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The chemical frameworks of natural productsmolecules generated by biological organismshave inspired many of todays most potent pharmaceuticals. But the complexity of these compounds makes time-consuming tricks necessary to produce them at large scales. Bing-Tao Guan and Zhaomin Hou from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, however, have developed a rare-earth catalyst system that promises to make natural product synthesis significantly easier by enabling direct modification of aromatic pyridine compounds.
Lower quality financial advisors use three tactics to deceive investors: omission, misrepresentation, and exaggeration.
Teradata operates in a $20 billion market and has a strong product portfolio across all price points, along with more than 1,000 customers in multiple industries.
Winning in the video game wars is not easy, even for a mainstay such as EA.
Barrick Gold has had a terrible year to date. But that doesn't mean it's not a good investment.
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon revealed last week that the bank had managed to create a massive $2 billion trading loss. That was the good news.
Rackspace stock fell by as much as 14% this week after Q1 earnings came in a cent shy of the consensus estimate. But the company has longer-term growth prospects.
The Interop enterprise technology conference brings together some of the world's most powerful tech companies. They made it clear that today's big trends are here to stay.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics on Thursday unveiled its new-generation premium television as global manufacturers seek to drive slowing sales with lucrative models.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm said his company was not interested in wireless airwaves that its biggest rival, Verizon Wireless, has offered to sell.
High-profile, fixed-income expert Jeff Gundlach gave a presentation titled Deficits Don't Matter... so he could argue that they do.
Networking bellwether delivers earnings that meet expecations, but conservative guidance leads to concern about economic slowdown.
Microsoft made a big investment in Barnes & Noble. Let's hope it works out better than the last time it threw its weight around in an emerging media technology field.
Nicolas Sarkozy has 'one in six chance of winning' and risks becoming the 11th European leader to be swept from power during the economic crisis
Voting has begun in the French presidential election, a ballot which could transform the political colours of France and spark a change in Europe's approach to its debt crisis and austerity measures.
All polls for months have shown the Socialist party candidate, François Hollande, beating the rightwing Nicolas Sarkozy, the most unpopular French president ever to run for re-election. The left is hoping for its first Socialist president since François Mitterrand's re-election in 1988, which would be a rare event in a Europe that has swung to the right in recent years and weakened the left.
If Sarkozy is defeated after one term in office, he would become the 11th European leader to be swept from power since the economic crisis. Hollande has promised to renegotiate Europe's fiscal pact on austerity and shift the focus to growth measures.
Sarkozy has remained defiant, claiming that the polls were mistaken, predicting a higher-than-expected turnout that would play in his favour. In the final days of campaigning, he suggested the poll could be so tight that there may need to be a recount, comparing it to George W Bush's win in 2000 after a Florida recount.
A Sarkozy victory would be a major political turnaround. Despite a narrowing in Hollande's lead in the final days of a vitriolic and brutal campaign, Sarkozy's aides have for days privately admitted that it would take a miracle to turn the odds in his favour.
"He's like a runner – he won't consider it's over until the very end, but I'd say he has one chance in six," one of his inner circle told Reuters before campaigning ended on Friday.
Hollande, spending the weekend in his rural heartland of Corrèze where he is an MP, said he was "confident but not sure". He added: "If I was absolutely sure of the result, I wouldn't have campaigned until the very end."
By 5pm CEST turnout was at 71.96 % – more than in the 22 April first round, but less than in 2007. Polling stations in major cities will close at 8pm CEST with polling estimates based on partial early counts announced by French television at the same time.
Much will depend on turnout and the decision of the 6.4 million voters who voted for the far-right Front National's Marine Le Pen in the first round. Sarkozy needs the vast majority of Le Pen's supporters to vote for him if he is to have a chance at winning. Le Pen said she would vote blank and polls have shown a maximum of 60% of her voters turning to Sarkozy. The president would also need to win over a large number of supporters of the centrist François Bayrou, who took 9% in the first round. Bayrou, in a break from centrist tradition, announced last week he would vote Hollande because he was disgusted at the way in which Sarkozy had veered to the hard-right in a campaign that has seen him stoke anti-immigration and anti-foreigner feeling to court Le Pen's vote.
