taxes over a three to five-year period, capping the income-tax rate for Roth IRA conversions, and removing the current income and age tests to qualify. Savers should look before they leap, of course, but they should be allowed to "leap."

British Airlines still has big problems

British Airways, based in London, has canceled more than 200 flights since the terminal opened March 27, after computer log-on failures for baggage handlers and delays at staff car parks sparked turmoil at the airport, Europe's busiest.

British Airways already is Europe's worst airline for lost luggage and the second-worst for delayed bags, according to the Air Transport Users Council. The flights canceled today were domestic or European. All long-haul services were scheduled to operate as normal, the airline said.

Remembering William F Buckley, Jr

It's been a little while now since Buckley passed away and I've been absorbing some of the media reviewing his life, wit, philosophy. Charlie Rose had a wonderful hour long program reviewing the 17 times that Buckley appeared on his show the night he passed away; if you can find it, watch it.

I've never read one of Buckley's books but I have subscribed to National Review and I rarely missed Firing Line. Buckley was funny, confronting, fascinating, consistent to the end and so smart. I really liked his used of the English language.

Then I found something on youtube that seemed to really align Buckley with me in which he said on Meet the Press in 1965, "I'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University."

Thank you Bill Buckley for living the great life.

Lending Crisis?

``There's really only a handful of banks that are offering cash,'' said a money-market trader at a unit of Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany's biggest state-owned bank. ``Everyone is just waiting for the next bank to go down. There is no trust in the market. They're very afraid.''

Joe Lewis (no not the boxer)

talk about bad trading . . . . .

Lewis paid an average of $103.89 apiece for his 12.14 million Bear Stearns shares, according to yesterday's filing. He started accumulating most of his shares last July and has lost about $1.19 billion on the investment, or almost half his wealth, which Forbes magazine estimated at $2.5 billion in its 2007 survey.

Back from Euorpe

I usually manage to go to Europe when something important happens in the financial markets and this time I did it again with a little political intrigue to boot. I returned home last night so here's my first installment on what happened . . . . in case you missed any of it.

Not a day after I arrived in Paris to spend two nights with my niece and her boyfriend (Greg), did Eliott Spitzer get embarrassed and resigned as NY Governor. This was quite a timely event in that Greg had worked on Spitzer's campaign and been an aide to the incoming David Paterson.

What was to come over the next 10 days was the financial meltdown of Bear Stearns, Carlisle Capital and Wall Street.

another story tomorrow.

Buffett and Dexter Shoes

even the great ones make mistakes . . . .

In 1993, Berkshire paid $433 million for the Maine-based company. Rather than use cash, Buffett used Berkshire Class A stock to fund the purchase. That Berkshire stock is worth eight times more now, giving the Omaha, Nebraska-based insurance and investment company a $216 billion market value.

Dexter didn't make it that long. It ended shoe production in the United States and Puerto Rico in 2001, and Berkshire folded what was left into its H.H. Brown Shoe Group unit.

"What I had assessed as durable competitive advantage vanished within a few years," Buffett wrote on Friday. "By using Berkshire stock, I compounded this error hugely. That move made the cost to Berkshire shareholders not $400 million, but rather $3.5 billion. In essence, I gave away 1.6 percent of a wonderful business -- one now valued at $220 billion -- to buy a worthless business."

"To date, Dexter is the worst deal that I've made," Buffett went on. "But I'll make more mistakes in the future - you can bet on that. A line from Bobby Bare's country song explains what too often happens with acquisitions: 'I've never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I've sure woke up with a few.'"