Synthetic, natural, and whole-food vitamins

From: http://training.fitness.com/supplements/mulit-vitamins-2-33823.html

Regarding Centrum or One-a-day's, multis come in one of three forms: synthetic, natural, and whole-food. A good way to differentiate is to learn to read labels. Synthetic multiples will have the vitamin C listed as ascorbic acid but will lack a boiflavanoid complex. Vitamin C should be ascorbic acid, but we cannot metabolize it properly without the presence of bioflavanoids, so make sure that somewhere on the label is a bioflavanoid complex. Reptiles and older orders of birds make ascorbic acid in their kidneys. Recent orders of birds and most mammals make ascorbic acid in their livers where the enzyme L-gulonolactone oxidase is required to convert glucose to ascorbic acid. Humans, guinea pigs, and some other primates are not able to make L-gulonolactone oxidase because of a genetic defect and are therefore unable to make ascorbic acid in their livers.
They will also have a synthetic vitamin E (dl-alpha tocopheryl). As a general rule, if your vitamin contains these, you can be certain it is synthetic (like Centrum). Natural multis will contain natural ingredients (thus, ascorbic acid and bioflavanoids and d-alpha tocopheryl). Another indication is that the raw materials used to produce either a natural or whole food multi can not be compressed into one pill. Usually a one-per-day formula is synthetic. While synthetic multis are really poorly absorbed (like twenty percent due to the rate of compression and lack of protein bonding), natural and whole food multis are much more readily assimilated by the body. Most of the chain store (Costco, Sam's, Wal Mart, etc) vits are synthetic and are not only poorly absorbed but also really bad for the body.
A whole food multi is one that was created from raw materials found in actual whole foods, not created in a chemist's lab somewhere. Studies have shown that synthetic vitamins contain- in addition to the actual vitamins- coal tars, artificial coloring, preservatives, starches, and sugars. Vitamins that come from whole food sources are protein-bonded, and are absorbed, utilized, and retained better than supplements that are not protein-bonded.

Chemically derived vitamins are not protein-bonded, and thus are not absorbed well. That's where the bioavailability comes in- it has to do with how much of the actual nutrient you absorb. Basically, scientists have created synthetic vitamins that are cheap to make and are supposed to be identical to their whole-food counterparts. They are not. A study using polarized light showed that when the light is placed through whole food vitamins, the light beam bends to the right, due to its molecular rotation. When the same light passes through a synthetic vitamin, the beam splits in half.

This proves 2 things- first, synthetic vitamins are not the same as whole food vits in their atomic structure, and second, researchers concluded that in a best case scenario, only 50% of the biological activity of the vitamin is available. (Vinson, JA., Bose P. "Comparative Bioavailabilty to Humans of Ascorbic Acid Alone or in Citrus Extract." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1998, Vol 38, No 3, p. 601-604. AND Duke, James. Handbook of Chemical Constituants of Grasses, Herbs, and other Economical Plants. CRC Press, Boca Raton. 1992.) Add to that the fact that most synthetics are compressed at a rate of about 12,000 PSI's, and you're looking at maybe a 20% absorption rate.

Recipe: Ayam Goreng Suharti

From: Indonesian Food Recipes

Original Ayam Goreng Suharti

April 29th, 2009 | Author: the chef

Ingredients:

• 800 gr skinny chicken (ayam kampung, if possible), cut into four
• 2 ltr coconut juice
• 2 tsp? rice flour
• vegetable oil

Spice paste ingredients:

• 8 shallots
• 4 cloves garlic
• 7 cm ginger, grated
• 10 candle nuts
• 2 tbs coriander
• 2 tsp black pepper
• salt to taste

Directions:

• Grind spice paste ingredients in a grinder or mortar into a fine paste.
• Heat 2 tbs vegetable oil in a wok. Saute the paste until fragrant. Pour the coconut juice into the wok.
• Add chicken and heat on medium until the liquid evaporates. Remove the chicken.
• Combine spice paste in the wok with rice flour, whisk through until well-mixed.
• Deep fry the chicken and flour mixture in another frying pan until browned.
• Serve with sambal and vegetables

Recipe: Pan Fried Tilapia

From: Food.com

Pan Fried Tilapia

By Cattleships on September 16, 2002

Photo by DarksLight
31 Reviews

• 
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Total Time: 10 mins
• Servings: 2

About This Recipe

"Another very simple recipe...and a healthy one as well."

