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Earlier this week, the house approved the $700 billion bailout bill. If you assume that there are 300 million Americans, this works out to be $2,333 per person. Of course, not all 300 million Americans are taxpayers. If only half of Americans are taxpayers, this works out to almost $5,000 per person.

What else could you purchase for $700 billion?

The Seattle Mariners play in Safeco Field. It cost about $517 million to build. For $700 billion, you could build 1,354 Safeco Field’s.

The new Freedom Tower in New York City is estimated to cost $3 billion to build. You could build 233 of these for $700 billion.

A dollar bill is 6.14 inches long. 700 billion dollar bills is 4.298 trillion inches in length. This is equal to 67,834,595.95 miles. The distance to the moon is 238,900 miles. This amount is about 284 times farther than the distance from the earth to the moon.

The current price of oil is $93.88/barrel. At this price, the US could buy 7,456,327,226 barrels of oil for $700 billion. The US currently imports 10,031,000 barrels per day. For $700 billion, we could import at our current rate for 743 days without running out of money assuming that the price stays the same.

At $9 per movie ticket, the government could buy each American 259 movie tickets.

A dollar bill is .0043 inches thick. $700 billion worth of dollar bills is 3,010,000,000 inches thick. This is equivalent to 250,833,333 feet or 47,506 miles thick. The Eiffel Tower is 1,063 feet tall. You could stand 23,596 Eiffel Towers on top of each other to reach the same height of $700 billion worth of dollar bills. The highest point in the world is Mt. Everest standing at 29,029 feet tall. Even at this staggering height, you would have to stand 8,640 Mt. Everests on top of each other to be the same height as $700 billion worth of dollar bills.

There are plenty of other comparisons I could make to show enormous amount of money that the US is spending to bail out the financial industry. I can think of plenty of other things that the US could spend their money on.

Host Hotels and Resorts is poised for a decent run upwards over the next few months I believe. Between the months of May and July, the stock dropped from a high of $18.76 all the way down to $11.14, a drop of 40.6%. Ouch! Ever since that low, the stock has risen back up to it’s current price of $14.27. This is a gain of 28.1%. I think that the stock is on it’s way back up to at least $18/share before the end of the year. This would give it a gain of 26.1% from today’s price.

I have come up with this price target purely by doing a quick technical analysis of the stock’s chart. Take a look at the chart below to see how it has fared over the past three months.

Based on my calculations, the slope of this positive sloping trendline is about +$1.76/month. Remember though that this is a fairly arbitrary line that was chosen based upon my opinion of the chart. I believe that this line does represent a fairly accurate view of how the stock has moved over the past few months. Even more encouraging is that it has continued to fare well, even as the market has been very shaky over the past few months.

Based on a slope of +$1.76/month, I believe that the stock should be well situated in the $18s by November.

One should take note though of a strong patch of resistance between $17.25 and $17.50. As you can see in the chart below, the stock struggled to make it through the elusive $17.50 mark as it traded in a narrow band between $16.00 and $17.50 for about four months between the beginning of January through the end of April.

You will notice at the end of May HST ended its’ short lived one-month above $17.50. As soon as it dropped below this mark, the stock tanked and dropped all the way down to $11.14/share in a little over a month.

I think that the stock will have an easy run up to the $17.50 range and then stagnate for a little while. I would either sell at this point or put a trailing stop loss order on the stock with a roughly $1.50 trail to lock in your profits.

If you get in before 9/30/2008, you will also be eligible for the $.20/share dividend. That puts the current yield at abot 5.6%. That beats any certificate or money market account these days

For the past few months we have been having multiple people come in telling us how worried they are about their deposits at Washington Mutual. It seems like these days people are starting to act on these worries. Yesterday we took in about $500,000 in new money that was deposited straight from Washington Mutual. $500,000 doesn’t sound like a ton of money for a financial institution, but if you consider the fact that our size is only $500 million, it puts it in more perspective. This comes out to .1% of our total deposits.

One should also take into consideration that this data is for only one of the 8 branches. If this coincidentally happened at each of our branches, this would have totaled $4 million in new money just from WAMU for the day.

