In many ways western democratic countries are modeled on ancient Greece. However if you look closely at Greece, some flaws begin to appear – votes were for free men only. Ancient Greece had many slaves or free labourers to do the work necessary in the city, in modern times one can argue about the amount of compensation but there generally is a minimum income for work. In a interesting book David M Schaps wrote a book called Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1979. Ancient Greece similar to many societies was dominated by men, who wrote the rules favouring men, for example property left to the oldest son,but what about women? It turns out women had economic rights and although many looked after the household – the running of it, the care of the children and be given a dowry at the time of marriage. Marriage was a contract between the bride’s father and the groom. The groom would then be responsible for the maintenance of the wife and children. If there was divorce the dowry goes back to the wife. In ancient Greece there were rich women and poor women, some owned property although not many are recorded for most records are dominated by male names.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the dowry often times was movables such as furniture, but it had the great appeal of preservation of capital and some growth. As it was back then, it still is, one of the best strategies to earning wealth is not losing it or preserving it, which is why investments in dividend paying stocks is of great benefit. The dividends ensure a return and because of the company consistently earning a profit to pay the dividends the stocks grow over the years to increase the wealth at a low risk to the holder. In Ancient Greece, there was a dowry from the bride’s family, a good thing to invest the money is dividend paying stocks for the long run of the marriage.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

The story of the Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone , Penguin Books, 2007 is 4 sisters who marry well and influence Europe in the mid 1200’s. One was married to Louis IX, king of France; one was married to Henry III, king of England and the other two were married to the most powerful people behind the Kings – Richard, the Earl of Cornwall and Charles of Anjou. How all four married into the families and how their marriages brought peace to Europe is the subject of the book. Every family in the world hopes their sons and daughters marry well, for Raymond Berenger V the Count of Provence his four daughters surpassed expectations. In terms of managing the relationships between France and England – having the Queens related would mean although their was difficulties, France and England were more at peace than they were at war. In terms of the barons – these are the lords who are one level down from the King and Queen. The barons have a variety of names – Lord, Earl, Count depending on what lands they own. The best method to keep these folks in line, besides having a strong army was to bribe them. If someone is offered more money, more lands, the niece or daughter or a cousin’s daughter or niece in marriage to improve their social standing so much the better. Often times money was the grease to withhold your troops in the case of disagreements, in the case of war – the winner picked up any valuables from the losers. If war was fought, it was a more civilized approach where the battle would be fought during the day and the evening was time to tend to the injured and dead and if you were losing, it was time to go home. Withholding your troops is not to send them into battle or coming at noon when the battle was over.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, although the terms of war are often used when one company buys another, the market will lose their taste of honourable words for  a higher stock price. The first line of defence of any company under a possible merger is to protect the senior management and existing owners, the 5th line is to offer something for the existing workers. In the book the Four Queens, the ability to offer bribes does wonders for peace, now days the offer of stability of employment to the elected officials and not increasing prices to consumers for a set period of months is the type of bribes which get offered for the workers. For the owners, increasing the stock price swings the most votes.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

The story of the Four Queens by Nancy Goldstone , Penguin Books, 2007 is 4 sisters who marry well and influence Europe in the mid 1200’s. One was married to Louis IX, king of France; one was married to Henry III, king of England and the other two were married to the most powerful people behind the Kings – Richard, the Earl of Cornwall and Charles of Anjou. How all four married into the families and how their marriages brought peace to Europe is the subject of the book. Every family in the world hopes their sons and daughters marry well, for Raymond Berenger V the Count of Provence his four daughters surpassed expectations. In the feudal times of the Kings and Queens would marry off their families to achieve alliances with others in the expectation of if someone attacked their lands, the others because of marriage would be obligated to help defend the lands.

In peace time, when the marriages happened, the girls tended to early teenagers, besides their youthful beauty, would bring a dowry for the kings to pay off their debts. The first was married strategically and the other sisters began to fall into place because of who she married. In the 1200’s the biggest debt holders were the kings and to get out of debt,new lands needed to be acquired to pay off the creditors. Another method was to marry off a family member for the dowry or payment of money by the bride’s family. In the case of the Berenger family, the Count had a pledge the same asset a number of times to keep up appearances and to satisfy the groom’s expenses. The lives of the 4 Queens reads similar to many Court stories in terms of forming alliances, keeping the barons friendly, for there is always someone who wants to go fighting, and maintaining their standing.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, this particular book focuses on the power behind the throne, someone has to sit on the throne but that does not always mean they were the best candidate. It means they won the right to sit on the throne to carry on, and hopefully they will do a more than adequate job. There is always people behind the scenes who ensure stability is seen by all, in this case, the queens might have been better at the job than the kings. As an investor, the most important aspect of the company is to continue to earn a profit and pay a dividend; one of the variables which is always interesting to watch is how the senior management interact and act for the good of the company.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