Recipe: Indian Dal

From: wholefoodsmarket

Recipe:

INDIAN DAL

Indian Dal
Submitted by: Whole Foods Market
 

• 
• 
• 

Rated by 26 people
Serves 6
Nutritious and flavorful, with added heat from a jalapeño, this recipe is an ideal choice for a quick evening meal. Dal is one of the principal foods of the Indian subcontinent where the term can be used to mean either an ingredient or the dish made from it. If using green or black beluga lentils instead of red, the cooking time should be increased by 10 to 15 minutes. Serve over a bed of brown rice.

2012 运程

Color Sheet

From http://www.somacon.com/p142.php

Neutral Colors

Color Name	Color Code
Pearly Gates
Pale Olive
Ultra Pure White
Frosted Lime
White Orchid
Green Veil
Gray Cliffs
Far Horizon
Plantation White
Warm Summer
Ivory Tusk
Eggshell Cream
Toasted Meringue
Light Sand
Carmel Tan
Wedding Veil
Subtle White
Warm Shadow
Sand Box
Frosted Peach
Dusted Pink
Porcelain White
Light Adobe
Barely Blushing
Dusty Trail
Ostrich Feather
White Sail
Morning Fog
Dove Beige

Wikitravel and travel resources offline

From: Hobobo Guide to Travel Guides
- Compete Wikitravel offline
First you need to download the wikitravel data dump here. It is just a text archive with all the text from the website. The archive format .bz2 file keeps the size small at only 40MB. You have several options for reading this file type.
The easiest if you are traveling with a laptop is to download wikitaxi or BZ reader. These readers will work for any wiki dump which means if you want the entire Wikipedia resource available offline (~6GB) you can access it without having to extract it. If you have the space this is also a fantastic thing to have while you travel. You never know what you’ll want to look up.
- On mobile devices
For increased portability there are also options for smart phones and ipods. Depending on your device it can loaded with varying degrees of ease. The best interface by far is the wiki2travel app for the jail broken ipod or iphone. The Oxygen guide is the best for the Android OS, though is far inferior to wiki2travel for the iphone.
There is support for other devices as well, but I haven’t tried any of them. There are also a few apps that let you download and store the wiki travel pages and maps a la carte. One good example is itravelfree. The paid version lets you download and store everything offline. It is only $3 which is a bargain to have all the travel information you could want at your fingertips. Compare that to $30 for a single country Lonely Planet guide book.
If wikitravel doesn’t have a lot of detail on the destination you’re looking at Lonely Planet has offered an attractive answer to buying a paperback guide book. They now offer downloadable .pdf versions of most of their guides as well as the option to buy single chapters at a reduced price. Introductory planning chapters are always free which can help with your first-cut travel planning.

青椒炒鸡蛋

转贴: 青椒炒鸡蛋

作者：陆芳 时间：2011-7-5 14:27:33 

　　黄绿搭配，色彩美观，口味鲜香。

　　基本材料

　　新鲜青椒150克，鸡蛋3个，豆油60克，精盐、香油、葱花各适量。

　　制作方法

　　1.把青椒用清水洗净，去籽切成细丝。将鸡蛋打在碗里，加适量食盐，用筷子搅拌均匀。

　　2.锅内放油(40克)，烧热，将蛋汁倒入，炒好倒出，备用。

　　3.往锅内倒入余油，烧热，放入葱花炝锅，稍微发黄即可，随后放入青椒丝，加精盐炒几下，见青椒丝翠绿色时，放入炒好的鸡蛋，翻炒均匀，用香油烹一下，即可出锅。

　　美味提示

　　有些人喜欢放味精，其实在炒鸡蛋时最好不要放味精，这是最起码的常识。因为鸡蛋富含大量的谷氨酸和一 制作方法(11张)部分氯化钠，当鸡蛋被加热后，鸡蛋中的这两种物质会合成新的物质，这种物质化学名称叫谷氨酸钠，味精的主要成分就是这种物质，食物在加入这种物质后会有鲜味。但是，炒鸡蛋的时候如果放入味精这种物质，经过分解后的味精就会严重的破坏鸡蛋本身合成的自然鲜味。所以，建议各位家庭主妇在炒鸡蛋时切忌放入味精，这样才能保证鸡蛋的原汁原味。 

Power supply discussion

Power Supplies: Info you need to know

In this first segment, I will be covering on power supplies and the quality of power supplies from different brands.

1) Why you should buy a quality power supply?
The reason is simple. Quality power supplies are not only able to deliver their rated power, but they also deliver it in a cleaner and more stable manner.
 This means that you will have to use less voltage to your CPU when overclocking, it also helps to prolong the life of your hardware when they are provided with clean, unfluctuating power.
Also, the power supply lasts longer.