WAMU is insured by the FDIC up to $100,000. If they fail though, you won’t have instant access to your money. It can take the feds up to 3 months to get your money back to you. If you were without your money for three whole months, what would you do? This explains why people are starting to panic more and more about WAMU.

If you find yourself worried about your account at WAMU or another institution, consider moving your funds over to a credit union. Credit unions are typically more conservative in nature than banks, and therefore are a safer bet for your money. Credit Unions are insured by the NCUA, which is similar to the FDIC. The NCUA insures your accounts up to $100,000 as well. If a credit union fails though, the NCUA will have your funds back to you within three days, not three months. Something to consider when looking for a new institution.

Since the price of gas has been going up so much lately, I have tried to make a conscious effort to try and drive less. Besides the fact that is makes sense for me economically, it is good for the environment as well. I am proud to say that I have gone over an entire month without filling up my tank. What makes this even more impressive is the fact that my car only gets about 250 miles per tank. The last time I filled up my car was 7/22/2008. That makes it a month and three days as of today, and a month and four days as of tomorrow.

I have a few theories about why I managed to accomplish this feat. 21 days had been my previous tops since I bought the car in October 2007. The main reason I think that has contributed to my decrease in driving is my new living location. Previously I had to drive back and forth to the park and ride each day. It worked out to about 8 miles each day in driving. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you think about it, that is 40 miles per week. My car only gets about 17 mpg in the city, so that means I went through 2.35 gallons per week. Now I have an extra 2.35 gallons per week to do something else with. I can also walk to the grocery store now instead of always having to drive. That saves at least 2 miles per trip as well.

All in all I can’t say I am too upset with not driving as much. It has definitely saved me a bit of money as well.

Crystal Research, and independent research company has just issued a 64-page research report on Generex Biotechnology. Crystal Research “is an independent research service company dedicated to increasing the visibility of innovative and growing private and public companies that represent extraordinary investment opportunities. Regardless of the size of the client, our independent research and advisory services provide additional value and assistance in realizing a company’s goals, enabling it to achieve its fullest potential.”

They focus on companies with “solid growth prospects, well-designed operating and growth strategies, an experienced and proven management team, command of a niche position in a large and expanding market, and a unique or innovative position or technology.”

After looking at some of the other companies that Crystal Research has covered, it appears that they mainly cover smaller BioTech companies.

This research report is free for anyone who wants to read it. You can access this report here.

In the review, they mention many things that are in Generex’s favor. There are currently 246 million people with diabetes worldwide. They also mention that diabetes is the 4th leading cause of death in the world. Since Generex’s product targets diabetes victims, this provides an excellent potential customer base for them.

When I moved into a more expensive living situation, I knew that I needed to so something to ensure that I would always have the funds available to pay rent on time. I currently pay $735/month for a studio apartment in the Seattle area. Based on my research, it is a good price given the area it is in. Since it was so much more than my usual rent, I decided to create a rent savings plan.

I figured there are roughly 21 week days during the average month. I then took $735/mo and divided it by the 21 days and I got $35/weekday. So each weekday I have my financial institution automatically transfer $35 from my checking to my savings. By the end of the month, I should have the $735 needed to pay rent.

This is an easy way to plan ahead for expenses without having to do a lot of thinking about it. The small daily transfer gives me some consistency, rather than a larger transfer at the end of each week where I may forget it is going to take place. If I had it my way I would have the transfer take place each day of the month, but my institution does  not support that.

I think that anyone who is having trouble making an expected monthly payment on time should consider taking up this savings method. It really works for me and this type of budget could easily work for you too! I encourage you to give it a try.

Although the price of gas has dropped a little bit over the past few weeks, it is still really expensive to fill up. Here in Seattle, premium gas is over $4.30/gallon. For me, this means that I am paying $.24 per mile to drive my car. While there are a lot of trips where driving a car simply makes more sense, I am starting to find that there are quite a few trips that can be just as easily traveled by bicycle.

In order to assist me, I have a speedometer on my bike to assist me in calculating my distance. To be specific, the bicycle computer that I use is the Sigma 906. It currently retails for $22.98 at Pricepoint.com. It is a pretty simply bicycle computer. It is nothing too fancy, but it takes care of the essential functions like trip and total distance, current speed, max speed and average speed. My only gripe is that I haven’t been able to find an easy way to reset all of the values of a trip. If I erase the trip distance, the trip time will remain active. Because of this I have to go through and manually reset every statistic.

