whether it was smith's deal or not (it was not - it was granger) is only important till a certain extend imo, and not particular a smith lover here :-).

but another angle to consider is more substantional in nature imo. this last transaction seems a deal for the middle to long term to me.

there are much smarter people than me warning for a huge second dip in stockmarkets and commodity prizes for the second half of the year. amongst others, marc faber, jim sinclair, martin amstrong trading chief etc... real growth right only happens on paper and by speculation on futures, so at a particular moment in time equity markets will reflect those hard core fundamentals. real unemployement in the usa for instance is around the 20/22% as we speak. don't need to talk about what happens in the banking industry. greed became an art form. lloyd blankfein considers his work as a job given to him by god :-(

estimates for the country's debt vary from 13 trill to 80 trill and higher depending on the war industry, which is bigger in the usa than the rest of the world combined . q e is about 100 bill /month with no end in sight. treasuries are tanking, slowly but steady. long term interest rates rising and counting, fed is buying their own debt paper, buyer of last resort and china keeps dumping to to mention a few. not to mention the still declining housing market. the mark to market rule still allowing banks to hide their losses and instead use some creative accounting...to cook their totally insolvent books.

so in order to make a profit on fnc it needs to be done within a couple of months imo. reduced growth in china will be proven not to be strong enough to maintain these overheated commodity spot prizes from this moment.

so next year might be too late. we need action and higher sp appreciation now. i'm very worried smith, although not the youngest anymore, has no clue about these underlaying fundamentals.

cheers roos.