2) What makes a good power supply?
There are many things a good power supply has.
Look for operational features like OCP (Overcurrent Protection), OVP/UVP (Overvoltage/Undervoltage protection), SCP (Short circuit Protection), PFC (Power factor correction) and such.
If you open up a quality power supply, chances are you'll find the following traits.

a) A fan with ball bearings from a reputable manufacturer. (AVC, Nidec, Sanyo, ADDA, Globe, Delta, etc.)

b) Quality Japanese capacitors that are rated at the higher maximum operating temperature of 105 degrees Celsius. (Nichihon, Nippon Chemicon, Hitachi, Rubycon)

c) Active PFC. This is evident when you see the absence of a voltage selector switch at the rear of the unit.

d) Sleeved cables. Now, it doesn't mean all PSU's with sleeved cables are good, but it usually means that they have at least added some quality to the cabling. Thick wires are also a good indicator.

Barron's 2011 Roundtable, Part Three -- Think Contrarian

Source: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970204331604576104252848553210.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1

By LAUREN R. RUBLIN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
Meryl Witmer, Marc Faber, Mario Gabelli and Oscar Schafer share their investment picks for 2011 in the final

If you're looking for compelling investment ideas and insights into how to unearth them, you've come to the right publication. That is especially so in any week when stock pickers extraordinaire Meryl Witmer, Mario Gabelli and Oscar Schafer grace these pages together. Add Marc Faber, whose 30,000-foot view of the markets encompasses both hemispheres and all asset classes, and you've got yourself the handiest guide we know to making money in 2011.

On Jan. 10, the editors of Barron's were fortunate to get all four -- and the other six members of the Roundtable -- in the same room at the same time, to explore the prospects for the global economy, financial markets and a wide array of investments in the year ahead. This week's Roundtable issue, the last of three, features the picks of this formidable foursome, and their stock-picking strategies.

Barron's Roundtable

Part 1: Attention Stockpickers

Part 2: All Over the Map

Part 3: Think Contrarian

Meryl, a general partner at New York's Eagle Capital Partners, says it's a lot harder to find cheap stocks now that the market has rallied. That is why she and her team are prowling for companies recently released from bankruptcy protection -- a process that cleanses their balance sheets but wrecks their reputations. The more unloved they are, the more Meryl loves them -- and the opportunities they offer.

Mario, the big boss at Gamco Investors in Rye, N.Y., has a keen interest in break-ups, make-ups, spinoffs and split-ups -- the Page Six of corporate life. That's because deals are "one way for values to surface." Deal stocks likeFortune Brands and Sara Lee figure prominently among his picks for 2011, along with a novel play on shale gas and another on gold.

View Full Image

Brad Trent for Barron's

From left, Marc Faber, Oscar Schafer, Meryl Witmer and Mario Gabelli share the stock-picking spotlight in this week's issue.

For Oscar, the value hound who runs New York's O.S.S. Capital, it's the catalyst that counts. What circumstance, or constellation of events, could turn an otherwise ordinary business into a growth machine? He homes in this year on companies returning to public hands after leveraged buyouts. Shares outstanding are limited, tax rates are low and management is cost-conscious -- an optimal set-up for outsized investment returns. Hertz is one such returnee, and his masterful analysis is worth reading twice.

As for Marc, a globe-trotting financial advisor, he's prone to big pronouncements. Nothing to get alarmed about -- just that all paper currencies are doomed and World War III has begun. When the shock wears off, however, you might be riveted by his thoughts on how to profit from great global shifts, as well as temporary dislocations in equity, currency and commodity prices. Think energy, gold and, yes, Japan.

Want more details? Please read on.

Barron's 2011 Roundtable, Part Two -- All Over the Map

Source:http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970204853904576090250370348320.html?mod=BOL_twm_fs#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1

By LAUREN R. RUBLIN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
In the second installment of the Roundtable, our pros' picks range widely over commodities, previous metals, financial stocks and big-cap tech. Two better-than-bonds plays.

If you read the first installment of this year's Barron'sRoundtable, you already know the sky is falling–but very, very slowly. It could take another year, or two or four, before the dollar tumbles, the euro crumbles and the price of gold, that great hedge against disaster, makes its way to the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, back here on earth, shrewd investors can find bargains aplenty among stocks, bonds, funds and even futures, as well as other neat ways to profit in a high-anxiety, ultra-low-interest-rate world. We rounded up 10 such investors two weeks ago, and sat them down at the Harvard Club of New York for a long day of intense conversation on where in the world to invest in 2011.

Last week we shared the big-picture views of these market savants. This week's installment -- the second of three -- typically features the investment picks and pans of several panelists. But those big, important issues, from economics to policy to politics, kept sneaking back into the conversation all day long, providing the basis for broad, thematic investment recommendations.

