This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• OUPblog: Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend, November 16, 2009. Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary prepares for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year.  This announcement is usually applauded by some and derided by others and the ongoing conversation it sparks is always a lot of fun, so I encourage you to let us know what you think in the comments.

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: “unfriend”. “Unfriend” - verb - to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook.

• Martin Wolf (Financial Times): Grim truths Obama should have told Hu, November 17, 2009. Obama

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John Micklethwait has been editor-in-chief of “The Economist” magazine since 2006. Previously he was United States editor of the publication.

Micklethwait was educated at Ampleforth and Magdalen College, Oxford. He joined “The Economist” in 1987, previously having worked for Chase Manhattan Bank. He coined the word Cosmocrat. His books include; “The Company - A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea,” “The Right Nation,” “The Witch Doctors” and “The Future Perfect”.

Click here or on the image below for the video.

Source: Charlie Rose, October 14, 2009.

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Apparel retailer J. C. Penney Co. Inc. (JCP) recently launched an exclusive range of contemporary career sportswear brand for female professionals called “she said".

The in-house brand features body conscious fits with signature pieces that enable customers to blend their professional and personal lives. With the launch of “she said", JCPenney has further supplemented its portfolio of leading contemporary brands that include “Bisou Bisou", “I Heart Ronson", “Allen B.", “Oxford & Regent", and “Twelfth of Eleven".

The company has affordably priced the “she said" clothing line, with skirts at $44, tops at $26-$44, pants at $44-$50, dresses at $44-$58 and jackets at $68-$85. The private-label brand is supported by print, direct mail, preprint and digital marketing efforts of the company. Currently, the brand is available at all the JCPenney stores, online at jcp.com and via catalog.

JCPenney operates 1,106 department stores across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It

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The Philosophy of Money: What It Means to Be Truly Wealthy

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

As a young man in my twenties, I worked as a stockbroker in a local firm. Before long I was earning a six-figure income. Then came the brand-spanking-new lakefront house, the ski boat, the Jaguar XJ-6, and all the other toys.

I saved virtually nothing. When my friends came over for parties - which were frequent - most of them assumed I was rich.

I was nothing of the sort, I hadn’t learned about the true philosophy of money.

Wealth is not the same thing as income. If you earn a lot of money and blow it every year, you’re not rich. You’re just living high.

Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you earn. And it certainly can’t be measured by what you spend.

How does the average person get rich?

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The Housing Market: The Disappointment Of The Decade

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

My colleague Dr. Mark Skousen and I have been having a long-running, good-natured disagreement about the direction of the national housing market.

He calls buying real estate “the investment of the century.” I think it’s more likely to be “the disappointment of the decade.”

He thinks housing prices are about to rebound. I say rebounds (in the price of anything) only come off a genuine bottom. And, despite the precipitous drop in some areas, we still haven’t seen a bottom in home prices.

This week the media reported that the S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price index fell 19.1% in the first quarter.

Bear in mind, that is not the fall from “the top” but just in the first quarter from a year ago. Moreover, the plunge is picking up speed. It was the biggest drop

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Sovereign Wealth Funds: $7 Trillion Reasons to Stay Invested

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

In February, I wrote that the decline in stocks was just about over. Why?

There was more money available to buy shares than at any time in almost two decades. The $8.85 trillion held in cash, bank deposits and money market funds was equal to 74% of the market value of U.S. companies, the highest ratio since 1990, according to the Federal Reserve.

What happened in the past when cash reached these levels?

In September 1974, cash on hand reached $604.5 billion, representing a record 1.21 times the U.S. stock market’s capitalization. That preceded a 31% gain in equities between October 1974 and March 1975. In July 1982, just as a 20-month bear market was ending, cash as a percentage of the U.S. stock market’s value rose to 95%. The S&P 500 began a six-month, ...

The Economic Recovery: Have Stock Values Gone From Green to Yellow to Red?

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

Human psychology is a strange thing.

Two months ago, I was fielding hostile questions from readers wanting me to defend my position that we were in neither another Great Depression nor a “lost decade” like Japan experienced in the 1990s.

Today I’m fielding questions from readers who are shoveling money back into the market - since they were earning next to nothing in cash anyway - and want to know what to buy to take advantage of the coming economic recovery.

What has actually changed over the past two months? Very little, really…

The economy is still weak and losing 600,000+ jobs a month. Consumer confidence and spending is anemic. Housing remains mired in the quicksand. Banks are reluctant to lend; credit is tight.

The biggest change is simply investor perceptions about when an economic

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Look Before You Leap into the DGI IPO: Watch out for these 4 Big Risks

by Louis Basenese, Oxford Club Senior Analyst

Jim Cramer’s sounding his obnoxious “Buy! Buy! Buy!” on this week’s Digital Globe (NYSE: DGI) IPO – a provider of high-resolution satellite imagery used for defense and consumer location-based applications (i.e. - Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth).

I’m not saying the DGI IPO lacks the potential to rocket out of the gates. The performance of other recent IPOs – Changyou.com (Nasdaq: CYOU) and Rosetta Stone (NYSE: RST) – suggest underwriters are intentionally under pricing deals to get them out the door. In turn, investors are reaping the rewards. The stocks are up 86.3% and 63.7% from their respective offering prices.

However, you need to look beyond the

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Yesterday after the close, The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. (HAIN) reported results for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 ending March 31, 2009. Despite the very tough quarter being the second consecutive below expectations quarter, we maintain our Buy rating on the stock.Hain Celestial has weathered the perfect storm, and not only survived but prospered. Despite multiple headwinds, sales increased. And on an operating basis, the company was profitable.Adjusted operating quarterly earnings were $0.31 per diluted share, a 14% decline from $0.36 reported in the year-ago quarter. Earnings were $0.04 below expectations. GAAP earnings were a loss of $1.01 per diluted share, which include an after-tax non-cash impairment charge of $48.4 million against goodwill and intangible assets related to the European and Hain Pure Protein's (HPP) units.Net sales increased 1.2% year-over-year to $267.7 million versus $264.6 million recorded in the prior-year period. ...

Corporate Takeovers: “Once-In-A-Lifetime” Investment Opportunities

by Alexander Green, Oxford Club Investment Director

Despite efforts by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to thaw the credit markets, normal lending remains hamstrung.

This is a both a significant problem and an enormous opportunity.

The problem, of course, is that if manufacturers can’t borrow to buy from suppliers, and wholesalers can’t borrow to buy from manufacturers, and retailers can’t borrow to buy from wholesalers, then consumers can’t get auto loans, credit cards, and mortgages.

The economy faces a serious headwind.

The companies in the toughest position, however, are those that are highly leveraged. Even though interest rates have fallen substantially, they aren’t able to access the credit markets (at reasonable rates) or increase their bank lines to get the liquidity they need.

And therein lies an enormous opportunity for investors like you and me - profiting from corporate takeovers.

Corporate Takeovers - Solid Companies

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