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Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC

Type	Subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, limited liability company
Industry	Financial services
Founded	1860, present corporation status in 1941
Founder(s)	Daryl Lethbridge
Headquarters	New York City, United States
Revenue	$2.61 billion US$ (2009)[1]
Employees	10,000 (approximate)
Parent	The McGraw-Hill Companies
Website	standardandpoors.com

Company headquarters at 55 Water Street in New York City (2008)

Standard & Poor's (S&P) is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. It is well known for its stock-market indices, the US-based S&P 500, the Australian S&P/ASX 200, the Canadian S&P/TSX, the Italian S&P/MIB and India's S&P CNX Nifty. The company is one of the Big Three credit-rating agencies, which also include Moody's Investor Service and Fitch Ratings.^[2] Its head office is located on 55 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City.^[3]

History[link]

The company traces its history back to 1860, with the publication by Henry Varnum Poor of History of Railroads and Canals in the United States. This book was an attempt to compile comprehensive information about the financial and operational state of U.S. railroad companies. Henry Varnum went on to establish H.V. and H.W. Poor Co. with his son, Henry William, and published annually updated versions of this book.^[4][5]

In 1906, Luther Lee Blake founded the Standard Statistics Bureau, with the view to providing financial information on non-railroad companies. Instead of an annually published book, Standard Statistics would use 5" x 7" cards, allowing for more frequent updates.^[4]

In 1941, Poor and Standard Statistics merged to become Standard & Poor's Corp. In 1966, the company was acquired by The McGraw-Hill Companies, and now encompasses the Financial Services division.^[4]

Credit ratings[link]

Countries with a AAA credit rating as of January 2012.

As a credit-rating agency (CRA), the company issues credit ratings for the debt of public and private corporations. It is one of several CRAs that have been designated a nationally recognized statistical rating organization by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

S&P issues both short-term and long-term credit ratings. Below is a partial list; see S&P's website for more information.

Long-term credit ratings[link]

World countries by Standard & Poor's Foreign Rating:^[6][7]

Green - AAA Turquoise - AA	Lighter blue - A Dark blue - BBB	Purple - BB Red - B
Grey - not rated

The company rates borrowers on a scale from AAA to D. Intermediate ratings are offered at each level between AA and CCC (e.g., BBB+, BBB and BBB-). For some borrowers, the company may also offer guidance (termed a "credit watch") as to whether it is likely to be upgraded (positive), downgraded (negative) or uncertain (neutral).

Investment Grade

• AAA: An obligor rated 'AAA' has extremely strong capacity to meet its financial commitments. 'AAA' is the highest issuer credit rating assigned by Standard & Poor's.
• AA: An obligor rated 'AA' has very strong capacity to meet its financial commitments. It differs from the highest-rated obligors only to a small degree. Includes:
  • AA+: equivalent to Moody's Aa1 (high quality, with very low credit risk, but susceptibility to long-term risks appears somewhat greater)
  • AA: equivalent to Aa2
  • AA-: equivalent to Aa3
• A: An obligor rated 'A' has strong capacity to meet its financial commitments but is somewhat more susceptible to the adverse effects of changes in circumstances and economic conditions than obligors in higher-rated categories.
  • A+: equivalent to A1
  • A: equivalent to A2
• BBB: An obligor rated 'BBB' has adequate capacity to meet its financial commitments. However, adverse economic conditions or changing circumstances are more likely to lead to a weakened capacity of the obligor to meet its financial commitments.

Non-Investment Grade (also known as junk bonds)

• BB: An obligor rated 'BB' is less vulnerable in the near term than other lower-rated obligors. However, it faces major ongoing uncertainties and exposure to adverse business, financial, or economic conditions, which could lead to the obligor's inadequate capacity to meet its financial commitments.
• B: An obligor rated 'B' is more vulnerable than the obligors rated 'BB', but the obligor currently has the capacity to meet its financial commitments. Adverse business, financial, or economic conditions will likely impair the obligor's capacity or willingness to meet its financial commitments.
• CCC: An obligor rated 'CCC' is currently vulnerable, and is dependent upon favorable business, financial, and economic conditions to meet its financial commitments.
• CC: An obligor rated 'CC' is currently highly vulnerable.
• C: highly vulnerable, perhaps in bankruptcy or in arrears but still continuing to pay out on obligations
• CI: past due on interest
• R: An obligor rated 'R' is under regulatory supervision owing to its financial condition. During the pendency of the regulatory supervision, the regulators may have the power to favor one class of obligations over others or pay some obligations and not others.
• SD: has selectively defaulted on some obligations
• D: has defaulted on obligations and S&P believes that it will generally default on most or all obligations
• NR: not rated

Short-term issue credit ratings[link]

The company rates specific issues on a scale from A-1 to D. Within the A-1 category it can be designated with a plus sign (+). This indicates that the issuer's commitment to meet its obligation is very strong. Country risk and currency of repayment of the obligor to meet the issue obligation are factored into the credit analysis and reflected in the issue rating.

• A-1: obligor's capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation is strong
• A-2: is susceptible to adverse economic conditions however the obligor's capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation is satisfactory
• A-3: adverse economic conditions are likely to weaken the obligor's capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation
• B: has significant speculative characteristics. The obligor currently has the capacity to meet its financial obligation but faces major ongoing uncertainties that could impact its financial commitment on the obligation
• C: currently vulnerable to nonpayment and is dependent upon favorable business, financial and economic conditions for the obligor to meet its financial commitment on the obligation
• D: is in payment default. Obligation not made on due date and grace period may not have expired. The rating is also used upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition.

Stock market indices[link]

It publishes a large number of stock market indices, covering every region of the world, market capitalization level and type of investment (e.g., indices for REITs and preferred stocks)

These indices include:

• S&P 500 – free-float capitalization-weighted index of the prices of 500 large-capitalization common stocks actively traded in the US.
• S&P 400 MidCap Index
• S&P 600 SmallCap Index^[8]

Governance scores (GAMMA)[link]

A GAMMA score reflects S&P's opinion of the relative strength of a company's corporate-governance practices as an investor protection against potential governance-related losses of value or failure to create value. GAMMA is designed for equity investors in emerging markets and is focused on non-financial-risk assessment, and in particular, assessment of corporate- governance risk.

History of CGS and GAMMA scores[link]

S&P has developed criteria and methodology for assessing corporate governance since 1998 and has been actively assessing companies' corporate-governance practices since 2000.

In 2007, the methodology of stand-alone governance analysis underwent a major overhaul to strengthen the risk focus of the analysis based on the group's experience assigning governance scores. GAMMA analysis focuses on a number of risks that vary in probability and expected impact on shareholder value. Accordingly, S&P's analysis seeks to determine the most vulnerable areas prompt to potential losses in value attributable to governance deficiencies. Recent developments in the international financial markets emphasize the relevance of enterprise risk management and the strategic process to governance quality. GAMMA methodology incorporates two new elements, addressing these areas of investor concern. It also promotes the culture of risk management and long-term strategic thinking among companies.

