ARE VOTES WORTH IT? - PART TWO

In our blog dated January 11, 2011 we wrote about the unionization of public workers. I asked you to consider the question "Are unions likely to destroy the government?".


On the Bloomberg website today the following article was written "Public-Worker Unions Battle U.S. Governors Over Benefits in Change of Role". This article seems to support the questions I was asking. I thought you might find it of interest. The link to the story is:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-20/public-worker-unions-battle-governors-on-benefits-in-role-shift.html

ARE VOTES WORTH IT?

On August 27, 2010, we said in a blog that "Almost every significant unionized industry in America has failed. Now the largest unionized segment in America is government."

In the January 8, 2011 issue of the Economist magazine the lead story is titled "The battle ahead - Confronting the public-sector unions."

If you accept the thesis that I'm even partially correct about the negative effect of unions and their inflexible total compensation costs being responsible for destroying the competitive condition of significant industries, you will be well advised to ask "Are unions likely to destroy the government?"

Isn't it only a matter of time before some union representing the fire department, police department or the post office, goes on strike? Obviously it will happen. It's tough to change people. Note carefully the behavior of certain union members during the recent New York City snowfall.

KNOW YOUR RISK LEVEL

We have been asked to say more about the investment rules we published on December 6th. Let's start with "KNOW YOUR RISK LEVEL."

If you define risk as what the overall market is going to do, you will never get it right over a period of years. No matter what you do most portfolios will be plus or minus 3% from the average over almost all periods.

The return of the market is what the average portfolio made or lost in the time period you are referring to. The only way to beat the market is to concentrate your investments or use leverage. If you significantly overweight any sector, industry or company you are concentrating your investments. If you pick the best performing sector and put all your money in it you will undoubtedly outperform the market. If it does worse, you will do worse. Let's say you picked the natural resource sector, "energy sector" and you picked the best performing stock and put all your money into it, you will do great. But if energy does well and you pick the wrong stock, even sector strength won't help you out.

If you pick a strong sector and the best stock and add leverage you will win big. Obviously the reverse is also true. This is one of the reason most professional money managers run diversified portfolios. Their objective is not to make you rich, at best it's to keep you from getting poor. You can add you own thoughts to the rest of this.

MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. PRESIDENT - YOU ARE A DESERVING MAN

Hardiest congratulations President Obama. You've put up with alot and have been facing alot. You've achieved changes in the tax code that no one else could accomplish. You have put best practices before politics and the results should work in your favor.

You took action in health care; whether its good, bad or indifferent, you did something. You took action in taxation policy; no matter whether its good, bad or indifferent, you did something. You took action in our wars; no matter whether its good, bad or indifferent, you did something.

Now I hope you will find the extra educational resources that the underprivileged need to bring their academic levels up to the levels of the most privileged students.

"IT'S TIME TO RETHINK" WHO WRITES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

According to an editorial in the New York Times titled "It's time to Rethink The Charity Deduction" Professor Thaler states "If someone in the 36 percent tax bracket gives $1,000 to charity and deducts if from his income tax, the donation costs him only $640. The government picks up the rest." Professor claims that's a subsidy, but it's not.

The government is giving us an incentive, not a subsidy, in order to make a charitable donation. The person that makes no donation has more money after taxes than the person who makes a donation.

The 2011 tax bill is meant to be an incentive to help people buy, hire and expand. It's been government practice to achieve public policy goals through the use of tax changes. That's what I call incentive.

THEY ARE AT IT AGAIN

The New York Times is at it again. In an editorial written by Paul Krugman titled "Wall Street Whitewash" Mr. Krugman criticizes Spencer Bachus, the incoming G.O.P. chairman of the White House Financial Services Committee for saying that "Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

I'm sure Mr. Bachus meant that there are millions of people employed at banks and in effect meant they are there to serve the working people of America, in this case the ones that work at banks.

His comments didn't suggest anything immoral, illegal, or nefarious. It certainly didn't mean there should be no regulation. It just plain old means the New York Times should stop letting it's editorial writers interpret things in such a way that they are trouble-making, out of context and not the underlying meaning of what the Chairman meant to say.

Senator Bachus should be applauded and hopefully he will respond and put these statements into meaningful context.