View Full Image

Brad Trent for Barron's

Thus, Felix Zulauf, head of Zulauf Asset Management in Zug, Switzerland, one of the savviest observers anywhere of the global investment scene, delivered a masterful disquisition on the bright past, rocky present and troubling future of the European Union, while Fred Hickey, editor of the not-to-be-missed High-Tech Strategist, published in Nashua, N.H., held forth eloquently on why gold is heading higher (in his case, to Canada) and many tech stocks, lower.

Then there was Pimco's Bill Gross, master of the universe of bonds. Few anywhere could better explain why the Federal Reserve's money-printing policies, which have promoted negative interest rates after inflation's effect, are tantamount to stealing from savers -- or how to profit from the insult.

Only Archie MacAllaster, head of New York's MacAllaster Pitfield MacKay, stuck to script, or plain old stock-picking, without a whole lot of color commentary. Then again, the dividends paid by his favorite financial concerns are colorful enough for almost any portfolio.

All four market pros are featured in this week's issue, along with the rest of the well-informed crew. It makes for lively, thought-provoking reading and, we hope, profit-provoking investments.

Barron's 2011 Roundtable, Part One -- Attention Stockpickers

Source: http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052970204555504576075983972474462.html?mod=BOL_article_full_more#articleTabs_panel_article%3D1

By LAUREN R. RUBLIN | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
In the first of three installments, our panelists share their big-picture views

From the halls of Congress to the malls of California, we've been kicking the can down the road. Postponing our troubles, inflating our bubbles. Putting off, for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, the crushing problems that cry out to be dealt with today. Is this any way to run a country? Based on the stock market's stellar performance in the past two years, you bet it is.

The members of the Barron's Roundtable homed in on this paradox almost as soon as our annual confab got under way last Monday at the Harvard Club of New York. America's structural problems, including a gargantuan deficit, and the policies that perpetuate them, just might bring the country to ruin—but not before the stock market rallies another 5% or 10% or 20%, our panelists predict. That's because constructive cyclical or short-term forces, including a reviving industrial economy and rising corporate profits, could influence the direction of stocks for at least the next year or so.

View Full Image

Brad Trent for Barron's

In the pages ahead we've distilled these 10 market mavens' big-picture views, which include a preference for equities and hard assets at a time when the Federal Reserve is printing money like mad. We call your attention, in particular, to Bill Gross' well-reasoned explanation of why negative real interest rates—the intended result of all this money creation—are a default by another name.

After the macro comes the micro, namely Scott Black's and Abby Joseph Cohen's stock picks for the new year. Founder and boss of Boston's Delphi Management, Scott brings his considerable analytical skills to bear on eight mostly small- and mid-cap companies that generate lots of cash and impressive returns on equity, but sell for underwhelming valuations.

Abby, an estimable investment strategist and head of Goldman Sachs' Global Markets Institute, favors several big-cap blue chips recommended by Goldman's analysts that will benefit from a more robust economy. Most pay nice dividends, as well, and afford exposure to growing markets overseas.

Want the names and numbers? Please read on.

The Lehman Report

Beancounters in a bind

Mar 18th 2010 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

Banks’ professional advisers come under scrutiny

IF SUNSHINE really is the best disinfectant, the 2,200-page report into Lehman Brothers’ downfall by its court-appointed bankruptcy examiner may do more to clean up finance than any number of new regulations. It paints a remarkably detailed, and damning, picture of Dick Fuld, Lehman’s ex-boss, and the executives around him. Their spectacularly ill-advised strategy was to take on oodles more risk in property just as everyone else was running the other way. Risk management was risible, with risk limits raised whenever they were breached and dodgy investments excluded from stress tests.

Lehman’s former leaders are not the only ones squirming in the glare. Some of its counterparty banks get a slap on the wrist for changing the terms of their collateral demands, for instance. But the strongest criticism of those who interacted with the flailing firm is reserved for Lehman’s auditor, Ernst & Young (E&Y), for failing to “question and challenge improper or inadequate disclosures”. The main “accounting gimmick” hidden from investors, but apparently known to the auditor, was called Repo 105. This technique helped the firm flatter its numbers by temporarily moving assets off its balance-sheet at the end of each quarter. Lawyers are also in the spotlight: unable to find an American law firm to approve the transaction as a “true sale” of assets, Lehman got the nod from Linklaters in London. Both E&Y and Linklaters deny any wrongdoing.

Although Repo 105 appears to have been in line with American accounting standards, its effect was to deceive. The technique allowed Lehman to reduce its reported leverage substantially and thus avoid ruinous ratings downgrades as it fought for survival. Investors would like to think that auditors consider not just the letter of the rules but their spirit, too. The examiner concluded that there was enough evidence to support a case for malpractice against E&Y.

