Peace Love Profits

My iPad is loaded with Apps, not all of them “a very good use of my time” my mom says. However, one that does get parental approval is Stock Wars, and it happens to be one of my favorites.

Stock Wars is a virtual investment game. You are given $100, 000 to invest.  You create your own portfolio by choosing stocks to invest in, and then buying and selling shares. Stock Wars is hooked up to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, so you get real-time stock quotes and market information. 

The system keeps track of everything for you: it tells you how much money you’re making or losing, shows your asset allocation (how much of your portfolio is in stocks or cash), and ranks you against the other “traders” who are “investing” on Stock Wars. 

I’ve been a “trader” on Stock Wars since November 2011. I love it. I think it’s a really great and fun way to learn about stocks. And, my portfolio is doing pretty well; it’s up 13.8% since I started trading. 

Here’s what I own:

30 shares of Apple (AAPL)  up 50.09%

20 shares of Annie’s (BNNY) down 8.12%

270 shares of Charm Communications (CHRM) up 5.76%

200 shares of Cisco (CSCO)  up 11.43%

10 shares of 3D Systems (DDD)  down 4.66%

70 shares of Disney (DIS)  up 15.21%

40 shares of Forest Oil (FST) down 20.94%

270 shares of GameStop (GME) down 14.15%

50 shares of Google (GOOG) up 7.98%

50 shares of Netflix (NFLX) up 53.43%

70 shares of Starbucks (SBUX) up 15.09%

7,120 shares Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) 33.53% 

I’m not sure what type of investor I am. I’m still trying to figure that one out. There are three basic types:

Growth Investing: This is when you look for stocks that are going to be big winners in the market. Maybe the company’s earnings are growing really fast, so you buy the stock hoping the stock price will grow even faster. This strategy is considered high risk with the possibility of high rewards.

Income Investing: This is a low-risk investment approach. Here you invest in companies that pay high stock dividends and hope that the dividends grow over time. For more info on dividends, please see my earlier blog A Piece of Apple Pie.

Value Investing: This is the case of the overlooked company. Maybe all the stocks in a particular sector are doing well except for one.  You invest in this stock hoping it will catch up to it’s peers.

Stock Wars makes it fun to try to make the right investment decisions. And, it’s a lot more fun when you don’t have to risk real money. Let’s call it funny money.

Peace Love Profits,

Blake

I love Annie’s macaroni and cheese, and apparently Wall Street does too.

Annie’s, makers of organic macaroni and cheese and other things like organic crackers shaped liked bunnies (the organic version of Pepperidge Farm goldfish) had it’s IPO on  Wednesday. (Remember: that’s when a company starts selling it’s shares to the public on the stock exchange, please see earlier blog FACEBOOK’s New Friends).  Annie’s stock went public at $19 per share, and closed Thursday at $37 per share.

Talk about a bunny hop!

My research (googling news stories, talking to my dad) says the big attraction here is Annie’s organic label. People love to buy organic. They feel good about feeding their family things that are good for them.

I eat Annie’s and love it (I like the purple box the best). But, I can tell you that my family is anything but organic. My mom buys Annie’s, makes it with “normal”  milk and butter (butter makes it extra good), and then serves it to me with an Oscar Mayer hot dog. That is so not organic! In fact, Annie’s macaroni and cheese is the only thing in our house that is organic, until we open the box.

I am aware of the fascination with organic food. People want what they think is the best for the family. I saw it in the cafeteria last year when we had to bring our lunch to school. Kids would open a little carton of organic milk that their parents packed for them. Then, they would use it to quench their thirst after eating a big bag of cheetos. I don’t think their moms would approve of this.

Moms might not care so much if they read my book. Chapter 8, August 2010: The $40 Ostrich Egg, discusses organic food and it’s benefits. There aren’t any. You should read the entire chapter to get the whole story, but I will tell you, quoting from the book,  that “the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reviewed more than 160 papers published over the last fifty years and found that organic food offers no nutritional value over conventionally grown food.”. Uh oh.

Don’t misunderstand me, Annie’s macaroni and cheese is great. I just hope when it come to Wall Street, investors have done their research on these rabbits.

Peace Love Profits,

Blake

I want to say a big thank you to everybody for reading all my posts, watching my interviews, and sending me all those messages. It’s been a crazy and inspirational two days!  