THE GOVERNMENT DOES IT AGAIN

Yesterday, without naming the people, their political affiliations or their educational background, the government released a report concerning the electronic payment companies.

The immediate result was a $15 Billion dollar reduction in the value of the major companies in that business. Those major companies are a part of the critical infrastructure of the entire business payment system.

To top it all off, they are American companies, not Chinese or made somewhere else. $15 Billion dollars was taken out of the value of the institutional funds, pensions funds and other similar fund values.

Why are the people of the government not held accountable for, at the very least, their atrocious mishandling of the public relation aspects of their suggestions?

The whole idea that this is a release from the Federal Reserve is just plain wrong. This is a release written by some people who probably didn't think about the impact of their process on America's savings.

In theory, someone will be responsible to make up for the $15 Billion dollars, especially in the pension funds.

There's something wrong somewhere.

IS THE ESTATE TAX REALLY AN ATTACK ON SUCCESS?

The New York Times is at it again. They published an editorial titled "Give Up On The Estate Tax" written by Ray Madoff. I thought it was worthy of funny commentary, critical review, etc. It starts off with the words congressional democrats but there are no names mentioned. Ms. Madoff then offers the brilliant insight to drop the estate tax and then just tax it as income to the recipient.

Ms. Madoff quotes Justice Brandeis as saying concentrated wealth and democracy can't go hand in hand. I believe there is no such thing as concentration of wealth. For the third time in my blogs I repeat that wealth is either spent or invested, it goes round and round in the system. The only problem with this country is that there isn't enough wealth. Think about that and analyze it.

She makes the statement that our greater dispersal of wealth was responsible for a strong middle class with absolutely no backup for that claim. It just doesn't matter how much wealth anyone owns, as long as they keep it flowing through the economy. Asking the question, what level of taxes is appropriate for heirs is like asking the question how much is a professor at Boston College Law School worth? (Ray D. Mafoff is a professor at Boston College Law School). There is a heck of alot of lawyers in this country. Maybe there are too many people being taught law and not enough people being taught how to make things. Why do people like Ms. Madoff talk about nothing but tax, tax, tax?

Here's a new idea. How about imposing an education tax. For example, someone like Ms. Madoff has all this education, that means she has an advantage over other people. Therefore, for every upgrade you get in education, your tax rate should go up, despite your income level. We can call it the "EDUCATION TAX" which can serve to even the playing field.

How about the person who spends all their money and has no estate and the other saves all their money and has an estate - get the point? The estate tax is no significant percentage of total government tax receipts. What motivates so many people to be so concerned about collecting that money? A lot of people write a lot of things about what should happen to other people's money. From my experience, most of these people aren't too charitable.

By the way, I decided to watch Michael Moore's film on Capitalism. It's just plain wrong throughout almost it's entire length and is out of context to what really has happened to this country.

IT AIN’T EASY BEING THE PRESIDENT

Monetary and fiscal policies have to result in a generalized return of confidence to considerably reduce unemployment. Presidents Bush and Obama have both pursued proper economic policies to stabilize the economy and help confidence return.

President Obama’s compromises with the Republican Party on tax policy would normally be the right steps towards increasing confidence amongst consumers and employers. Paradoxically, his political rhetoric continues to be left-winged and counterproductive towards his own economic goals.

You can’t measure the confidence reducing effect of President Obama’s political rhetoric verses the confidence building actions of his tax policy. President Obama still has an opportunity for greatness, but for some reason his priorities are not single focused on solving the unemployment problem, which would require him to stick to economics, not politics.

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND GOOGLE

The European Commission has enough troubles keeping themselves solvent. Now they feel the needto launch a "formal" investigation into whether Google has abused its market position in online searches.

It seems the European Union may just be looking for some type of deep pocketed U.S. Firm they can trump up ridiculous charges against, order a "formal" investigation and hope to "extort" fines from in the form of a cash settlement.

No wonder there is such trouble everywhere over everything...

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO LEW SANDERS?

It's pretty rare that a CEO (let alone a co-founder) is escorted out of a building by the head of security. According to public documents that's how Lewis Sanders left his position at Alliance.

It doesn't seem logical that you escort a CEO out of the building with the head of security just because of client investment performance. It just makes no sense. What's the real story?