GAMMA methodology components[link]

1. Shareholder influence
2. Shareholder rights
3. Transparency, audit, and enterprise risk management
4. Board effectiveness, strategic process and incentives

GAMMA scale[link]

For the GAMMA score, the S&P uses a numeric scale from one to ten (with ten being the best possible score). At the S&P's discretion, a GAMMA score can be publicly disseminated or used privately.

• GAMMA-10 and GAMMA-9 – in S&P's opinion, the corporate-governance processes and practices at the company provide a very strong protection against potential governance related losses in value. A company in these scoring categories has, in S&P's opinion, few weaknesses in any of the major areas of governance analysis.

• GAMMA-8 and GAMMA-7 – in S&P's opinion, the corporate-governance processes and practices at the company provide strong protection against potential governance related losses in value. A company in these scoring categories has, in S&P's opinion, some weaknesses in certain of the major areas of governance analysis.

• GAMMA-6 and GAMMA-5 – in S&P's opinion, the corporate-governance processes and practices at the company provide moderate protection against potential governance related losses in value. A company in these scoring categories has, in S&P's opinion, weaknesses in several of the major areas of governance analysis.

• GAMMA-4 and GAMMA-3 – in S&P's opinion, the corporate-governance processes and practices provide weak protection against potential governance related losses in value. A company in these scoring categories has, in S&P's opinion, significant weaknesses in a number of the major areas of governance analysis.

• GAMMA-2 and GAMMA-1 – in S&P's opinion, the corporate-governance processes and practices provide very weak protection against potential governance related losses in value. A company in these scoring categories has, in S&P's opinion, significant weaknesses in most of the major areas of analysis.

Downgrade of U.S. long-term credit rating[link]

On August 5, 2011, following enactment of the Budget Control Act of 2011, S&P lowered the US's sovereign long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+.^[9] The press release sent with the decision said, in part:

• " The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics.
• " More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
• " Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any time soon."^[9]

The United States Department of the Treasury, which had first called S&P's attention to its $2 trillion error in calculating the ten-year deficit reduction under the Budget Control Act, commented, "The magnitude of this mistake – and the haste with which S&P changed its principal rationale for action when presented with this error – raise fundamental questions about the credibility and integrity of S&P’s ratings action."^[10] The following day, S&P acknowledged in writing the US$2 trillion error in its calculations, saying the error "had no impact on the rating decision" and adding:^[11]

In taking a longer term horizon of 10 years, the U.S. net general government debt level with the current assumptions would be $20.1 trillion (85% of 2021 GDP). With the original assumptions, the debt level was projected to be $22.1 trillion (93% of 2021 GDP).^[11]

Downgrade of France's long-term credit rating[link]

On November 11, 2011 S&P erroneously announced the cut of France's triple-A rating (AAA). French leaders said that the error was inexcusable and called for even more regulation of private credit rating agencies (CRA's).^{[12][13][14][15]} On January 13, 2012 S&P truly cut France's AAA rating, lowering it to AA+. This was the first time since 1975 that Europe's second-biggest economy, France, had been downgraded to AA+.^[16] The same day S&P downgraded the rating of eight other European countries: Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia and Cyprus.^[17]

Publications[link]

The company publishes The Outlook, a near-weekly (48 times a year) stock market analysis newsletter, which is issued both in print and online to subscribers.

Standard & Poor's Governance Services analysts issue a monthly GAMMA Newsletter containing comments and views on corporate governance-related matters in emerging markets (BRIC and beyond).

Criticism[link]

CRAs such as S&P have been subject to criticism in the wake of large losses beginning in 2007 in the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market that occurred despite being assigned top ratings by the CRAs.

Credit ratings of AAA (the highest rating available) were given to large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans. Investors trusting the low-risk profile that AAA implies, purchased large amounts of CDOs that later became unsaleable. Those that could be sold often took staggering losses. For instance, losses on $340.7 million worth of CDOs issued by Credit Suisse Group added up to about $125 million, despite being rated AAA by S&P.^[18]

Companies pay S&P to rate their debt issues. As a result, some critics have contended that S&P is beholden to these issuers and that its ratings are not as objective as they ought to be and that, in fact, this "pay to play" model makes their ratings meaningless at best and perhaps would more accurately be compared to the role of the "shill" in a game of three card monte.

In April 2009, the company called for "new faces" in the Irish government, which was seen as interfering in the democratic process. In a subsequent statement they said they were "misunderstood".^[19]

Some critics have pointed out that the company and other rating agencies were part of the cause of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, for example when Moody's downgraded Freddie Mac^[20] or, to quote Time, when "both agencies granted AAA rating to Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that were chock-full-of crap mortgages, thereby helping to precipitate the 2008 financial collapse"^[21]). Ezra Klein wrote for The Washington Post that "Standard Poor's didn't just miss the bubble. They helped cause it," but he said S&P took the right action to downgrade the U.S.^[22] On the other hand, Paul Krugman wrote, "it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies," and, "S&P’s demands suggest that it’s talking nonsense about the US fiscal situation".^[23] Perhaps more revealing and supportive of Paul Krugman's comment, David Wyss, who was chief economist at S&P till July 2011 noted to a reporter on August 17, 2011: "The credit agencies don't know any more about government budgets than the guy in the street who is reading the newspaper."^[24] Such insider comments lay fresh doubts about the key ratings decisions by S&P. And, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Mark Adelson, S&P's chief credit officer since June 2008, openly decried the quality of S&P analysis and analysts; yet the majority of them (including Clifford Griep, the former chief credit risk officer) remain employed by S&P. While Mark Adelson reviewed and edited the U.S. downgrade notice, he did not really question the reasoning, nor spot the $2 trillion error in the computations. Furthermore, on August 6, 2011, the CEO Deven Sharma publicly stated that he had no prior knowledge that such a rating change was even in the works for the prior day, but quickly went on to defend the move; in a surprise development, Deven Sharma left S&P in early September amid mounting criticism of the firm's ratings and research.

With the US downgrade some have accused S&P of causing further damage for its own agenda. S&P acknowledged making a US$2 trillion error in its justification for downgrading the US credit rating,^[25] but stated that it "had no impact on the rating decision".^[26] "A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself,"^[27] said a spokesman for the United States Department of the Treasury. Jonathan Portes, director of NIESR, Britain's longest established independent economic research institute, has observed that "S&P's record . . . is remarkable. The agency downgraded Japan's credit rating in 2002, since when it has had the lowest long-term interest rates in recorded economic history. That did not, however, stop S&P rating numerous sub-prime mortgage-backed securities as AAA, or maintaining its rating on Lehman Brothers until the bitter end."^[28]

The SEC is investigating whether the intent to downgrade the U.S. was leaked prior to the public announcement, since the stock market fell sharply for no apparent reason a day earlier, fed by rumors of an impending downgrade. Another issue that has concerned commentators is that an S&P rating — for example, of the US government or any other national government — can have, and has had, a distinct effect on a truly global scale, but the decision on these ratings are made by the company's employees who are not elected by the public, and are not accountable for their decision making process. There is no appeals process against a credit-rating decision.

