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Over the better part of 30 years I have seen plenty of ups and downs in the financial markets, but nothing compares to the bedlam - the pure panic - that gripped Wall Street and much of the rest of America twenty five years ago today. It was October 19, 1987, and when the New York Stock Exchange ope...

Yesterday we learned that the bankrupt Eastman Kodak Company has reached agreement with the court-appointed "1114" retiree group (named after a bankruptcy code clause covering retiree benefits) to terminate health care benefits for all retirees effective December 31st of this year. No, this wasn't a...

"I like it, but it's just too expensive." I've heard that phrase often this summer, almost exclusively when discussing Apple's stock price. When it comes to investing, many of us get too enamored with the number of shares that we own, instead of the total dollar value of our investment. Think of...

I have attached the text of this morning's memo to Kodak employees from CEO Antonio Perez. I'll point out one thing that the memo says and one thing that it doesn't. First, note that at the start of the 6th paragraph, Mr. Perez mentions that he "will take a direct oversight role" in operating wha...

In June of last year the full-page color ads in the Democrat & Chronicle started appearing. "GET MOTIVATED" screamed the headline, and the ads went on to list top-shelf speakers like Rudolph Giuliani, Colin Powell, Terry Bradshaw, Erin Brockovich, and Bill Cosby. The full-day motivational session, p...

My assistant, Marge Geyer, and I have been on the phone the last few days trying to arrange phone service for an elderly client who has entered an adult care facility. She's nearly 100 years old, and for the last 60+ years has lived in the same home and had the same phone number. With today's hotly...

A week ago today we were expecting to hear the results of the court-ordered sale of Eastman Kodak's 1,100 digital imaging patents. On Monday August 13th, the winning bids were to have been announced. Over the preceding weekend the Wall Street Journal had reported a disappointing bidding process that...

My journey examining Europe began with Greece which seems wholly appropriate given its historical precedence. It started simply enough with the addition of their real assets and their real liabilities. It ended simply enough with the realization that the numbers did not add up. There was no prejudic...

It wasn't long ago that I was in my backyard yelling at my smoking lawnmower that had just stopped working. After calming down, I did some research and tried to fix it myself. After tinkering with the carburetor (making it worse) and unscrewing the motor (felt like a man, didn't help), I had fixed n...

Mark Twain famously said that he could sum up everything he knows about life in three little words; "it goes on." And so it does. As another earnings season draws to a close what have we learned, what have we confirmed, and where do we go from here? We Learned Any earnings season can be broken...