The report identifies two other aspects to E&Y’s involvement. Lehman used subjective, inconsistent methods to value its illiquid assets. The examiner raises numerous questions about the auditor’s scrutiny of those “marks”, though he finds no evidence of deliberate misvaluation. Secondly, he accuses E&Y of failing properly to investigate claims about Repo 105 by a whistleblower, or to report these to the company’s audit committee (a claim which E&Y disputes).

All of which threatens to dent E&Y’s credibility and, perhaps, lighten its pockets. Class-action suits may follow. Lehman’s trustee could sue to recover losses suffered by creditors, who are seeking more than $800 billion in (at the last count) 64,000 separate claims. Nobody expects E&Y to suffer the same fate as Andersen, whose work for Enron led to its break-up in 2002, reducing the Big Five global accounting firms to four. But the industry, which had to swallow a raft of reforms, including Sarbanes-Oxley, after that scandal, could face calls for further tightening if similar tactics are exposed elsewhere.

Lehman is unlikely to be an isolated case, argues Prem Sikka, an accounting professor at the University of Essex, because “the guards are in bed with the prisoners.” Like rating agencies, auditors suffer from a potential conflict of interest because they are paid by those they judge (and can still tout for other work from them, despite post-Enron restrictions). E&Y’s annual bill for Lehman was $31m. With such big fees on the line, there may be a temptation to wave through practices that meet the rules but present a misleading picture of a client’s financial health.

Economist link

Municipalities and derivatives

Cities in the casino

Mar 18th 2010 | BERLIN
From The Economist print edition

A derivatives farce makes its way to court in Milan. Others are sure to follow

ONE of the great advantages of financial innovation, it was often said, was that risk would end up going to those best qualified to hold it. In fact, much of it seems to have ended up in the hands of those least able to understand it. How some of it got there may soon be revealed in an Italian court. On March 17th four big banks, 11 bankers and two former city officials were charged with fraud in connection with the sale of interest-rate derivatives to the city of Milan. The trial is due to start in May.

The prosecution relates to a huge bet on interest rates that the four banks—UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Hypo Real Estate’s DEPFA unit—helped the city authorities to take in 2005. The banks helped arrange the sale of €1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) of bonds for the city and then also helped it swap the fixed interest rate it was paying on the bonds for a lower, floating rate. Part of the contract is thought to have involved a “collar”, a way of limiting the range of outcomes on a bet, which protected Milan from rising rates but which also meant it would have to pay out if they fell.

The city claims that it was originally promised interest savings of about €60m on the deal but has now made big losses because interest rates have fallen, triggering payments to the banks. Bankers with knowledge of the transaction claim that, in fact, the city has benefited from offsetting gains as the interest rate it pays on the underlying debt has fallen too. The prosecution also claims that the banks charged more than €100m in fees that were built into the price of the swaps and were not properly disclosed to city officials. The banks all deny any wrongdoing.

The outcome of the case will be closely watched elsewhere. In Italy alone, local municipalities had derivatives exposures with a face value of €25 billion last year, according to the Bank of Italy. Some academics reckon that losses on these may go as high as €8 billion. In many of these cases local authorities swapped fixed rates for floating ones, only for collars incorporated into the deals to leave them with losses as interest rates fell. In other cases, losses may only start to show when rates move the other way. Had their bets paid off, however, it seems unlikely that any cities would be crying foul.

Other egregious examples of financial incompetence can be found in nearby Germany, where scores of public authorities also signed contracts that they seem not to have understood. In Leipzig the courts have been asked to rule in a dispute between the city and UBS. That case relates to a complex sale-and-leaseback agreement that the city signed for its local waterworks. Part of the deal reportedly entailed the city agreeing to insure a portfolio of loans against default through a collateralised-debt obligation (CDO). Making good on those loans may bankrupt the city.

In all, about 100 German local authorities are thought to have entered into sale-and-leaseback agreements with American investors over the past decade in a bid to take advantage of loopholes in tax laws. In many of these deals local municipalities unwittingly agreed to take on credit risks for various counterparties, exposing them to demands for collateral as the ratings of institutions such as AIG, an American insurer, fell.

Municipalities in America are also grappling with derivative contracts they barely understand. The city of Los Angeles is pressing Bank of New York Mellon to soften the terms of an interest-rate swap on $443m of bonds that is costing the city money because rates fell. And Jefferson County in Alabama is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after it entered into swaps that were worth more than $5.4 billion at their peak.

Sorting out this mass of claims and counterclaims will keep lawyers busy for decades. In the meantime, cities can expect to have less room for financial manoeuvre. On March 11th Italy’s Senate Finance Committee endorsed proposals that will restrict the use of derivatives by municipalities. It will, for instance, force them to get an opinion on a proposed deal from the Economy Ministry and require them to prove that a transaction would leave them better off than simply repaying their current debt. To keep dancing, high finance and low-level bureaucrats may need a chaperone.

