The Investor's Coroner: Everything Sucks

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Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously dropping in jokes from the free throw line of life.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why you do not deserve liquidity.


Everything is Too Expensive
You name the foodstuff and it’s way more expensive than it should be. Those few stocks that have had success are either linked to the high cost of commodities like oil, metals, and every food in the whole world or have a very strong hold in emerging international markets. Because the dollar was so weak, America was exporting quite a bit of goods. That is, until last month when, for the first time in a long time, imports and exports both fell. This is not good. It means that the American consumer is not buying like it used to or selling to take advantage of the weak dollar. For those of you scoring at home, this is what we in the financial world call, a “problem” (we’re not very creative in the financial world).

As I type this now, the market is in what we call a distribution day, which means more investors are selling than buying. As a result, the overall indices appear in decline and prices at the grocery stores will be increasing. Which kind of sucks.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you the good news but there just ain’t much. Speculators don’t think that oil prices will stabilize as high as they are so oil stocks aren’t jumping off. Gains made from internationally minded companies like Priceline and Yum Inc have already been accounted for. I mean, had you invested in them last week you’d be great but they probably aren’t increasing any time soon.

Oh, wait. I forgot about the financial sector.

Shit not as Shitty as Initially Thought
Market writers (real ones, not bums like me) love to point out that the market looks forward and that the subprime collapse has already been “priced in” (I have no idea what that means). So even though Sallie Mae, Fannie Mae, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan et al posted huge losses and are sucking off the government teat like a crack-addicted single parent, their stocks actually went up because things weren’t as bad as expected. And if you think that’s ironic, well you’ll probably find more irony in the next paragraph.

Ninety percent of market analysts work at firms that lost their shirts in the mortgage collapse. And what these guys and girls say actually influences stock prices. Which is to say that these dudes think they can predict the future of the market when they couldn’t predict their own future. Which is to say that the whole market analysis game is inherently flawed. Which essentially means that everyone is wrong and no one is to be trusted.

I should have been a lawyer.

Microsoft and Yahoo Need to Just Bone and Get it Over With
And I thought my relationships were fucked up. Microsoft upped its bid to buy Yahoo and Yahoo told them to go to hell. In the end it was only about three billion bucks that kept Yahoo from joining Microsoft’s quest to defeat Google, which incidentally had a successful trial run with Yahoo this week. The whole thing is enough to drive a Yahoo shareholder to drink. I mean, what’s three billion dollars among bitter rivals anyway?

Countrywide Got Dumped
Bank of America, which was using an assload of government money to purchase Countrywide Mortgage and save its sorry excuse for a company, has decided that they just don’t see the advantages of buying a bankrupt, worthless company. On a related note, life is a lot better when you have a lot of money.

Circuit City Sucks
Circuit City, an overpriced retail store that doesn’t pay its salesmen commission, thus guaranteeing that they could give two shits about talking to you, recently revealed that it will open its books to any company willing to purchase the aging retailer. The internet is apparently doing more than crawling up Buzz Bissinger’s ass. It’s also affecting retailers who can’t get with the times.

New Innovations Sexier When Drunk
Cornell Labs has designed technology that may make it possible for ships to know where all whales are ten miles away from them. I had no idea that whales were too stupid to avoid big ships. You learn something new everyday.

Flogo, short for flying logo, is a way to advertise in the air with foam shapes or something, which indicates, to me anyway, that soon we’ll be genetically modifying animals so that they grow Nike swooshes on their hides. What a time to be alive.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Aaaaa—Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Investor's Coroner: Now Candy Coated

I try to read the Coroner but it’s like… it’s so depressing.
Aaaaa—Xavier Holland

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously making with the funny.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why the stock market is a heartless bitch.

We’re on the Eve of Something
The market is at what the professionals call a turning point. This typically happens during what they call earning season. Earning season actually happens four times a year. It’s the time of the year when quarterly earning statements come out and speculators find out if they were right, wrong or out of a job. Things get interesting during earning season.

This week, Ben “Vicodin Kicks Ass” Bernanke and his cartel cronies cut interest rates another quarter point and indicated that this could very well be the last time he cuts rates this year. Apparently, now that every product in the grocery market is up four million percent, he’s starting to worry about inflation and thinks that cutting interest rates may not be the best idea. I sometimes wonder what Bernanke does with his days because he’s certainly not watching the market. I’ll bet he just plays Grand Theft Auto all day. It just seems like his kind of video game.

By promising to stop cutting rates, Bitches Bernanke actually strengthened the dollar, which helped cause a bit of a commodities slide, which negatively affected the market leaders (agriculture, oil and metal stocks), which means that this could be the beginning of a new trend that may yield new market leaders and signal that we’re coming out of a recession.

Of course, it also may not mean a damn thing. That’s why they call it speculating.

If I were your advisor I would tell you that now is an awesome time to invest in nothing because I don’t know what the hell is happening. As I type to you, oil is rising and oil stocks are rebounding. It’s literally happening right now. The market is a confusing place but, thankfully, still not as confusing as the thought process of your average woman (but what is?).

Microsoft is Just Plain Mean
When my girl called me up and dumped me, she managed to still be nicer than Microsoft is being to Yahoo. The company that Gates built gave Yahoo a deadline to accept its offer of billions more than you’ll make in your lifetime. That deadline passed last Saturday and Yahoo still owns itself. It seems to me, and maybe I’m crazy, but if you want something from someone, ultimatums probably aren’t the way to go. I’m giving Microsoft one week to figure that out.

New York will Tax your Footsteps
New York, home to the highest prices in America, is trying to pass a law that would force online companies to pay taxes on any business they do in the state. Which is to say that if a New Yorker were to order a book from Amazon, a fraction of Amazon’s profits would go the state, thus Amazon would have to up its prices in New York. If this passes, you can rest assured that every other state will try to get something like that done and the advantages of buying/selling on the internet would seriously dwindle. But retail stores would be happy. So, if this passes, my advice to you is to buy a retail store.

Free advice is often adequately priced, just so you know.

Chocolate Buys Gum, Creates Awful Snack
With the help of Warren Buffet, Mars Inc bought William Wrigley for roughly the cost of Kenya. Mergers like this are often looked at with smiling faces because the companies do similar things and can integrate quickly, which means we might finally achieve the dream of chocolate flavored gum, something I’ve been pining for since second grade. Go for it Mars/Wrigley! I’m tried of pouring chocolate syrup all over my gum. It’s just too much work.

New Innovations Better than Innovative News
A company that lives in La La Land recently developed a video game that is designed to encourage kids to brush their teeth, which is a little like creating an addictive drug that encourages kids to stay in school but whatever, teeth are that important.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
Your best investment is your imagination.
Aaaaa—Randy Castillo

The Investor's Coroner: Think Globally; Act Natural

Me: So what do you think of the Investor’s Coroner? Is it working for you?
Kev: I love it. Some of the kids might not get it but I think it’s great. I even emailed it to my Dad. He was a financial advisor for a long time.
Me: Did he like it?
Kev: Yeah, he did. Although he did say that he’s never read any investment writing that used the word fuck before.
Me: That’s what separates me from the pack.
Kev: It ain’t just that, brother.

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously doing my damndest to sprinkle in a joke or two like those cooks that put those pubic hairs on Fabio’s pasta—those dudes kick ass.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why the federal reserve hates you and wants you to die penniless in a bank owned house surrounded by imported goods.

The Economy is Healing and How you Feeling?
Gas, oil, corn, soybeans, copper and wheat are all at, near or hanging around thirty year highs, the Philly Manufacturing Index is at a seven year low, retail stores are suffering, food and gas prices are through the roof, but we’re not in a recession. In fact, things are looking up.

