Lightsquared - some comments

I usually find Senator Charles Grassley's attempts to provoke spats with big-name hedge fund managers tendentious. But in his spat with Falcone and Harbinger he is right on the money. Lightsquared deserves to fail and Grassley knows it.

If you don't know the background start with Bethany McLean's excellent article on Phil and Lisa Falcone in Vanity Fair. I think McLean tries too hard to be balanced on the key policy issue of spectrum and Lightsquared - but McLean offers a good introduction to the issues. By contrast Grassley is not balanced but he is right. Here is why.

There is an international body that administers a binding international treaty on how spectrum should be allocated. That body is the International Telecommunications Union.

The rules need to be binding because otherwise one country's communications build-out could jam communications from another country. This is particularly important where countries are densely packed (like Europe) but is also important in the Americas especially regarding satellite spectrum. (After all spectrum use by Argentina could interfere with spectrum use by the United States if that spectrum is used by a geostationary satellite.)

The biggest conflict is between satellite spectrum and terrestrial spectrum. Satellites are a long way away (in geosynchronous orbit they are 35,786 kilometres above the equator). Because they are a long way away the signal is not very powerful and you often need a dish to catch enough signal to make it usable. Being a very weak signal you need to ensure that there is no very powerful signal in the same spectral region. A powerful signal will block a weak signal just as surely as a big city radio station can drown out a less powerful regional station a little further up the (frequency) dial.

The ITU's job is to make sure this does not happen. The treaty for instance stops Canadian land-based radio devices jamming distant (and hence much weaker) American satellite devices and vice-versa.

The first thing the ITU does it allocates some spectrum as global spectrum (mostly for satellites but also for communicating with ships at sea and similar) and other spectrum as terrestrial spectrum which member countries can allocate however they want. After all there is little international issue in land-based spectrum because interference is basically local. (A cell phone in New York does not interfere with a cell phone in London or visa-versa – so the allocation of terrestrial spectrum in London can be done independently of the American Government or vice-versa.)

Generally satellite spectrum is given away or sold very cheaply – but it comes with obligations. The main obligation is to build out some (normally global) social network (eg communication to remote areas or ships at sea). Terrestrial spectrum is auctioned by local governments and often carries the right to build a cell phone network. That spectrum is hugely valuable and is auctioned for billions of dollars.

There is an underlying global policy issue here – which is that cell phone use is growing like crazy and the real shortages of spectrum are for cell phones rather than for satellites. The iPhone and other internet devices are the core culprit and the inability of many of my readers to use their iPhone in New York City is testament to that.

In an ideal world some of the spectrum allocated to satellites would – over time – be shifted to domestic use and auctioned by the local authorities. This can't be done fast because businesses have satellites in space at the cost of several billion dollars and you can't just render them useless by drowning their signal with (nearer and hence much stronger) domestic signal.

Enter Phil Faclone and Lightsquared. Lightsquared gets access to some satellite spectrum cheaply and then ploughs headlong into a loophole in spectrum laws. The loophole is this: satellite spectrum licenses allow the construction of ground-based booster stations to retransmit their signal and hence make it more useful. The example envisaged is say a remote town in Alaska needs a 6 foot dish to receive the signal (and hence say get high speed internet). Rather than have everyone in the town install a six foot dish they install a single dish and then retransmit the signal around the town – and that way everyone in the remote area can use the signal cheaply. Seems sensible enough.

But in the eyes of Falcone this gives him the right to use 40 thousand plus booster stations all they way across America so he can retransmit to everyone. Of course these booster stations will also be connected to ground-based fibre networks where appropriate. And so Falcone plans to build another US national cell phone network or at least to sell spectrum to the existing networks.

This is – to put it mildly – audacious. And there is little doubt that American consumers would benefit from more wireless spectrum capacity.

But also to put it mildly it is a massive lean on the American taxpayer. You see if the spectrum had been auctioned like traditional spectrum the taxpayer would have received billions of dollars – dollars that will might now flow to Lightsquared and Falcone. Rarely have I seen taxpayers give away larger gifts to corporates (and that includes the banks) but in this case they are giving the gift to one slightly compromised billionaire and his hedge-fund clients. It is really hard – nay impossible – to see any policy basis for that gift.