Whoever becomes the next French president will have no state of grace, leading a country crippled by public debt and in economic crisis, with unemployment nudging a record 10%, a gaping trade-deficit, stuttering growth and declining industry. France's public debt is so high that interest repayments alone account for the second highest state expenditure after education. The rating agency Standard & Poor's this year downgraded France's triple-A credit rating, citing in part its over-high state spending for straining public finances. Both Hollande, a moderate from the centre ground of the Socialist party, and Sarkozy have promised to balance the books – France hasn't had a balanced budget for more than 30 years.
Hollande's manifesto is based on scrapping Sarkozy's tax-breaks for the rich and putting up taxes for high earners to finance what he deems essential spending, including the creation of 60,000 posts in France's under-performing school system. He has pledged to keep the public deficit capped but for his delicate balancing-act to work, he needs a swift return to growth in France, despite economists warning of over-optimistic official growth forecasts that need to be trimmed.
Hollande beat Sarkozy by about half a million votes in the first round of voting on 22 April.
The first round turnout of around 80% was higher than expected and is being closely watched again, with polls suggesting Sarkozy's best chance of an upset comes from an even greater voter turnout on Sunday.
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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - It took decades for music delivery to evolve from vinyl records to CDs and years to go from CDs to MP3 players.
LONDON (Reuters) - Addressing Nokia Oyj employees in January 2011, Chief Executive Stephen Elop - at that point only four months into the job - dramatized the company's predicament by comparing it to standing on a burning platform.
Investors are no strangers to unethical corporate behavior. But how can they predict it, and, better yet, protect themselves from it?
Microsoft just gave Barnes & Noble a $605 million boost. But even that may not be enough.
Apple is probably the best business competitor in the world. And when you win, eventually you will have to deal with anti-trust accusations, much as Microsoft dealt with in operating systems in the 1990s. Anti-trust actions are famously difficult to prove, but I think in the coming years you'll hear more about it with Apple because it controls huge amounts of business.
I wrote about this a couple weeks back on Investor Uprising, but I thought it would be good to summarize what about Apple makes it so dominant in the market... for, well, everything.
Apple, after all, is not just growing in one segment. It's actually taking huge chunks of profit out of entire industries.
Apple also enjoys fatter profit margins because of its vertically integrated model -- which has come at the expense of telecom providers who must subsidize customers' never-ending thirst for iPhones and iPads. It also allows Apple to build in excess profits into components such as chips, because it can charge a premium.
Let's just look at some facts about Apple's dominance.
- Apple has single-handedly boosted the stock market. Bloomberg tells us that Apple alone has accounted for 8% of the S&P 500's rise since the 2009 bottom. And Barclay's analysts recently pointed out that Apple has had an outsized influence on the markets, accounting for 15% of the growth in all of the S&P's rise this year. They estimate Apple contributed four times its weight to the index by having outsized profits. So maybe the government should launch an inquiry into Apple controlling the stock market.
- Apple's profits account for most of recent profit growth. According to FactSet research, if you subtract Apple's earnings from the market in the fourth quarter 2011, profit growth for all of the S&P 500 was -1.6%. With Apple profit growth added back in, overall profit growth was flat. That's right folks -- without Apple, there would be no growth in profits. It alone accounted for all of the profit growth in S&P 500 in the last quarter last year, and FactSet expects Apple to the be the largest source of earnings growth in Q1 2012.
- Apple leverages major telecoms through subsidies. The retail price on a new iPhone can be as high as $600. A telecom carrier will sell it to you for $199. Think about Apple's core sales channel: telecom operators. Apple has so much leverage that it can largely dictate the terms in these relationships so that telecom operators subsidize sales of its devices.
In extreme cases, such as the deal with Sprint, the subsidy is a simple transfer of wealth from carrier to Apple. Sprint tagged its subsidy expense at $1.7 billion, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier. Some analysts predict this can't last, that Apple has to give back more of its profits to carriers. But Apple's immense leverage means it can dictate the terms.
- Apple is taking over all of retail electronics. Blog site Zero Hedge recently calculated that Apple's market capitalization now surpasses that of the entire retail industry. How is this possible? Well, as i-devices have added functionality such as music, communications, and video, they have eliminated entire segments of the industry. Maybe this is contributing to Sony's recent woes. Once you have an iPad, you need a portable DVD player?