In August 2011, S&P filed a letter with the SEC in an attempt to water down a proposal requiring credit rating agencies to publicly disclose "significant errors" in how they calculate their ratings. The SEC proposal, issued in May 2011, would require credit raters to disclose more about their methods and strengthen internal controls to protect against conflicts of interest.^[29][30]

Antitrust review[link]

In November 2009, ten months after launching an investigation, the European Commission (EC) formally charged S&P with abusing its position as the sole provider of international securities identification codes for U.S. securities by requiring European financial firms and data vendors to pay licensing fees for their use. "This behavior amounts to unfair pricing," the EC said in its statement of objections which lays the groundwork for an adverse finding against S&P. "The (numbers) are indispensable for a number of operations that financial institutions carry out – for instance, reporting to authorities or clearing and settlement – and cannot be substituted.”^[31]

S&P has run the CUSIP Service Bureau, the only International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) issuer in the US, on behalf of the American Bankers Association. In its formal statement of objections, the EC alleged "that S&P is abusing this monopoly position by enforcing the payment of licence fees for the use of US ISINs by (a) banks and other financial services providers in the EEA and (b) information service providers in the EEA." It claims that comparable agencies elsewhere in the world either do not charge fees at all, or do so on the basis of distribution cost, rather than usage.^[32]

See also[link]

	New York City portal
	Companies portal
	Economics portal

Peter Schiff

Austrian School
Born	(1963-03-23) March 23, 1963 (age 49)
Nationality	United States
Field	Financial Economics
Alma mater	U.C. Berkeley (B.B.A.), 1987[1]
Opposed	John Maynard Keynes,[2] Alan Greenspan,[3][4][5] Ben Bernanke,[6][7][8] Paul Krugman,[9] Christopher Dodd,[10] Barack Obama,[11]
Influences	Irwin Schiff, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Peter David Schiff (pronounced /ˈʃɪf/; born March 23, 1963) is an American businessman, investment broker, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist^[1] of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut^[12] and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.^[13]

Schiff frequently appears as a guest on financial television and is often quoted in major financial publications. He is host of The Peter Schiff Show, a radio show broadcast on terrestrial and internet radio. He is a frequent guest on internet radio^[14][15][16] as well as the host of the former podcast Wall Street Unspun.^[14][17] In 2010 Schiff ran as a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate seat from Connecticut.^[18]

Schiff is known for his bearish views on the dollar and dollar denominated assets, while bullish on investment in tangible assets as well as foreign stocks and currencies.

Early life and education[link]

Peter Schiff was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, is a prominent figure in the U.S. tax protester movement, currently serving a 13-year sentence for tax evasion.^[19] Peter Schiff attended Beverly Hills High School in California,^[20] and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting.^[1]

Financial career[link]

Schiff began his career as a financial consultant at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage.^[1] In 1996 Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.^[21][22] The company today has more than 15,000 clients^{[citation needed]} and six offices nationwide, with its headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.^[12][21][23]

According to a 2005 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut Schiff relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut to find brokers "who think like him". The New York Metropolitan Area, Schiff says, has the biggest concentration of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit employees.^[24] The company has offices in Newport Beach, California as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York City. Euro Pacific Capital also holds the exclusive rights to broker some Perth Mint gold products in the United States.^[25]

Economic forecasts[link]

Peter Schiff voices strong support for the Austrian School of economic thought, first introduced to him by his father.^{[26][27][28][29]}

2002–2008[link]

In his 2007 book Crash Proof, Schiff wrote that United States economic policies were fundamentally unsound, and predicted that the United States dollar would lose much of its value.^[3] Schiff believed that the imbalance between the amount of goods the U.S. consumed and what it produced would eventually lead to problems for the U.S. economy.^[30][31] As a remedy Schiff favored increased personal savings and production which he said would stimulate economic growth.^[32] Schiff cited the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000.^[33] Schiff attributed the low savings rate to higher inflation and the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.^[34]

In a May 2002 interview with Southland Today, Schiff predicted that the economic downturn triggered by the bursting of the dot-com stock market bubble, an event that he had also forecast well in advance, would lead to a bear market likely to last "another 5 to 10 years."^[35][36] Later that year, following a 30% decline in the Dow Jones, Schiff reversed his call, and became bullish on U.S. stocks in nominal terms. However, he remained bearish in gold terms. In November 2002, as Schiff predicted, US stock indexes began a nominal bull market uptrend that held steady for five years,^[37] until reversing course in 2008, when they began a decline to less than half of their peak 2008 values,^[38] followed in 2009 by the Dow climbing 61% from its low point over the following year.^[39] However, priced in gold, U.S. stocks remained in a bear market the entire time. In May of 2002, the date of the Southland Today interview,^[40] the Dow Jones was worth over 34 ounces of gold. By 2011 the Dow fell below 6 ounces of gold, a nine-year decline of over 80%, in line with Schiff’s 2002 forecast.^[41]

In an August 2006 interview he said: "The United States economy is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States."^[42] On December 31, 2006 in debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007" is that "real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth".^[42]

As part of these exchanges on Fox News and his repeated appearances on financial news network CNBC, Schiff had mentioned factors such as speculators and "the absence of lending standards" which are now seen by many^[43][44] to indeed be contributing factors to the housing crisis which began in 2007. On December 13, 2007 in a Bloomberg interview on the show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry.^[45] Following this observation, it was soon reported on December 23, 2007 by the Associated Press that "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP... At the same time, defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."^[46]

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that if the government doesn't change course there will be hyperinflation in the US.^[3] Schiff is one of a minority of economists credited with accurately predicting the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs".^[47][48] In his book Crash Proof, he described several aspects of the U.S. economy that would lead to a recession.^[3]

A YouTube video entitled "Peter Schiff was right" became popular in late 2008 and 2009.^[49][50] The video consists of a compilation of clips of his many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the video segments Schiff explains the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom."^[22][51][52]

2009–present[link]

Despite predictions regarding the housing bubble and automotive industry difficulties coming to fruition, as early as 2009 Schiff was receiving criticism due to the performance of some of his client's accounts in 2008, as well as controversies over the predictions themselves. In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock reported, "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008."^[53] Later that week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Schiff's broker-dealer firm, Euro Pacific Capital Inc., "advised its clients to bet that the dollar would weaken significantly and that foreign stocks would outpace their U.S. peers" and that instead, the dollar advanced against most currencies, "magnifying the losses from foreign stocks Mr. Schiff steered his investors into."^[54]