Economist link

A postmortem on Lehman Brothers

A postmortem on Lehman Brothers
Oh, brother

Mar 12th 2010
From Economist.com

Shining a harsh light on Lehman’s bankruptcy

IT SOUNDS distinctly unpromising. A nine-volume, 2,200-page report by a court-appointed examiner into the causes of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, published on Thursday March 11th, has a table of contents that lasts for 38 pages. Its most exciting finding relates to an off-balance-sheet accounting gimmick. But the work of Anton Valukas, the chairman of Jenner & Block, a law firm, is crisp, clear and explosive.

Mr Valukas and his team took more than a year to research their report. They collected more than 5m documents and reviewed an estimated 34m pages of information. Looking at Lehman’s IT systems was a particular challenge. The firm had a rat’s nest of more than 2,600 systems and applications at the time it went bust; Mr Valukas boiled that down to the 96 most relevant ones, some of which are now operated by Barclays (the buyer of Lehman’s American arm after the holding company failed). He also conducted more than 250 informal interviews, many of them with Lehman’s directors and most senior executives.

The report’s juiciest finding relates to Lehman’s use of an accounting device called Repo 105, which allowed the bank to bring down its quarter-end leverage temporarily. Repurchase (“repo”) agreements, whereby borrowers swap collateral for cash and agree to buy the collateral back later at a small premium, are a very common form of short-term financing. They normally have no effect on a firm’s overall leverage: the borrowed cash and the obligation to repurchase the collateral balance each other out.

But Repo 105 took advantage of an accounting rule called SFAS 140, which enabled Lehman to reclassify such borrowing as a sale. Lehman would give collateral to its counterparty and receive cash in return. Because the deal was being recorded as a sale, the collateral disappeared from Lehman’s balance-sheet and the bank used the cash it generated to pay down debt. To outsiders, it looked as though Lehman had reduced its leverage. In fact, the obligation to buy back the collateral remained. Once the quarter-end had come and gone, Lehman borrowed money to repay the cash and buy back the collateral, and its leverage spiked back up again.

Mr Valukas marshals plenty of evidence to back up his claim that “Lehman painted a misleading picture of its financial condition”. The effect of Repo 105 was material: the firm temporarily removed around $50 billion-worth of assets at the end of the first and second quarters of 2008, a time when market jitters about its leverage were pervasive (see table below). Mr Valukas can see no legitimate business reason to undertake the transaction, which was more expensive than a normal repo financing and had to be done through its London-based arm because Lehman was unable to get an American lawyer to agree that Repo 105 involved a true sale of assets.

He also uncovers all sorts of unguarded e-mail traffic about the practice, which employees variously described as “window-dressing” and an “accounting gimmick”. Bart McDade, who became president of Lehman in June 2008 and tried to stop the bank from being so aggressive in its use of Repo 105, described it in April of that year as “another drug we r [sic] on”. Mr Valukas believes that “colourable claims”—meaning a plausible legal claim for damages—could be brought against Dick Fuld, the firm’s boss, and three of Lehman’s chief financial officers for filing “materially misleading” quarterly reports. He also thinks that Ernst & Young, Lehman’s auditor, has a case to answer for allowing these reports to go unchallenged.

Whether the report will actually lead to lawsuits remains to be seen. Mr Fuld says he did not know about the Repo 105 transactions; Ernst & Young says that Lehman’s reporting was in line with accounting principles. But even if executives were not breaching their fiduciary duties, the examiner’s report gives Lehman’s creditors and shareholders an awful lot of other reasons to feel aggrieved.

 
Lehman's liquidity pool was not that liquid, after all 
As well as his findings on Repo 105, Mr Valukas describes how Lehman’s liquidity pool, which was designed to allow the bank to survive in stressed financial conditions for 12 months, contained cash and securities that had been assigned as collateral to its clearing banks, which grew increasingly nervous about doing business with Lehman. On September 10th 2008, just five days before it filed for bankruptcy, Ian Lowitt, the bank’s chief financial officer at the time, told investors that its liquidity pool remained strong at $42 billion. Yet an internal document from September 9th showed that it had a “low ability to monetise” almost 40% of the assets involved. The liquidity pool was not that liquid, after all.