You’ve probably heard me and my dad mention the term free markets a few times recently.  If you’ve read Your Teacher Said WHAT?!, you’ve heard free market many more than just a few times. That’s because free markets have been the most important key to our economic success in the past, now, and will be in the future. 

The term free market is defined as a market where prices are determined by supply and demand. In our book, we take it a step further and define it as a belief thing: “that the best economic decisions are made by the largest number of individuals acting in what they believe to be their own interests.”  

This means, as a free market society, people don’t need the government telling them what to make, buy, or sell, or how much to make buy, or sell, or even how much money to make. Millions of people acting in their own self-interest will guide the economy to the most profitable place possible. 

I’m not saying we don’t need government and laws to protect people, of course we do. But, the U.S. economy will do just fine without big government dictating every move; it a has for a couple hundred years already. 

Famed Scottish philosopher Adam Smith said this back in the 1700s. He also said a lot virtues come out of a free market society, like trust, diligence, and hard work. Here’s one more: hope. 

A free market promotes hope in the future. Without hope, no new business would ever be started (there’d be no incentive!). America is a free market society, the free-est free market society in the world, let’s hope it stays that way.

I have hope, but also homework…..

Peace Love Profits,

Blake

I’m a huge Hunger Games fan. I’m almost done with the third book, and I loved the movie this weekend.

My dad would have loved it too. He would have enjoyed seeing a movie where the “villain” is not a corrupt corporate CEO, but rather an extreme autocratic government.

Hunger Games is a box office blockbuster. Ticket sales this weekend totalled $155 million, more money than anybody had expected.

A company called Lionsgate is responsible for the movie. It’s stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange, and investors have been buying it recently. Shares are trading near a 12-month high.

Look for Part 2, Catching Fire, on November 22, 2013. Oh, and “may the odds be ever in your favor.”

The Occupy Wall Street protestors need to find a more appropriate place to party. The movement just marked it’s six-month milestone by gathering in Zuccotti Park, again. 

The Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting “economic inequality.” The protestors believe that 1% of the U.S. population has all the money; and it’s made up of greedy, corrupt Wall Street businessmen and bankers.

Well, isn’t that ironic? Zuccotti Park was named in honor of John Zuccotti, one of the 1%.  He’s a multi-millionaire businessman, a Princeton and Yale graduate. It’s not only his hard work that got him where he is today. His Italian immigrant father, Angelo, came to America at the age of 15. He started as a waiter at El Morocco restaurant in Manhattan. Here, he found economic freedom for him and his family, and lived his own American Dream. 

Next time I’m in New York, I’m going to Zuccotti Park. Not to protest, but to praise John Zuccotti, that one percenter who helped 100% of the people.

India isn’t going for the gold right now, and this is impacting gold prices worldwide.

Gold is a commodity, like silver, wheat, coffee, sugar and crude oil (please see my earlier Pumped Up Prices blog). People all over the world buy it for jewelry, but it’s also bought and sold as an investment. And, it’s considered a pretty safe one; gold can be sold at any time for money.

India is the world’s biggest buyer of gold. It accounts for about a quarter of the world’s gold demand. The precious metal carries a deep cultural meaning in India. Parents use it for their daughter’s weddings, and it’s given as religious gifts. 

Recently, the Indian government decided they were going to put a higher tax on gold, and charge more money to import gold into India. Indian buyers backed off and gold shops shut their doors in protest.

This sudden decrease in demand took the worldwide price of gold down with it. It’s a basic rule of economics, supply and demand: If demand goes down, and the supply remains unchanged, the price goes down too. 

Will this have a lasting impact on gold prices worldwide? That’s up for debate. What’s not up for debate is the 10 million Indian brides every year who want to glimmer in gold.

Peace Love Profits,

Blake

If you’re an Apple investor, it’s payback time. Apple announced it will pay stockholders a dividend for the first time in 17 years. It’s probably good news because Apple’s stock price closed above $600 per share for the first time ever after the company announced the dividend. But, I needed to do a little digging to get the dirt on dividends before knowing for sure.

When a company makes a profit, it can do two things with the money. The company can keep the money and re-invest it in it’s business (maybe build factories, do research, improve operations). Option two, would be to share the profit with stockholders. One way to do this is to distribute the money in the form of a dividend. 