But the FCC (the relevant regulator) rolled over and granted Falcone permission. McLean points out the political donations involved (they were large my the standards of most people, but tiny when billions of dollars are on the line). Falcone also hired the husband of a key FCC staffer to be a lobbyist. I shouldn't be surprised – this is they way some billionaires make money in the US. But the regulatory birth of Lightsquared will cast a stain across its future and its financing – a stain that I hope Falcone can't avoid.

The first stain is possible interference between Lightsquared's terrestrial network and GPS. There is not much spectral distance between Lightsquared and much GPS signal – but GPS signal is weak (it comes from satellites) and Lightsquared will be much stronger (it is domestic and it needs to carry lots of information). That means that Lightsquared will potentially interfere with GPS networks. Serious people including the defence department object to Falcone's use of the spectrum. Falcone – quoted in McLean's articles – accuses the critics of making up the GPS objection to protect their privileged domestic spectrum positions. Two responses: those critics include the defence department and clearly Falcone is stretching it there, secondly the other critics paid good money to taxpayers for their privileged spectrum position – Falcone relied on a loophole.]

But the GPS stain is not going away. I don't know whether the spectrum interference is terminal or not – but the loophole-political-donation issue raises makes it more believable. After all this spectrum was not allocated according to standard international practice.

And the stain is going to make it really hard for Falcone to finance the use of this spectrum. After all if the network interferes with GPS that will make it less useful. After some pilot too trained to use his GPS gets his signal jammed and crashes a plane Falcone will find it much harder to maintain his ill-gotten spectrum position. Money lent against Lightsquared might be lost because the underlying spectrum ownership is ephemeral.

Carl Icahn it seems has been buying Lightsquared's debt. That will be a fantastic investment if Lightsquared can get past the stain of its birth. But I doubt it.

Anyway I hope this post contributes to the end-failure of Lightsquared. Dirty or incompetent regulators make bad capitalism. If Falcone had obtained the spectrum the usual way, paying the usual number of billion dollars and dealing with interference issues (like GPS) in an open and transparent manner I would have no problems. As it is Falcone sickens me and Grassley is right on the money.

Dear Mr Falcone....

As a manager of a small hedge-fund to one of the leaders in my industry: I will respect you again when you make your next entirely straight billion dollars.

It is not this one.



John

Mr Fred allows me a victory lap...

Sir Fred was not a good man -
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air -
And bad Sir Fred stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his frown.

Sir Fred was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon ...
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune for the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

(Apologies to AAMilne...)

Some links:

The fourth post ever on this blog in which I say Sir Fred Goodwin should be sacked for cause and denied his retirement benefits. I argue he is (now was) the worst CEO of any major bank anywhere.


And the end game as reported by FTAlphaville: Introducing Mr Fred Goodwin - Former Knights of the Bachelor...



John

Does my butt look fat in this?

Kid Dynamite summed up the case for lululemon athletica inc (always spelled in fashionable lower case) very simply. His sister, and presumably many other women, thought the clothes make their butt look good. I gather this is not original - Howard Lindzon has also turned a few choice phrases in bullish promotion of the stock.

I thought this was crass - but for the life of me I can't think of any better explanation for the stock price.

Background

lululemon athletica it is a remarkable company. The website describes the product (in lower case) as "yoga clothes and running gear for sweaty workouts" and it sells its products in the three fattest nations in the world (USA, Australia and Canada). You would think a specialist yoga and running clothes retailer in those markets would be playing to a limited audience.

But if you thought that you would be wrong.

lulu had sales of $629 million for the nine months ended October 30. This was up about 35 percent from last year. This is a retailer so the fourth quarter matters. Last year they did 245 million in sales in that quarter and this year (at a guess) it will be 35 percent higher - say 331 million. Annual sales will be somewhat shy of a billion dollars.

A billion dollars in sales is a lot of "yoga clothes and running gear for sweaty workouts". Nike by contrast does just over 20 billion in sales but shoes are a much bigger category - and their market is seemingly much wider. After all Nike also makes shoes for yoga and running (and my guess is the shoes should command more gross dollars of margin than the leotards).