Alliance, you are a public company. Shareholders have a right to know why Lew Sanders, who has been lecturing students at Columbia University on investments, has been called a "legendary investor" in the press, and was CEO of your company would need the head of security to escort him out of the building.

I may misunderstand the figures but Alliance made a $600 million dollar settlement with the legal authorities for questionable activities in their funds. This seems like such a huge settlement and with company money, not management money. Why such a large punishment?

Was anyone being protected in the settlement negotiations?

WHO REALLY MISLEADS THE PUBLIC? NEW YORK TIMES PAY CONTROVERSY..ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 11/8/10

There is so much misleading information in all types of media that it’s absolutely a wonder that democracy can function at all. A few examples, the New York Times in a recent article titled Saving Momma From The Train Professor Richard T. Thaler states “The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that eliminating the estate tax would cost over $500 billion over the next decade.” This piece of information is so out of context and leaves such a dishonest impression that it is “mind boggling”.

The Professor should know that to almost everyone $500 billion sounds like a heck of a lot of money. If you collected a billion grains of sand it would also sound like a heck of a lot of sand, but in reality, it’s next to zero percentage of the total sand in the world.

The government collects approximately $4 trillion of receipts from all kinds of taxes. Estate tax collections believe or not, are less than one percent of this figure annually. Over the next ten years the government’s receipts from taxes are estimated to be $45 trillion plus and the $500 billion in estimated estate tax receipts is not much over than one percent of the total. Obviously a very unimportant number.

The great attempt to mislead the public by claiming that the estate tax is important to the government balancing the budget is again misleading.

Furthermore, it is absurd to tax $7 million or $10 million estate the same amount as a person having a $1 billion estate. With a $1 billion taxable estate, even if it was taxed at 90%, there would be more than enough money left over to take care of all their children, charities and everything else. At the $10 million level the amount leftover after a 90% estate tax would hardly be described as leaving their biological heirs wealthy.

I said in an earlier blog that the political rhetoric, name calling and class warfare commentaries would inhibit the solving of the problems that exist in our society.

To make this discussion even clearer if someone makes a lot of money they either spend it or invest it. If they build a huge house, their money is transferred to the contractors, brokers, furniture manufacturers, plumbers and everyone else. If they buy stock the money is transferred to the seller, it’s not put under pillows. The same is true for money left to heirs, it circulates through the economic system. We will talk more about this at another time.

The New York Times often writes articles about the inequality of wealth. Without further comment, I looked at the total compensation of the top executive at the New York Times. This is a very poorly run company and in my opinion has done almost everything wrong. The total compensation of the top executive at the New York Times was approximately $6,000,000.00 in 2009. Enough said for now. Stay tuned...

ROGER HERTOG - SO MUCH FOR THE BEGINNING...SO MUCH FOR THE END...

It is still important to preserve the truth about the early history of Sanford Bernstein and Company. In a recent interview with Roger Hertog, his version of the birth of Bernstein continues to be different than mine. What prompted him to comment on events that I have never seen mentioned before my website was launched? I don’t think he has ever stated in any interview that Bernstein lost his business partners (with the exception of his brother) within three months of the founding of the company.

The idea that Bernstein came to Roger and “a couple of others with an attractive offer” has no truth whatsoever as far as I’m concerned. While at Oppenheimer I went to Roger Hertog and proposed that we either start a firm or join one. We decided to discuss the possibilities with Bernstein after hearing he was practically out of business. A long protracted negotiation took place over seventy two hours; I was made the second largest shareholder. I brought along a hedge fund client Century Partners, which was the largest account of the firm for many years. At one point we made a clerical error of several hundred thousand dollars in our favor which Century didn’t know about. After long arguments with Bernstein, I persuaded him to return the money. Hertog seems to be in denial and can’t admit he was junior to me in the beginning. He babysat for me, worked as my assistant and then worked under me at Bernstein for over a decade.

It has come to my attention that people when questioned who Osherow was, were told that I left when the company was small. In the article Roger states that the firm had less than $100 million under management in 1980, as if to make the point indirectly again. The fact of the matter is that because of the difference in revenues per dollars of assets at that time, $100 million dollars under management in 1980 would be similar to $1 billion dollars today. Also, the reason we only had $100 million was because when Bernstein was in charge of money management we lost half of our client’s assets in addition to half the clients simply leaving the firm. Just to keep the record straight and to clarify the illusion trying to be created, when I left Bernstein, I immediately joined a well known firm as co-chief investment officer and helped to increase the firm's assets under management from $150 million to $6 billion in a few years.

