Honeybee says good-bye too, and thanks to each of you! I will miss you all!
==> The BRT (Blog Research Team) has helped me immensely - too many of you to mention by name.
==> I am also grateful to those who have contributed wisdom, humor and education in their comments.
==> I will always be grateful to Frankj for his fabulous guest-author summaries! Frankj's writing ability is first class all the way.
==> Extreme gratitude to dRahme who has provided great Audio Clips!
==> Also thank you to our humor-writer Jeffchristie, who helped us all prepare for the Moneytalk Final Exam.
I have considered several options of ways to continue this blog, but have decided that the main purpose of the blog was always to "Keep Bob Brinker Honest on Moneytalk." I have done this for many years, but now he will no longer be broadcasting to millions of listeners, so unless he finds a new way to reach (and sometimes mislead) a huge audience, my job is done.
I have received hundreds of emails from people who have thanked me for saving them a ton of money by simply pointing out that Bob Brinker cannot time the stock market - and has less than a 50-50 batting average.
Now I would like to take this opportunity to repeat what I have said many times over the years about Bob Brinker's teaching ability.
It was in the late 1980's when I first found Bob Brinker's Moneytalk on KGO in San Francisco. I have always been grateful to Brinker for not only teaching me how to become my own financial manager, but for giving me the courage to untangle myself from the clutches of one of the big brokerage house-sharks.
Back then, internet information was not available (to me), so I spent many hours doing research at the San Jose, Ca. main library on weekdays, and carefully listening to Brinker on Saturday and Sunday.
When Brinker said things like "it's not rocket science," or "anyone can become their own financial manager," I believed him. But that did not make it easy for me. It took hard work to go down that learning curve. And it took courage to actually get money moved from Dean Witter - they were determined not to let me go. However, to the DW broker's dismay, I prevailed and moved to Charles Schwab.
So I have always known that Brinker is a good teacher and has taught the basics of investing to millions of listeners.
I also know firsthand that Brinker has a lot of ugly skeletons in his closet. My blog work over the years will always be available for those who want to investigate those skeletons, but I will not cover that territory today.
FRANKJ'S SUMARY OF MONEYTALK'S LAST GUEST AUTHOR:
FRANKJ'S SUMARY OF MONEYTALK'S LAST GUEST AUTHOR:
Bob’s final guest in the
third hour today, this 30th day of September 2018 was Alan Blinder,
former member of the Fed and professor at Princeton. He published a book about 5 years ago, “When
the Music Stopped,” a recounting of the 2008 meltdown. His latest book, “Advice and Dissent, Why
America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide,” was the topic of his last
visit in May of 2018 which was his fifth appearance as a guest.
Maybe it is fitting that he
is on as a final guest once more. He and
Bob seem to get along like a couple who know each other well enough to finish
each other’s sentences.
The interview started off
with Bob asking if Prof. Blinder was surprised by anything that happened since
“When the Music Stopped” was published.
The professor took a little swipe at the present administration saying
he expected a full on pushback against the Dodd-Frank legislation that passed
after the meltdown. He said he was
pleasantly surprised that this did not take place and that only minor adjustments
occurred.
What the guest termed as
“silly” mortgage lending practices have gone away. Dodd Frank will not prevent those from
occurring in the future but it will be more difficult.
Turning to the Bear Stearns
meltdown in early 2008, Bob asked why didn’t the Fed see this coming? Prof. Blinder said the Fed did not realize
the web of derivatives that existed, nor their size, and did not realize what effect the Lehman
Bros. bankruptcy would have on markets.
There was a brief
discussion of two Fed chairs. It is
Alan’s opinion that Ben Bernanke left after 8 years because he was tired. The present Fed chair, Jerome Powell is
communicating more and introducing more transparency, which Alan approves
of. The guest thinks a Fed funds rate of
3% is about neutral and as the Fed closes in on this rate in the future, there
will be a “rip-roaring” debate over whether to go above it.
Bob posited that Gross
Domestic Product growth should equal population growth plus productivity
growth. Both are less than 1% now, yet
GDP is about 4% … what gives? They
chewed on this bone a while and no real conclusions were reached but the guest
pointed out that productivity growth has always been hard to measure but long
term it has been about 2.3%.
The first caller was Andre
from Berkeley, CA who wanted to know with a debt of $23 trillion, what happens
when interest rates normalize? The guest
said about 35% of that is just what is owed by one government agency to
another. The rest is publicly
held. If interest rates increase, interest payments
(which must be made) will squeeze out other spending. Then we will need to print more money and the
result will be inflation.
Colin from Arroyo Grande,
CA wanted to know if there are still toxic instruments out there like there
were in 2008. The answer was yes, there
still are some but not nearly to the extent there were in 2008.
What does Alan Blinder
worry about these days? He worries that
the markets have become too complacent about a trade war. They used to react to each new piece of news
but now they don’t. He also worries that
the Fed will “overshoot” and the result will be inflation. Bob asked why didn’t the Treasury issue 40 to
50 year bonds when the interest rates were so low. Prof. Blinder said he would have done it but
speculated that the Treasury didn’t want to try to guess what interest rates
would do in the future.
Bob bid adieu to Prof.
Blinder at 3:49 then came back a few minutes later and mentioned the reports
coming out this week.
He then spent a few minutes
thanking a number of people who helped in his radio career. Here they are and please excuse any
misspellings: Jean Strauss, Maurice
Tunic, John McConnell, Jeff Rich, Mickey (Nicky?) Luckoff, Ravi Chandron, Angel
Bordone, Bob Mack.
Bob Brinker announced this
would be his last live program and that he planned to concentrate on the
newsletter. The radio show will continue
through October with the Best of MoneyTalk.
Bob signed off with “May
the odds be ever in your favor.”
I guess since I’m writing this I get to add a
personal note of my own. Honeybee was
very gracious to let me contribute all these years. It was never a chore for me – I enjoyed doing
the summaries and sending them on. I
appreciate that visitors to the blog sometimes said “thanks,” and that they
enjoyed the summaries. And Honeybee ALWAYS said thank you.
Bob Brinker introduced us to the phrase “The Land of
Critical Mass,” as being the place where alarm clocks are no longer
needed. And he often referred to the Starship
MoneyTalk. If I could change that to
“The Planet Critical Mass,” then this analogy makes more sense: Bob provided many of us with the ignition and
lift-off we needed to reach the Planet of Critical Mass in our own Starships.
He also gave us the navigational tools to avoid the
asteroids that can severely damage your Starship: high-fee funds, non-publicly traded REITs,
expensive annuities, discretionary brokerage accounts, too-good-to-be-true
fixed income investments and other shark attacks.
Frankj
Honey here: Thank you Frankj! Your contributions have been invaluable to making this blog educational and interesting!
LINKS TO THE COMPLETE BODY OF MY BOB BRINKER MONEYTALK SUMMARIES AND COMMENTARY:
(2007) Honey's Bob Brinker Beehive Buzz ARCHIVED (Note: This was taken over by Kirk Lindstrom, so beware of clicking on all ads on that blog.)
(2008-2011) Honey's Bob Brinker Beehive Buzz2 ARCHIVED (Note: This was taken over by Kirk Lindstrom, so beware of clicking on all ads on the blog.)
(2012 to 2018) Honey's Bob Brinker Beehive Buzz3 (Note: this blog belongs completely to Honey Bee and ad visits are appreciated.)