Scale and stock price

A billion dollars in sales is huge for such a narrow category. But even that is small compared to lulu's stock price. You see lulu market cap is now almost $10 billion. The stock is priced at 10 times sales. That is amazing for a fashion company. Nike by comparison has a market cap of $46 billion and a price to sales ratio of just over 2. And Nike is not a thin margin business. No other clothing company comes close.

Here is a chart of Apple's price to sales ratio:

Apple spent most the time at about 1 to 3 times sales (currently just over 3) and never exceeded 7 times sales.

Apple was never as richly valued as lulu lemon athletica.

So I want to play the valuation guessing game.

*  What is the value of the end market for yoga and running clothes. Is it $5 billion per year at which point lulu will be priced like Nike or is it larger or smaller?
*  Can you explain the stock price in any terms other than a play on female vanity? Is Kid Dynamite's explanation of the brand appeal and the stock right?
*  Even as a play on female vanity is it overpriced?
*  What if anything keeps the competition out of yoga clothes?

I would really like to know what any of the big institutional holders are thinking. Maybe their butt looks fantastic but their brain looks a little suspect.

I have no position. Shorting female vanity is not something I have ever done successfully - and I sure as hell would not want to be long this. Besides the entire "it is overpriced" argument applied 50 percent down from here.




John

Sky People Fruit Juice and the trials of a short seller

Just a link for today - to Roddy Boyd talking about Kevin Barnes and Sky People Fruit Juice.

Roddy is someone I always read.

If Sky People issue a rebuttal I will - in the interest of fairness - link that as well.


John

Diversions: Wild is the wind

Just had a fabulously productive day at work (meaning I got a long way towards some money-making ideas).

And for that I am happy enough for now.

So I am indulging in diversions:

Tesco - request for comments

The number of problem long investments in my portfolio doubled overnight - from one to two. (We have some small problem longs and some large longs with more minor problems - and some problem shorts but only two largish positions that are doing poorly.)

The treacherous two are the (much discussed) Bank of America long and the (less discussed) Tesco. Bank of America is a bank - therefore highly levered - and therefore total disasters can't ever be discounted. But Tesco is a grocer with a seemingly impregnable position in the UK and some positions elsewhere that may or may not be fine. It is hard to see how you compete with Tesco in its core business - and hence it is pretty hard to see how they get into real trouble. They have debt (driven by the demands of investors during the last cycle to "sweat the balance sheet" but the debt should not be problematic and the repayments are fairly rapid.)

I thought Tesco was my "safe" long. The relatively safety made the position bigger!

Oops.

On Tesco, I was sceptical of their expansion into the United States. Grocers (indeed retailers in general) have a poor record of crossing borders - there are plenty of cultural differences.

More to the point it is fairly easy to open up in competition in the US - there are vacant big-boxes everywhere and soon to be more - but it is very hard to open up in competition in the built-up cities of the UK. The UK is thus naturally a good business (hard to compete with) and the US less so. [Contra: I guess that is why they open in the US - because they can get sites...]

But when I revealed the position one of my regular correspondents (and obviously smarter than me) admonished me. He thought the American positions would be fine but the UK was going to be problematic - he thought margin declines could be nasty. And that is how it looks right now - the US has very good sales growth - the UK rapidly falling sales growth (a very bad second derivative) and declining margins to boot.

Margins may be the end of this story - but maybe there is something else. After all the competing retailers did well over Christmas - the problems look Tesco specific.

So here is a request for comments. When I was last in the UK (both recent trips) I did not step out of the international city of London. Oxford Street is visibly doing quite well. But the UK is not. My friends with businesses over the UK describe the city as a cocoon in which you can comfortably shop and see no problems with the world. Go to business parks in Edinburgh once built for grand financial institutions and it looks different.

So here is a request - and it is a request for my (relatively few) UK readers outside London. What is going on at Tesco and Sainsbury in places like Leeds or any other major regional city in the UK? Is there a reason why the problems appear Tesco specific? Is Tesco deliberately going down market (they appear to be in recent promotional videos).

My hopeful request to readers is for someone to conduct an "apple freshness test" in a regional city. For this test you buy an apple from each of the local grocers on the same day and leave them on the shelf to see the order in which they rot to the point you would not eat them. Twelve days is generally pretty good - it means the supply chain is fast and efficient. Eight days less so. The grocer that loses the apple freshness test eventually loses the reputation for fresh food and will (inevitably) lose margins and profits. This is something that happens imperceptibly - but women (and they are mostly women in this case) are very good subjective judges of where to shop.