- Apple's winning the smartphone profit battle. Though it's having a see-saw battle with the Android-powered mobile phones and can't quite gain majority market share, Apple recently gained some share back and now represents 43% of the smartphone market to Android's 53%, according to the NPD group. But more importantly, Apple makes more money in this market. Keep in mind that Google does not profit on Android directly because it gives its operating system away for free to phone manufacturers, whereas Apple controls its own manufacturing from the Operating System (OS) to the memory chips. Apple's model results in more profit, because it can charge more for all of the components in its product, including the OS. Even though it's not winning top market share, Apple is winning on profitability.
- Apple controls digital music. Remember the music industry? Apple's influence and control of digital music is still growing. It now accounts for 69% of all digital music sales. Amazon is a distant second with 8 percent, according to the NPD group. Apple's growth in digital sales means it now serves up about 25% of all music units, which includes physical units (even though Apple sells no physical music units), according to the NPD group. That's up from 14% in 2007.
I think that Apple's growing power and dominance in a number of industries is likely to be a topic for trade regulators for some time. The regulators have plenty of areas to mine, most notably Apple's control of the relationships in the telecommunications sales channel.
Will they make any progress? It may take years and years, but eventually you may see more legal action against Apple in the realm of anti-trust actions.
Don't get me wrong: I think Apple earned the control of markets that it has. It has better products, and it's a better company. We're also not crying because Apple is one of the leading components of our IU25 Index, which is up 35% in one year.
But it's not just about e-books. Apple's immense control now extends to the broad range of the entire business universe.
Our screening system has delivered some great stock ideas over the years. Our screen looks for leading companies whose valuations are reasonable in relation to growth rates and Return on Equity (ROE).
Here's an example from February 11, 2010 -- in which I said Microsoft, Apple, Sybase, and Gulfmark Offshore were buys:
Stock Buys for the Baklava Bailout.
Solid picks from two years ago. Sybase was bought at a 40% premium, Apple has doubled, Gulfmark is up 40%, Microsoft is up about 15% and has paid you a 3% dividend all along.
I frequently publish these screens and send them to readers and friends. Their first instinct is to analyze every pick. "But isn't Microsoft shrinking Windows deployments?" Don't do this. The point of a screen-based portfolio is to follow the computer and ignore your more likely faulty human logic.
Even if you have sector-specific "knowledge," it can be damaging to use it. The numbers don't lie. Often when companies are cheap it just means they are cheap, and then suddenly somebody buys them. This is exactly what happened with Sybase just three months after it made my screen.
Look at Apple. How many people underinvested in Apple? How many people tried to over-analyze whether they could expand another market, like Pad computing? The stock has been cheap for six years. It's still cheap -- currently trading at a forward P/E of 12.
Enough said. Here is the new screen, which I have published on Investor Uprising in our new Market Report.
Disclosure: I currently own Buffalo Wild Wings and I am looking to acquire more of these stocks over time. Positions can change at any time.
Table 1: Our Stock Shopping LIst
| Ticker | Company Name | Price 2/29/2012 | Market Capitalization (mil.) | Forward P/E | Return on Equity (%) | Yield (%) |
| AAPL | Apple Inc. | 514.85 | 480,031 | 12.108 | 36.6 | 0 |
| ALTR | Altera Corp. | 39.11 | 12,608 | 21.608 | 28.3 | 0.83 |
| BWLD | Buffalo Wild Wings | 86.38 | 1,586 | 26.335 | 15.9 | 0 |
| CAT | Caterpillar Inc. | 115 | 74,361 | 12.105 | 38.3 | 1.6 |
| CLF | Cliffs Natural Resources, Inc. | 65.47 | 9,298 | 6.749 | 32.16 | 1.76 |
| CMI | Cummins Inc. | 123.3 | 23,779 | 11.913 | 33.6 | 1.3 |
| HD | Home Depot Inc. | 46.92 | 72,330 | 16.55 | 20.8 | 2.47 |
| KLAC | KLA-Tencor Corp. | 49.06 | 8,180 | 11.681 | 27.25 | 2.88 |
| PCLN | Priceline.com, Inc. | 632.76 | 31,511 | 20.043 | 47 | n/a |
| QCOM | Qualcomm Inc. | 62.78 | 106,187 | 16.741 | 15.7 | 1.37 |
| TPX | Tempur-Pedic International, Inc. | 78.72 | 5,023 | 20.185 | 208.2 | n/a |
| UNH | UnitedHealth Group Inc. | 55.32 | 57,807 | 11.525 | 18.2 | 1.17 |
Returned from CES last week. Slept for a couple days. Woke up. Tried to remember something that will change the world. Couldn't think of anything.
