JJC:    At Penn State, last Wednesday, a student in the fabulous Nittany Lion Investment Fund, suggested a stock in a class I attended...

I vetted CPFL Energia S.A. (CPL)... It trades in America...  I don't recommend stocks that trade in another country, that don't trade in America... it's too risky for you...

CPL, it turns out, I think is a great play on Brazil, which is one of our favorite countries... and that is continuing to pants the United States, when it comes to financial stability and economic growth.

CPL is Brazil's largest privately-held power distributor... a massive utility, with huge scale, and a natural monopoly...  There's nothing better than a natural monopoly... It certainly tops this idea of capitalist competition...  It's too hard to set up competing generators and powerlines...  Do you know anybody who has two sets of powerlines going into their house?

In this country, we buy utilities for stability and for yield.  That's exactly why we do it in Brazil...  Remember, we think Brazil is the United States, when we were good...

I have such conviction in the sustainability of Brazil's economic growth, that I think CPL is a great, safe dividend stock...

It pays out a 7.8% yield.  It was actually higher last week.  I've been waiting for the stock to come in, so I could talk about it...

7.8%... and that's a heck of a lot better than the 5.8% yield you get from Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED), which you know is my favorite American utility, and that's starting to move up at least... the stock.

The difference is that, while both of these companies are stable, CPL's a growth utility, because Brazil's still a growing economy...  It's consuming ever-greater amounts of electricity.   I consider it analogous to where the United States was, during the economic expansion of the 50s and 60s...

In the old days, if the United States sneezed, Latin America got Leprosy... but now I believe that we're in a world where the United States can be in recession, and Brazil's economy can still chug along at 5.6% GDP growth.    And that makes me want to own the stock.

.  .  .  .  .

I told you about the dividend and the safety...  Let me elaborate more on how CPL is a utility with growth... boy, are those hard to come by...

This company has gotten as big as it is by carefully purchasing local utilities in Brazil's fragmented market.  They generally won't do reckless deals... they won't pay up.   For example, this week, Brazil's government tried to privatize CESP, a government-controlled utility.  CPL didn't bid.  They didn't like it.

They don't appear to just gobble up anything, the way we do in this country...  This is actually something I think we're seeing a lot more in Brazilian companies... it's called discipline.   We saw it with CVRD (RIO) walking away...

This has to bode well for the country's economic future and its largest utility. 

The bottom line...