Why, just last week Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that he would only make 25 billion dollars worth of T-bills available to brokerage firms that failed at their job of obtaining and retaining money because said firms only took 34 of the available 50 billion last week. On a related note, I have $500 in my checking account.

And anyway, here at the Coroner we like to stress that markets are global. And well, thanks to their international plays, Google, Intel and IBM all beat analyst estimates this quarter based mainly on their success in developing nations in Latin America, China and India, where a new middle class is emerging. Now, over here we’re fucked. But that doesn’t matter, see? The stock market will continue to kick ass just so long as there are countries like China, which doubled its buy price for Potash (fertilizer) and India, which now has the most people from one country on the list of the 100 richest people. This is why, even though times are tough in the first world, the market will always find stability elsewhere.

So keep investing in oil, base metals, agricultural stocks, oil company stocks etc, but add to them market leaders with large international plays (I do love me some international play). You can also throw a dart at leading Chinese stocks and probably make money. But they’re weird over there and harder to understand than our government, which is really saying something.

What you cannot do, however, is invest in potatoes.

You Cannot Invest in Potatoes
Rising wheat, corn and soybean prices have many consumers looking to find nutrition elsewhere. And according to two different newspapers I read this week, potatoes are a perfect substitute. This news made me want to invest in potatoes as a commodity but you see, there is no market for potato futures. Hell, there aren’t even any publicly traded companies with more than a fifty percent focus on potato cultivation, development, refinement and what not. So, just to reiterate: you cannot invest in potatoes. You can, however, fry them up and eat them with hamburgers. So that’s nice.

Airline Situation is Crazy, Boring
We’ve been here a million times it seems like. Once again, America’s most poorly run (and not coincidentally, most legislated) industry is having problems. Lots of little airlines went out of business, some are trying to merge and Southwest is okay because of when they got their fuel contracts or something (despite the FAA cracking down on every major airline for being unscrupulously unsafe). Reading about airlines makes me want to slit your throat (I ain’t slitting mine). Airline employees are a step above most DMV employees, air travel gets less fun and more expensive every year, and the companies see no reason to improve airline travel because they’re all just waiting to get bought out by big government. But this shit has been in the news so I figured I’d mention it.

Oh, that reminds me of an old joke that some white comedian once said: “Getting married for the sex is like buying a 747 for the peanuts."

That was kind of funny, right?

Google Moons Analysts
Google beat all analysts’ predictions and its stock price jumped around twenty percent in a couple of days as a result of its earnings announcement. I mentioned this in a Coroner a while back but it’s important so I’m saying it again: I trust Google. They’re a great company and consequently a great stock. I think the folks in charge of Google know way more about everything than the folks who predict Google’s future do. They’re in a great position in all markets and well, I just don’t see that changing.

(Thems the breaks, Microsoft and Yahoo.)

Dude, Times really are Tough All Over
Talbot’s, a store you’ve probably heard of, recently had its credit line revoked by Citibank. This is the market equivalent of Visa denying you a credit card. So basically, Talbot’s is now the broke college kid of the international marketplace. I wonder if Talbot’s has a bong…

Because I wanna Sidebar
This has nothing to do with the market, but I just wanted to put in this picture. You see, I just wanted to point out that the Coroner is the only bit I write for PIC that requires notes. Or forethought for that matter. Anyway, here are this week’s notes:

I never said I took good notes.

Anyway, back to the market.

Ameritrade Gains in Crappy Market
Ameritrade said that last month they saw a sharp increase in the number of personal investors that signed up with their company. I believe this is caused by the growing number of people who look at their brokerage firm managed mutual funds and say, “Dude, I could lose ten percent. What the fuck am I paying you for?” But I could be wrong.

College Students Suck
Citigroup announced that in order to shore up a little more cash, in addition to laying off forty-three metric tons of employees, raising loan rates and borrowing from the government, they will no longer be in the business of helping fund student loans. Because fuck college kids. They skip most of their classes anyway. Lousy leaches.

Sears wants your Stimulus, Wants it Bad
Sears, which owns Kmart and is kind of pathetic, has offered to accept your unnecessarily stupid stimulus check from President Chuckles, turn it into a gift card and (get this, get this) they will throw in another ten percent. So, if you spend it at Kmart, your $300 government apology check will be worth $330 and you will have more shitty clothes and shoddy merchandise than any piece of trailer trash could ever need. Awesome times we’re living in, huh?

I’m in Murders and Executions
Blockbuster, a once strong retail chain that is failing thanks to the success of the internet, has offered to buy Circuit City, a once strong retail chain that is failing thanks to the success of the internet. And get this: news of the merger actually caused both stocks to fall in price (typically, merger news causes one stock to rise and another to fall—I know this stuff, went to college and everything), which tells me that both these companies are screwed and though misery may love company, the stock market doesn’t like this deal.

New Innovations are not a $300 Check
The Swiss Center for Electronics is working on clothes that can analyze your sweat and tell you what nutrients your body is lacking. And you thought hearing shit about your diet from your girl was bad. Wait until your shirt tells you to put the jelly donut down.

Well, they finally did it. They have made a dishwasher safe keyboard. Seal Shield, the maker of said keyboard, says they’ll be huge in hospitals and other messy industries. And I just want to add, I’m totally buying one. I eat at my desk and my keyboard looks like a fucking Smurf picnic.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
Anything the private sector can do, government can do worse.
Aaaaaaa—Governor Dixie Lee Ray

The Investor's Coroner: Fuck the Dollar

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously injecting jokes like a shaking heroin addict with an aching arm.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why the really cool kids call economic indicators, clickers.

This Economy is Sick Yo
More federal rate cuts are coming. Tens of billions more dollars worth of treasury bills are being pumped into investment houses (this month alone) because we all know that when rich people fail at their jobs, the economy is precluded from recovering. The greenback (word for dollar) is being deliberately driven down by an economic overseer who cannot understand that devaluing currency rarely yields long term success.

(Side note: The International Monetary Fund just said that US recession is inevitable. On a related note, I think the Giants are gonna win the last Super Bowl. That Eli Manning just looks sharp.)

Inflation is the name of the game. Sell the dollar. Sell it away right now. We have no intention of keeping it strong, which, if you invest properly and live off your investments, is not that big a deal. As you may remember from the first Austin Powers movie, “There are no countries anymore, only corporations.” Our representatives at the Federal Reserve don’t care if they get rich off China, America, Venezuela or Lichtenstein (though that last one would be really fucking surprising).

So, what should you invest in?

Keep investing in commodities, in companies that aid agricultural development (fertilizers, farm equipment, etc), companies that aid oil refinery, exploration and development, etc. Oh and feel free to get on the currency markets and trade the dollar as well. I don’t really know how to do that last one, but I probably should have looked into it months ago.

And while you’re doing this, you may want to pray that those idiots in congress don’t actually pass a bill that would bail out stupid investors (i.e, the lending institutions, investment houses and the homeowners, for the record) with your tax money.

But they will.

This economy is sick.

This Yahoo Microsoft Affair is getting Fucking Crazy
It really is getting hot in here.

Okay, let’s look back at the Yahoo takeover bid real quickly here. Microsoft wanted Yahoo for its own, Yahoo said no. Microsoft called Yahoo a slut and tried to force Yahoo’s friends to encourage the hook up. Yahoo told Microsoft to take a flying leap and then tried to hook up with News Corp. Only it didn’t work out. Yahoo then slammed Google in television and radio ads in an attempt to get more attention for itself.

Fast forward to yesterday, where there was, to borrow a phrase from that one old dude that was played by Dennis Quaid in that one old movie, “a whole lot of shaking going on.”

You see, Yahoo announced that it would start using some of Google’s search engines on its site because Yahoo wanted to apologize for bad-mouthing Google nationally. And then, to make both Microsoft and Google jealous, Yahoo then began talks with Time Warner AOL about a possible merger.