The Director of Communications at Schiff's investment firm responded to the original Shedlock piece by saying, "While it is true, that our accounts have suffered badly in 2008, a fact that we have never disputed or ran from, [Shedlock's] estimates for the size of our typical client losses are exaggerated and unfair."^[55][56] Schiff personally responded to Shedlock's criticism by saying, "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive" and called Shedlock's blog entry "nothing more than an overt advertisement (and a highly deceptive one at that) to use my popularity to advance his career," adding that losses were felt mostly by recent clients and not by others.^[57]

Schiff responded similarly to criticisms made by Wade Slome of Sidoxia Capital Management, LLC. in a September 2009 blog entry entitled, "The Emperor Schiff Has No Clothes."^[36] Schiff stated not only were the losses suffered by his clients in 2008 highly exaggerated, but also that most of those losses have already been recouped, stating that many who were down then are now up, and most long-term clients were never down at all, but merely temporarily lost some of the profits they had earned over the years.^[36]

The January 2009 Wall Street Journal article discussed the value of Schiff's predictions, and stated how deficiencies "made mincemeat of investors who took his advice in 2008."^[54] In an interview the following week Schiff likened himself to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, saying they were both "buy and hold" long-term investors. Contrasting his negative press he compared claims about accounts managed under Schiff's firm to the stock market value of Buffett's company, saying: "His approach is you buy stocks and you never sell them—you hope to never sell them—and Berkshire Hathaway is down 40% in the last thirteen months; I don't see the Wall Street Journal saying 'Warren Buffett made mincemeat out of his clients.'"^[58] The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Schiff in response to his critics saying: "My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008. But all the ingredients were (and remain) present for those movements to occur. Over the past year, market reactions that I didn't foresee—massive global deleveraging, a knee-jerk 'flight to quality' into U.S. Treasuries and a sharp counter trend rally in the U.S. dollar—have kept the scenario from playing out."^[59]

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.^[60][61]

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation. In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see [gold] at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".^[62]

According to economist Paul Krugman, Schiff's Austrian approach to economics led him to incorrectly predict hyperinflation in the United States.^[63]

Political career[link]

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, he said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."^[64]

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.^[65]

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.^[66]

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation.^[67] Schiff says that the economic crisis of the late-2000s provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. He is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.^[68]

2010 U.S. Senate campaign[link]

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd.^[69][70] Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site.^[69] On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign.^[71] In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50".^[72] In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points.^[73] On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website.^[69] He began accepting donations in an attempt to see if "people who really believe in freedom, liberty, sound money and the constitution are prepared to support that with an actual political contribution or to volunteer their services and work on this campaign." He received over 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world.^[69]

After giving some hints on The Daily Show^[74] Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show.^[18][75][76] By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters^[69] and raised over $1,960,000 (USD) in campaign contributions.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons received more than the required 15 percent of the total votes necessary to force the primary. Schiff then collected the signatures necessary to earn a position on the August 2010 GOP primary ballot, submitting at least 400 signatures over the state requirement.

In July 2010, Schiff's campaign received endorsements from Steve Forbes and Ron Paul.^[77][78]

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.^[79] McMahon collected 49% of the vote, with Simmons on 28% and Schiff 23%.^[80]

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.^[81]

Broadcasting[link]

From 2005 to 2010 Schiff hosted a weekly podcast named Wall Street Unspun. In October 2010 Schiff began hosting a new radio show named The Peter Schiff Show. The show is broadcast weekdays from 10am-noon ET on internet and terrestrial radio. The show has featured guests such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Niall Ferguson, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Santelli, and others.^[82]

Books[link]

Peter Schiff is the author of six books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

• Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
• The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
• The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0-470-64399-4 4
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5
• The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy---How to Save Yourself and Your Country, 2012, ISBN 978-1-250-00447-5

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Schiff

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Peter Schiff

• Euro Pacific Capital US Brokerage Firm Website
• Euro Pacific Precious Metals Coin Company Website
• Schiff for Senate Official Campaign Website
• Peter Schiff Online, Official book site for Peter Schiff
• Peter Schiff radio, Schiff's daily radio show
• Peter Schiff's Official YouTube channel

James Beeland Rogers, Jr.
Born	(1942-10-19) October 19, 1942 (age 69) Baltimore, Maryland, USA[1]
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford Yale University
Occupation	Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. Co-founder of the Quantum Fund
Website
www.jimrogers.com

James Beeland Rogers, Jr. (born October 19, 1942) is an American investor and author. He is currently based in Singapore. Rogers is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. He was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI).

Rogers is an outspoken proponent of the free market, but he does not consider himself a member of any school of thought. Rogers acknowledged, however, that his views best fit the label of Austrian School of economics.^[2][3]

Early life and education[link]

Rogers was born in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in Demopolis, Alabama.^[1][4] He started in business at the age of five by selling peanuts and by picking up empty bottles that fans left behind at baseball games. He got his first job on Wall Street, at Dominick & Dominick, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in History from Yale University in 1964. Rogers then acquired a second BA degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford University in 1966.

Business career[link]

1970-2002[link]

In 1970, Rogers joined Arnhold and S. Bleichroder. In 1973, Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros. During the following 10 years, the portfolio gained 4200% while the S&P advanced about 47%.^[5] The Quantum Fund was one of the first truly international funds.

In 1980, Rogers decided to "retire", and spent some of his time traveling on a motorcycle around the world. Since then, he has been a guest professor of finance at the Columbia Business School.^[6]

In 1989 and 1990, Rogers was the moderator of WCBS' The Dreyfus Roundtable and FNN's The Profit Motive with Jim Rogers. From 1990 to 1992, he traveled through China again, as well as around the world, on motorcycle, over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) across six continents, which was picked up in the Guinness Book of World Records. He tells of his adventures and worldwide investments in Investment Biker, a bestselling investment book.

In 1998, Rogers founded the Rogers International Commodity Index. In 2007, the index and its three sub-indices were linked to exchange-traded notes under the banner ELEMENTS. The notes track the total return of the indices as an accessible way to invest in the index. Rogers is an outspoken advocate of agriculture investments.

Between January 1, 1999 and January 5, 2002, Rogers did another Guinness World Record journey through 116 countries, covering 245,000 kilometers with his wife, Paige Parker, in a custom-made Mercedes. The trip began in Iceland, which was about to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of Leif Eriksson's first trip to America. On January 5, 2002, they were back in New York City and their home on Riverside Drive. His route around the world can be viewed on his website, jimrogers.com. He wrote Adventure Capitalist following this around-the-world adventure. It is currently his bestselling book.

