| American Sports
Mick turned down the Boston Red Sox to accept a full ride to play for Rod Dedeaux at USC. This is where he and I were again classmates. At USC, he was the Trojans' ace, going 9-3 his sophomore year. He beat John Elway and Stanford at Sunken Diamond, 2-1 in a classic performance. After USC, he played in the Seattle Mariners organization. Most Likely To Succeed It can be said that the leafy, affluent suburbs of Marin County may produce the very best and brightest of America's high school students. In 1979, if one were to survey all of Marin to determine which of that year's seniors was the "most likely to succeed," the most obvious choice would have been Mickey Meister. His baseball success was only part of the story. Mick was 6-5, 225 pounds, and if you looked up "handsome" in Webster's, his smiling face was to be found there.
Hostile bidders warned off French bank
THE French government vowed overnight to fight off any hostile takeover bid for Societe Generale, but warned the bank is in "crisis" following massive losses blamed on a rogue trader. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said the bank was in "a crisis situation" and Societe Generale's board must now decide the fate of its chairman, Daniel Bouton after the €4.82 billion ($8.04 billion) losses. But Prime Minister Francois Fillon stressed the "government is very attentive to any risk of destabilisation of Societe Generale" and warned it "will not allow Societe Generale to be the target of hostile raids by other banking establishments". "Societe Generale is a great French bank ... and the government intends it to remain a great French bank and globalised player," Mr Fillon later told the National Assembly.
Protectors and artists: Moore's Shou Shu Karate
Instructors and high-level students at all Moore's karate schools are evaluated and certified by a single committee of masters. This school has five grand masters, Cody said, and every month they have a black belt group. Every black belt who owns a school is required to attend and the masters review each school's material. "As you tell a story it starts changing. They make sure that doesn't happen," Cody said. "This art never got away from the beast." The masters also visit each school to review the students. "That's what preserves the integrity of the system," Cody said. Cody has been practicing the art for nearly 30 years. He was inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2007 as Martial Artist of the Year for application arts. He was trained by Al Moore II.
The FOMC Has Faced Tougher Choices, But When?
Hussman, head of the Hussman mutual funds, writes in his weekly commentary. Unlike other sharp market declines, the current episode's "saving grace" is the clear downtrend in Treasury yields, he continues. But those declines also are partly a symptom of growing default risk in other areas, Hussman adds. That's evident in the deepening mortgage crisis, with the latest bad news in a worse than expected decline in new home sales reported for December and a 10.9% drop in the median new-home price in 2007. The result of the daisy chain of risky mortgage securities repackaged in collateralized debt obligations, stuffed into special investment vehicles, wrapped with insurance from monocline carriers is starkly apparent to all. Now, the bell seems about to toll for leveraged buyouts, previously a major source of rocket fuel for the stock market.
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