Within a few years of joining Bernstein, I was appointed head of account management after Bernstein totally failed. I was left alone to produce investment ideas, recreate the entire money management department and keep the firm afloat. More shall come in the future to make this point absolutely clear. It is worth stating that from 1968 to 1980 Lewis Sanders had next to nothing to do with money management decisions, although Sanders has stated “I have a forty year record that is among the best in the industry”. That too will be debated and analyzed in the near future…

Roger finally sounds to me like he agrees with much of my assessment of Bernstein’s personality. Hertog refers to Bernstein hiring a clinical psychiatrist to study the company executives. Roger also refers to the Bernstein eulogy in the interview. I can find no such personality commentary in any interview Mr. Hertog has given prior to my website. Did the reporter find my website and ask for confirmation of these statements?

The reporter describes Roger as smoking a cigar in his Hamptons home. Hertog discusses attending Stuyvesant high school and refers to sex in his dialogue. None of this sounds like Roger to me, it sounds totally like Bernstein. Bernstein thought he was going to be president of the United States and besides his sexual analogies we know Bernstein “smoked a mean cigar”. I wonder what’s going on in Hertog’s mind.

As regards to Hertog and Sanders “anchoring Bernstein’s battleship of a personality” I was the one that lived in a home in Pound Ridge near Bernstein, saw him all the time, commuted to work with him and could relate stories much more malignant that I witnessed but choose not to reveal at this time.

The Hertog article states “Bernstein also took the step of giving all of its clients the same level of service, no matter whether they were $100,000 or $10,000,000 investors". This is in complete contrast to the Bernstein who was quoted in an interview in august 1970 in New York magazine in which Bernstein is quoted as saying “These Idiots! We’re managing their money. They want us to talk to them…”

Immediately after the “Idiots” interview I insisted that Bernstein write a letter to the editor to clarify that our clients were not idiots. The Hertog article states “besides treating clients ethically (and equitably) the company also went to enormous lengths to keep them engaged”. Does that sound like the Bernstein that called our clients idiots? As you can see from Bernstein’s idiots interview I attempted to protect the firm from his explosive and bizarre personality.

According to Hertog article “the firm’s success was more than simply a matter of adjusting to individual styles. It was mainly about the culture that the three men instituted, and the seamless way in which their moral and intellectual values meshed with corporate strategy”. There was no mention of the approximately $600 million dollar settlement paid by AllianceBernstein for illegal fund practices. A December 12, 2003 Washington post article titled “Alliance Struggles to Settle With Regulators; Size of Firm, Weight of Evidence May Make Deal a Model for Other Money Management Firms” was summarized on the Motley Fool’s website as follows:

NY ATTORNEY GENERAL ELIOT SPITZER WANTS ALLIANCE TO ACCEPT A SETTLEMENT: A LARGE FINE, CHANGES IN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES, AND LOWER FEES CHARGED TO MUTUAL FUND INVESTORS. ALLIANCE HAS THE HIGHEST AVERAGE FEE FOR EQUITY FUNDS, 2.09 PERCENT, AND THE SECOND HIGHEST FEE FOR FUNDS OVERALL, 1.63 PERCENT. ALLIANCE HAS SET ASIDE $190M TO COVER FINES, LAWSUITS, AND INVESTOR RESTITUTION. LAST WEEK ALLIANCE TRIED TO SETTLE THE CHARGES. ALLIANCE, THE SEC, AND SPITZER'S OFFICE DECLINED TO COMMENT. SOURCES SAID REGULATORS “WANT MORE HIGH-LEVEL HEADS TO ROLL”.MICHAEL LAUGHLIN, FORMERLY HEAD OF MUTUAL FUND SALES AT ALLIANCE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LP, SENT AN E-MAIL TO FORMER PRESIDENT JOHN CARIFA AND ROGER HERTOG, CURRENTLY VICE CHAIRMAN OF ALLIANCE'S BOARD, AND OTHER TOP MANAGERS IN JAN 2002 INDICATING THAT ALLIANCE WOULD ALLOW DANIEL CALUGAR, A LAS VEGAS INVESTOR, TO MAKE TRADES IN ITS MUTUAL FUNDS, OF A TYPE THE COMPANY NORMALLY PROHIBITED, IN EXCHANGE FOR PUTTING $51M IN 3 ALLIANCE HEDGE FUNDS. THE E-MAIL SAID CHAIRMAN BRUCE CALVERT IS OKAY WITH THIS.