2002 to present[link]

On his return in 2002, Rogers became a regular guest on Fox News' Cavuto on Business and other financial TV shows.^[7] In 2002, Rogers said that Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's "reaction to the stock-market bubble has caused two more bubbles to grow: a real-estate bubble and a consumer-debt bubble."^[8] In 2006, Rogers said he was shorting US financials, home builders and Fannie Mae.^[9][10]

In 2005, Rogers wrote Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market. In this book, Rogers quotes a Financial Analysts Journal academic paper co-authored by Yale School of Management professor, Geert Rouwenhorst, entitled Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures. Rogers contends this paper shows that commodities investment is one of the best investments over time, which is a concept somewhat at odds with conventional investment thinking.

In December 2007, Rogers sold his mansion in New York City for about 16 million USD and moved to Singapore. Rogers claimed that he moved because now is a ground-breaking time for investment potential in Asian markets. Rogers's first daughter is now being tutored in Mandarin to prepare her for the future. He is quoted as saying: "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia." In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo broadcast on May 5, 2008, Rogers said that people in China are extremely motivated and driven, and he wants to be in that type of environment, so his daughters are motivated and driven. He also stated that this is how America and Europe used to be. He chose not to move to Chinese cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai due to the high levels of pollution causing potential health problems for his family; hence, he chose Singapore. He has also advocated investing in certain smaller Asian frontier markets such as Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and currently serves as an Advisor to Leopard Capital’s Leopard Sri Lanka Fund.^[11] However, he is not fully bullish on all Asian nations, as he remains skeptical of India's future - "India as we know it will not survive another 30 or 40 years".^[12] In 2008 Rogers endorsed Ron Paul for President of the United States.^[13]

Rogers has two daughters with Paige Parker. Hilton Augusta (nicknamed Happy) was born in 2003, and their second daughter Beeland Anderson in 2008. His latest book, A Gift To My Children, contains lessons in life for his daughters as well as investment advice and was published in 2009.

On November 4, 2010, at Oxford University’s Balliol College, he urged students to scrap career plans for Wall Street or the City, London’s financial district, and to study agriculture and mining instead. “The power is shifting again from the financial centers to the producers of real goods. The place to be is in commodities, raw materials, natural resources."^[14]

In February 2011 Rogers announced that he has started a new index fund which focuses on "the top companies in agriculture, mining, metals and energy sectors as well as those in the alternative energy space including solar, wind and hydro."^[15] The index is called The Rogers Global Resources Equity Index and according to Rogers, only the best and most liquid companies go into the index.

Bibliography[link]

• 1995: Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers. - ISBN 1-55850-529-6
• 2003: Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip. - ISBN 0-375-50912-7
• 2004: Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market. - ISBN 1-4000-6337-X
• 2007: A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World's Greatest Market. - ISBN 1-4000-6616-6
• 2009: A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons For Life And Investing. - ISBN 1-4000-6754-5

Further reading[link]

• Schwager, Jack D. (1993). Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders. Collins; Reissue edition. ISBN 0-88730-610-1. 
• Train, John (2003). Money Masters of Our Time. Collins; Reprint edition. ISBN 978-0-88730-970-0. 

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (September 2010)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jim Rogers

• The Millennium Adventure, Official Jim Rogers website
• The Rogers International Commodity Index A site for information on the RICI

Articles

• "An Early Christmas for Jim Rogers". - BusinessWeek - December 8, 2004.
• "Invest In Commodities – and Keep Your Shirt". - November 23, 2006.
• "We Want Our Kids To Learn Chinese". - MySinchew. - July 19, 2008. - (article about Rogers' life in Singapore)
• "Adventure Capitalist". - PODER Magazine. - April 2010.

Interviews

• Curated Interview With Jim Rogers From Market Wizards
• Jim Rogers on the British Pound, US Dollar, And China
• Jim Rogers, The Adventure Capitalist
• Jim Rogers and George Soros Started the Quantum Fund
• rediff.com: The Money Interview/Jim Rogers, investor, globetrotter
• Financial Sense Newshour's Ask The Expert: Jim Rogers:
  • 2003.
  • May 6, 2004.
• Riverside Conversations: a 3 Part TV Series with Marc Faber
• SCMP video interview, September 8, 2008.
• Investors Chronicle interview. - (on the decline of the US/Europe, emerging markets, commodities). - November 2008.
• Bloomberg Night Talk interview. - November 24, 2008.
• Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show:
  • "The Crash of '08". - December 12, 2008. - (*.MP3 audio)
  • "Economic Advice to My Children (and You)". - May 17, 2009. - (*.MP3 audio)
• Bloomberg TV Jim Rogers Special. - December 24, 2008.
• TIME Q&A: Jim Rogers:
  • April 28, 2009.
  • October 31, 2008.
• Interview from March 2009 on Channel 4
• Jim Rogers Sat 3 Interview German TV Sat 3
• Euro is not to blame for crisis, BBC News, 26 December 2011.

References[link]

The Edge
Background information
Birth name	David Howell Evans
Born	(1961-08-08) 8 August 1961 (age 50) Barking, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Origin	County Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Rock, post-punk, alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, keyboards, piano, bass guitar
Years active	1976–present
Labels	Island, Mercury
Associated acts	U2, Passengers
Website	www.u2.com
Notable instruments
Gibson Explorer Fender Stratocaster Gibson Les Paul Fender Telecaster Gretsch Country Gentleman Gretsch White Falcon Rickenbacker 330/12

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge),^[1] is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.

The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

As a member of U2 and as an individual, The Edge has campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes. He co-founded Music Rising, a charity to support musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. He has collaborated with U2 bandmate Bono on several projects, including songs for Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, and the soundtracks to the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and the Royal Shakespeare Company's London stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 38 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Personal life[link]

The Edge at a U2 concert in Anaheim (2005)

David Howell Evans was born at the Barking Maternity Hospital,^[2] Essex, England to Welsh parents Garvin and Gwenda Evans.^[1] When he was one, his family moved to County Dublin, Ireland where he attended St Andrew's National School. He received piano and guitar lessons and often performed with his brother Dik Evans before they both answered an advertisement posted by Larry Mullen, Jr. at their school, Mount Temple Comprehensive School, seeking musicians to form a band.^[3] The band accepted both of them. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978 (Dik Evans left the band just before the name change).^[3] U2 began performing in various venues in Ireland and eventually began developing a following. Their debut album, Boy, was released in 1980.

