The Dividend Investing Blog

I’m back. Sorry for the lay off but I was on vacation in the Smoky Mountains. We took a trip to Pigeon Forge and had a great time. I don’t care for the hustle and bustle of downtown, but the nature surrounding the place is awesome. I was able to go white water rafting for the first time. We also did some tubing down a mountain stream. Anyway, I highly recommend it.

I couldn’t post yesterday because I felt horrible by the time I arrived home from work. I went to the doctor today and he says what I think is a spider bite is merely an abscess. I think his diagnosis was based on the fact brown recluse spiders are not in Florida, but I informed him that I had been in the Smoky Mountains. He still says no way.

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I feel cheated. My United States Government teachers did a huge disservice to myself and my fellow classmates in our formative years. They told us how government works, but they left out one important part. Government is a reactionary mechanism of the people and thus very flawed. When something catastrophic happens, the primary solution is to create a new law to deal with the situation. It passes through Congress, then the President signs off on it. Everyone pats each other on the back for a job well done. We have one more layer of bureaucratic nonsense draped over our society that does almost nothing to fix the root cause of the problem but does have the effect of costing more money.

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Bank of America reported earnings today and they beat estimates. You heard me. This must be taken with the fact that these were lowered expectations for the company and a 41% drop from last year’s second quarter profit. Bank of America posted $0.72 per share versus $1.28 per share a year earlier. Analysts had forecast $0.53 per share. The second largest bank, BofA, also indicated that it expects the acquisition of Countrywide to add to the bottom line before the end of the year. This makes the fourth of the nation’s five largest banks to report results that exceeded expectations.

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It has been an interesting week for our little Folio. Not one, but two companies are being bought by larger competitors. Rohm and Haas will be purchased by Dow Chemical for $18.8 billion. Dow has the backing of the Oracle of Omaha to the tune of $3 billion for the buyout. The selling price will be a nice 74% premium if everything goes through. The other major announcement over the weekend was the much anticipated purchase of Anheuser-Busch by InBev. The two companies finally settled for $51 billion all-cash deal. Reportedly the largest all-cash deal ever. Just a little note to the fellas over at Yahoo! Inc. You blew it.

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This week’s update is a couple of days late. I took a vacation to the beach. The weather was great and everyone got along well. The wind was rather brisk the whole time which made the beach very nice. While catching up on recent events today, I stumbled across the Pickens Plan. For this unfamiliar, the billionaire oil tycoon, T. Boone Pickens, has a plan to reduce America’s dependence on oil through wind farms and natural gas. I know what you are thinking. An oil guy that wants America to get off oil?

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