Who Cares If Bill Miller Is "Back"?

(www.clusterstock.com) Hey hey, look who it is.

"Legendary" fund manager Bill Miller is back. Investor's Business Daily declares it Miller Time, noting that his Value Trust is handily outperforming the S&P 500 this year, up 9%. His Opportunity Fund is up 23%! Nice job to anyone who decided to put their money with the beaten-down start at the end of last year.


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Jim Cramer Is Less Powerful Than Hannah Storm

This one is great....Cramer right there with Willard Scott!

(clusterstock.com) We're checking out Mediaite.com this morning, the new media/news/blog/aggregator/opinion/whatever site from former NBC guy Dan Abrams. They've got some stuff about -- what else -- Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson, but the real draw is their devilish "power grid" for media figures, which ranks everyone in using some homebrewed algorithm designed to ensure maximum linkbaitiness.

The big shock so far: Jim Cramer ranks one slot below Hannah Storm in the TV Anchors/Hosts category. And he's only one slot above Willard Scott!

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U.S. regulators could learn from Canada's banks

(usatoday.com) Our northern neighbor sometimes seems so similar to the United States that it's hard to tell where the USA ends and Canada begins. Here's one way: Canada is the place with healthy banks, taxpayers unscathed by megabillion-dollar bailouts and no need to overhaul financial regulation because it was done right the first time.

As U.S. officials scramble to prevent a crisis sequel, the ability of Canadian banks to navigate the current financial storm is earning global plaudits. The World Economic Forum in October ranked the country's financial institutions No. 1 in the world for solvency. U.S. banks came in 40th, two rungs behind Botswana.

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The Great American Bubble Machine

(rollingstone.com) The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

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More on Ron Insana's New Stint

(Clusterstock.com) Ron Insana -- the CNBC guy who plays the role of "wise one" because he had a stint in the fund-of-funds game -- has a new newsletter he's pumping with TheStreet.com.

If your the type of investor who thinks that getting Ron Insana's exclusive stock picks will help you make money, and you want to spend hundreds of dollars on that advice then more power to you, the link is here.

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CNBC’s Ron Insana Learns to Beat the Market — With Cramer’s Help

Not sure if this a joke or not, but here it goes

(Wall Street Journal-MarketBeatBlog)

In less than a year, Ron Insana, the CNBC senior analyst, apparently has learned a trick or two to go from money-losing hedge fund manager to sure-fire stock picker.

Insana, you may remember, left CNBC in 2006 to launch his own firm, Insana Capital Partners, which was billed as a fund of hedge funds. He sold the firm last year and went to work at Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors. Neither venture was terribly successful.

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PIMCO's July Investment Outlook

(PIMCO.com) “Kill the umpire,” the fan cried to open the 1996 baseball season in Cincinnati, and eight pitches later, the man behind the plate, John McSherry, was dead, all 320 pounds of him screaming for more and more oxygen to feed his spastic heart. He’d been killed by a billion molecules of sink-clogging, Drano-resistant cholesterol that fed on his coronary artery and sucked up his life’s blood like a vampire in the heat of the night. The next day Howard Stern had characteristically railed that the antidote was obvious. It was the same for all fat people: “DON’T EAT,” he howled. As if the ump hadn’t known. The fact was, he couldn’t stop. He loved the taste of food – every sugary, fat-ladened, carbohydrated morsel. The first bite was a special ecstasy, as was the last, and everything in between. The man, it seemed, was a Cuisinart with four limbs.

Read all of Bill Gross's letter here