The "apple freshness test" is the core here. The company says that at the "heart" of what they need to do is fresh foods. Fresh foods is only partly about what happens in the store. To be fresh they need to deal with the chain.

Hoping for help from my readers.



John

It is a small (meaning worthless) consolation that the two stocks on which I am suffering are the ones Warren Buffett has been buying. I am losing money in good company - but they are losses just the same. (Unlike him though I have some winning short-sales...)

The forthcoming irrelevance of the Australian consumer electronics retailers

This is a post aimed squarely at my hedge fund manager readers who regularly ask me what to short in Australia. The most obvious target (in my view) is retailers - and as a taster I start with the big-box consumer electronics retailers.

Australia still has two electronics chains doing big-box consumer electronics. These are JB HiFi which is well run, has a modern format, a short history and not much balance sheet and Harvey Norman which is a little more old fashioned (like Circuit City in the 1990s it still sells fridges on prime real estate) but has a better balance sheet (reflecting its once glorious history). Harvey Norman also has a franchise model - it does not own all of its stores.

In the US the debate is whether the country can support one or zero highly profitable big box chains. Best Buy - the bears argue - is the showroom for Amazon. In Australia as I said we still have two chains - its as if Circuit City were still around. Moreover because Harvey Norman has a balance sheet it can survive quite a long time and Gerry Harvey is prone to say it is the competitor that will go out of business. But Harvey Norman really is losing share to JB Hi Fi and ultimately both will lose share to the internet.

Gerry Harvey sounds somewhat desperate these days - firstly arguing that internet shopping is a con (nobody makes any money in it) and then arguing that there should be additional taxes on it. Then he sets up an internet company in Ireland.  It looks really bad except that because of the above-mentioned balance sheet he can stay around for a while and he might even be able to liquidate and be left with something valuable at the end. (I still believe liquidating a large retailer is scary-hard.)

The JB HiFi model

JB HiFi spends a lot of money to look cheap. Have a look at their website - it is almost a parody of old-style discounting pamphlets. The stores have false plywood floors to make them look like a discounting house. They have young staff wearing casual clothes and signs that are carefully printed on a computer so that they look hand-drawn. The shop is deliberately cluttered giving it a feeling of being (very) crowded. They don't do products that are not hip. There are no fridges, blenders, toasters but lots of pads, laptops, large screen TVs and computer games. The Apple products are given prime place not because selling them is profitable but because it makes the store look cool.

And for a long time JB HiFi really were cheap. The website flashes the slogan "cheapest prices - always". This was a company with the virtuous cycle of looking cheap and being cheap, selling fast, having high turnover and low inventory costs (important in electronics where obsolescence is quick) and just looking like a happening place. It was also a hot stock.

But it does not ring true any more. They are not the "cheapest prices always" - far from it. They match prices on large items where people price check and they will match prices if you really push them (trade practices law in Australia makes it hard to advertise the cheapest price if you don't have it) but I am noticing that on "convenience items" such as cables and SD cards they are pricing aggressively high. They spend money to look cheap but they aren't any more. It is the advertising tag-line of a decaying business.

They missed earnings expectations a while ago - the stock is having a rough time. But it is still fairly richly valued (do comparisons of price to sales if you want). The immediate question is how far further will it go and will Gerry Harvey keep throwing his good balance sheet at staying in the game and give them pricing pressure. Gerry Harvey it seems wants to be the survivor.

My Christmas Observation

I purchased a camcorder at Christmas and forgot to buy an SD card. These produce a lot of data so a big (ie 32gb) card was required.

Here is the only such card at the JB Hi Fi in the major shopping mall in Bondi Junction.

You see that price right: $299. It is the 45 mb/s version.

Here is the same product via an Amazon partner store at $128.

Gerry Harvey doesn't do better. Here is a 32 gb card at the Harvey Norman in the same shopping centre.

 The product is a Sandisk "ultra" at $190. Amazon will sell you an identical product for $39.

I am trying to work out the dynamics of this with regard to the stock. My best model is the decline of Radio Shack which did this before them. Radio Shack had a business model built on squeezing very fat margins out of customers that needed something now. They had 2400 stores over America so they were close enough to anyone who needed them pronto.