In the book Animal Fakes and Frauds by Peter Dance, Sampson, Low Berkshire, 1975,  the author reveals some of the shapes and sizes of the animals that generations have discussed. Mr. Dance worked at the British Museum (Natural History) and would come across these animals in the course of his work. In all things in life, when people are asked exactly what did you see? and what do your remember? for most of us, unless we trained ourselves, the answers will have variation. If you believe you are an exception, next time you are in lunchroom setting or restaurant, pick someone out of the crowd, allow them to sit down and describe the person to the person you are having lunch with without viewing the person you are describing. How much do you remember of the person? Most of us remember something, but every detail? This was the case with the animals fakes and frauds, generally the people remember something but in the short time they saw the animal, other features were embellished. Soon word was out and more than likely the person, in their recollections, felt the description was accurate. Unless someone is trained in that area of the animal kingdom there was no reason not to believe it and much of it could have been true.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as investors we have access to information, but we like to be told a good story in order to invest our money. The stories often tell of the years the stock or the fund did very well. Is this the year which the exchange is going to repeat itself with higher stock prices? The truth is on the stock market, the best answers are looking back at something that has already happened. Looking forward the best answer is I do not know, but we a method to achieve more money is to invest in quality stocks which consistently earn a profit. If a company consistently makes money, then the multiple of times the earnings trades at will go higher. Add a return of dividends and the money returning to you is not a fake or fraud just good sound investing.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.

On You Tube one of the most consistently highest watched videos is animal tricks, and given many people like animals their popularity can easily be rationalized. At the same time, for generations of people, some have made up animals to counteract our fear of the unknown. Those that went to sea for a living talked about sea monsters; those that lived near the mountains talked about strange animals in the mountains. It is very understandable why the animals would evolve. In the book Animal Fakes and Frauds by Peter Dance, Sampson, Low Berkshire, 1975,  the author reveals some of the shapes and sizes of the animals that generations have discussed. Mr. Dance worked at the British Museum (Natural History) and would come across these animals in the course of his work. Many of the animals could have been true, although given our desire to enhance the magnitude of the problem and solution, it is not surprising the different types of animals which came forth. The creatures described included animals carved in the stones, jewellery, mermaids, dragons, birds, fossils, etc. More or less whatever we can collect and enhance to be even more valuable.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, you will see a number of stocks making great claims to the be next great thing, if it someone can make money from it, the tale can go from the regular to the gold at the end of the rainbow. However, those stocks which have consistently earned a profit and paid a dividend are worth shouting about from the mountain tops. Those are the companies where the bulk of your stock investment dollars should be going to. The combination of dividends paid to you on a regular basis and over time increasing, plus the higher multiple for company earning profits will send the stock higher. There are many stories to be found, but stay close to dividends plus consistently profitable companies and you will find listening to the stories is better than investing in them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

One of the great beliefs of the democratic society is one can believe in whatever one wants to as long as it does not break any laws. From this belief a book called Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson, Penguin Books, London, 2008 was written. The premise is how we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science, and fake history. In the modern age which we are in, we all have access to great amounts of information, most of it we do not know what to do with, but there is a great amount of information and more and more of it is on the internet. The internet started for government officials and university researchers sharing and trying to find more information to lead to a decision. Whatever topic you are interested in, there is something for you on the internet, most of us rarely go to most of it until something affects us personally. When something affects us, we want to communicate with others and come to a decision and move to other things in our lives.

In theory, we are better educated than the previous generation which allows us to look at the facts, do the research and make decisions. Unfortunately, when we do research, there is a great deal of counterknowledge or misinformation packaged to look like fact – packaged so well it could be fact. Ideas that use to be on the fringes of society and now being taken seriously be the general public. The essence of counterknowledge is that it purports to be knowledge but is not knowledge. Its claims can be shown to be untrue, it misrepresents reality by presenting non-facts as facts.

It is important to understand, why theories are being offered, for counterknowledge has been used through the generations to affect a particular response. Only now in the internet age. more of them can be seen and some them are based on the existing companies and government having done wrong in the past for a particular end. For example, the classic case is drug companies bringing out a drug with a bad side affect to make money. Is natural then better? or worse? Another classic case in the past was the Spanish Inquisition where the Catholic church killed people for not believing in their religion. Spain formerly had Muslim and Jewish communities, when the new ruler who was Catholic decided all should be Catholic, many died who were accused on not being Catholic enough. There are many examples in our day to day lives of counterknowledge.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the internet brings challenges to every company because people have the tools to research and make a decision. Upon making a decision, they can tell the world, once in a while it goes viral. When it does, the company has to make a decision about the reason or sales may go down. It may be correct or incorrect, but decisions have to be made. The decision will have impacts one way or the other, and resources have to be spent to counteract the claim to show that it is not what is suggested. The important question is why is someone making the claim? what results are expected? people have all kinds of agendas some of them are good.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