How much money you get depends on a couple of things: how much money the company plans to distribute, and how many shares of stock you own

Apple’s annual dividend payment is $9.9 billion dollars. That means for every share of Apple you own, you will get $10.60 per year ($2.65 per quarter). Ten dollars per year may not seem like a lot, but just think if you owned $100 shares, that’s more than $1,000 to you just for being s stockholder.

Dividends seem like a great idea to me, but there are some people who don’t agree with me on this. Some people believe that profits should be re-invested in the company to help it grow, and if a  company decides to distribute the profits, maybe it has run out of good growth ideas.

Wall Street approved of Apple’s payback plan by pushing it’s stock price to a new high. Many analysts have been asking for an Apple dividend because it would allow some stock funds, which only invest in dividend paying stocks, to finally be able to buy Apple shares. 

Maybe someday I’ll be an Apple investor, for now I’m just enjoying it’s products.

Peace, Love, Profits

Blake

I recently read in the newspaper that the S&P 500 is doing much better than anybody expected. Not me. I wasn’t expecting anything because I don’t know what the S&P 500 even is. I decided I need to know.

The S&P 500 is a stock market index made up of 500 large-cap U.S. Companies. A company called Standard and Poor’s maintains the index; it figures out which companies should be in it and calculates it. All the companies that are in the index trade on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (please see my earlier Keeping up with the Dow Joneses blog for more on the Dow) are the most widely watched large cap stock market indexes. Why? Because they reflect how good or bad business is for large companies in the US and from this we can get a read on how the economy is doing as a whole.

So, if we look at the S&P 500 right now, the economy is doing a bit better than a lot of people anticipated. The S&P 500 closed above 1400 for the first time since June 5, 2008. According to a recent report in USA Today, 10 out of 13 stock strategists that were asked to give predictions at the beginning of the year didn’t expect the S&P would even hit 1400 by the end of 2012.

Analysts say that good economic reports (jobs number, retail sales for example) and less worries about financial disasters in Europe have helped to boost U.S. Stock markets.

Who knows if the indexes will continue to move higher, but what I do know now is what the S&P 500 is and why it’s important.

Peace Love Profits,

Blake 

Wendy’s is winning the beef battle. The company is now the second biggest hamburger chain, stealing the spot from Burger King. Wendy’s had sales of $8.5 billion in 2011, compared with Burger King’s $8.4 billion. This is the first time since Wendy’s was founded in 1969 that it has beaten Burger King. The number one spot still goes to McDonald’s, with a whopping $34.2 billion in annual sales.

Coffee giant Starbucks is now banking on juice to sweeten it’s profits. The company recently purchased the Evolution Fresh brand of juices, and just opened it’s first Evolution Fresh retail store. There you can buy all-natural wraps, smoothies, salads, and juices from juice partners,  the Starbucks barrista’s alter-ego. Look for the first Evolution Fresh store in Bellevue, Washington with plans for West and East coast stores in the next year.

Kermit the Frog is getting connected to keep competitive. His Oscar-winning movie The Muppets is coming out on DVD today, so Kermit is talking it up on Twitter, Facebook and other social media hangouts. Kermit is so cute,  I hope he’s not on match.com, Miss Piggy would be so upset:) BTW, I saw The Muppets and loved it.

Bonds can be a confusing bunch. There are many different kinds and different investment grades.  To better understand bonds, let’s get the basics.

People invest in bonds, a lot.  Bonds are a form of debt. When you buy a bond, you are loaning money to the bond issuer, and they are giving you an IOU, agreeing to pay back your original investment, plus any interest that is due, by a certain date.

Why do people buy bonds? Why don’t they just stick with stocks? Certain bonds are considered very safe investments. It’s important for investors to have a relatively risk-free place to put their money, especially if the stock market is acting unstable. The money that you make by investing in bonds may not be very big, slightly more than the interest on a savings account, the risk isn’t big either. Basically, you know you’re not going to go bust by investing in certain investment grade bonds.

The biggest seller of bonds is the U.S. government.  These government issued bonds, called Treasuries, are the safest debt investment around. That’s because Treasuries are backed by the U.S. government; these bonds help finance the country’s debt and keep Washington working.

