Friday, May 18, 2012 
For some perspective on all-important long-term interest rates, today's chart illustrates the 112-year trend of the 10-year Treasury bond yield (thick blue line).
Escalating concerns over Europe in addition to a struggling global economy have encouraged investors, institutions and governments alike to move a portion of their investment dollars to the relative safety of the US. This has resulted in a significant decline of the 10-year Treasury bond yield. In fact, the 10-year yield has declined a fairly dramatic 340 basis points (i.e. 3.4%) since the peak of the credit bubble.
This decline has brought the 10-year Treasury bond yield to a 112-year low. The decline of the 10-year Treasury bond yield has been significant enough to bring the 10-year yield near resistance of what is a 26-year downtrend channel.
If you are buying Bonds now, be carefull, you could suffer HUGE PRINCIPAL LOSES to you Capital !
Thursday, May 17, 2012
MENLO PARK, CA (The Borowitz Report) – On the eve of Facebook’s IPO, Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published the following letter to potential investors:
Dear Potential Investor:
For years, you’ve wasted your time on Facebook. Now here’s your chance to waste your money on it, too.
Tomorrow is Facebook’s IPO, and I know what some of you are thinking. How will Facebook be any different from the dot-com bubble of the early 2000’s?
For one thing, those bad dot-com stocks were all speculation and hype, and weren’t based on real businesses. Facebook, on the other hand, is based on a solid foundation of angry birds and imaginary sheep.
Second, Facebook is the most successful social network in the world, enabling millions to share information of no interest with people they barely know.
Third, every time someone clicks on a Facebook ad, Facebook makes money. And while no one has ever done this on purpose, millions have done it by mistake while drunk. We totally stole this idea from iTunes.
Finally, if you invest in Facebook, you’ll be far from alone. As a result of using Facebook for the past few years, over 900 million people in the world have suffered mild to moderate brain damage, impairing their ability to make reasoned judgments. These will be your fellow Facebook investors.
With your help, if all goes as planned tomorrow, Facebook’s IPO will net $100 billion. To put that number in context, it would take JP Morgan four or five trades to lose that much money.
One last thing: what will, I, Mark Zuckerberg, do with the $18 billion I’m expected to earn from Facebook’s IPO? Well, I’m considering buying Greece, but that would still leave me with $18 billion. LOL.
Friend me,
Mark
Friday, May 11, 2012
Well that’s some slick timing. Eduardo Saverin, who is best known for co-founding Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg back in their college days at Harvard, has given up his United States citizenship.
His name appeared on a list published on April 30 by the United States Office of the Federal Register, which issues a quarterly list of people who have given up their U.S. citizenship. The news was first picked up by Bloomberg earlier today.
The switch will almost certainly decrease the number of American taxes he owes on the $3.84 billion or so he isreportedly in line to make once Facebook goes public, which is widely expected to happen next week. As Bloomberg reported: “Renouncing your citizenship well in advance of an IPO is ‘a very smart idea’ from a tax standpoint, said [University of Michigan international tax law professor Reuven] Avi-Yonah.”
On the surface, this might seem like an opportunistic move. In many ways, Facebook’s story is the most modern example of the American dream gone right. Some would argue that those who have gotten rich from the company should pay some dues back into the system that enabled that success. As billionaire Mark Cuban has written on his blog, the “most patriotic thing you can do” is “bust your ass and get rich. Make a boatload of money. Pay your taxes.”
But to be fair, Saverin is a pretty unique case: He was born in Brazil in 1982, became a U.S. citizen at age 16, and has lived for the past several years in Singapore (where he reportedly drives a Bentley, parties at posh members-only clubs, and prefers the company of supermodels.) He’s also said to be investing in lots of South American and Asian companies at the moment. By all accounts his footprint is legitimately a global one.
And anyway, this isn’t the first time Saverin has made a savvy move in regards to complicated international financial regulations. In a widely published IM conversation from his college days, Mark Zuckerberg described Saverin like this: “My friend who wants to sponsor [Facebook] is head of the investment society. Apparently insider trading isn’t illegal in Brazil so he’s rich lol.”
Souce: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/eduardo-saverin-facebook-ipo-us-citizenshi/
**** Eduardo Saverin was born in Brazil to a Jewish family, but moved to Miami, Florida in the mid 1990s. Eduardo studied Economics as an undergraduate at Harvard College, where he received his BA in 2006. While at Harvard, Eduardo served as Harvard Investment Association’s President, and was known for making over three hundred thousand dollars betting on weather and oil futures. He met Mark Zuckerberg in his sophomore year while punching the Phoenix S.K. Club and later co-founded Facebook...