Mr Valukas also draws back the curtain on the decisions that led Lehman into trouble in the first place. Lehman’s chiefs signally failed to see the potential contagion from the subprime implosion. In its pursuit of growth, the firm’s overall risk appetite was repeatedly increased and limits on the size of single leveraged-loan transactions were routinely ignored. Incredibly, stress tests failed to include many of Lehman’s most illiquid assets. Even when executives began to understand the scale of the risks they were taking, they kept taking on business rather than walk away from deals. Board directors were unaware for several months in 2007 that Lehman had breached its risk-appetite limit. They also did not know that executives had used a new methodology, based on aggressive revenue projections, to increase that risk-appetite threshold again in January 2008. And so on, for page after damning page.

Mr Valukas’s conclusion is that Lehman’s aggressive growth strategy and its approach to risk reflected “serious but non-culpable errors of business judgment” rather than any breach of fiduciary duties. But the stain on the reputation of the bank’s executives and directors has grown even larger.

Economist link

Repo 105

Posted by Tracy Alloway on Mar 12 08:05.

Think window-dressing on a massive, and possibly misleading, scale.

Much of the 2,200-page Examiner’s report into the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy centres around an “accounting gimmick” used by the bank, and signed off by auditors Ernst & Young, to reduce leverage.

That would be Repo 105 and Repo 108 — or Repo 105 for short.

And it/they worked like this, according to Volume III of the report:

Lehman employed off‐balance sheet devices, known within Lehman as “Repo 105” and “Repo 108” transactions, to temporarily remove securities inventory from its balance sheet, usually for a period of seven to ten days, and to create a materially misleading picture of the firm’s financial condition in late 2007 and 2008.

Repo 105 transactions were nearly identical to standard repurchase and resale (“repo”) transactions that Lehman (and other investment banks) used to secure short‐term financing, with a critical difference: Lehman accounted for Repo 105 transactions as “sales” as opposed to financing transactions based upon the overcollateralization or higher than normal haircut in a Repo 105 transaction. By recharacterizing the Repo 105 transaction as a “sale,” Lehman removed the inventory from its balance sheet.

Lehman regularly increased its use of Repo 105 transactions in the days prior to reporting periods to reduce its publicly reported net leverage and balance sheet. Lehman’s periodic reports did not disclose the cash borrowing from the Repo 105 transaction – i.e., although Lehman had in effect borrowed tens of billions of dollars in these transactions, Lehman did not disclose the known obligation to repay the debt.2851 Lehman used the cash from the Repo 105 transaction to pay down other liabilities, thereby reducing both the total liabilities and the total assets reported on its balance sheet and lowering its leverage ratios. Thus, Lehman’s Repo 105 practice consisted of a two‐step process: (1) undertaking Repo 105 transactions followed by (2) the use of Repo 105 cash borrowings to pay down liabilities, thereby reducing leverage. A few days after the new quarter began, Lehman would borrow the necessary funds to repay the cash borrowing plus interest, repurchase the securities, and restore the assets to its balance sheet.

Lehman never publicly disclosed its use of Repo 105 transactions, its accounting treatment for these transactions . . .

You can see why Repo 105 would be a tempting thing in the midst of a brewing financial crisis.

Leverage had become a focus of the ratings agencies and was widely thought to be an indicator of bank risk, which meant Lehman would have been hell-bent on reducing its leverage — at least publicly.

At the same time prices for things like CMBS and subprime loans were falling and/or illiquid — Lehman could not have reduced its balance sheet simply by selling things off without incurring large losses.

Hence the Repo, which the bank increasingly used between 2007 and 2008 — even breaching its own internal cap on the Repo’s use (about $22bn as of summer 2006).

And the effect is pretty clear. From the report:

Hence the Examiner’s conclusion:

The Examiner concludes that there is sufficient evidence to support a colorable claim that: (1) certain of Lehman’s officers breached their fiduciary duties by exposing Lehman to potential liability for filing materially misleading periodic reports and (2) Ernst & Young, the firm’s outside auditor, was professionally negligent in allowing those reports to go unchallenged. The Examiner concludes that colorable claims of breach of fiduciary duty exist against [former CEO/CFOs] Richard Fuld, Chris O’Meara, Erin Callan, and Ian Lowitt, and that a colorable claim of professional malpractice exists against Ernst & Young.

And the response, as reported by the FT:

In a statement, Mr Fuld’s lawyer wrote: “Mr Fuld did not know what those transactions were – he didn’t structure or negotiate them, nor was he aware of their accounting treatment,” his attorney wrote in a statement.

“Furthermore, the evidence available to the examiner shows that the Repo 105 transactions were done in accordance with an internal accounting policy, supported the legal opinions and approved by Ernst & Young, Lehman’s independent outside auditor.”

E&Y said in a statement: “Our opinion indicated that Lehman’s financial statements for that year were fairly presented in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and we remain of that view.”