Other investment grade bonds (bonds that have a good credit rating) can include municipal bonds, issued by cities to pay for projects like bridges and tunnels, and corporate bonds issued by corporations to fund operation costs.   

But don’t bank on all bonds for a safe risk-free investment. “High-yield” or “Junk bonds” are considered risky investments. They are issued by companies that may not be able to pay back their debts when the bond matures. People who invest in “junk bonds” take on a big risk hoping for a big return.

Peace, Love & Profits

Blake “The New Bond Girl”

We’re waiting for Friday. That’s when we get the ‘Big Kahuna’ of economic reports: The Unemployment Report, also known as the Jobs Report. It’s s a big deal for Wall Street and Washington.

That’s because the Jobs Report will tell us what’s happening on Main Street.  Are people in America working or not? If they’re working, they’re making money and spending it. Therefore, businesses are growing and taking the economy along for the ride.

Here’s how the U.S. Labor Department sums it up: they take the number of jobless people plus the number of people actively looking for a job, add it together and that gets the unemployment rate.

If the unemployment rate is down compared to the previous month, it means more people are working, which is good news for the economy. If the unemployment rate increased for the month, it means more people are now out of work and actively looking for a job.

The January unemployment rate in the U.S. was 8.3% (that’s about 12.8 million people). January was the fifth straight month that the unemployment rate declined. But you may need to read between the lines a little: one reason the rate has declined recently is because many people have simply stopped looking for a job. The government, which reports the numbers, only counts people as unemployed if they are out of work and actively looking for a job.

Other facts and figures are also key in the report:  which sectors had the biggest increase or decrease in jobs, the average hourly earnings, and how many nonfarm payroll jobs were added.

Washington is watching too.  With the Presidential election looming, President Obama is hoping a decreasing unemployment rate will boost his chances for reelection.

Economists are expecting the unemployment rate to stay at 8.3% and about 210,000 nonfarm payroll jobs added in February.

It’s a date, don’t be late: 8:30 am ET.

Peace, Love & Profits

Blake

Registers are ringing.

Every month, retailers report same-store sales. This is the amount of sales a company has made in a given month. It is called same-store sales because the number is compared with the same month a year ago and for the same number of stores. So, if a retailer in February 2011 only had 25 stores, and in Feb 2012 it has 45 stores, the number is adjusted to reflect this.

Wall Street watches these reports closely. Here’s why: the reports can offer clues about how healthy the consumer and economy are. If people are spending money, it may mean they feel confident about their current and future financial situation. Investors are keeping a close eye on the reports also. If a retailer has strong sales figures, investors may want to buy some of that company’s stock. On the flipside, a bad same-store sales report could mean trouble ahead.

For February, Gap, the nation’s largest clothing company, said sales rose 4% . Analysts who follow Gap expected sales to fall 1.4%, so this was a huge, positive surprise. There is a similar story at Target where same-store sales rose 7%, compared with a 5% forecasted increase.

Retail analysts (people whose job it is to keep an eye on everything in the retail sector) say that warmer weather helped boost sales. Shoppers wanted to get a jump on spring shopping, and stores helped by stocking shelves with new products.

Are retail stocks in fashion on Wall Street? Ooh la la….

Peace, Love & Profits

Blake

Let’s face the facts:
Facebook plans to raise more than $5 billion from the initial public offering. This would value the company at more than $100 billion.  Facebook would be the biggest high-tech IPO in history, surpassing Google’s $1.9 billion offering in 2004.  Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who famously started the company in his dorm at Harvard, will make about $25 billion dollars in the deal.

What does all this mean for Facebook users? Probably not much right away. However, once a company is publicly traded, it has to impress its investors. . What most investors want to see is a healthy profit.  This means more advertising and other money-making ideas are probably in Facebook’s future.  

How does a company decide what its worth? It’s really the job of underwriters, or the bankers handling the IPO, to set the price. Facebook is using investment bank Goldman Sachs. They’ve looked at Facebook’s finances and came up with a price based on its business prospects down the road. 

Many times, the bankers also decide who gets to buy some of the stock in the IPO. Shares usually ends up with the bank’s good clients, or big-time investors.  Smaller investors may have to wait a while before they can ‘like’ shares of Facebook too.  