While all this craziness is going down, Microsoft then decides to engage in talk with News Corp about a partial merger and combined takeover of Yahoo.

What the fuck, right? I’ve seen relationships on seasons of The OC that were easier to follow. Let me try to recap.

Microsoft wants Yahoo; Yahoo says no and goes to News Corp (it doesn’t work out); Microsoft forces a proxy fight and sets a deadline for bargaining talks; Yahoo hooks up with Google and Time Warner AOL; Microsoft then hooks up with News Corp with the hopes of buying Yahoo as partners; Yahoo says no; I think my head just exploded.

Anyway, most analysts say that all of this monkey loving is just an attempt for Yahoo to push up Microsoft’s bid and I’m gonna agree with them because thinking about this has gotten really annoying. It’s like the stock market equivalent of junior high-chick drama.

And no one needs that.

China says US Investments Just Fine, Watches You Buy
China okayed its citizens to purchase US securities off US exchanges for the first time ever because China is this totally free and awesome place that protects its citizens from bad investments like mortgage backed securities. You see, China protects its citizens so it doesn’t have to bail their lenders out. If only we could be like China.

Sigh.

Maybe with a few more rules and regulations, we’ll get there.

Banks and Cities get Bailed Out, Students get Fucked
After taking care of the shit-backed securities pushed by the hustlers in the free market, and making sure that municipal bonds were safe and secure, the federal government let student lenders collapse because fuck students. They ain’t rich.

As a result, First Marblehead, a company that specializes in servicing student loans, dropped around forty percent this week. The whole student loan sector basically took a big fat dump, proving once again that if you need a loan for school, America does not need you. Government backed T-Bills are only for the brokerage firms. It’s hard enough keeping the rich and privileged rich and privileged without having to worry about lowly things like the future of our middle class. Yeah, fuck them.

Icahn Wants Your Sandwich Again
I mentioned a while back how billionaire Carl Icahn sued Motorola, caused them to break into two divisions and put two of Icahn’s own people on Motorola’s board. Well, now he’s going after Biogen and demanding they explain why they didn’t let themselves be purchased by outside investors a while back, which begs the question, does anyone ever tell Carl Icahn to fuck off? I mean, when he gets a speeding ticket does the cop wake up the next day with his oldest child’s head in his lap? Could Icahn, if he so decided, take my sandwich from me mid-bite?

Probably.

Yeah, that’s a safe answer. Probably.

I’m going with probably.

Google Knows You Want Ads, Nudity
Google is working on a way to improve the likelihood that ads get seen on social networking sites, where focus has little to do with consumption of goods. I have some advice for Google: hot, naked chicks. Seriously, hot naked chicks always work. Even when they’re unemployed.

ICSC Bitches about Lack of Blue Light Specials
There’s something called the International Council of Shopping Centers and they are reporting that this was the weakest March for retailers in 13 years. Factors like an early Easter, a cool spring and a weakening dollar led to the weak March. I don’t have a point or a joke here other than to stress this fact one more time: there is an International Council of Shopping Centers and they employ analysts and pay people and stuff.

And you thought Points in Case was useless…

New Innovations Will Not Pay Your Student Loan
The University of Texas has produced the most powerful laser in the world. The laser is 2000 times more powerful than the output of all the US power plants combined. It flashes for less than a trillionth of a second and its beam is brighter than sunlight at the earth’s surface. No news yet on whether or not it will be used to turn Dr. Hathaway’s house into the world’s largest popcorn popper, however.

Mobile phones are about to get more fucking annoying. A few companies are working on ways to outfit mobile phones with projectors, so that you can project that picture of a chick getting boned by a horse onto the wall behind your professor. On a related note, people suck.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability he has.
Aaaaaa—Confucius

The Investor's Coroner: Loving Subsidy

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously injecting jokes like Christmas injects the economy with retail sales.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn who’s really in charge of E.E. Cummings' dumdamslamslumsloppidy wurl (id sho am wicked id are).

Bernanke Explains Himself, Gets Sent to Room
You know, sometimes I feel for Ben Bernanke. Sure, he’s essentially the chief of an illegal cartel that manipulates monetary policy at its whim for the sole purpose of keeping rich bank owners nice and fat, but man, if I had to get in front of congress—the same assholes who have used our tax money to bail out the likes of Detroit-based car companies and American airlines—and explain why I gave away thirty billion dollars to lending institutions, I think I would snap and start screaming. I mean, I think the only people in the world who understand less about fiscal policy than I do are representing me in DC. Anyway, here’s what Bernanke had to say about why he helped fund the JP Morgan buyout of investment failure, Bear Stearns:

“If the financial system crashes, or at least is severely hobbled, then the economy can’t grow in a healthy way either, and that’s why we did what we did.”

I don’t agree with this in the slightest. I personally believe that nothing motivates and improves an economy more than complete and total failure of current financial systems. That’s how pure capitalism works: your company fails, another company picks up the business. But the Federal Reserve is, I believe, in the business of preserving its business relationships with the fat cats who own them. However, what I believe is about as relevant as acid washed jeans.

What is relevant now is that the government is considering giving broader power to the Fed and to regulatory agencies to oversee the business practices and procedures of all lending and financial institutions. The lie here is… I’m sorry. I mean, the idea here is to protect the people from another crash, but it also conveniently allows one entity to have a pretty good idea of the economic outlook of the entire world and then use that outlook to centralize global control over us through the most successful way in the world: by manipulating our money. Fuck me running. Bush was wrong: the terrorists don’t hate freedom; we do.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Bernanke said we may be in the beginning of a recession but it was too soon to tell because all the data wasn’t in yet. If Bernanke were caught in a fire, he probably wouldn’t leave until he spoke with the Fire Chief about it.

Not for nothing, but here’s Bernanke’s statement to congress (translated into plain English):

“It’s tougher to make money when all the guys in charge of making your money are losing your money so we had to give them more money or none of us would have any money.”

And yes, US policy really is that dumb.

Monsanto Has Seed Money
Monsanto just can’t stop buying seeds. They bought De Ruiter seeds for eight hundred million bucks or so. Monsanto is creating seeds that have fertilizer and pesticide built in so as to create a genetically altered food that is naturally resistant to predators, which increases crop yield. Of course, they’ve been working hard to create seeds that produce crops that don’t produce their own seeds so farmers will have to rely on Monsanto instead of their own skills. But that’s just good business. I mean, why would anyone pay for something they could get for free?

Solar Power Grows the American Way, with Subsidy
Subsidizing the solar power market has led to a decrease in solar cell cost and an increase in solar cell purchase, which has improved that sector of the market significantly. Of course, none of it is really cheap because we pay for it through taxes and inflation, but who cares?

After all, our government doesn’t.

Banks Cut 200,000 Jobs, Like your Tie Though
Okay, so you’re a bank and you just discovered that you’re getting billions of dollars to cover your dumbass moves over the last three years. How do you show your gratitude, you fucking welfare case? Well, you fire people of course. Lots of people. Hey, what can you do? Times are tough all over.

Truckers Protest, Somewhere in the Distance a Dog Barks
Some truckers protested the high price of diesel gas, which is expensive because it takes more oil to make diesel than it takes to make regular gas and oil is ridiculously costly right now. No one really noticed the protestors though.

I just think it’s funny that these guys basically asked the government to do something about diesel prices. I wonder if Americans even know what the term “free market” means.

Apple Announces that it is God
Apple announced that it is the number one retailer of music in the year of our Lord 2008, which isn’t exactly official until confirmed by outside sources. Anyone can announce anything. Why, just yesterday I announced that I was actually Lord of 2008. Anyway, Apple is (probably) selling more music nationwide than any other retailer. People are motivated by two things: laziness and greed. And there is nothing lazier than ordering stuff from the internet.