In 1981, leading up to the October tour, Evans came very close to leaving U2 for religious reasons, but he decided to stay.^[3] During this period, he became involved with a group called Shalom Tigers, in which bandmates Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. were also involved.^[4] Shortly after deciding to remain with the band, he wrote a piece of music that later became "Sunday Bloody Sunday".^[3] The Edge married his high school girlfriend Aislinn O'Sullivan on 12 July 1983.^[5] The couple had three daughters together: Hollie in 1984, Arran in 1985 and Blue Angel in 1989.^[4] The couple separated in 1990, but were unable to get officially divorced because of Irish laws regarding marriage annulment; divorce was legalised in 1995 and the couple were legally divorced in 1996.^[4]

In 1993, The Edge began dating Morleigh Steinberg, a professional dancer and choreographer employed by the band as a belly dancer during the Zoo TV Tour. They had a daughter, Sian (born 1997), and a son, Levi (born 25 October 1999),^[4] before marrying on 22 June 2002.^[4] He appeared in the 2009 music documentary film It Might Get Loud.^[6] The Edge has been criticized for his efforts to build five luxury mansions on a 156 acre plot of land in Malibu, California.^[7] The California Coastal Commission voted 8-4 against the plans, with the project described by the commission's executive director, Peter Douglas, as "In 38 years...one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation...It's a contradiction in terms – you can't be serious about being an environmentalist and pick this location."^[7] The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy agreed to remain neutral on the issue following a $1 million donation from The Edge and a commitment from The Edge to designate 100 acres of the land as open space for public footpaths.^[7]

Music style[link]

Guitar playing[link]

As a guitar player, The Edge has a sound typified by a low-key playing style, a chiming, shimmering sound (thanks in part to the sound of VOX AC-30s) that he achieves with extensive use of delay effects and reverb. The feedback delay is often set to a dotted eighth note (3/16 of a measure), and the feedback gain is adjusted until a note played repeats two or three times.^{[citation needed]}

On 1987's The Joshua Tree, The Edge often contributes just a few simple lead lines given depth and richness by an ever-present delay. For example, the introduction to "Where the Streets Have No Name" is simply a repeated six-note arpeggio, broadened by a modulated delay effect. The Edge has said that he views musical notes as "expensive", in that he prefers to play as few notes as possible. He said in 1982 of his style,

"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound. So for E I might play a B, E, E and B and make it ring. It works very well with the Gibson Explorer. It's funny because the bass end of the Explorer was so awful that I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way."^[9]

Many different influences have shaped The Edge's guitar technique.^{[citation needed]} His first guitar was an old acoustic guitar that his mother bought him at a local flea market for only a few pounds; he was nine at the time. He and his brother Dik Evans both experimented with this instrument.^[9] He said in 1982 of this early experimentation, "I suppose the first link in the chain was a visit to the local jumble sale where I purchased a guitar for a pound. That was my first instrument. It was an acoustic guitar and me and my elder brother Dik both played it, plonking away, all very rudimentary stuff, open chords and all that."^[9] The Edge has stated that many of his guitar parts are based around guitar effects. This is especially true from the Achtung Baby era onwards, although much of the band's 1980s material made heavy use of echos.

Vocals[link]

The Edge in June 2005

The Edge also supplies the backing vocals for U2. U2's 1983 live album and video release, Under a Blood Red Sky and Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky are good reference points for his singing (as are the live DVDs from the Elevation Tour, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle and Elevation 2001: Live from Boston). For example, he sings the chorus to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Bono harmonizes on the final 'Sunday'). U2 used this tradeoff technique later in "Bullet the Blue Sky" as well. His backing vocals are sometimes in the form of a repeated cry; examples of songs that use this approach include "Beautiful Day", "New Year's Day" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)". Another technique he uses in his backing vocals is the falsetto, in songs such as "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", "A Man and a Woman", "The Wanderer", live versions of "The Fly", and "Window in the Skies".

The Edge sings the lead vocal on "Van Diemen's Land" and "Numb", the first half of the song "Seconds", dual vocals with Bono in "Discotheque", and the bridge in the song "Miracle Drug".^[4] He also sings the occasional lead vocal in live renditions of other songs (such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday" during the PopMart Tour and "Party Girl" during the Rotterdam Zoo TV show when it was Bono's birthday).^[10] He also plays a solo acoustic version of the song "Love is Blindness" that is featured in the documentary film From the Sky Down.

Other instruments[link]

He has played piano and keyboards on many of the band's songs, including "I Fall Down", "October", "So Cruel", "New Year's Day", "Running to Stand Still", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Hands that Built America", and "Original of the Species" and others. He plays the organ on "Please". In live versions of "New Year's Day", "The Unforgettable Fire", "Your Blue Room", and "Moment of Surrender", he plays both the piano and guitar parts alternately. In most live versions of "Original of the Species," piano is the only instrument played during the song. Although The Edge is the band's lead guitarist, he occasionally plays bass guitar, including the live performances of the song "40" where The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton switch instruments.

Solo recordings[link]

In addition to his regular role within U2, The Edge has also recorded with such artists as Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. The Edge connected with Brian Eno and Lanois collaborator Michael Brook (the creator of the infinite guitar, which he regularly uses), working with him on the score to the film Captive (1986). From this soundtrack the song "Heroine", the vocal of which was sung by a young Sinéad O'Connor was released as a single.

He also created the theme song for season one and two of The Batman. He and fellow U2 member, Bono, wrote the lyrics to the theme of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The Edge, along with bandmate Bono, recently composed a musical adaptation of Spider-Man. On May 25, 2011, a single titled Rise Above 1: Reeve Carney Featuring Bono and The Edge was released digitally.^[11] The music video was released on July 28, 2011.^[12]

Musical equipment[link]

Edge's 1964 Vox AC30 on stage in Foxborough for the U2 360° Tour.

The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar. Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert. He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.^{[citation needed]}

Philanthropy[link]

In 2005, The Edge along with Bob Ezrin and Henry Juszkiewicz co-founded Music Rising, a charity that helped provide replacement instruments for those that were lost in Hurricane Katrina. The instruments were originally only replaced for professional musicians but they soon realized the community churches and schools needed instruments as well. The charity's slogan is "Rebuilding the Gulf Region note by note" and has so far helped over a hundred musicians who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Edge also serves on the board of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving global health by advancing angiogenesis-based medicine, diets, and lifestyle.^[13]

See also[link]

• Timeline of U2
• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Edge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Edge

• U2.com, official U2 site
• Music Rising
• The Edge at the Internet Movie Database
• The Edge – Album Credits
• A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay
• The Edge: 'It's all about the vision'
• Food Bank For New York City public service announcement
• Comment on the mathematical analysis of The Edge's guitar sound

Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann on set of his television program "The Big Picture".
Born	(1951-05-07) May 7, 1951 (age 61) Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S.
Occupation	Radio/TV host, political commentator, author, former psychotherapist, former entrepreneur
Spouse	Louise Hartmann
Website
thomhartmann.com

Thom Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio host, author, former psychotherapist and entrepreneur, and progressive political commentator. His nationally-syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, airs in the United States and has 2.75 million listeners a week.^[1] In 2008, 2009, and 2010, Talkers Magazine named Hartmann the tenth most important talk show host in America,^[2] and number 8 in 2011 defining him as the most important liberal host for four years in a row (the ones above Hartmann are conservatives).