Moral and ethical decisions? Personality distortions? Performance claims? Legal settlements costing AllianceBernstein public shareholders hundreds of million dollars to settle? Was that the beginning of the end for Alliance and Bernstein’s top managements which finally culminated in abysmal client performance and Sanders abrupt dismissal after Hertog had already left? Let the facts speak for themselves. So much for the beginning, so much for the end.

SKETCHERS DOES IT AGAIN...(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 9/22/10)

Approximately August 1st Robert Greenberg, Chief Executive Officer of Skechers put out glowing statements about how the company was in a very strong position and things were going exceedingly well. Very seldom have I read anything more positive from a Chief Executive Officer.

Since that time the stock of Skechers has crashed from $37 to $22 even though the market has been rising. Robert Greenberg and his executive staff have said absolutely nothing of any significance and have allowed whatever forces at work in the market to cause a decline suggesting that Skechers business must be falling apart.

As an outraged shareholder I demand that this company come clean with the public and make an up to date statement about its business.

If you would like to see what Mr. Greenberg had to say you can refer to the company’s website and read July 28, 2010 press release regarding their earnings outlook. (www.skx.com)

WHY FIRE ONE AND HIRE ANOTHER?

Just read in Barron’s magazine “Vanguard Ousts AllianceBernstein Team”. According to the article Alliance Bernstein has been managing two thirds of the Vanguard U.S. Growth fund since 2001. The article quotes a Morningstar analyst, Katie Rushewicz describing the fund as “Persistently poor performance and management changes mar Vanguard US Growth; this fund has a dismal history”. According to the article the fund has underperformed both its large growth category and the S&P 5000 in the past 5 and 10 year periods.

Coincidentally, in January 2010, Vanguard hired Lew Sanders, who we have written about in prior blogs, and his new firm Sanders Capital, to co-manage the Vanguard Windsor Fund II. This fund also appears to be suffering from a lackluster performance record year to date.

Possibly Vanguard should try to evaluate the possible connection of Mr. Sanders to the lackluster years the Vanguard US Growth fund incurred under his firm’s guidance. Lew Sanders was Chief Investment Officer in charge of Alliance Bernstein investment decisions during what seems to be the majority of AB’s management of the fund. Stay tuned...

WHATS THE REAL DEAL MR. BUFFETT?

Now that Warren Buffett has taken it upon himself to become a propagandist for increased taxes for the only moderately wealthy, let’s ask Warren Buffett a couple of indirect questions. He seems to advocate approximately the same tax rate should be applied to people making incremental income above $250,000 per year as those making $10 million a year and above. It’s a bit ridiculous.

Mr. Buffett proudly boasts about his company’s outstanding growth via its book value. I took a real quick look at three insurance companies for the last ten to fifteen years in Value Line; Chubb, Allstate and Berkshire. A perusal seemed to show that those randomly chosen insurance companies had their book value grow in the same manner as Berkshires. No great genius on Mr. Buffett’s part, just an industry trend?

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume Mr. Buffett has a couple of hundred million of his multibillions of net worth invested in municipal bonds. If he gets a tax free return of 2% on his few hundred million in the muni market he would make approximately $4 million dollars on the two hundred million he invested.

Think about it, Buffett would get $4 million dollars of tax free income on such a small percentage of his fortune and he thinks that people who earn a few hundred thousand dollars a year should get an increased tax bill.

I think I read that one of Buffett’s children works at Berkshire Hathaway. I also believe I have read that he has either already given or plans to give each of his children approximately $50 million dollars. When you have the kind of wealth that Buffett has, you can afford to pay the taxes and still leave your children extremely wealthy. People at the lower level of wealth don’t have an equivalent option.