Speaking of Music, Lazy Asses
News Corp, which owns Myspace.com, which prevents relationships from ever entering reality, will now be offering music online. Which is great because I hear people like to buy stuff online. Good call, Rupert Murdoch. You sir, are a genius.

I’m in Murders and Executions
Ansys, a design software firm, bought Ansoft, another design software firm, for more than eleven times its previous years earnings, which seems a bit pricy. But here’s what’s interesting: these companies both specialize in weird aspects of model designs that are becoming more important in the advancing technology market, they’re both located in Pittsburgh and their names sound almost exactly the same (in fact, while I was studying this merger, I kept getting confused as to which company was which). This is kind of like kissing your cousin, if you ask me. I mean, most mergers take a long time but I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys have already moved in together. This may be the only merger I’ve ever read about that did not require airfare to put it together. Hell, the meetings probably all took place over Pastrami sandwiches at Primanti Brothers. (Five years. That’s how long I’ve been waiting for an excuse to reference Primanti Bros. sandwiches. This is a big moment for me.)

New Innovations No Substitute for a Good Sandwich
A data center built by IBM in some foreign country uses all of the heat that its computers generate to heat an indoor pool that is probably limited to executive use, proving once again that recycling is stupid, reducing is no fun, and reusing is freaking awesome. And no, this has nothing to do with my underwear. Do not ask me about my underwear.

A website called everyblock.com is working on a new kind of news: hyperlocal news. Hyperlocal news tells you exactly what’s happening every second in your neighborhood, on your block and possibly in your living room (assuming the bitch won’t stop screaming).

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.”
Aaaaaaaa—Mark Twain

The Investor's Coroner: Fuck Citi

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes like a scalpel through Pam Anderson’s breasts.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn what happens to a dream deferred (hint: it dries up).

Recession no Reason to Stop Inflation
Thursday marked Day One of the Federal Government Money Give Away! That’s right, if you are a bank, lending house, clearing house, securities firm, brokerage house or any other kind of alleged money-making institution, the government loves you more than bombing brown people and has already auctioned off 18 billion dollars of treasury bills in exchange for worthless mortgage backed securities. And this is, as I may have mentioned, only day one of the giveaway extravaganza. The government has 27 more days of dollar-weakening spending to go!

Woo to the hoo, freak out with your bad self, flip the dance craze, let the party begin. It’s time to bail out stupid investment companies who made stupid decisions to bundle bad loans into securities and then sell them. This is why I love America. Land of the brave, home of the free bailouts to credit institutions. What a country!

Breaking up is Hard When Sued
Motorola decided to spin off its shitty handset (Wall Street word for phone) business and restructure into two companies because some billionaire shareholder named Carl Icahn threatened to sue them for business mismanagement. On a related note, Carl Icahn wants your fucking sandwich right now. Seriously, don’t even think about biting that. Icahn will fuck you up. That’s right. Put the sandwich down, bitch.

Just like I thought.

Bear Stearns Begs for More Money Like a Measly Panhandler
Bear Stearns, one of the companies that screwed up its job of obtaining and maintaining money, has received an increased offer from JP Morgan, which bought forty percent of the company and raised its offering price to ten dollars a share (from two dollars a share), which still pissed off everyone who bought it at seventy. But whatever. Times are tough all over. Oh, and more of a billion of the money JP Morgan has thrown at Bear Stearns was gifted from the Fed, with more to come. America: land of the subsidy. God I love this country.

Yahoo is Seriously Getting Bitchy
Poor Yahoo. First, Microsoft gets all lovey dovey, moves too fast and too cheap, and then hurts Yahoo’s feelings, then Yahoo has to go and estimate its future as being way brighter than it could possibly be all so Yahoo wouldn’t lose all the friends that think that Microsoft and Yahoo were made for each other, and then, while all that is going down, they finally realize that their friend Google’s been out to get them the whole time. So Yahoo did what any little bitch does when they think that their friend is out to get them, they talk shit.

That’s right, Yahoo has released the first ever search engine attack ads on radio and television. Yahoo is trying to say that it's way better than Google ever wishes it could be which is why Microsoft loves Yahoo and not Google. At the end of the day though, it’s all just a plea for affection. Yahoo really and truly just wants to be loved.

Clear Channel Sues, Is Afraid to Love
Clear Channel, a mega, super-owner of radio stations that banked on a stupid rule (formed during the Clinton administration) which lifted limits on how much radio share a company can own and thus limited free speech, has been trying to go from public to private. The banks funding the private sale tried to back out because, as I may have mentioned, times are tough all over. Anyway, there was a lawsuit and Clear Channel won, which means that a company that owns much of what we hear (and thus much of what we think) will soon be free from conveying its earnings and business practices to the SEC, which was better than nothing. Fortunately, the FCC is still around to protect free speech.

Wow, I almost choked on laughter while trying to type that last sentence. Let’s just move on.

CitiGroup is Stupid, Afraid of Me
In one month, CitiGroup has gone from being worth $24 a share to being worth $11 a share. In addition to laying off more than forty thousand people in the last four months, CitiGroup also fired me five years ago for sending out a dirty email making fun of the company. On that day, they were trading around $25 a share, which goes to show you what can happen if you fire me then purchase a bunch of mortgage backed securities. Suckers.

I’m in Murders and Executions
Sirius and XM, the only two satellite radio companies on God’s green earth, are one step closer to completing a merger that should have happened years ago. I mean, these two companies were dumb enough to think of each other as competition when the real competition was terrestrial radio. Anyhow, this is badass news for anyone who ever wanted all that both radio stations ever had to offer… oh, assuming said anyone has an extra $200 lying around.

You see, because XM and Sirius are/were competing companies, their radios won’t work with each other’s stations, so new radios will need to be released and will probably cost around $200 a pop. There are other plans related to how to handle this but they limit use and are really boring and complicated so I’d just as soon spend the $200 than type about the alternatives to doing so.

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, motivates us to consume like our own laziness does.

Ironic, huh?

New Innovations Still not Huge Breasts
Soon you’ll be able to store encrypted digital versions of your important documents online, just like you’ve been wanting to all along, you total geek. Wells Fargo should be the first bank to offer online safety deposit boxes. They should cost between $5 and $15 a month and you should smack yourself in the face if you feel you need one.

Tokyo is launching a program whereby so-called “manner cops” will be patrolling the trains and protecting people from loud cell phone talkers, boom boxes, and assholes who don’t give up their seats to the elderly. I don’t know how well this will work since I know shit about Tokyo but I really, really want to see someone try this in New York or Chicago. Manner cops? Fuck, we can’t even get our American cops to display manners. Clearly, Japan is weird.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
It is better to play than to do nothing.
Aaaaa—Confucius

Investor's Coroner: Dead Bunny Edition

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes like a spike through a holy hand.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why God loves banks more than he loves you.

So Now we’re in a Recession
All of the leading US economic indicators have been screaming recession like a Carolina stripper screaming rape at a Duke lacrosse team party, the dollar's been falling really fast exactly like something that falls really fast, unemployment claims keep getting worse, housing starts are ridiculously low and all manufacturers all across this great nation are showing reduced output and now, just now, we can get more than half of analysts to agree that we’re in a recession. Well, halle-fucking-luiah, Happy Easter and how’s the temperature in reality fellas? Welcome to the real world where we already knew this.

Oh, and Henry Paulson, some senator who probably doesn’t even know that Google is a search engine and not a word meant to describe staring at women for too long, has stated that it doesn’t matter if we label this particular period as a recession or not. What matters is what we do about it. And what we’re doing about it is apparently giving away money.