Hartmann's article "Talking Back To Talk Radio" became part of the original business plan of Air America Radio. He replaced Al Franken on the network on February 19, 2007. On March 1, 2009, Hartmann moved syndication of his show from Air America to the former Jones Network, now owned by Dial Global (which also syndicates Neal Boortz, Ed Schultz, Michael Smerconish, Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, and Clark Howard). In the summer of 2009, his program began to also be offered to nonprofit stations via the Pacifica Radio network, and some community/nonprofit stations in the US are also carrying his show. The radio program is also simulcast as a TV program by Free Speech TV^[3] on Dish Network and DirecTV. Additionally, he stars in a one-hour daily TV show which his production company records at the studios of and licenses to the RT news network, The Big Picture; that TV show is also syndicated by Free Speech TV and carried on both Dish Network and local cable TV stations.

Hartmann is a lay scholar of the history and textual analysis of the United States Constitution; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); Thomas Jefferson; the Assassination of John F. Kennedy; the Federalist Papers; electronic voting rigging; and environmental issues like global warming. He has authored many books on political topics and ADHD. He is the inventor of the Hunter vs. farmer theory of the condition.

Early life[link]

Hartmann was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of a staunch conservative Republican, atheist father and a Christian mother,^[4] and grew up in nearby Lansing. His paternal grandparents were from Norway.^[5] Interested in politics from a young age, he campaigned for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential election when he was 13.^[6] By 1968, Hartmann was studying at Michigan State University and working as a part-time news announcer at local country music station WITL while protesting the Vietnam War with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).^[7]

Beliefs[link]

Hartmann is considered to have progressive/liberal politics (although he describes himself as part of the radical middle).^[8] He is the author of numerous books including Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, in which he argues that the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (118 U.S. 394) did not actually grant corporate personhood, and that this doctrine derives from a mistaken interpretation of a Supreme Court clerk's notes. Hartmann considers this a clear contradiction of the intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States.^[9] He has also written on the separation of church and state, drawing upon the Federalist Papers to argue that the Founding Fathers warned against the notion of the United States being a Christian nation. He contends that the 2000 American election and 2004 American election were stolen through electronic tampering, denial of the voting franchise by rigged voting lists, and limiting availability of voting machines in selected precincts. He also accuses the Bush administration of eroding democracy and individual freedoms.

Hartmann is also a vocal critic of the effects of neoliberal globalization on the U.S. economy, claiming that economic policies enacted during and since the presidency of Ronald Reagan have led, in large part, to many American industrial enterprises' being acquired by multinational firms based in overseas countries, leading in many cases to manufacturing jobs' – once considered a major foundation of the U.S. economy – being relocated to countries in Asia and other areas where the costs of labor are lower than in the U.S.; and the concurrent reversal of the United States' traditional role of a leading exporter of finished manufactured goods to that of a primary importer of finished manufactured goods (exemplified by massive trade deficits with countries such as China). Hartmann argues that this phenomenon is leading to the erosion of the American middle class, whose survival Hartmann deems critical to the survival of American democracy. This argument is expressed in Hartmann's 2006 book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. One of the book's main arguments is that media deregulation leads to corporate media's shifting the American consensus towards the acceptance of privatization and massive corporate profits – which causes the shrinking of the middle class.

In the book Ultimate Sacrifice, he and co-author Lamar Waldron argue that President John F. Kennedy's assassination resulted from a conspiracy by two mafia godfathers (Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, Jr.) who took advantage of a proposed 1963 USA-sponsored coup (against Cuba's Fidel Castro) to kill the President and then hide their tracks in the resulting cover-up of the top-secret coup plans. Gore Vidal, in his recent autobiography "Point To Point Navigation" devotes much of the final two chapters of his book to praising Hartmann's and Lamar Waldron's scholarship in "solving" the JFK case (JFK was a friend of Vidal's).

Talk radio career[link]

Thom Hartmann doing his radio show, the Thom Hartmann Program.

Hartmann started in radio as a DJ (country, rock, progressive overnight) in 1968 in Lansing, Michigan, (on WITL, WVIC, WFMK) and program director at WNBY and worked full or part-time in radio while also attending school and/or running businesses in Michigan for a decade. He returned to radio in February 2003 with a show on a local station in Vermont, then a month later picked up the noon-3 PM ET slot on the i.e. America Radio Network and Sirius Satellite Radio. In 2005, he moved from Vermont to Oregon and, in addition to continuing his national show, also co-hosted a local talk show in Portland, Oregon (with Carl Wolfson, the late Heidi Tauber, and later Christine Alexander), from 2005 until early 2007 on KPOJ, initially an affiliate of Air America Radio owned by Clear Channel Communications. The KPOJ local morning 6 – 9 AM PT is now hosted by Carl Wolfson. In late 2010 Hartmann moved his show from Portland to Washington D.C.^{[citation needed]}

Hartmann's national program, on the air since 2003 and now in the 3PM to 6PM ET daypart, was chosen by Air America to replace Al Franken on most Air America affiliates in 2007.^[10] Some stations, such as The Quake in San Francisco, had already dropped or moved Franken for Hartmann, who now is, according to Talkers Magazine, America's most important liberal talker. As of March 2012, the show was carried on 81 terrestrial radio stations in 34 states as well as on Sirius and XM satellite radio. A community radio station in Africa, Radio Builsa in Ghana, also broadcasts the show. Various local cable TV networks simulcast the program.

According to his syndicator Dial Global, more people listen to Hartmann's show on more stations than any other progressive talk show in America. The Thom Hartmann Show is estimated by industry magazine Talkers to have 2.75 million unique listers per week. In addition to Dial Global, a subsidiary of Triton Media Group, the show is now also offered via Pacifica Audioport to non-profit stations in a non-profit compliant format and is simulcast on Dish Network Channel 9415 via Free Speech TV Network.

Many guests appear on the show purporting points of view on diverse social and political topics. Some guests proffer progressive views similar to Hartmann's, but more than half are conservatives, libertarians, or Ayn Rand Institute members^[11] who espouse opposing views. A vigorous debate with the host usually ensues. There are four regular guests on the program, and they are sympathetic to Hartmann's political views. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT) appears every Friday during the first hour of the show titled "Brunch with Bernie". Ellen Ratner of the Talk Radio News Service provides Washington commentary daily. Victoria Jones who is the White House correspondent for Talk Radio News Service appears occasionally as does Dr. Ravi Batra an economics professor at SMU.

