Lyncho in the Lions Den

Did I mention my Wednesday noontime speaking engagement?

It will be just like old times when I return to the Little Rock Founders Lions Club, of which I was a member for many years. They meet at the Lions World Serivces for the Blind near UALR.

I am getting my “A” material ready. The house will be rockin’.

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Nervous financial markets

The international financial markets are very jittery these days, and I am not going to tell you that things will be OK, even though that is what I think. There are some very unnerving situations, including an irrational fear of the mortgage industry. A certain portion of that segment is in deep trouble, banks and companies that wrote proper loans will be just fine.

I am thinking of Franklin Roosevelt. At a difficult moment he said that all we have to fear is fear itself. I don’t recall that personally, but I do read. My old pal, the late radio analyst Lowell Ruffcorn, used to say that there are only three reasons people make an investment: ignorance, fear or greed. This is all psychological.

Investors are looking for justifications for the decisions they have already made. All it takes is a little push. We will make it through this, although it might be a good idea, in the future, not to give any more loans to folks that do not have an income of a good history of debt payment.

Bankers have all but ignored an old standard known as the “3 “C”’s”. They are character, capacity and collateral. That does not necessarily cut out the small borrower, especially from a hometown bank that understands the person and the local situation.

(Broadcast August 17, 2007)

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Huck advances

Mike Huckabee says that his “win” in the Iowa straw poll moves him into the top tier of presidential candidates. Checking with a couple of my conservative friends, David Sanders and Bill Vickery, there is some disagreement with the former governor’s overly optimistic assessment. Let’s just say that he is in a position to raise more money, get more exposure, be taken much more seriously and eventually move up to the top tier.

Whether this happens will have a lot to do with how Huckabee does under close scrutiny. Take it from me, the Arkansas media is a bunch of lap dogs. It is significant that Mike Huckabee did well against a very well financed front-runner. Mitt Romney, who poured millions of personal money into Iowa, should have performed much better.

The other part of this puzzle is radio ads sponsored by the so-called Club for Growth. These guys are all over the former governor for raising money to improve the worst public school system in America. Their children go to private school someplace else, so it is some sort of crime for people to pay for roofs, wiring, books, and programs to help young people?

It looks like folks in Iowa, even home-schoolers and evangelicals, saw through that nonsense.

(Broadcast August 16, 2007)

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