Bernanke Opens Safe, Finds All Your Money
In addition to slashing interest rates another 75 basis points, causing zero reduction in mortgage loan rates and credit card rates but making it easier for banks to get shit done, Ben Bernanke also utilized some little known Fed trick that hadn’t been used since the Great Depression (my grandpa’s joke: what was so great about it?). Now, because all of these banks screwed up at their job, which was to obtain and retain money, they are able to borrow directly from the Federal government in order to avoid completely and totally going belly up, thus making competition among banks a thing of the super-distant past and decreasing the value of your hard-earned dollar which no one in America really cares about because you’re not a bank. You dumbass. I totally told you to be a bank. If you were a bank, you could buy Bear Stearns.

Bear Stearns Goes Under in Bear Market, Crickets Chirp
Bear Stearns, some brokerage clearing house, stock option kind of place, which had been around for over eighty years, saw its stock drop from $70 a share to $2 a share over the course of two weeks. Apparently, they suck at investing lately, which is a shame because now they’re dead.

The Fed agreed to allow JP Morgan to purchase Bear Stearns for less than a billion dollars, which is ironic because apparently their headquarters building alone is worth more than 1.5 billion but whatever. Times are tough all over. What makes this sale annoying and asinine though is that JP Morgan is buying Bear Stearns with guaranteed money from the Federal Reserve (i.e. your money) so you now own a little bit of Bear Stearns. You’ll never actually see a profit from your purchase, but it must be nice to know you played a part.

Initially Publicly Powerful
In the good news department, Visa is up more than forty percent from its offering after issuing the largest IPO in the history of eyeing pee. This is the kind of stock you can buy and hold for three to ten years without even thinking about. Visa is everywhere you want to be and now they’re on the market which, thanks to Bernanke’s creativity, is again the place to be.

Stocks Rebound, Commodities Fall, Bernanke Rises from the Dead
Thanks to all Bernanke’s foreplay with the banks, for the first time in a long time, commodity prices free fell. Wheat and corn actually fell the maximum they are allowed to on the Chicago Board of Trade, which got me thinking, could I put a maximum allowable price rise on the menus of America? That’d be cool.

Also, stocks rose in higher volume (the amount of people buying and selling) which is a huge sign. If that happens a couple more days in a row, we may be seeing the first signs that we’re inching out of the recession we just allowed ourselves to be in. Say what you will about this country, but at least we’re the last ones to know what we’re doing. Which explains our last four wars.

Yahoo Loves You Baby, Would Never Lie
Microsoft’s aggressive courting of Yahoo has caused Yahoo to estimate earnings for the next two years way the hell above the estimated earnings of analysts all across the world, which is to say that Yahoo is trying to reassure its current shareholders that it does not need Microsoft’s loving. In a related story, I am estimating my next two years earnings at four point seven million. What? You don’t believe me? Fuck you then. I’m getting in my fifteen year old car and driving myself out of here.

Before I leave though, can I bum ten bucks?

Come on, man. Times are tough all over.

New Innovations Steal your Soul
Thanks to privacy laws that don’t allow people to see their medical records and a push to make medical records available online, some web specialists foresee a new period of identity theft stemming from online health records which is good news for you if you have AIDS because no one will want your identity. Finally, some good news for people with AIDS. I’ll bet they needed that.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
Aaaaa--Coach John Wooden

Investor’s Coroner: Has Anyone Seen my Optimism?

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes with the intention of pulling out later.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn the difference between preferred stock and livestock, Jethro Van Chubby Bubba.

Recession, Motherfuckers. The Word is Recession.
Okay, this is starting to border on the surreal. The dollar is at an all-time low against the Euro and at a long time low against every other currency in the global market, commodities were unaffected by the 200 billion that Bernanke pumped in to the market to ease the mortgage crunch, unemployment is up, inflation is a constant bitch and even the stock market’s equivalent of a pre J-Lo Puff Daddy, Warren Buffet, said, "from a common-sense standpoint right now, we're in a recession.” So uh, from what standpoint then aren’t we in a recession?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are in a recession.

Bernanke Gets Creative, Tries Women’s Clothes
Ben Bernanke wasn’t kidding when he said that he was gonna focus on growth. The fed’s goofy chairman (along with a few other countries) offered to exchange useless mortgage backed securities for guaranteed treasury bills to the tune of several hundred billion dollars. Now, this basically means that you and I will be footing the bill, but let’s ignore that for a moment as I tell you this story. This, as I understand it, is the story of the mortgage backed securities crisis. I call this story, “How we’re all Fucked.”

Before we start, it is important that you understand what a bond is. A bond is basically a security instrument by which organizations (banks, municipalities, etc.) raise money. The borrower (or issuer) sells a bond and promises to pay a fixed amount of interest over a fixed period of time. Then, after said fixed period of time, the principal the lender (or purchaser) paid for the bond is repaid and everyone goes home with a slight profit, a little bit of happiness and maybe a playground or a jumbo jet or something.

Anyway, these companies named Moody’s and AM Best are in charge of rating bonds and they rated most of these mortgage backed securities to be AAA, which is the best rating you can get. Which is to say that Moody’s and AM Best (major rating institutions) said that the mortgage backed bonds were as safe as Treasury Bills, which are issued with the full authority and power of the US Government, which, incidentally, thinks you need a new car. But I digress.

In these mortgage backed bonds are (you guessed it) mortgages. As long as people pay their mortgages on time and/or the value of the land and homes behind the mortgages steadily increase, then everything will be fine. Well… uh, neither happened.

So when people talk about the mortgage crisis what they’re really talking about is a bunch of securities that received the highest ratings from the most accredited rating companies in America. And, in these securities, on average, roughly thirty percent of the mortgages are not being paid and more than fifteen percent are in default. Plus, ten to twenty percent of the represented properties are already bank owned.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that as much as Bernanke would like you to believe that throwing a few hundred billion at the problem will make it go away, he’s basically selling the proverbial magic beans.

So, in a nutshell, we’re kind of fucked.

You see, these rating institutions (Moody’s and AM Best) are losing credibility, and these mortgage backed bonds have to be re-rated. And those ratings won’t be high. And there’s still over a trillion dollars worth of them out there.

On the bright side though, it’s a good time to be a first-time home buyer.

Because I’m a Big Fan of the Sidebar
Not for nothing, but here are some of my favorite words that market writers use to describe when a stock’s price starts to suck: gapped down, dropped, skidded, plunged, lost, sunk, dove, suffered losses, and of course, bombed.

Yeah, the market really is doing great.

Market has Personality, Goes into a Life of Crime
You know life and the market emulate each other and I find it funny. Two examples here: First, after I heard that copper had hit another high, I found out that the office building down the road from me had been victim to the theft of all of its outside air-conditioning units. Police have seen a string of these robberies and all of them hinge around the price that thieves can get for copper from the copper wiring in the units. Fences and scumbags follow the market, too.

Second, a friend of mine asked for advice on debt consolidation. It turns out that for the fist time in her life, the folks at Target had decided to use actual human beings (instead of the automated threats she had been receiving) to call and collect money for her measly thousand bucks of outstanding Target charge card debt. The next day at work, I read on Bloomberg that Target was spinning off their debt division as a separate entity and thus doing their best to clean off bad debt from their books. My friend’s bad debts were obviously a part of this. I emailed her the link to the story and she responded with, “Does that mean I don’t have to pay them?”

Uhh...

Alternative Fuels have Alternative Uses Dammit
I hate the concept of alternative fuels especially when said fuels are made out of stuff that I can eat. You see, one of the cool things about using oil and gas for fuel is that there is no other use for oil and gas. I can’t eat or drink them. I can eat corn, though. And thus begins my problem with the ethanol craze. Now, much like my following of Ron Paul, my belief that recycling is a scam, my feelings that climate change has little to do with my car or with Al Gore’s house and my hatred for a fiat money based society, you are probably gonna think I’m wrong here. That, however, is because you probably don’t think. You just believe the masses, kick back and call it a day.