Like all talk radio shows, The Thom Hartmann Program takes calls from listeners. When callers asked Thom how he was, he used to reply, "I'm great, but I'll get better." But after a time callers would regularly try to elicit this response so he's stopped replying this way routinely. Hartmann ends each show with the phrase, "Activism begins with you, democracy begins with you. Get out there, get active! Tag, you're it!"

TV program[link]

Hartmann produces a one hour daily TV show, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, which is seen worldwide on the Russian-based RT news channel, as well as on Free Speech TV; through Free Speech TV it is also seen on selected local-origination and Public-access television cable TV channels.

Business career[link]

Hartmann began his business career in the early 1970s while in his 20s, co-founding The Woodley Herber Company. Woodley Herber sold herbal products, potpourris and teas, and operated until 1978. It was during this time that Hartmann obtained three degrees in herbology and homeopathic medicine, one of which was from a diploma mill. Thereafter Hartmann moved to New Hampshire to begin The New England Salem Children's Village,^[12] which still operates in Rumney, New Hampshire. He was Executive Director of NESCT for five years, and on its board for over 25 years. NESCT's child-care model was based on that of the German Salem International organization, and through his affiliation with that group he helped start international relief programs in Uganda, Colombia, Russia, Israel, India, Australia, and several other countries between 1979 and today.

Hartmann founded International Wholesale Travel and its retail subsidiary Sprayberry Travel in Atlanta in 1983, a business which in the intervening years^{[clarification needed]} has generated over a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue.^{[citation needed]} According to their website, Sprayberry Travel was lauded by the Wall Street Journal in 1984 for being one of the early adopters of frequent travel programs analogous to the recently initiated frequent flyer programs of the airline industry.^[13] He sold his share in the business in 1986 and retired with his family to Germany to work with the international relief organization Salem International.^[14] In the late 1970s, he had been a trainer in advertising and marketing for The American Marketing Centers (now defunct), and in 1987 after returning from Germany founded the Atlanta advertising agency Chandler, MacDonald, Stout, Schneiderman & Poe, Inc., which did business as The Newsletter Factory.^[15] He sold his interest in that company in 1996 and retired to Vermont.

Other areas of notability[link]

Hartmann is a writer who has published more than twenty books on diverse topics. The title which won the most critical acclaim is The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. In 1999 he was invited by the Dalai Lama to spend a week in Dharamsala after the Dalai Lama finished reading this book. Hartmann won the Project Censored Award in 2004 for Unequal Protection. As a result of a book on spirituality, The Prophet's Way, he was invited in 1998 to meet Pope John Paul II.

Trained in the 1970s in Neuro-Linguistic Programming by Richard Bandler (Hartmann is licensed by Bandler's Society of NLP as both an NLP Practitioner and an NLP Trainer, and Bandler wrote the foreword to his book "Healing ADD"), Hartmann popularized some of its concepts in Cracking the Code (2007), which argues that Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz made use of them in the 1980s and 1990s for Republican Party causes and advocates using them to advance liberalism. His book "Healing ADD" also leans heavily on NLP techniques. His book on the JFK Assassination (written with Lamar Waldron) titled "Ultimate Sacrifice" is cited extensively in the last two chapters of Gore Vidal's recent autobiography as having "finally solved" that case.

Hartmann was one of several contributors to Air America, the Playbook, a 300 plus page collection of essays, transcripts, and interviews by liberal radio personalities. It was published shortly before the 2006 Congressional elections and was on The New York Times Best Seller list for October 8, 2006.^[16]

Leonardo DiCaprio made a web movie titled "Global Warning" that was inspired by The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Hartmann appears in DiCaprio's 2007 documentary The 11th Hour, as well as the feature documentary film Dalai Lama Renaissance (with Harrison Ford), and Crude Impact.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder[link]

Hartmann has authored in the area of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and adult attention-deficit disorder (AADD) and is the creator (first proposed by him in 1978, first published nationally in 1992) of the now well-known hunter vs. farmer theory that ADD is an expected evolutionary adaptation to hunting lifestyles. These individuals have the ability of rapidly shifting their focus and external attention and of holding multiple trains of thought. This ability causes difficulties when they must live and work in cultures in which "farming" – well-planned, predictable, organized and repetitive behaviors – is typical. His first book on the disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder: a Different Perception was described by Scientific American as "innovative and fresh".^[17] Hartmann has established specialized schools^[quantify] for children with ADHD, such as The Hunter School in Rumney, New Hampshire,^[18] which he co-founded with his wife Louise.

He also operated the "ADD Forum" and "DeskTop Publishing Forum", along with several others, on CompuServe.^[19]

Bibliography[link]

• 2011: Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country. Berrett-Koehler. ISBN 978-1-60509-706-0. 
• 2010 (second edition): Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became "People" – And How You Can Fight Back. Berrett-Koehler. ISBN 1-60509-559-1. 
• 2009: Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture. Viking. ISBN 0-670-02091-5. 
• 2008: Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination (by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann). Counterpoint. ISBN 1-58243-535-9. 
• 2007: Cracking The Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision. Berrett-Koehler. ISBN 978-1-57675-458-0. 
• 2006: Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. Berrett-Koehler. ISBN 1-57675-414-6. 
• 2006: Walking Your Blues Away: Practical Bilateral Therapies for Healing the Mind and Optimizing Emotional Well-Being. Park Street Press. ISBN 1-59477-144-8. 
• 2005: Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-1441-7.  by Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartmann
• 2004: What Would Jefferson Do?. Harmony Books. ISBN 1-882109-38-4. 
• 2004: We the People: A Call to Take Back America. Coreway Media, Inc.. ISBN 1-4000-5208-4. 
• 2004 (revised ed.): Unequal Protection. Rodale Books. ISBN 1-57954-955-1. 
• 2004 (revised ed. – first ed. 1998): The Prophet's Way. Park Street Press. ISBN 0-89281-198-6. 
• 2004 (revised ed. – first ed. 1997): Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 1-4000-5157-6. 
• 2003: The Edison Gene. Park Street Press. ISBN 0-89281-128-5. 
• 2000: Thom Hartmann's Complete Guide to ADHD: Help for Your Family at Home, School and Work. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-52-0. 
• 2000: The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century. Hampton Roads. ISBN 1-57174-166-6. 
• 1998: Healing ADD. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-37-7. 
• 1996: Beyond ADD. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-12-1. 
• 1996: Think Fast!. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-08-3.  by Thom Hartmann and Jane Bowman, with Susan Burgess
• 1995: ADD Success Stories. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-03-2. 
• 1994: Focus Your Energy: Hunting for Success in Business. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-51689-2. 
• 1994: ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to Fulfillment in the Business World. Select Books. ISBN 1-59079-017-0. 
• 1992 (first edition): ADD: A Different Perception. Underwood Books. ISBN 1-887424-14-8.