And proximity was useful. Remember the days you absolutely needed that Firewire cable and were prepared to drive to the local Radio Shack (or Dick Smith in Australia) and pay $10-20 for something that would cost 50c to purchase in China? As the Onion observed we do not need so many cables any more and Radio Shack has become irrelevant. These days it survives by selling mobile phone contracts.

Well as my little SD card survey demonstrates the big-box electronics stores here have become Radioshack - albeit with a bigger footprint and the pretence of "lowest prices". But Radioshack didn't blow up - it just sort of drifted away. The stock was $70 in 2000 - the peak year in which everyone was connecting their computers to the net and needed all those cables. It is $9 now.

That I think is the future here too. The two stores won't deal either one a death-blow. Gerry Harvey will continue to lose share to JB Hi Fi (who look cheaper and cooler) but he and his company are rich and they can bleed for a very long time. JB Hi Fi will continue to charge "convenience prices" to the customers hiding behind their faux-cheap facade.

And we will wake up in a decade and realize these companies are just not important - or for that matter even relevant.



John

Disclosure: no position in the funds. For various tax reasons we have elected to have no Australian positions.

Sears Holdings liquidation sale

We have been short Sears Holdings, publicly, albeit in small quantity. Being summer in Australia I did not even look at the market for the last couple of days - but got into work for some congratulatory emails as Sears stock is off very hard on an announcement of truly awful sales, the closure of 100 to 120 stores and $1.6 to $2.4 billion of non-cash charges. (More about the charges later on.)

I look pretty smart putting a Sears short on in November - and kudos is gratefully accepted but undeserved. I was short Sears at my old firm when the Eddie Lambert controlled K-Mart took them out for considerably more than they were worth. It was not the only time that happened to me - but multiple stabs don't dull the pain. I would gladly swap kudos for a refund of my then clients' money.*

The premise for owning Sears was property liquidation. The company owned many of its sites - sometimes on book at low historic values reflecting the company's long and once glorious history. Eddie Lambert and his merry-men were going to extract that value through selective store closures and super-profitable liquidation. Sears was an awful retailer (there was little doubt about that) but it was - they thought - a good property play.

My view: owning Sears as a property play is a demonstration of the arrogance and breathtaking naivete of much that passes on Wall Street. Sears Holdings has over 300 thousand employees. I don't know how you successfully liquidate a business integrated with that many lives. I don't know of anyone who has ever successfully liquidated a business with that many employees.** I am not sure it can be done and it certainly can't be done by someone with my skill-set (highly analytical, ability to spy value or value traps but no people management skill and not much tact).

The idea that Sears was going to be managed/liquidated by a bunch of hedge fund guys (people like me) well - that was comical.

Just to stress the point for my fund manager friends who read accounts and have my skills (but like me are often disconnected from the businesses they invest in) I will state the obvious. The employees are living breathing people and as you pull the business apart the way you treat those people and how they think about you (and behave towards you) are critical to any value you extract in liquidation. Someone has to look these people in the eye and tell them they don't have a job. And someone has to pick-and-choose which people to fire and which to retain. And they have to do this without destroying much of the value extracted along the way. They have to liquidate the firm in such a way that the value accrues to the liquidators and not to the people who are being screwed.

I don't care what you think of the morality of that. The reality of that is that it was always going to be hard - possibly very hard.***

We are about to find out how hard. Sears is going to close 100 to 120 stores (it is vague about the number) and fire many employees. But they have not worked out which employees or even which stores. Not to sound ghoulish - but my guess is that this is going to be considerably harder than the "Sears spokesman" makes it sound. And if they can't do 120 stores without trouble then the original Sears liquidation premise was insane. This is a case of Wall Street fantasy meeting reality: eventually reality wins.

The charges and reality

The large (non-cash!) charges deserve mention. This is from the Sears release:

[We Sears] expect that we will record in the fourth quarter a non-cash charge related to a valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets of $1.6 to $1.8 billion

You know what that means. It means that you should not expect to earn that profit in the future. It is the admission from the Eddie Lambert controlled Sears that the fantasy is over.

