Minutes from the March 21, 2012 meeting:

We had an intimate soiree that evening at our G&G location. Our
guest speaker for the occasion was Eric Goldstone ,of Goldstone
Portfolios. Eric is an investment adviser who is well known to our
club; both in his capacity as a president of Temple Beth-El and as
someone who appraises us from time time on the state of the economy.
That evening Eric also played the part of economic historian and seer.
The financial meltdowns of 1929 and 2008 were similar, he said, in that
they were both the end result of an overly speculative economy.
However, Eric drew a contrast between the government's historic
response to the two separate events as actions that produced very
different outcomes. In the recent crisis, said Eric, the government
enabled a massive bailout of American financial institutions, with the
result that those institutions and their investors were spared the
calamitous bank runs of the 1930's. However, the price of saving the
players in our financial system was saddling of the government with
massive debt, which, said Eric, is growing at approximately 1.6
trillion dollars per year! The government stimulus of recent years has
taken the place of consumer spending in growing the economy, as
relatively high unemployment and the tightening of credit have
inhibited consumer confidence. Thus, Eric was somewhat cautious in his
prognosis for the economy, predicting that, in the near-term, the stock
market's growth will be modest. Government borrowing and the situation
in the European economies made him nervous, said Eric, because
"quantitative easing" and the purchase of U.S. debt by the Chinese will
work only if interest rates remain low. We thanked Eric for his
informative talk and presented him with our distinguished Warren G.
Harding mug, which, if the economy worsens, could be used to solicit
spare change.                                                                     

           Red Ticket: Michael Rothman      Blue Ticket: Jerry Goldberg

                         Respectfully Submitted: Peter Albenda

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