So anyway, you may want to skip this little diatribe.

Ethanol is 20% to 30% less efficient than gasoline, it takes 450 pounds of corn to fill one tank with ethanol, it takes one gallon of oil to produce one gallon of ethanol (you gotta grow, fertilize, store and ship corn), it takes 1700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol, all of America’s corn crops alone are only capable of replacing fifteen percent of the oil we use at the most, and ethanol is subsidized to the tune of a buck or more a gallon on top of the nine billion in corn subsidies farmers in America get anyway.

And, for those of you who say that we need ethanol to free us from the demand on foreign oil, I ask why we charge foreign countries a 54 cent a gallon tariff on their more efficient and cheaper sugar-based ethanol while we subsidize our corn to the tune of a buck or more.

Basically, ethanol is a big fucking lie.

Oh yeah, and if Marx and Lenin were alive today they’d be environmentalists. No one has us scared like the environmentalists.

Speaking of Communism
The EPA raised its O-zone standards again. The estimated cost annually to America to get the three hundred or so counties to comply would be around 8.8 billion dollars. All so a few cars and business will pump out 5 less ozone parts per billion into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, your milk costs five bucks a gallon, your gas costs four bucks a gallon, you’re losing your job and your kid’s education is a fucking joke. God I love this country.

New Innovations No More Valuable than Dry Underwear
In Switzerland they’re developing a vaccine for high blood pressure. Finally, something to extend the lives of the fat people! Awesome.

Scientists say they’ve located the gene that triggers breast cancer. This is highly unlikely because no one gene controls one of anything because genes are insanely complex and all that but nevertheless, these dudes need funding. They may be able to cure cancer!

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
Every winner has scars.
Aaaaa—Herbert Casson

Investor's Coroner: Jesus Loves the Market

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes with the grace and poise of Michael Meyers on a drunken killing spree.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why Jesus really only loves rich people, you heathens.

So What, You Say Recession and the Sky Falls In?
Okay, so every economic indicator in the world says we’re in a recession, our GDP says we’re in a recession, our dollar’s at the weakest it’s been since before I was born, our inflation is the highest it’s been in 26 years and 47 billion dollars was pulled out of the stock market and put other places in the last month alone, yet our president swears that we are not in a recession. He’s either an idiot or a liar and even though he’s been running this country for going on eight years, I’m still not sure which.

Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke stated that he and his cronies are focusing on slowed growth and not inflation even though inflation is at the highest it’s been in a long time. More rate cuts are coming—the only question is by how much—and the market responded to the news by sucking money out of stocks like a high-dollar whore hard at work. So, for those of you who are a little slower than George Bush, the Fed Chairman said he would focus on improving the growth of the markets and those very same markets ran away like a beat up bitch. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that market confidence probably ain’t doing too well.

Give me Something to Invest In
The great thing about the global marketplace is that, even in shitty markets, there are oodles upon oodles of ways to make money. You see, when inflation kicks ass at a time of war, well, the commodities markets take off. Gold, oil, corn, silver, platinum, soybeans and wheat are all kicking ass. And lagging behind them are the companies that pull the gold, platinum, silver, corn, soybeans and wheat out of the ground. And behind them are the companies that make the machinery that make it possible to pull all that stuff out of the ground. And just behind them are the companies that provide the chemicals that help grow the corn, soybeans and wheat as well as the companies that help transport all the aforementioned commodities. Even in shitty markets, there are always leading industry groups and, especially in shitty markets, you must invest only in stocks within those groups.

Or you can keep smoking pot. Totally your call.

Initial Public Awesomeness
VISA is launching its IPO March 17th. For those of you who don’t know, IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) are when formerly private companies offer stock certificates on the market (or go public). VISA may very well be launching the largest IPO in the history of peeing Os. One thing I’ve learned in life is that when a company issues an IPO and you have a) heard of that company and b) used their product with regularity, you should fucking buy as much of the stock as you can and hold it for five to eight years. I also noticed that mole on your neck. You thought I didn’t but I was just being polite when I responded to your inquiry with: “What mole?” It really is rather ugly.

You Realize of Course that this Means a Price War
In response to the success of low-budget, flat rate programs by Leap Wireless and Metro PCS and to the purchase of blocks of wireless air (I wonder how they sell those) by Google, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are all rolling out flat rate, all-the-minutes-you-want-for-X-dollars-a-month type of plans. Though this is awesome for consumers, it sucks for stockholders of Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, all of whom watched their shares fall. Nevertheless, the move had to be made and is generally considered smart. Kind of like my dancing.

Okay, so it's the opposite of my dancing. Whatever.

Google Apparently Not Bigger than Jesus
Google stock lost a few percentage points this week on news that it was restructuring its ad clicks to limit false clicks and improve advertisers’ ability to get to consumers. Also, some analysts said that Google has lost its core focus because of all the freaky things it’s trying to do like Google Health, putting a robot on the moon and investing in alternative energy. Here’s my take: fuck you analysts.

I believe Google knows what they’re doing. I just do. They haven’t really screwed up yet. Their ideas are always ahead of the curve and they can sell us on anything because we’re always going to their fucking search engine. Nevertheless, they are not Jesus. Moses maybe, but not Jesus.

Because I wanna Side Bar
This has little to do with the market, but McDonalds is delivering in China so it can compete with Yum Inc, which owns KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, begging the question, why the fuck doesn’t McDonalds deliver here? Imagine how much money the Golden Arches would make if they stayed open until an hour after the bars closed and delivered greasy food to would be wastees. Shit on a stick that would be awesome. Big Mac attack at 4 AM? Sign me the fuck up.

New Index is Foreign, Weird
Standard and Poor’s has decided to create two new indexes to appeal to Muslim investors. And I think it’s high time that someone appealed to Muslim investors. The new indexes, the S & P CNX Shariah and the CNX Shariah Nifty (nifty!) are designed to track the Indian equities markets. And they got some goofy rules.

To get onto one of the two indexes the companies must conform to a modified version of Islamic law, which means that they cannot get more than five percent of their revenue from a prohibited activity, such as alcohol sales. Also, any company on either Shariah index cannot have more than 33% of its money in debt because Islamic law forbids interest rates, which explains why Muslims hate Jews.

You now know everything I know about the CNX Shariah and the CNX Shariah Nifty. And probably all I ever will know for that matter.

Market Has Personality, Goes to the Bar
I read a headline the other day that read: Poland’s GDP up 6.5%, Liquor Stocks Soar.

How fucking awesome would it be to live in a country that is so known for partying that liquor is its leading economic indicator? I’ll bet they party like crack fiends in Warsaw.

Internet Gives Finger to Retailers, Laughs Maniacally
Apple, through I-tunes, made more cash selling music than Best Buy and Target, trailing only Wal-Mart in terms of revenue from retail music. And yet my grandpa still thinks the internet may be a fad. Go figure.

New Innovations still not better than New Potatos
A company called Emotive Systems has invented a headset that reads facial features and transfers those same features on to the avatars of videogame characters, begging the question, does this country really need all this stupid shit?

Several companies are designing wristbands that beep when you get too far away from your cell phone so you won’t keep losing it, you unorganized slob.

Osaka University developers are working on a protein-based memory storage system that is resistant to magnet interference. It should be up and running in about five years, and if you give me all five of those years, I just might be able to figure out how the fuck they’re doing it.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Aaaaaaa—Mark Twain

Investor's Coroner: Fun with Failure

Welcome back to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes like a porn start trying to break a record.

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe you’ll learn why you’re so poor, you Ramen Noodle sucking freak.