The reality is unchanged: when you think of the 1950s you think of Sears. Sears was (in Main Street reality) irrelevant a decade ago. The Wall Street fantasy took a little longer to end.


John



*(A note about Schadenfreude.) The take-over of the old Sears by the Eddie Lambert controlled K-Mart was the second worst day of my career. The worst day was when Fred Goodwin's Royal Bank of Scotland purchased Charter One Financial. When I started the blog one of the main goals was to spell out just how atrocious Sir Fred Goodwin (the then CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland) was. The fourth post on this blog was the beginning of my "Sir Fred Goodwin death watch". I enjoyed watching him and his bank come apart. But I should not have enjoyed it. Schadenfreude is not an attractive personality characteristic and the collapse of RBS has caused real pain to a lot of innocent parties. And a Schadenfreudegasm - well that just strikes me as unreasonably indulgent. After all my clients lost money - and I should and would but cannot swap any pleasure I had for a refund of their losses.

This time though I am just accepting the Schadenfreude. My client are making money and I have no reason to feel guilty about that. Moreover I don't have to fire those employees. Unlike Royal Bank of Scotland (which Sir Fred destroyed) Sears employees were doomed anyway.

**. It is worth mentioning the GM example. GM was salvaged through bankruptcy with a couple of hundred thousand employees. But those employees were particularly trapped, the shareholders were wiped out and the Government contributed considerable money. That is what a "successful" transition for a business with that many employees looks like.

***. (Politics, employees and realism). I am a bleeding heart left-winger and naturally feel a little paternalistic to the employees being fired. However you don't need to be a bleeding heart lefty to agree with my analysis. A realist will tell that when you have 300 thousand employees your relation to them is going to be critical in running your business. Employees are "stakeholders" even if your only (moral) criteria is "shareholder value". Realism over politics is a better basis for investment.

Future Joseph Jett traders get a Christmas card from Mario Draghi

Well the Euro fix is in. Whether it works - that is another question. But the fix is this: European banks can borrow unlimited amounts for three years to buy Euro government debt. The debt often yields 5 percent. The money costs 1 percent.

The Government debt has - at least for the moment - a very low (mostly zero) risk weighting for capital adequacy purposes so the return on regulatory equity is more than adequate.

Now of all the things you want to be - top of the list these days has got to be a trader at a dumb bank paid a percentage of income earned at bonus time. Massive return on equity. Unlimited funds to employ. Christmas. Indeed a lifetime of silly-seasons all at once courtesy Super Mario.

Of course your bank is not just going to sign over the 20 million check. You are going to have to bamboozle them for that. After all, the European Government Bond carry trade patently risks capital and the risk management department should charge you mega-bucks for that capital. Indeed the risk management department probably should do more than that and stop you.

At Goldman Sachs (where they are quite tight) the risk management department would stop it dead. Contra: at MF Global certain senior Goldies employees demonstrated how Goldies traders without Goldies risk management behave.

But even at MF Global the risk management department knew what was going on.

So dear traders seeking large bonuses: how do you complicate it beyond the feeble minds of your local back-office? You can do complex things with government bonds - strips, interest rate swaps and all sorts of high-fallutin maths that comes from them.

You might not believe me: remember Joseph Jett who misstated profits and risks at Kidder Peabody (then part of General Electric, now buried in UBS). He reported enormous profits and took home an $8.2 million bonus. Jett operated entirely in Government bonds and their derivatives.

So what are you waiting for? The complexity of the stuff you can trade - all dependent on the above ECB provided carry - is enormous. And surely you are smart enough to run rings around the kids in the risk management department.

Wall Street has proven that complexity and cheap money are the road to riches. Now, dear European traders, is your time.

Hop to it boys. You got a Christmas card to collect.


John

Peculiar goings on at Blogger

This post is a short apology. Somehow yesterday a post I part-wrote in September - left in draft and never finished - got circulated to my email list by blogger/feedburner. It had spelling mistakes in it (it was a draft) but nobody picked up that the email was dated several months ago. People did email me about the spelling mistakes.

It mentioned solar panel prices. They are much lower now.

Sorry for the inconvenience and the incorrectly dated and priced objects.

John

PS. About half the posts I write wind up never being sent - all sorts of reasons. I guess I got to be careful with the old ones.

J