China and Japan's Appetite for US Treasurys Grows

The US Treasury sold $50 billion of notes in bonds in July. China added $2.6 billion; its total hoard stands at $1.150 trillion. Japan added $7 billion; it total stands at $1.117. We print dollars and buy cool stuff; what a racket! The only unfair thing is that the US government sells directly to them and then gets to spend, instead of selling to them, distributing the money to us, the citizens, and let us spend. I could use a new car and big flat screen financed by China..

Microsoft Raises Dividend by $1 billion

Microsoft had $56 billion in cash as of June 30 . The company decided to raise its dividend payout by 3 cents to 23 per share or up by $1 billion a year. This goes to the heart of corporate finance theory. If you cannot reinvest cash at ROI higher than your cost of equity, you should distribute cash to investors as dividends or share repurchases in order to avoid destroying shareholders' value. Apple had $117 billion incash as of June 30. It also started paying dividends this month.

Should Finland get out of the euro?

Everyone talks about Greece leaving the euro. Greece and the Greeks don't want to. Who in their right mind would buy a Greek government drachma-denominated bond? No one talks about the other side of the coin. If you were Finland, a small country with a 2011 GDP of $258 bn, and you were asked to jointly underwrite the debt of much bigger countries (~Spain's GDP $1491 bn), you had a AAA credit rating and a government surplus, would you not want to leave? Especially given that your cousins (Sweden, Norway) that are outside of the euro are thriving? I'll buy a Finnish markka bond, won't you?