Here's a problem: CES is becoming like the old Comdex. It's like a giant star that's gotten too big and general and will soon Supernova and collapse in upon itself.
Here's another problem. Apple generates the most excitement, both form the technology and a investment perspective, in the mobile consumer electronics space. And Apple doesn't go to CES. So what you have is a gigantic hallway filled with 150,000 people trying to copy Apple.
What's more important is what Apple will do next. Apple will do a sleeker tablet with LTE connectivity. Apple will try to do TV -- again.
That being said, there was stuff to listen to. If you want a list of some potential future tech trends, I wrote about some futuristic stuff on Investor Uprising.
In terms of investment ideas, I believe that the place to look in mobile and consumer is in suppliers and chips, because clearly as devices multiply it opens up many chip markets for many players. Read my CES Investor's Guide on Investor Uprising.
So far our outlook has proven astute, as we advised readers to be continue to be involved in the precious metals as the best hedge in the mounting global debt crisis, which is far from over. Gold has hit a new high this week, and is likely to continue higher -- with periodic pullbacks. But this week, even more action indicates that the European debt crisis is metastisizing and likely to spread to other markets.
The U.S. approval of a new debt ceiling has taken a back seat to some important developments in key markets.The warning signs include the following:
* The Swiss Franc spiking to all-time highs against the dollar and other currencies
* 30-year Treasury bond yield dropping to under 4%.
* All European bonds being sold
* Gold hitting new highs.
The markets are telling you something. Personally I have gone to a much higher cash position, and I have bought more gold and silver as protection against mounting currency devaluation. I also believe there are certain places to hide such as high-yielding energy, dividend, and biotech stocks.
As a reminder, in March, Investor Uprising launched a premium investment newsletter service that gives you access to our best ideas and detailed research. Investor Uprising Confidential (IU Confidential) published an important report, "All That Glitters: The Ultimate Gold Report," which told you why at $1,450 gold was still undervalued and likely to go much higher. Gold traded today as high as $1,646.The report tells you why this is likely to be only a way-station to much higher prices.
IU Confidential also completed some detailed research on the Biotech market, which shows that it can be a "place to hide." The biotech market, as measured by leading biotech indices, did not lose as much during the 2008 financial crisis -- and when it bounced back, the performance was much better than the leading indices. In other words, Biotech has outperformed the S&P 500 with less risk during the last five years.
Our research indicates this is likely to continue. You can still get both of these reports individually -- or subscribe to the service and get both of them plus five more bi-monthly reports for the next 12 months.
As a Rayno Report reader, this research is available to you at an exclusive low price. Click below for these exciting offers:
The Best of Biotech -- $399 Special (Regular $500)
The Ultimate Gold Report -- $299 Special (Regular $500)
Full Annual Subscription: IU Confidential Annual Subscription
(Includes The Ultimate Gold report, Best of Biotech Report + 5 more reports over the next 12 months!) -- $999 Special (regular $1250.
I have become fascinated by Acai, even though I can still not pronounce it correctly and I won't even bother trying to figure out how to print it with the accent which I can't find on my computer keyboard. I'm an admitted latecomer to the trend. Yes, it's old news. But it's still a good story. The recent New Yorker article did a great job outlining the background.
The New Yorker article tells the tale of how two SoCal chums and University of Colorado grads (Go Buffs!) Ryan and Jeremy Black "discovered" acai in the Braizilian jungle and started marketing it in the United States, kicking off what would become one of the most potent health-food marketing booms in recent history, aided and abetted by none other than Oprah.
What I found interesting about the article is not so much about the controversy surrounding the health benefits of acai (like most debates, the truth lies probably somewhere in between), but the entrepreneurial spirit of the two Black brothers and their partner Edmund Nichols. The went to the jungle with a load of credit-card debt, locked in a long-term contract to sell acai through a Brazilian producer, and spent hundreds of thousands in the first year to ship Acai to the United States. Within two years they were doing half a million in sales and now they do $50 million. Quite an adventure.
