This winter I was trying to convince my kids to sign up for the local softball league this spring. No way; weren’t interested. This morning as my son and I were playing catch I pointed out that he had a great arm. Actually he’s a natural athlete at most sports; yet time and again I find he is reluctant to try new things. When I asked why he had rejected baseball this spring, he uttered a reply I have heard often lately, “I was afraid I wouldn’t be good,” he explained.

This thought connected with a book I finished yesterday called “How Starbuck’s saved my life.” Great little book. Not only did it give me a fresh respect for Starbucks as a company but the author’s inspiring true story reminded me of this recurring life theme: we have to take personal risks to grow, and some times the very best thing that can happen to any of us is outright failure.

Recently it seems reverberations on this topic have come to me through many different people...   more »

Ms. Park was interviewed by Metal News on April 6. You can read the article here.   more »

Ms. Park will be a guest on BNN with Micheal Kane at 835am EST on Wednesday April 22. The clip can be viewed here on BNN.   more »

This morning I saw a story on how Goldman Sachs had hired a legal team to fight the author of goldmansachs666.com and I wanted to provide the link for my readers.

In 2004 as CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson lobbied the SEC to release the major investment houses from the net capital rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure. The complaint put forth by the investment banks was of increasingly onerous regulatory requirements. After the SEC agreed to set aside this rule, Paulson and his contemporaries levered up their institutions 40 to 1 with Mortgage-backed paper and derivatives. The rest, as we say, is history...   more »

"Everyone stumbles over the truth from time to time, but most people just pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing ever happened."
-Winston Churchill

Over the years, I have come to note a couple of truths about human behaviour. One is that once we are adults, none of us can be rescued by anyone else. Only we can rescue ourselves. We may not end up with the life we expected, but generally we end up with the life that we make through our daily choices. I realize there are catastrophic accidents and illness that can impact our journey, but even then the way in which we respond to our circumstances has a huge impact on final outcomes.

The financial harm that has befallen people over the past couple of years was no random accident. It was both foreseeable and avoidable. The test now is to see who can acknowledge this truth and use the experience as a source of wisdom to change and inform better choices going forward...   more »

"On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. "There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left," says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). "

This 1 hour special report is worth watching.

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We seem to be at an interesting juncture in market psychology.

The long always cheerleaders are still out in full force, urging everyone to buy, buy, buy. But they always say that, so we have learned to filter out the noise of perpetual optimism.

At the other end of the spectrum there is now a famous club of “bear” commentators who called the downturn a couple of years ago and are now continuing to receive significant media attention with dire predictions of untold doom yet to come.

Yes, my firm called the downturn as well, and yes the PR for getting that right and protecting our clients has been very positive. But before I become intoxicated with the views or prophetic abilities of myself or anyone else, I am insistent on keeping affixed to practical plans and sober thoughts...   more »

Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout. He spares no one — not even the Obama administration. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

This is video clip is 28 minutes worth watching.

In order for us to learn from our generation's modern day version of the "savings and loan debacle" (same behaviours different decade) we need to expose and fully admit what happened this time around. We need to remove and replace the participants with those who can lead us forward by ethical example. The degree to which these issues are vetted and corrected will prove one of the first major tests of integrity for the Obama government.   more »

Tom Bradley has an excellent article in the Globe this morning: " 'It will sell': a tipoff for bad investment products."
Send it along to your friends and family.

Now that markets have already declined by 50% this bear market, the sales departments of broker-dealers have been feverishly rolling out "guaranteed" hybrid products for the fear-filled masses. Their timing is impeccable as always; the broker-dealer timing that is. Once again, they are making big fees selling the wrong things and at the wrong time in big volume--to the clients who trust them. On top of fat fees and commissions up front, product architects stand to make high probability gains off the top of this client capital over the coming market recovery. Buyers beware. If you are worried about capital preservation but also want a little exposure to the stock market over the next couple of years, you are likely to fare much better putting a large amount of your capital in GIC's and buying a small exposure to a low fee equity index from here, rather than signing up for convoluted products.   more »

Ms. Park will be a keynote speaker at the Calgary Resource and Clean Energy Investment Conference on Saturday and Sunday this weekend April 4th and 5th. You can learn more or sign up to attend the event on the Cambrige House web site.   more »

The correction Friday through Monday ran just over 5% for both the TSX and the S&P. Today we had a “fugly” US ADP employment survey showing a big 742K decline in March and markets are rallying. But then we knew job losses were bad and will get worse still.

Clearly the primary trend of the stock market is still a bear, but we are presently in the midst of a significant rally which to month end managed to take the main indices up more than 13% from the March 9 low. Other US data this morning: planned lay offs, new home sales and the ISM Manufacturing Index, all timidly came in a little better than feared, with 3 month trends now slightly improving.

There have been a lot of developments in the first 60 days of Obama. Despite great challenges he is undoubtedly inspiring hope. The camel drivers in Giza were chanting “O-b-a-m-a” with a fist pump and a smile when we walked by a couple of weeks ago. Hope can be a powerful thing to lift human sentiment. And it is infectious. Right now hope and despair are wrestling it out every day all around the world...   more »