While preparing for 2012, I take note of the headlines and stories that matter and don’t.  Aaron Task summarized 2011:”The year in politics can be summed up in two words: Dysfunction and Scandal..”  I’m not sure it matters.  The question has to be “how did it affect us?” and “what have we done about it.”http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/12-23-politics-2011-stench-washington-164829602.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/author/aaron-task/

Other people’s chaos doesn’t help us.  I heard a friend (someone I like, see on TV and read on-line but as you can tell, “wouldn’t know my name”(thanks Cheers) deride another investor for saying the Euro mess will be over by June, May?, who remembers.  But I do remember when his  “calander” sat on the TV set and each night he pulled off a page.  That’s when the housing market would stop going down.  “Throwing stones when living in a glass house?”

So often, it is easy, maybe for our sanity, to guru the pundits.  Others of us make them into villains.  Take what you can from them and leave the rest.  Is the info helpful?  The personality, their ego, their rantings, do not help us nor should we care.

I love reading http://www.jamesaltucher.com/

He tells stories, he philosophizes, he’s crude, he’s funny BUT!!! most important:  He helps me formulate my ideas and work on them.  Thanks James.  You are a friend.  You are there for me even though you don’t know it.