Peace, Love & Profits

Blake

It’s not as high-tech as Apple’s iPad, but many people think it may be just as important. I’m talking about the Oreo. It’s turning 100 years old on March 6th, and it’s as innovative today as it was a century ago. 

Since the Oreo was born in 1912, it’s been the best selling cookie on the market. The cookie is great however you prefer to enjoy it: taken apart, dunked in milk, or    double-stuffed. But it may be more than just deliciousness that makes it a tried and true best-seller in America and in China. It’s the brand and the marketing behind it. According to a recent article in the New York Post, The Oreo Facebook page has almost 25 million “likes” and is one of the top five most engaged brands in social media. 

Nabisco owns it and the patent on it. Other companies can try to copy it, but it’s probably just a “crumby” idea. The Oreo is an example of just how important and profitable it is to own your own idea or property.  My dad and I wrote about it in Chapter 3: The Property of Properties of our book, “Your Teacher Said What?!” In it, we write that it wasn’t until people could get patents on their inventions, and own their own ideas, that they really started making money, which helps grow the economy.

The Oreo is definitely doing its part to help boost Nabisco’s bottom line. The cookie is sold in more than 100 countries (green tea Oreos in China!) and has annual worldwide revenue of $1.5 billion.  Over 362 billion Oreos have been sold in the last hundred years; that’s what I call a sweet success story.

I prefer mine with milk, how about you?

Peace, Love, & Profits

Blake

I love the Apple Store. I went to our local Apple store this weekend in the Short Hills Mall to buy a gift card for a friend’s birthday. The store was packed, not only with people but incredible, innovative products. It was a really cool atmosphere. I’m not even sure which is the bigger attraction for me: the sleek white store with Apple employees talking tech, or the actual products, ipads, iphones, screens,  TV (yes, apple TV coming soon!). Whichever it is, I’m not the only one who thinks the whole Apple experience is pretty great, Wall Street thinks so too.  

I went home and told my dad that the Apple store was packed. His reply was something like, “You know, Apple is the most valuable company in the world. It now has a market capitiization of about $500 billion dollars.” Tell me more!

Last week, Apple’s stock price closed at $522 per share, which means if you wanted to buy one share of Apple stock that’s how much you would pay for it. To figure out the market capitalization (how big a company is in dollars), you multiply the stock price by the number of shares outstanding (the total number of shares purchased by investors). So for Apple: $522 per share x 932 million shares outstanding = $466 billion market cap.                                                                                                                              This makes Apple the biggest publicly traded company in the world; Exxon-Mobil is a distant second. It’s also larger than Google and Microsoft combined.  And, any investment in Apple has paid off. If you bought $10,000 worth of Apple stock in 2000, it would be worth $966,667 today. 

Is the stock going to continue its climb? Researchers and experts on Wall Street that follow Apple’s every move will have to try to figure out that one. They’re crunching the numbers: 37 million iPhones and more than 15 million iPads were sold last quarter! Analysts are also waiting to see how the untimely departure of famed CEO Steve Jobs impacts Apple’s future.

For my part, I’ll be keeping my eye on the Apple Store. Anyway you look at it, right now the company appears to be the Apple of Wall Street’s eye. 

Peace, Love, & Profits

Blake

Pepsi just announced “Pepsi Next”  will hit shelves next month. It’s supposed to taste just like regular Pepsi but with half the calories.

Mars is making its own calorie conscious move. The maker of M&M’s, Snickers and Twix will discontinue its king-sized candy bars by 2013. It’s also getting rid of any other treat over 250 calories. 

Talk about taking a bite out of the bottom line!

People are talking about the rising price of gas. This matters not only to your wallet, but also to Wall Street. 

Stocks aren’t the only thing people invest in on Wall Street. There’s also bonds, bills and commodities. Crude Oil, which is used to make fuel for cars, planes, trucks, trains and boats, is a commodity. So are things like gold, silver, copper, wheat, cotton, coffee, sugar, corn and pork bellies (just to name a few). The price of a commodity changes constantly due to supply and demand; this can change in a second due wacky weather, unrest around the world, or any unexpected disaster. 

Tension in the Middle East,  home to most of the world’s crude oil, is a big factor in the recent run-up in crude oil prices. The increased cost is being passed on to the pump and your pocketbook.  Regular gas is going for an average of $3.60 a galllon, that’s up 42 cents over a year ago. Some people expect the national range will reach $3.75 to $4.15 a gallon.