The other story in acai is about marketing. How does an obscure jungle fruit go from being a locally enjoyed delicacy to a multi-billion-dollar global business in ten years? Savvy marketing. The blacks hooked into real-world health research and captured the Brazilian mystique. The more nefarious marketeers later leveraged Acai into online marketing scams. But both the legitimate companies and online scammers had something in common: They knew that consumers like a good story, and you can't get much better of a story than a mysterious berry coming out of the Brazilian jungle.
Here is an abstract of the article from the New Yorker (full article available only in print):
It's hard to pick stocks in cloud computing, because so many of them have become absurdly overvalued. So what I do is look at a handful of them, learn about the companies, and try to figure out which ones have true staying power. Then you look for opportunities to buy them on pullbacks.
Riverbed is a company that I have been following for several years. I have published a profile of Riverbed here on my new site, Investor Uprising, in which I try to explain how Riverbed plans to expand. A true "best of breed" player in WAN optimization, Riverbed is now looking to use its leverage in that market to branch out and grow on more fronts. I had a chance to meet with several Riverbed executives at Interop in Las Vegas, and following those meetings I think the company is on the verge of taking it to the next nevel. CEO Jerry Kennelly very clearly described some growth opportunities for the company that will take it from a point-product company to a multifaceted networking power.
Here's the important thing about Riverbed: Its technology takes advantages of long-term trends in networking in computing: Data-center consoldiation, the migration of apps from the enterprise to the cloud, and outsourced networking optimization. If you are asking what this all means because it's too many buzzwords -- it's that large and small companies both are looking to outsource more of their technology and networking needs to service providers who operate in the "cloud" -- providing any application or computing online, at any time.
The reason this is important for Riverbed is because it flies in the face of what has built the existing networking juggernaut: Cisco Systems. Cisco is built on the emergence of Ethernet networks and IP routing. It comes from an era in which companies hired armies of IT people to configure and deploy Ethernet switches and routers. All of that is moving to the cloud and massive data centers run by service providers. The interesting thing here is that Cisco has displayed weakness in selling data-center products: Its software is aging and lacks the scale to handle the shift.
This is a profound shift and one to carefully watch in the networking space. On the valuation, Riverbed recently pulled back $10 from an all-time high and I used the opportunity to pick up some shares. The P/E is a palatable 30, given a growth rate in excess of 40%. The PEG is now 1.40, which is well of recent highs. You have to pay up for this company because it has such huge prospects.
(Disclosure: Long RVBD).
Another Fed day, another episode of serial money printing, another banner day and a new high for gold.
It really feels like gold has entered the final and most exciting stage of the bull market. As Jim Sinclair, long-term gold trader, Chairman of Tanzanian Royalty Exploration, and Publisher of JSMineset.com says, gold is ready to go ballistic.
It's another breakout in a series of powerful breakouts. We've been alerting you to these breakouts ever since this site was launched. Remember this one? Or what about this one? And this one.
It seems to happen at least twice a year now, gold consolidates for about six months and then breaks out into a powerful $200 move. But silver is now the star, having doubled in less than a year!
Here's some good reading on the topic:
- Investor Uprising has a great technical look at gold by Fred Goodman.
- My new site, Investor Uprising, has published an new exhaustive, 28-page report on gold, written by yours truly.
- Jim Sinclair says we're headed for $1650 next on the way to $2000.
Investment comrades, I have helped launched a new site sponsored by PRNewswire called investor Uprising. There, you will find everything you love to follow, including business trends, rising companies, stock picks, and model portfolios.
The Guide to Investment Metrics tells you how to screen for more reasonably valued companies. Investor Uprising expands on the investment philosophy developed in these pages: looking for reasonably valued, growing companies and invest slowly over time, ignoring volatile market swings and focusing on dollar-cost averaging. It works in bull markets, and it helps you survive in bear markets. By focusing on stocks with low valuations, you can reduce your risk.
Go to the site now and register -- if you are among the first 1,000 registrants you will be entered into a drawing for a free iPad!
Next week I am launching a new Website for PRNewswire called Investor Uprising. It is going to focus on high-quality investment opportunities and business trends. We'll also pick and watch lots of stocks on a GARP (Growth at a Reasonable Price) basis.