Mr Lowitt’s attorney said in a statement: “In the three months during which he held the job, Mr Lowitt worked diligently and faithfully to discharge all of his duties as Lehman’s CFO, Any suggestion that Mr Lowitt breached his fiduciary duties is baseless.”

Mr O’Meara could not be reached for comment. A lawyer representing Ms Callan declined comment . . .

via FT

MPR: How You Can Prevent Hair Loss

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How You Can Prevent Hair Loss

August 25, 2009 by Dr. Al Sears   

Most men and women watch their hair slowly thin with age. It is one of the most apparent signals of your age to people you meet. But you may be in the first generation of men that can actually do something about it.

We do not lose our hair because of wear and tear from the environment. New scientific discoveries have led to a very important revelation about why hair thins with age. Your hair falls out on command – commands from hormones. The secret to keeping a naturally thick, lustrous, full head of hair is to change that hormonal command.

We have known for some time that male hormones were involved. They provide a genetically programmed signal for hair thinning to begin and they control how it progresses as you age. Convention made a big mistake, however, in blaming testosterone. As it turns out high testosterone levels throughout life can protectyou from hair loss.

The real culprit has turned out to be a different male hormone called dihydrotestosterone or DHT. This hormone also exists in women where it also causes hair loss. In fact, most women I’ve treated with the pattern of receding hair lines and hair thinning over the crown have high DHT levels in their blood.

I have seen high blood levels of DHT induce hair loss in young athletes who abuse anabolic steroids. In some cases, there was not a genetic predisposition to baldness. When we employ strategies to lower DHT, their hair loss stops.

You can use these same strategies to lower your DHT. They have been recently proven to reduce hair loss, preserve your current head of hair or even induce new hair growth.

You may have seen ads for the prescription drug Propecia. It has been a significant balding treatment breakthrough. Propecia has been associated with a number of side effects though. It’s also very expensive, is not covered by most health insurances and has not been approved for women. There are safer, less expensive natural alternatives that can do the same thing. In fact, they can work by exactly the same mechanism.

Propecia works by blocking the conversion of testosterone to DHT. This is the perfect point of attack. It has the effect of both decreasing DHT and increasing testosterone. Propecia inhibits the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase necessary for this conversion. A number of plant-based nutrients also inhibit this enzyme.

Testosterone: Notice the 4,5 double-bond on the A (leftmost) ring.

Testosterone Changes to DHT: Notice the double bond is missing…

The most powerful nutrient to block the conversion of testosterone to DHT is beta-sitosterol. Beta-sitosterol has been proven to inhibit 5-alpha-reductase from converting testosterone into DHT.

A study published by the Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine examined beta-sitosterol’s effectiveness in blocking the production of DHT. The study analyzed men between the ages of 23 and 64 with hair loss.

The participants either received beta-sitosterol or a placebo. The researchers found that 60% of the men receiving beta-sitosterol had an improvement in hair growth. They also lost less hair than the placebo group.¹ A softgel containing B-sitosterol 50mg and saw palmetto 200mg extract versus placebo in treating hair loss was used.

You can also find beta-sitosterol in a few herbs at health food stores: saw palmetto, pygeum bark extract and in pumpkin seeds.

Another important nutrient is gamma linolenic acid (GLA). It is an essential fatty acid found in natural plant oils. It is difficult to obtain healthy amounts through diet alone.

Gamma linolenic acid is a proven 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor. The Journal of Investigative Dermatologypublished one well-known study, researchers tested GLA’s efficacy on hamsters. GLA successfully inhibited the 5-alpha-reductase  converting testosterone into DHT.²

Like most health issues, good nutrition serves as the foundation. Stress, drugs of abuse, bad health habits and prescription drugs aggravate the problem and can accelerate the loss of hair.

6 Tips For Keeping Your Hair Youthful

• Eat a healthy, high protein diet
• Avoid too much stress
• Do not use illegal drugs
• Avoid prescription drugs
• Limit hat wearing
• Take a multivitamin

New technologies are rapidly emerging that will change the way older men look.  better hair grafts to hormonal manipulation to new prescription drugs, the options have changed useless, vain and troublesome snake oils to a powerful armamentarium that can have a real effect.

Growing real hair takes time. There are no immediate solutions for a return of natural hair growth. But, if you have patience, you can expect to make a difference by sticking to a well thought out strategy.

1. Prager N, et al., A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to determine the effectiveness of botanically derived inhibitors of 5-alpha-reductase in the treatment of androgenetic alopecia. J Altern Complement Med 2002 Apr; 8(2): 143-152
2. Liang T, et al., Growth suppression of hamster flank organs by topical application of gamma-linolenic and other fatty acid inhibitors of 5 alpha-reductase. J Inv Derm 1997 Aug; 109(2): 152-157