Are you thinking a few nickels and dimes here and there doesn’t matter much? Think again. Summer is coming and so is the busy driving season. More money that has to go in the gas tank may mean less driving, and less money to spend once you get where you’re going. The worry is that consumers may pull back on all their spending, which could put the brakes on any economic recovery. 

I’m going to start paying more attention to prices at the pump. 

Peace Love Profits,

Blake

I’m getting ready to leave for school, but I have to tell you what I read last night while studying for a social studies test. I knew the Dutch built a town called New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island (which is now New York City) in 1626. But what I didn’t know was that they built a wall at one end of the town because they were afraid of wolves and because walls were common in European cities. This is now the site of Wall Street. Who knew? I have to go now, don’t want to miss the bus, again.

Peace, Love & Profits

Blake

I heard it several times today. “The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed the 13,000 mark for the first time since 2008. Wall Street had a good day.” I‘m pretty sure I know what it means, kind of. It means that the stock market was up. But, I need a little more information to totally get it.

Let’s start with a stock. Companies sell stock to investors to raise money. A company may issue 5,000 shares and sell them on Wall Street for $10.00 per share. Then the company has $50,000 to spend on building new plants, developing products or whatever their need is.

Investors buy shares of stock hoping that the company will earn more money, and then the stock they bought will be worth more.

So, what does this have to do with the Dow Jones Industrial Average? The Dow is an index of 30 large companies in the United States; names you know like AT&T, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart. When the Dow goes up, it means that the stock prices of the companies in the Dow are also up.  When the Dow is down, stock prices are down too. 

But it means more than that. Because the Dow 30 includes 30 large American companies, it is a good indicator of how strong business is in the entire United States and how healthy the economy is. When business is good, more people are working, making money, spending money, and the economy is growing. 

Even the investors that see their stocks rising feel better about their own money and their finances. It’s called the “wealth effect.” The richer you feel the more money you’ll spend. The more money you spend, the more products you need to spend it on, businesses need to make more, they need people to make the products, and on and on.

So, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose and crossed over the 13,000 mark for the first time since May 2008. I get it, it’s a very good thing for Wall Street, Main Street and me.

Peace, Love, & Profits

Blake

There are a couple of first things I have to do.  One is to thank you for reading my blog. The other is to introduce myself and explain why I am doing this in the first place. 

I’m Blake Kernen, a sixth grader from New Jersey. I am a typical tween in many ways. I love my three dogs, my family, playing on my iPad, strumming my guitar, and putting off my homework. One thing about me that may not be so “typical tween” is my curiosity about Wall Street. I have a lot of questions about it. What it is? What you do when you work there? Why are people always talking about it? How does it affect my life?

I am so interested in Wall Street that I actually wrote a book about it with my dad, CNBC Squawk Box Co-Anchor Joe Kernen. Our book, Your Teacher Said What?!, Defending Our Kids from the Liberal Assault on Capitalism, took a couple of years to write but it was worth every second. I learned a lot. My dad and I had thoughtful, smart, exhausting discussions about what makes America so great and how Wall Street and capitalism play a huge part in making our country the envy of the entire world.

Now, you probably don’t know what capitalism is, why would you?  I didn’t until my dad explained it to me, and now I hear the word all over the place. Funny how that works, maybe I’m just more aware now and listening for it. This is why I’m writing this blog. I hope that if anybody has even the slightest interest in knowing something about Wall Street, I can help explain it easily. People could become more aware of the world around  them.

Obviously at twelve years of age I don’t know everything, although there are times when my parents say that I act like I do!  But, when I have a question about Wall Street, maybe from something I heard on the news that I don’t understand, I will research it, uncover the answer, and explain what it is and why we should care. 

Which brings me back to capitalism, probably the best place to end my first beginning.  The term is pretty broad but basically capitalism is the private ownership of goods or services for profit or income. When people have a stake in something, they tend to work a lot harder and care a lot more about the outcome of their work. This is the way it is in America, and a lot of the great things that we take for granted we owe to the capitalist system.  A few great capitalists that you may be aware of are Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s. What would the world look like without them or their work?

Peace, Love, and Profits,

Blake