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

The book about the King’s Speech written by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, Penguin, London, 2010 is the story of King George VI and Lionel Logue overcoming the King’s stammering when speaking. When Lionel took on King George VI as a client, friendship developed and Lionel and the King enjoyed a long professional and personal relationship, but it did not make him materially rich. The King and Lionel went to a variety of functions, Lionel was invited to the King’s home and each time there was a expectation of either formal dress or close to it. Lionel’s practice of helping people to deal with their stammering gave him a modest income but not the type to be a trend setters. Perhaps if he had capitalized on his relationship with the King and let the public know, he would had more clinics and more clients and greater income.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there often is a line in which companies should capitalize on their clients, but if few people know, how does that add to the on going operations of the company? When former Presidents or people close to them are added to the Board level, part of their responsibilities is to bring in new clients or be a rainmaker. It is an expected and normal part of the business. Every business needs new customers to purchase the premium brand (where the company brings the most profit from) for there is always some customers who end the service and part of attracting new is telling who some of the older customers are and why they are satisfied with the service. For the customers who have high esteem for the company the public should know about it and they will tend to listen to your pitch for services, for it is called using all of your public assets to the best advantage.

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

A number of years ago, a movie was made called the King’s Speech a very good and dramatic movie about talking in front of an audience. We expect on leaders to speak well and a host of other things. What if a leader was thrust into the spotlight and did not speak well? and most people on the inside knew it. The person would need training to ensure the people’s expectation and his delivery matched. The book about the King’s Speech written by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, Penguin, London, 2010 is the story of King George VI and Lionel Logue overcoming the King’s stammering when speaking. Those who are born to monarchy are to represent the King and Queen in all sorts of functions when dignitaries are needed to open something, turn the sod, give comforting words etc. King George VI was not expected to be King as the second son, his brother stepped down for love of Mrs. Wallace Simpson (and perhaps other reasons) and Albert stepped up to become King George VI. The King VI had stammering problem and Lionel helped him with it. There were many lessons, a wonderful relationship and a King who delivered on the people’s expectations.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, expectations plays a significant part of investing in the markets. Expectations of the quarterly results; expectations of new products or services; expectations of raising money with debt or equity; expectations of dealing with change in market conditions; expectations of the new management, and the list goes on. If a company delivers consistently on its expectations while showing a profit its goodwill goes up people will flock to owning the stock because expectations have been met. If expectations are not meant by, the markets will send the price of the stock lower, for there is always another choice when dealing with the markets.

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

wonderful book called the Gold of Exodus was written by Howard Blum, Simon and Schuster, 1998. In the book, two adventurers Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke went looking for the mountain for both spiritual and financial reasons. There are a variety of reasons why the book is interesting – first any detective story has excitement built in; actually finding substantive information to back the clues is ups the excitement. Taking the journey than Mosses walked or a pilgrimage has many spiritual feelings – a sense of the desert and what life was about and how precious it is. Another aspect of the book is the geo political happenings. In the Middle East, who is aligned with whom is a changing field and depends on the circumstances. Each country is trying to figure out what the others are doing, thinking and trying to stay one step ahead of each other. In the book’s example, Saudi Arabia wanted to defend itself against others and had the money to pay for the best systems, in the geo political world often times money does not necessary buy you what you think it is buying you. Saudi wanted a radar system to detect missiles that could cross its borders and one of the sites for the system was Jabal al Lawz (Mt. Sinai). This meant the adventurers had another roadblock ahead of them – military sites are protected by armed people. If the adventurers had come 5 years previous, the site given Saudi authorization to visit would have been open to anyone, not the site is behind the fence.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the world changes and sometimes even the best planning fails to take account of the geo political changes that happen. Some of it happens over time, some of it happens over a short period of time. When you buy a dividend paying stocks the companies have experience in dealing with geo political changes, technological changes and just change in general. Understanding no company is perfect or even close to it, however if a company has consistently made profits and increased its dividends; you should expect its management has the ability to steer through normal changes and even profit from them.

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

In the Jewish and Christian religions, the time when the Jewish people left Egypt and were no longer slaves is an important part of the religion. The route taken, one would think, should be well known. Along the journey, Mosses went up Mr. Sinai and came back with the 10 Commandments or the laws of the people. What if for hundreds of years, the mountain that was chosen is not the correct one? What if the mountain is actually in Saudi Arabia, in the land of Midian? When Mosses was cast out by Egypt, he settled in Midian, when he lead the people out of Egypt he went back to Midian, later Israel was founded. So the simple question is where is Midian? and why were people going to another site? When the Roman Emperor Constaintine the Great converted and made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, he had a team sent to the South Sinai Peninsula and they picked a mountain. In the Jewish tradition, the mountain where Mosses received the 10 Commandments was a mystery or an unknown. Midian is now in the boundaries of Saudi Arabia.

A wonderful book called the Gold of Exodus was written by Howard Blum, Simon and Schuster, 1998. In the book, two adventurers Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke went looking for the mountain for both spiritual and financial reasons. When the Jews left Egypt, they took a lot of gold and silver from Egypt, some of it went to the Golden Calf which was destroyed; some of it went to the Ark of the Convenant and the some was left by the mountain. Maybe it is still there? The adventurers used a variety of methods to determine where upwards of a million people would leave their trail and operations. Clues are found in the Bible for some of the bible is fact and some of it is belief. The real route to Mt. Sinai was found – from Cairo down the Gulf of Suez across the Strait of Tiran and to the mountain called Jabal al Lawz, which is in Saudi Arabia. It happens very few people will be going to the Mt. because the Saudi’s have built military infrastructure in the area. The infrastructure costs billions of dollars and will not be moving anytime soon, thus Saudi Arabia has the distinction of having the two holiest shires of the Muslim religion and the holy shine of the Christian religion.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the adventure started with a chance to find gold as well as the real Mt. Sinai, with the adventurers thinking gold was the top priority. As they followed the route, the journey of the man Mosses becomes more important and given the military infrastructure, the priorities switched to the journey. With your investments, the adventure or sense of adventure starts and one always hopes for more gold, but the journey is important. Along that journey if you can collect dividends, it makes the journey easier and then you can relish in both the journey and the gold.

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