Recess Less Fun as an Adult
Okay, so there are these two indexes (indices?) that piped up yesterday and smacked the market around like it caught the motherfucker in bed with its wife. The first of these indicators is called the index of leading economic indicators (LEI), which is intended to predict future economic activity and is a composite of average workweek (manufacturing), initial unemployment claims, new orders for consumer goods, vendor performance, plant and equipment orders, building permits, change in unfilled durable orders, sensitive material prices, stock prices (s&p 500), real m2 ( a chunk of the money supply) and the index of consumer expectations. All you really need to know about all the stuff that compiles this composite (I compiled a composite this morning after breakfast, by the way) is that lots of smart, rich people think that everything in the LEI leads market expectations. And the LEI took a huge crap and experienced its fourth straight decline, which means, if we’re not in a recession, then this is the first time the LEI experienced four succesive declines while we weren’t in one, so we’re in one. Get over it.

The other index is called the Philadelphia Federal Index, which measures growth in business by surveying participants who voluntarily answer questions regarding the direction of change in their overall business activities. The survey is a measure of regional manufacturing growth. It is considered to be a good gauge of general business conditions and it basically gave the finger to the market like the market cut that bitch off in traffic. Roided up road rage in the market place to be sure.

So anyway, we’re in a recession.

Bernanke Tired of all the Bad News, Wishes he Still had Job at K-Mart
The federal reserve lowered estimates for growth, stated that inflation would worsen, economic activity would decelerate and future rate cuts would do little more than allow market stagnation preceding a possible correction. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated that he was hopeful that the March cuts would stimulate economic growth but that he was also hopeful that Julia Roberts would cook him a T-Bone while naked and he didn’t think that was happening either.

“The fuck can you do?” Bernanke shrugged as he spoke.

Economic History for Dat Ass
Okay, okay this is fucking awesome. I am downright giddy about this because this is economic history, this is economic collapse, this is why the stock market is so much more fun than the super market (well, this and the fact that all the supermarkets got rid of the car and horse rides out front of their stores—assholes).

First, a little background.

There are these things called municipal bonds. If you don’t know what they are, go Google them. (The Coroner is long enough already.) Sometimes, not all municipal bonds will be purchased but that’s cool. You see, these bonds have 99% success rates and are guaranteed by AAA rated insurance companies. That makes them safer than any contraceptive on the market, which is pretty fucking safe. So those that aren’t sold to investors get put up for auction every month where they are all purchased by banks and investment holding companies. All of them, every month, without fail, get purchased.

Well anyway, if you read last week’s Coroner, you saw that the bond insurers were in a lot of trouble and that Warren Buffet was trying to steal their business. After the banks declined his piracy, their collective stocks took a collective crap and, for the first time ever in market history, there were bonds left for sale at the monthly muni-auction. The banks weren’t scared of the bonds themselves (A-rated municipal bonds are very safe) but they were worried about a lack of insurance capital from the companies insuring the bonds, so the cities issuing the bonds paid five to six times what they would have normally to get their bonds issued. That’s a twenty percent gain to the buyer on a product that has a one percent chance of defaulting. Fuck me running, that is a steal.

And Oppenheimer Funds realized that and bought them all up for their first short term investment ever. They plan on selling the bonds to individual investors when the insurance problem resolves itself, which brings me to more awesomeness.

Everyone Fucking with Bond Insurers
After Buffet tried to buy out bond insurers FGIC, AMBAC and MBIA, which are in the process of losing their AAA rating, which would be like if Lindsey Lohan lost her tits (i.e., she’d be worthless), a guy named Bill Ackman, the head of a hedge fund firm, proposed a plan to save the companies. Only thing was that Ackman had been short-selling (betting against success to profit, basically) those particular stocks for the last four months. In other words, the dude who made a mint betting against the insurers offered a plan to save the insurers. This is a little bit like Adolf Hitler offering a plan to save the Jews. You couldn’t make this shit up.

Anyway, in response to everyone fucking with them for creating one of the freakiest conundrums in recent economic history, FGIC agreed to get split into different companies to protect municipal bonds from being lumped in with those mortgage backed securities and creating total economic collapse. AMBAC and MBIA may follow suit. Then again, they may just tell their overseers to fuck off. Rumor has it they’re in better positions than FGIC (hint: doggie).

Microsoft and Yahoo like Sex Rough
Microsoft’s attempt to merge with Yahoo is going about as smoothly as would raping a ninja. Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer, then Microsoft said it was a great offer and Yahoo should be happy that Microsoft even considered banging Yahoo. Microsoft was so pissed off that it decided to call for a proxy vote, which is basically when a company tells another company’s shareholders that they’d be better off if the bigger company owned the shareholder’s company. Anyway, proxy votes can take years to arrange so this is really just Microsoft’s way of saying that it loves Yahoo and wants them to be together forever, whatever it takes. Dammit Yahoo, can’t you tell Microsoft loves you. It doesn’t mean to hurt you, baby. You’re the one.

Oh yeah, and Google heard about this and got all pissed off because they thought world domination was imminent and this merger may threaten that. Google can be a little bitch sometimes. Personally, I think they should just make this a threesome but that would probably create the largest monopoly since the time God sold all the worlds’ seeds to Monsanto.

I’m in Murders and Executions
Some data company named Reed Elsevier PLC purchased another data company named Choicepoint, which means that none of your information is safe. They know it all! Every damn detail! They’re laughing maniacally right now. I can hear them. Oh, and if you knew that was coming, you would have made a mint because Choicepoint’s stock went up almost fifty motherfucking percent in a down market. And um, yeah, I didn’t see it coming either.

Butterfly Flaps its Wings, Your Stocks Take Dump
Due to rising inflation, a weak dollar and weak markets globally, commodities have been the only truly reliable market investment of the last six months. But none of this stuff happens in a vacuum, and as demand for commodities grows, demand for the machinery that aids in the retrieval of those commodities grow. Because of that, mining manufacture Bucyrus gained like Walter Peyton over the last two weeks, as did a few farming machinery manufacturers. See, it ain’t all bad. Just mostly.

Fidel Castro Quits, Cuban Cigars still Tough to Get
Cuba has only one contribution to the market (because Cuba hates markets) and that is some kind of economic package that can be found in a Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Closed End Fund, which trades under the ticker symbol… (wait for it…) (wait for it…): CUBA. That’s right. You really couldn’t make this shit up.

Fidel’s brother Raul is in charge now and so the Herzfeld Caribbean Basin gained about thirty percent in a couple of days. Meanwhile, I haven’t had a Cuban cigar in seven years. Could someone please step up the efforts to end embargo? Haven’t I suffered enough?

Invest in Your Rulers
Last week, I told you that I thought that financials might be good investments. You apparently agreed, assuming of course that you are a middle eastern country.

The country of Qatar bought up a shitload of Credit Suisse stock and plans on spending over 15 billion on bank stocks over the next year. Back in the day, he who had the gold made the rules, then the banks eliminated the gold so now he who has the banks makes the rules and foreign investors will soon have our banks. But don’t worry, this isn’t a takeover effort, just savvy investing. They’ll sell our bank stocks back to us when the stocks are up and the dollar is stronger. Qatar was in the National Honors Society back in high school, after all. It’s not stupid.

Toshiba Throws Up Hands, Gets Pissy and Leaves
I don’t know exactly how this happened. But this week, every distributor and retailer of HDDVDs and Blu-Ray systems decided that Blu-Ray was the way to go. Microsoft and Toshiba lost out big time. Panasonic is sitting pretty because they were Blu-Ray all the way, baby.