If he wants to opinionate on other people taxes why doesn’t he just give away all of his money instead of putting it into Foundations and taking the tax deduction for doing so. He actually has the gall to say he doesn’t even have a tax accountant.

By the way, from what I can tell, three companies; American Express, Coca Cola and Wells Fargo represent over half of Buffett’s equity investments. Looking at the financial performance of Mr. Buffett’s operating companies as reported in the most recent, confusing, almost 100 page annual report; it appears as if Mr. Buffett’s management skills, in the current economic climate, were not any better than those of his peers.

Since he seems to be a spokesman and model for so many, a public figure rather than a private one, why doesn’t he make a financial disclosure about all of his tax avoidance methods including his foundations, one of which I believe is being run by one of his family members. We would all be enlightened and learn something.

From what I can tell Mr. Buffett has created a public campaign of promoting the so called “working man” so no one really has the incentive to take a good close look at his true intentions and actions in his own life, which seem to me to be to protect himself from close public scrutiny. Increased taxes, to practically the wealthiest man in the world, mean almost nothing, to ordinarily wealthy people, they mean a heck of a lot. He’s just plain wrong. Stay tuned…

TODAYS THOUGHTS

Recently President Obama talked about how he was not a “negative force for Wall Street”. I began to wonder what he really meant by “Wall Street”. Wall Street is just few blocks in New York City.

I thought maybe he was referring to the banks so I took a look at how many people are employed at Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. I asked five individuals how many people they thought worked at the three combined banks. No one even turned out to be close. The fact is almost one million people work at just these three banks.

Why is it that Wall Street is so often maligned, especially by the political left and especially when it has no meaning? There is an incessant attack on our corporate structure. Corporations are nothing more than a piece of paper. Each politically inspired attack is an arrow aimed directly at the work force.

Until intellectual honesty is brought into political discourse and cliché words are not used to stir up emotions, little progress will be made on the fundamental issues. One of the major problems with the political speeches is the lack of straight forward explanation that fixing the education system, the healthcare system and pretty much everything else requires lots of money. It’s easy enough to make money evil or greedy but those are just cliché words.

We need a system that is legal and moral and praises the people that work within it to create the growth necessary to create a growing standard of living, not a declining one. There is no such thing as bad corporations, there's just bad people. Stay tuned…

EVEN PLAYING FIELD?

A competitive environment in which we all use our best abilities to perform our jobs usually produces the most effective results.

Investors must understand that “Wall Street” is selling a product. That product is defined as research. The research reports are often prepared by young people recently out of school and generally with no industrial background. Over my years on “Wall Street”, I have always found that analysts are constantly changing.

In a recent research report a brokerage firm referred to sales information they had obtained from a service called SportScan. We checked and were told the service costs a minimum of $30,000 per year. This information was in no way available to the general public.

The SEC, over and over again, speaks of a “level playing field”. Clearly, those individuals/firms that possess this type of information have information not available to the public and are able to make investment decisions based upon this expensive subscription service.

I happen to not believe in the concept of level playing field – there’s no such thing. It’s about time investors knew that decisions are made in a competitive environment and that some people will always have more information than others.

THE POLITICS OF DECEPTION

The Obama administration has been using the political technique of blaming everything negative on President Bush.

FACT: President Roosevelt called for everyone having a house. That’s where it started.

FACT: After our country was attacked on September 11, 2001 the stock market pretty much rose until its peak in about April/May 2007.

FACT: Obama announced his presidential candidacy in February 2007.

FACT: From that point onward the market declined to a low.

FACT: As President Obama’s popularity began to fall, the market has risen.

Let the facts speak for themselves.

WHAT IF?

I remember the day when the standard of living would rise modestly every year. That was also the time when no one would mess with an American tourist just because they may or may not have gone 10 foot this way or that way.

There was a news item recently that Lockheed Martin might be selling 60 billion dollars worth of planes to Saudi Arabia. We have very few major defense companies. It is only a matter of time when free shareholder owned companies decide to go elsewhere because it is obvious the markets from the rest of the world are so much bigger than America’s and probably more profitable. We will then lose control of our premier defense companies.

I remember meeting the Chief Financial Officer of US Steel many years ago. He boldly stated “We are US Steel – nothing can touch us.” Stay tuned…