Anyway, I am using this bicycle computer to help me to track how much I have saved on riding my bike. So far I have ridden 16.82 miles, which has saved me $4.04. This isn’t much, but it can add up over a course of a year depending on how much I actually ride. For the most part I am able to keep up with traffic and Seattle does a good job of providing bike lanes and other places to ride. I would be a bit quicker if I had a road bike instead of a mountain bike, and slick tires instead of knobby treaded ones. So far I have ridden to the book store, the drug store, and my girlfriends place and back.

The best part is even if I am not saving money, I am still getting some exercise in the process.

American Medical Alert Corporation (AMAC) had issued a press release stating that they are predicting the gross revenues will increase to $39,200,000. This is a 10% increase from FY 2007. They have also predicted a growth in net earnings of 25% from last year. Additionally, their net earnings growth over the past three years is 104% if everything goes as projected.

This good news coincides with the release of a new product by the company. In Q4 of 2008 the company hopes to release a medication management and dispensing product called MedSmart. The company is also expecting to be receiving awards for its TBCS (Telephony Based Communication Services) in the second half of 2008.

For more details on this article, you can read it in its’ entirety at marketwatch.com.

For more information on AMAC, click here.

Their stock is presently trading at $6.41/share, which is down 34.9% from its’ 52-week high (10/31/2007) and up 25.9% from its’ 52-week low (3/17/2008).

As a side note, I presently hold stock in this company.

Every so often I will get something in the mail from “The Natural Contrarian.” I like to hang on to them for a while just to see how their picks really work out. It is a good way to try and test out the true track record of an investment company. I would think that in order to show how great at picking stocks they are, they would send a free recommendation for a surefire winner. This would convince people that they knew what they were doing and would entice them to do some investing with them.

Most recently (Oct 2007) it was a pamphlet touting their latest “hall of fame” pick. Inside this eight page color pamphlet was a lot of information on this up and coming company. The top line of the pamphlet proclaimed, “Expect +10,000% profits if you hold FXPE” (the ticker has recently changed to FXPT) “at least 6 months.” The reason that this large price run-up was expected was because Fox Petroleum was said to have access to “160 million barrels of oil along Alaska’s North Slope.”

Since I received this recommendation, FXPT has been in constant free fall. The flyer claimed that FXPT would reach $55/share, but in reality is has come nowhere even close. On April 21st, 2008, the stock did a 1 for 5 split in order to boost their price. On a split adjusted basis, the stock was trading at approximately $12/share, but it was actually at $2.40/share when the recommendation was made. It is currently trading at $1.52, or $.304 in October 2007 prices. This is a total decrease in price of 87.33%. So much for the massive gains they were expecting.

This example just goes to show that you shouldn’t blindly follow someone’s advice even if they claim that it is a surefire winner. One should always do their due diligence before investing.

Yesterday I stumbled across this website somehow or another. I’m not totally sure. Anyway, what I found was a very useful and informative site. Ever wonder what mutual fund companies own your particular stock. Better yet, what stocks does a particular mutual fund hold? At MFFAIS you can find that all out from their wealth of information.

Here is how it works:

You search the name or symbol of any stock or mutual fund that you want to look at. It doesn’t seem like this search option has been perfected yet, because I had some troubles finding a stock using the search tool. The best way to find what you are looking for is by starting letter. If you are looking at a stock, it will show you all the mutual funds that are currently invested or recently sold out. It also shows the number of shares that they own and what those shares are worth. You could also click on a mutual fund and it would show you all of the funds current holdings and recent sells. It then shows the number of shares in each company that fund holds.

You can also find out some interesting information on the site’s home page. For example, the top mutual fund class right now is the Global small/mid cap growth class. It also shows that Philip Morris was recently added to 230 different funds.

While I wouldn’t base my trading decisions on what this site says, it is interesting to see what the professionals are doing. If picking stocks is what they do every day for a living, I would think that their choices would likely be a bit better than mine. Just a guess. Although it is nice to see that some funds are doing worse than me this year. According to the site, the worst performing fund is Fursa Alternative Strategies LLC.