Now, this one really confuses me. The talking heads compared this to the Beta versus VHS gimmick of the eighties, but that took like three years to unravel and when VHS won, it was solely because they didn’t underestimate the demand and they flooded the market with more VCRs and a greater selection of movies than did slow-moving Beta-Max. I remember a lot of people thought Beta had a better product. But whatever. The decision between Blu-Ray and HDDVD wasn’t really made by the consumers. First, most of the movie studios endorsed Blu-Ray, then most of the retailers followed suit. But no one knows why. Personally, I think retailers were just sweating the lack of sales and knew they had to pick one format or the other to bring more consumers in. But that smacks of evil.

Anyway, if you own an HDDVD player, you may want to put it on EBay. Sucker.

New Innovations Still not Better than New Orgasms
Apparently, there’s now a device out there that can tell if coffee tastes good or bad. This is bad news for the world’s professional coffee tasters, but there’s only like fifty of them and I mean, seriously, a coffee taster? How the hell can I feel bad for you if you worked any amount of time tasting food for a living?

A new study shows that humans may be more receptive to vaccinations if they are tattooed onto their bodies. Which means that twenty or thirty years from now, we could see some kind of bizarre tattoo artist/nurse hybrid. Actually, typing that turned me on a little. Christ, I need help.

A Virginia Tech student invented a gravity powered floor lamp that can run for four hours at a time before someone needs to lift a weight from the bottom of the lamp and slide it up again to the top. The Virginia Tech student said he “Totally got the idea from gravity bongs, dude.”

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”
Aaaaaaa—C. Malesherbes

The Investor's Coroner

Welcome to The Investor’s Coroner, your weekly attempt to make both sense and fun of the current global markets and inform you of the happenings in the international marketplace while simultaneously inserting jokes like my penis into an Asian hooker’s hot-sauce-covered vagina (what can I say? I’m quirky).

It is a goal of The Investor’s Coroner to help you understand just what’s going on in this here economy. Or, barring that, maybe I’ll teach you a word or two. That never hurts.

Five Minute Recess
Now, let’s kick this off by addressing the thousand pound gorilla in the American living room. Everyone wants to know if the US is in a recession, but the truth is, that is not an easy question to answer. You see, some people define recessions by successive quarters of declining gross domestic product. I don’t go by that because I have no idea what those words mean, and recession has to be easier than that to define (it’s not that complex a word, after all). Still other people determine whether or not we’re in a recession by the rates at which wages increase or decrease. Some market analysts take into consideration the jobless claim rate. Still other market analysts state that a combination of dollar valuation, jobless rates and market index behavior all dictate whether or not we’re in a recession. But really, it is much easier to figure out than all of that. Basically, if all these analysts are arguing about which theory to apply to determining a state of recession, then we’re in one. If not, there wouldn’t be anything to argue about, now would there?

Now that you know we’re in a recession, you probably want to know how to survive in it. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’d rather just smoke more pot. That’s fine, stoner. See if I care (Nate’s note: I don’t care).

Bernanke Makes Market his Bitch
This week, Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke basically told the world that economic growth would continue to slow and would likely worsen, that there are no more plans to cut interest rates until March meetings at the earliest and that any attempts of stock rallying would get pushed down by his meaty little sausage hands.

When asked to comment, Bernanke said, “What the fuck is wrong with my hands, asshole?”

As a result of Bernanke’s comments, the market cried like a little girl who just lost a Barbie Doll and then fell a few hundred points or so. Warren Buffet, one of the world’s most successful investors, didn’t flinch.

Buffet Fails to Take Over More of the World
Warren Bufffet’s uber-company, Berkshire Hathaway, which specializes in buying other companies, making a shitload of cash and never splitting its stock, recently tried to buy the rights to insure $800 billion in non-sub-prime-mortgage-backed bonds from three fledgling banks, which quickly figured out that though, by accepting Buffet’s offer, they would have more capital to offset issues with insuring their crap mortgage-backed securities, they still would only be left with crap mortgage-backed securities to insure.

A spokesman for one of the shit banks, Ambac, said, “Slick bastard almost tricked us. Sometimes I wonder if he’s even human.”

Say what you will about Buffet being an evil conspirator with the central banks of the world, but at least the guy knows that you gotta kick them when they're down.

I’m in Murders and Executions
Okay, this is a little fucked up right here: Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo so it can compete with Google in online text-advertising except market analysts don’t think that the companies would merge well and that even if they did so seamlessly, they would still lose out big time in the online text ad sector, which really wasn’t even a sector until Google came along.

Well, Yahoo decided that Microsoft was icky and tried to team up with News Corp but News Corp’s not man enough to make a complete merger and is seen by most of the market as a douche partner picked solely for rebound purposes. Getting over Microsoft can be tough for anyone.

Still, other analysts say that the merger would be worth it because Yahoo/News Corp or Yahoo/Microsoft would solidify themselves as leaders in the online display ad market, which Google sucks at because the government hasn’t let it buy any online display ad companies, almost all of which are in the process of being purchased by some internet giant. On a related note, I own an online display ad company that I’m considering selling. You listening, Google? It’s a great company. I call it: Buy Me You Rich Bastards (ticker symbol: Rip).

Squiggly Lines Say Recession May End, Call you Fat
Okay, so there’s this thing called the 2-year treasury note and this other thing called the 10-year treasury note and when the difference in their yields gets really far apart and makes a big loop near the top of some chart, that means we’re approaching the worst of the economy and then after that the market gets like all better or something. I’m not much of a chartist, but if you believe the squiggly lines, things are gonna suck ass until about June or so. Then everything will be awesome until we get a new President, because new Presidents are all stupid the first year. It’s a rule. Like gravity.

The Market has Personality, Goes a Long Way
A company called ABB grew revenue 50% above forecasts, increased 300% in net profitability and still watched its shares fall 4% because their CEO quit the day before quarterly reports were released. Which means that the market is more prone to studying the behaviors of squirrelly executives than the lies they release each quarter as fact.

Diageo, the world’s largest producer of alcoholic beverages, saw shares rise .6% when everyone learned how fucked the economy was and headed straight for the Jack Daniels. According to market analysts, most of these drunks are ex-mortgage brokers.

Take Advantage of the Suffering
In markets like this, where frills are few and far between for the average consumer and inflation is rising quicker than my dick in a strip club, we must take into consideration what is booming. Currently, all commodities are doing quite well because no one trusts the stock market, so the wise investor is actually investing in the value of these commodities, which, considering how the price of said commodities are increasing on the market, may be the only way that investors can actually afford to pay for staples like corn, oil, gas and soybeans at their grocery stores and gas stations. At any rate, the commodities market is booming, which means it’s a bubble, which means it will burst, which means you may want to take a value based strategy this quarter. Which means… something about deals or something.

Invest in your Rulers
Now is a great time to get into financial companies because they are all suffering because of mortgage backed securities (Goldman Sachs is an exception here). Banks own the world and are more powerful than entire nuclear-weapon-toting countries, which means that their stock prices will return. Now’s the time. Believe me. I have a blog.

New Age Innovations better than New Age Music
According to some study I was too lazy to research, pepper may help with skin cancer. So, invest in pepper companies and if this turns out to be untrue, you’ll probably still be invested in pepper companies, which go great with salt companies and pork bellies.

Shit You Should have Invested in Last Week
Activision, the makers of Guitar Hero, had a kickass quarter and made their investors a lot of money. I’ll bet you’re kicking yourself for not investing in them, seeing as how you see that damn game everywhere. Dumbass.

Also, some company called First Solar kicked ass to the tune of thirty percent last week. Alternative energy companies were the largest growing sector of 2007, which proves that fear of American dependence on oil will soon be replaced by fear of American dependence on solar power. I, for one, am thinking of buying a piece of the motherfuckung sun.

Your Motivational Investment Quote of the Week
“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.”
Aaaaa—Henry Amiel