The Curious Cat Investing, Economics and Personal Finance Carnival is published twice each month. We find useful recent personal finance, investing and economics blog posts and articles to share with you.

• 2 Billionaire Brothers’ Insider Buying At Colfax by Zack Miller – “[In] the Danaher Business System… management believes its found a demonstrable, repeatable recipe for success, and it drives both culture and process at the company and its acquisitions. DBS is a form of Japanese kaizen, comprising 4 components: 1) People 2) Plans 3) Processes 4) Performance” [I own Danaher and have it in my 12 stocks for 10 year portfolio - John, my management blog focuses on such management systems]
• Apple’s Impossibly Good Quarter by John Hunter – “You can’t grow quarterly sales from $26.7 billion to $46.3 billion. $26 million to $46 million, fine that is possible, billions however – not possible. Except Apple did. You can’t grow a $6 billion quarterly profit to $13 billion in 1 year. Except Apple did. You can’t generate a cash flow of $17.5 billion in a quarter. Except Apple did. You can’t have a stockpile of $100 billion in cash. Except Apple does. These figures would not have been seen as unlikely just 3 years ago. They were impossible. But Apple achieved them.”
• How to Save the Euro by George Soros – “the cuts in government expenditures that Germany wants to impose on other countries will push Europe into a deflationary debt trap. Reducing budget deficits will put both wages and profits under downward pressure, the economies will contract, and tax revenues will fall. So the debt burden, which is a ratio of the accumulated debt to the GDP, will actually rise, requiring further budget cuts, setting in motion a vicious circle.”
• Japan’s Trade Figures: Some Perspective by Eamonn Fingleton – “In a typical maneuver, goods might be shipped to China via Hong Kong. The goods are exported from Japan at heavily discounted prices and a Hong Kong subsidiary takes a huge profit in selling to China. Such profits constitute hidden export revenues that are not caught in the visible trade numbers. The maneuver makes sense because Japan’s corporate tax rate is one of the world’s highest.” [This is one, of many things, that make economic data difficult to rely on - you have to pay close attention to the details - John]
• Krugman Take on $12 Trillion Question Rings True – “Japan’s toxic mix of too much debt, too little growth, too many old people and too few babies will end badly if Tokyo doesn’t get its act together. It’s important, though, to highlight where Fingleton is right. Japan is pretty close to a model society. It is an incredibly safe, clean, efficient, predictable…”
• Wall Street’s Achilles’ Heel – Efficient Market Hypothesis Doesn’t Always Work by Shailesh Kumar – “Market inefficiencies create undervaluation that an investor can buy into. In some other cases, it can also create overvaluation that an investor can sell into or avoid. It is beneficial for a self managed investor to be alert for these situations as the difference in performance between a value biased portfolio and a market neutral portfolio can be very significant over the life of the portfolio.”
• These Three Jobs Are a Great Way for a Teen to Earn Money and Learn Something About Life at the Same Time – “My opinion is that one of the best ways for a teenager to learn about making and saving money is to get a summer-job, or work part-time. These are absolutely amazing ways to gain valuable experience in helping others and learn about responsibility, endurance, and teamwork, and earn money in the process”
• USA Spends $7,960 Compared to $3,800 for Other Rich Countries on Health Care with No Better Health Results by John Hunter – “It is possible to argue the USA provides mediocre results, which is consistent with most global health care performance measures. Unless you directly benefit from the current USA system it is hard to see how you can argue it is not the worst system of any rich country: costing twice as much and achieving middling performance.”

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