|
|
|
|
| The Basics | The quirkiest financial news of 2003
|
2003 was chock-full of strange stuff. Care to relive some of those very special moments? Think Dick Grasso, the "terrorism futures market," and trans-fatty acids.
By Jane Bennett Clark and Anne Kates Smith, Kiplinger
Babe in fundland
The latest twist in the saga of Frontier fund -- a mutual fund with a record so bad and expenses so high its almost surreal -- reads like fiction. (A $10,000 stake in Frontier 10 years ago is worth just over $300 today.)
Frontiers new manager, Chris Lahiji, is a 20-year-old Internet stock guru who has taken a year off from college and lives with his parents so he can manage the fund without pay. His credentials? He has managed a hypothetical Internet portfolio, claims to have read 12,000 annual reports and has shown a penchant for backing tiny, unproven companies. Lahiji seems earnest, but we say watch out for land mines.
One hot Hummer
- Curb weight: 29 pounds
- Length: 36 inches (folded)
- Seats: 1
- Air conditioning: free
- Suggested manufacturers retail price: $700
- Mileage: unlimited
You just have to love the specs for this Hummer mountain bike, which scrambles up mountains, consorts with the military, radiates testosterone -- and also parks on a dime, runs on empty and costs less than the clunker you drove in high school. The GM-licensed mountain bike, originally designed to be used alongside tanks for patrolling enemy terrain, folds to a size not much bigger than a breadbox -- which means you can fit it into the back of, say, your Mini Cooper.
A parting gift for Grasso
Whether Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, jumped or was pushed, he makes out like a bandit. Call his departure a resignation, and he gets a spectacular $139.5 million in deferred payments and retirement benefits. Call it getting fired, and he could be entitled to an additional $57.7 million in deferred pay and severance. What can Grasso buy with nearly $200 million? Well, he almost could afford to pay cash for the nation of Tonga.
No pain, no gain
If youre looking for your first job, forget it -- Grassos has been filled, and his interim successor, John Reed, signed on for $1 a year (though Reed's newly named successor, former Goldman Sachs CEO John Thain, will earn a comfortable $4 million). Our advice to all you newbies whose student loans are just starting to come due: Become a bean counter. In these troubled times, actuaries -- who calculate risk and predict disaster -- are among the highest-paid employees, pulling in annual salaries that can easily hit $120,000. "Business continuity" specialists, who keep workplaces running in times of calamity, are also in demand.
Soldiers, check your pockets
If you visited the Virginia State Fair last year and have been driving a Jeep for Uncle Sam for the past nine months, this could be your lucky day. A Lotto South ticket--numbers 1, 2, 24, 32, 37 and 41 -- was sold at the fair and later hit an $11.6-million jackpot, which was still unclaimed by the March 31 deadline. (That made every child in Virginia a winner. By law, all unclaimed prizes go to the commonwealths fund for new school construction.)
But lottery deadlines dont apply to people who are on active duty during the 180-day claim period -- which in this case coincided with the war in Iraq.
Talking trans-fat
Credit snack-food giant Frito-Lay for eliminating one dietary no-no from its line of products. Addressing consumer concerns about trans-fatty acids -- which masquerade as "partially hydrogenated oil" in many prepared-food ingredient lists and are said to clog arteries and raise so-called bad cholesterol -- Frito-Lay took the trans out of everything from Doritos Four Cheese Flavored tortilla chips to Lays Flamin Hot Flavored potato chips.
Does no-trans fun food mean your next Super Bowl party will be a bust? Absolutely not. Frito-Lay products still have enough saturated fat -- another artery clogger -- to lubricate the social wheels.
Dont blow it all in one place
A U.S. District Court judge ruled in July that some megamusic companies, among them Universal, BMG and Warner Bros., had fixed prices on CDs sold between 1995 and 2000. Anyone who bought a CD during that period (and who filed a claim by the March deadline) could wind up with a whopping $13 rebate as his or her share of the $67-million settlement, less $20 million in legal fees. By coincidence, that should be just enough to buy one new CD from Universal, which recently slashed its prices.
Signed, sealed, delivered
Thats how the recording industry described its $2,000 settlement with 12-year-old Brianna Lahara. Brianna, possibly the first preteen ever to release a joint statement with the Recording Industry Association of America, was sued by the industry group for using file-sharing networks, such as KaZaa. Briannas mom was promptly reimbursed by P2P United, a group that represents the file-sharing industry. Of the 261 accused pirates, Brianna scored the only bailout.
We said eBay, not Uday
The price on Saddam Husseins memorabilia had been steadily declining even before the deposed ruler was captured in December. In recent weeks, you could pick up a dinar featuring Saddams face for about $2 on eBay (the same dinar ran at least five times that much at the conclusion of the war).
Among the other stuff you could have snagged were a Saddam butane lighter, which sold for the grand total of a penny, and a deck of "wanted" cards, which is still at large after failing to reach the starting bid of 99 cents.
She got better
In April, the Pennsylvania attorney generals office alleged that a Philadelphia woman had staged her own death to cash in her pension benefits. Charlotte Mears, who retired from the state liquor control board in 1989, submitted a phony death certificate to her former employer to claim a $16,000 payout. Mears was found out when she applied for Social Security.
Strong (but tasty) medicine
In a study published last summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that dark chocolate may lower blood pressure in people with mild hypertension. In a separate study, reported in the August issue of Nature, researchers found that dark chocolate increased levels of antioxidants, widely thought to promote cardiovascular health. Anyone hoping to duplicate the studies results at home should be prepared to invest in the straight stuff: Neither white chocolate nor milk chocolate produced the same salutary effects.
Terror futures market bombs
Relying on the prescience of futures markets makes sense when the subject is winter wheat. And a futures market even has forecast the outcome of a presidential election. But betting on global turmoil? That was the plan for the so-called terrorism futures market created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was supposed to provide the Pentagon with creative military applications of science and technology.
Participants would have traded on the likelihood of, say, the assassination of Yasser Arafat or a missile strike by North Korea. The idea proved a little too outside the box for lawmakers and was quickly shot down.
Copyright 2003 The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc.
|
|
|
|
