6 Free Financial Modeling Lessons...and More.

The Ben Bernank’s second dose of quantitative easing has been this month’s hot topic on Wall Street, with countless luminaries from across the globe flooding the internet, television, and even radio waves to voice their opinions on the matter.

Some of it was praise and adulation for the Ben Bernank, but unlike sheep our own resident badasses; Uncle Eddie and Midas, have espoused its stupidity in the premiere episode of NSFW.

And they’re not the only ones.

Their fellow badasses Paul Tudor Jones, Steve Schwarzman, Bill Gross, David Einhorn, and Jim Rogers have all spoken openly against the Ben Bernank’s policy of inflation, citing the inherent danger of it creating more problems than actually fixing them.

But what is it really?

Director Alex Gibney's documentary, "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer," released this week, detailing the Former New York Gov's epic taste for high-class hoes and gettin' freaky. I've yet to see the doc, but apparently it's worth seeing. It even dabbles in a little conspiracy-theorizing, claiming that Spitzer's downfall may have been orchestrated by a few of the powerful political enemies the guv made while in office. I'm not totally convinced this isn't a part of some liberal conspiracy/campaign to rehab Spitzer's image, but I'm still buying a ticket.

How much do subsidies actually cost? What is the intrinsic, inherent, implicit, etc...value of having them around? A while back I hit on a subject which has always fascinated me.

Cotton markets are both hugely important and hugely ignored in our agricultural market cornucopia. In spite of the rightful attention to gold, silver, wheat and sugar price spikes in recent months. It is cotton that has made me think hardest.

The following story is a must read for anyone interested in the true inner workings of markets. A peek behind the stage curtain, if you will...

I'm often asked about what eventually happened with a lot of the crazy deals we underwrote back in the early 90's. My firm had a penchant for underwriting some of the most bizarre and impractical companies you could ever imagine. The funny thing was, a lot of them worked out in the short term. In fact, we were ranked #2 in the nation in 1993 for return on our IPO's (a staggering 53% average return) by USA Today.

These companies ran the gamut from actual worthwhile technologies like the early iterations of radial keratotamy lasers to the hopelessly ill-conceived. One of our most widely-held portfolio companies was a low-rent biotech who came up with an injectable smoking cessation product. Seriously. Now, who do you know that wants to quit smoking bad enough to shoot up three times a day?