For the first project, we are creating a list of 30 companies which we will use to build an Index. This comes from a methodology I have used for 10 years to screen stocks and build "monkey" portfolios that can be bought and passively left alone. Using this method, the portfolios have averaged a 30% (cumulative) return since 2006 and none of them has ever lost money.
Next week you will find these stock picks on Investor Uprising (which has not yet launched), but today I'm going to give you four of them. Here are some low-PEG stocks we will be following at Investor Uprising.
Dolby Laboratories (DLB)
12-month sales growth: 28%
12-month income growth: 17%
Forward P/E: 15
Return on Equity: 20%
PEG Ratio: 1
Summary: Dolby is dominating the business for digital music tools. Specifically, it licenses many of the leading digital sound and signal processing systems for digital film, DVS, Blu-ray, and digital 3D systems. It has been steadily growing for years.
Veeco Instruments Inc. (VECO)
12-month sales growth: 150%
12-month income growth: 1,000%
Forward P/E: 13
Return on Equity: 46%
PEG Ratio: .72
Qualitative: Veeco is a leading manufacturer of important manufacturing and testing equipment in the LED, solar, and seminconductor market. It also makes equipment for the manufacturing of disk drives. If Veeco's growth rates seem absnormally hight, its because it swung from losses to a profit in 2010, yielding what looks like spectacular earnings growth. It has also growth its revenue through merger.
Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)
12-month sales growth: 0%
12-month income growth: -20%
Forward P/E: 9
Return on Equity: 45%
PEG Ratio: .70
Qualitative: Gilead is an extremely well-managed biotech company with a long track record of high ROE. Recently, it's revenues have been flat and earnings have shrunk due to maturity of some key drug markets. However, it is still enormously profitable, booking $2.9B in profits in 2010, and its valuation is just plain cheap.
Medifast Inc. (MED)
12-month sales growth: 57%
12-month income growth: 147%
Forward P/E: 10
Return on Equity: 33%
PEG Ratio: .50
Qualitative: Medifast is a fast-growing producer of diet supplements and nutrition products. The Medifast brands include many varieties of diet and weight-loss shakes, vitamins, food bars, and other food products.
Stay tuned for the launch of the new site! We are looking for moderators and bloggers. If you are interested, ping me at scott.raynovich@investoruprising.com.
I'll try to spare you political rhetoric and speak in simple terms: The U.S. Federal budget is out of control. The deficit remains over a trillion dollars, interest costs are increasing, and if something extreme isn't done very soon it will enter a death spiral.
President Obama has put out a budget showing $3.8 trillion dollars in spending in 2011. The projected federal revenues are $2.1 trillion, creating a $1.7 trillion deficit. Huh? This is somebody who said he was heading back toward fiscal conservatism.
That's insane. Not only will the deficit run over a trillion dollars for the third consecutive year, but the total federal budget only four years ago was $2.5 trillion. Folks, the budget has increased 37% in four years!
What if you own budget did that? What if all of the sudden you were spending 30% more than you brought in? What if you were running a company whose revenues were $2.1 trillion but whose expenses were $3.8 trillion? You would try to bring it into balance, no?
Both parties are hiding their heads in the sand. We all know that the bulk of the money is spent on the entitlement programs and defense. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to touch entitlements -- and the Republicans won't touch defense. So we're stuck.
No, they're sticking to rhetoric about ticky-tack discretionary programs that cost few billion there and a few billion here. It doesn't make a bit of difference. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts being needed.
And would it really be "Draconian" to go back, say, to a $2.6 trillion level of spending, which is what we were spending in 2007? Was the government really that much different then? Is it 37% better now? I don't undersand how this can happen.
Radical change is needed now. Social Security and Medicaire reform is imperative. If you don't think so, just look at the chart below, produced by the independent CBO, and tell me the current Congress is on track to fix things.
Look at the chart above and tell me where the "draconian" cuts are. The budget is skyrocketing. The deficits are skyrocking. There are no draconian cuts.
The current path ain't going to do it. it's just common sense. Another year or two of deficits like this with rising interest rates, and the costs of servicing the debt feed on themselves. Let's get out of denial. Let's fix it.