With every technology there is both good and evil that the technology can be used for. The book IBM and the Holocaust written by Edwin Black, Crown Publishing, NY, 2001 deals with the company IBM and its activities to help the Nazis in Germany during WW II and before. For generations, people have been surveyed and governments of all strips allocate resources based on the surveys. The programs can be for infrastructure – roads, bridges, sewers, etc. and they can be for social reasons – if there are more people needing extra services – the surveys help define where resources should go. Everyone in government needs the information from the census surveys. For generations, much of the material was collected by paper and took months to tabulate and there was only so much that could be done. Companies similar to IBM invented machines that could do the work of the tabulating and in the case of IBM, it used a punch card process. With the invention of the silicon chip, we no longer use punch cards. In the case of IBM – to ensure a monopoly like conditions their machines only used IBM paper. This was good for IBM and institutions around the world began to use the technology. Those in Nazi Germany decided to go further, besides running the country, one of their core beliefs was race belief system of Aryans was better. To have a country of Aryans was to have a better country. Part of this meant to eliminate non-Aryans in particular the Jewish population. The race division of the Nazi party ensured all surveys including the census included information about the religion of your grandfather and grandmothers to see if you were Aryan or not. The race division started in Germany and prior to WW II, every time the Germans invaded another country – their number one priority was to identify the Jewish population. Having identified the population, the lists from the IBM cards could be generated and the population transported to camps by the train. The train companies used IBM punch cards to know where every freight car was to be efficient as possible. The IBM system was used throughout the military industrial complex of both Germany and the US, and the state department of the US knew about it. It was one thing to have the machines, but it was another thing to supply the punch cards for the machines ran on cards – millions of them were needed. IBM supplied the punch cards,  which were manufactured in the US, for Europe as did not have the correct paper to supply all the punch cards.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, IBM is not the first company to profit on both sides of the war, but it did lead to the efficient gathering of lists of the population and the movement of them to camps where many died. Should the US state department allowed IBM to continually to ship cards with remarkably few consequences? Should IBM carried on similar to peace time in the German controlled Europe? At the time of the President Tomas Watson, IBM was micromanaged and Mr. Watson knew exactly where his machines were? its audits tracked down every expense and they must had a very good idea of what the Germans were doing. At the present time – both friends and enemies have access to microchips so the debate is mute, but in World War II, could have IBM done better for itself in terms of profitability – no. IBM profited from the high use of punch cards which ran the German system. All companies have to answer the question for themselves which is why when a company says they have a code of ethics what does that really mean? what solutions would they not provide?

There is more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

With every technology there is both good and evil that the technology can be used for. The book IBM and the Holocaust written by Edwin Black, Crown Publishing, NY, 2001 deals with the company IBM and its activities to help the Nazis in Germany during the second world war and before. The story goes IBM started from the Hollerith machine which could read punch cards, the early days of computers – data imputers punched computer cards which read the data and reports were produced to be analysed. The punch card started with data needed by the census department – to determine who is living in the country. Then other questions would be asked and IBM developed bigger cards for more information to provide solutions to the questions being asked. Census taking was a large task and provided the basis to sell to other large companies and institutions.

In Germany during the 1930’s the government decided the Jews were the problem and needed to be removed. It was one thing to decide that, how they did it is the subject of the book about IBM. Jews had been living in Germany for hundreds of years, fought for Germany during the first World War, similar to most had varying degrees of religion and did their best to make Germany a good place to live. The Nazis decided all Jews going back 100 years needed to be identified in order to be removed, this is where IBM plays a large part. IBM’s German subsidiary – Dehomag was profitable and was quasi removed or a layer of deny ability from IBM. One would need to look through a number of layers before the true relationship could be seen. IBM allowed Dehomag to manufacturer the punch card machine and Dehomag won the census taking for Germany. The Nazis wanted many questions about your past in the census so anyone who had Jewish blood in them could be identified. Once identified they could be rounded up, moved to ghettos, move to camps and many them would be killed. Other countries around the world followed the same process of identification, rounded up, moved to ghettos and camps, but they did not kill.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the case of IBM the senior management of the company including Thomas Watson knew what was happening in Germany and continued to help the Nazis. He saw it as good business and for a long time sympathized with the Nazis. Every long term profitable company goods and services can be used for both good and evil, depending on how society defines it. Fortunately most do more good than evil and when it does happen consequences happen including loss of goodwill and share prices.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

The radio was on in the car and a lady was talking about sugar. Apparently we all eat too much of it as it is in many processed foods. Sugar has a great history starting from the sugar cane and then refined to brown sugar and further refined to white sugar. The lady on the radio was talking about the perceptions of sugar – if a bowl of brown sugar and a bowl of white sugar was on the table, which one would you pick first? For most people it is the white sugar, because white sugar was always more expensive as it took a longer period of time to refine. The extra time helped purify it and people generally saw it as better. The lady on the radio then used the analogy of race – brown sugar or white sugar? One of the early products of refining sugar is molasses – what words would you use to describe the product? Does that describe one race better than the other? The answer can be no, but it usually does have an answer.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, with sugar the ideal is to stick to the sugar producing stocks but all foods can have analogies tied to them and thus our initial perceptions. When you first thought of investing did you think of dividend paying stocks (for old people) except history has shown reinvesting your dividends will generate the most wealth with the least risk to your capital. The only trick is to ensure your company remains competitive (stays in business) and continually increases its dividends. This is one of the reasons you need to ensure your companies have a history of paying dividends.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions