RePUBLICan TV? Has Chairman Tomlinson, a Republican, though appointed by big Dem Willie J—God knows why—been dishing out secret money to Republican snoops and lobbyists to slant programming to the right? Looks like he has, and unless someone makes a whole lot of noise, we'll soon be viewing the Rove Cheney Rumsfeld Rice back to the Bible hour reality TV show for new military recruits, the religious right, and the NRA. God Help Elmo and America!
$120 Billion Reward for Killing Americans! That's how much a former tobacco legal big now in the Justice Department, a good pal of W's, ordered career lawyers to reduce penalties against big tobacco, from $130 billion to $10 billion. Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, but someone in Washington is blowing a lot of smoke up our collective asses.
Jack the Ripper Establishes Humanities Chair at Oxford Not really, but Bristol Myers Squibb, one of the companies of the oligopoly that sucks our wallets dry, in addition to a $300 million settlement for cooking the books, will establish an endowed business ethics chair at Seton Hall University. Question: Do we really and truly want our future business leaders learning business ethics courtesy of companies that constantly spit in the eye of the law? Have them endow a 'business crooks slammer survival' chair instead.
GM Gets the FINGER Gettelfinger that is. Ron Gettelfinger, UAW's head honcho, tells profit immune GM ix-nay on changes before the UAW contract expires in 2007, and lowering health benefits of hourly workers to match those of salaried employees got about as much response as calling a nurse to dump your bedpan.
Bank Service Charge - $8.7 Billion? Cost of check writing going up? How about other fees? Yep, they sure are. J .P. Morgan Chase and Citicorp ponied up $4.2 billion to Enron investors. That's on top of the $4.5 billion they paid to WorldCom investors. Bob and Ted's Friendly Community Bank and Trust, totally free checking, is beginning to look better all the time.
These Two Businessmen Go Into A Bar…They weren't drunk, it just seemed like it. A lot of 90's mergers financed with air dollars are coming unstuck. Viacom is splitting in two, doubtless anxious to cash in on CBS's current ratings surge; Morgan Stanley is rethinking Dean Wittier (like that's a surprise), and Time Warner should drop kick AOL into the next millennium. The divestiture game is afoot, watch for more, and then it'll start all over again, just as it always has.
Holy HELLiburton Batman! Hold your nose on this one. Treatment of inmates at the American prison at Guantanamo, under attack by Amnesty International (Bush called their report absurd), and a host of others sources like Time and Business Week and now even the United States Congress, was staunchly defended earlier this week by Veep Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, and his chief bum boy Rummy Rumsfeld. Well guess who the Pentagon yesterday picked to build a second prison at camp Gitmo? Yep, Halliburton, for $30MM. I warned you: this one stinks even for D.C.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
Runway Fun United Airlines may be the first US airline to offer wireless in-flight Internet service, though it may have to do so from the ground if it can’t solve its plane-loads of debt and unfunded pension obligations. Maybe passengers and investors will Google United to see when it and its stock might get airborne.
Chinese Checkers No, not the game, the cars. Does a country with five times the population of the US really need to export its cars to us? We can’t keep GM going as it is, although its demise might not be a bad thing except for the 90,000 workers it will have left after axing 25,000 this week. Maybe instead of exporting jobs, the US should export people needing jobs—China might make good use of 25,000 American trained auto builders who can not only show them how to build substandard vehicles, but introduce them to the UAW philosophies and get that $2 per hour up to $37.
Ay Carumba! Mexicans with valid SS numbers and resident alien cards are renting them out to those not so fortunate. In the process, besides pocketing a fee for the service, these entrepreneurial ID renters expand their Social Security contributions thus qualifying for a larger pension down the road and collect income tax refunds. Identity theft is a huge problem, but maybe, inadvertently, these Rio Grande waders have come up with a solution for that problem as well.
Canadian Cuckarocha? Some nut from north of the border has invented a robot driven by something called a Madagascar hissing cockroach (for you NY apartment dwellers, it can grow to the size of a mouse and the hissing part doesn’t sound all that endearing so stop complaining) that he sticks in the driver’s seat with Velcro and then depends on the roach’s innate aversion to light to steer the robot away from light-flashing obstacles. He must have a couple of teenagers and old farts in the crowd though because it seems some of them like the crashing sensation while others sit idly for long periods of time, probably at intersections.
Stick That Whistle Where? Whistle blowing is a serious business ethics problem (apologies for using business and ethics in the same sentence). Consider Dr. Peter Rost, a vice president at Pfizer, one of the drug companies that we know and love. Rost ratted the pharmaceutical industry out on exorbitant drug prices, though I don’t know why he had to—like, it’s not a secret. First, his employees stopped reporting to him; second, his supervisors stopped returning his calls; third, he doesn’t know to whom to report; fourth, his secretary left; fifth, his office was moved near Pfizer’s security department in a different town; sixth, his company e-mail was cut off and his corporate cellphone stopped working. You don’t have to write mystery novels to guess what seventh might be. I think if I were Rost, I’d take my whistle and go tootle somewhere safer.
Kozlowski Kraziness & Scrushy Silliness If the juries for Denis Kozlowski, Tyco’s ex CEO, and Richard Scrushy, Health South’s ex CEO don’t get their acts together, these two super-rich oinkers may avoid the slammer and again make a mockery of our equal justice for all system.
Chinese Checkers No, not the game, the cars. Does a country with five times the population of the US really need to export its cars to us? We can’t keep GM going as it is, although its demise might not be a bad thing except for the 90,000 workers it will have left after axing 25,000 this week. Maybe instead of exporting jobs, the US should export people needing jobs—China might make good use of 25,000 American trained auto builders who can not only show them how to build substandard vehicles, but introduce them to the UAW philosophies and get that $2 per hour up to $37.
Ay Carumba! Mexicans with valid SS numbers and resident alien cards are renting them out to those not so fortunate. In the process, besides pocketing a fee for the service, these entrepreneurial ID renters expand their Social Security contributions thus qualifying for a larger pension down the road and collect income tax refunds. Identity theft is a huge problem, but maybe, inadvertently, these Rio Grande waders have come up with a solution for that problem as well.
Canadian Cuckarocha? Some nut from north of the border has invented a robot driven by something called a Madagascar hissing cockroach (for you NY apartment dwellers, it can grow to the size of a mouse and the hissing part doesn’t sound all that endearing so stop complaining) that he sticks in the driver’s seat with Velcro and then depends on the roach’s innate aversion to light to steer the robot away from light-flashing obstacles. He must have a couple of teenagers and old farts in the crowd though because it seems some of them like the crashing sensation while others sit idly for long periods of time, probably at intersections.
Stick That Whistle Where? Whistle blowing is a serious business ethics problem (apologies for using business and ethics in the same sentence). Consider Dr. Peter Rost, a vice president at Pfizer, one of the drug companies that we know and love. Rost ratted the pharmaceutical industry out on exorbitant drug prices, though I don’t know why he had to—like, it’s not a secret. First, his employees stopped reporting to him; second, his supervisors stopped returning his calls; third, he doesn’t know to whom to report; fourth, his secretary left; fifth, his office was moved near Pfizer’s security department in a different town; sixth, his company e-mail was cut off and his corporate cellphone stopped working. You don’t have to write mystery novels to guess what seventh might be. I think if I were Rost, I’d take my whistle and go tootle somewhere safer.
Kozlowski Kraziness & Scrushy Silliness If the juries for Denis Kozlowski, Tyco’s ex CEO, and Richard Scrushy, Health South’s ex CEO don’t get their acts together, these two super-rich oinkers may avoid the slammer and again make a mockery of our equal justice for all system.
Friday, June 03, 2005
America Off Line Time Warner should stop playing coy with this loser and send it packing before shareholders get another screwing. Time Warner’s own Road Runner and other cable ISP’s and DSL are knocking AOL out of the box at every turn. In five years, there’ll be fewer phone line hookups to the Internet than there are old dial phones in use today.
RIP AA As in Arthur Anderson, not Accountants Anonymous, though in this case they are the same. A judge tossed out the Enron (remember those guys – some haven’t gone to jail yet) document shredding case for AA, a Pyrrhic victory at best. Maybe it’s fitting that America’s largest garbage collector was the root of the Arthur Anderson demise.
BA, MS, W-M PhD Wal-Mart, that icon of post-graduate employment, that bastion of bloated pay-checks, to shine up its tarnished image, is sponsoring ABC’s The Scholar where five winners will each get a $2,000 Wal-Mart gift certificate to outfit their dorm rooms. Nothing was said about midnight dorm raids to make sure Wal-Mart banned works of those dangerous enemies of the Republic like Jon Stewart and Snoop Dogg aren’t sitting on Wal-Mart supplied shelves or being played on Wal-Mart supplied CD players.
Sweeeeet! To hear that big sugar might finally get its hands slapped for dipping into the Washington cookie jar far too long and far too often is joyous music. It seems our neighbors to the north and south can provide cheaper sugar if the quota system that prevents them from doing so were abolished, ending this multi-billion dollar boondoggle that you and I pay for each time we need a fix.
Prick! No, not an adjective for Alan Greenspan, though some economists and politicos would disagree, but a verb for what he plans to do to the housing market bubble. The Chinese, who buy gazillions in US Treasury debt, hold the bigger pin and don’t suffer from Washington peer pressure.
AIG Agony, A King Maurice P.S. AIG reduced its profits by $4 billion. The new CEO said AIG’s future is very bright. He didn’t say anything about ex CEO, Maurice Greenberg’s future.
RIP AA As in Arthur Anderson, not Accountants Anonymous, though in this case they are the same. A judge tossed out the Enron (remember those guys – some haven’t gone to jail yet) document shredding case for AA, a Pyrrhic victory at best. Maybe it’s fitting that America’s largest garbage collector was the root of the Arthur Anderson demise.
BA, MS, W-M PhD Wal-Mart, that icon of post-graduate employment, that bastion of bloated pay-checks, to shine up its tarnished image, is sponsoring ABC’s The Scholar where five winners will each get a $2,000 Wal-Mart gift certificate to outfit their dorm rooms. Nothing was said about midnight dorm raids to make sure Wal-Mart banned works of those dangerous enemies of the Republic like Jon Stewart and Snoop Dogg aren’t sitting on Wal-Mart supplied shelves or being played on Wal-Mart supplied CD players.
Sweeeeet! To hear that big sugar might finally get its hands slapped for dipping into the Washington cookie jar far too long and far too often is joyous music. It seems our neighbors to the north and south can provide cheaper sugar if the quota system that prevents them from doing so were abolished, ending this multi-billion dollar boondoggle that you and I pay for each time we need a fix.
Prick! No, not an adjective for Alan Greenspan, though some economists and politicos would disagree, but a verb for what he plans to do to the housing market bubble. The Chinese, who buy gazillions in US Treasury debt, hold the bigger pin and don’t suffer from Washington peer pressure.
AIG Agony, A King Maurice P.S. AIG reduced its profits by $4 billion. The new CEO said AIG’s future is very bright. He didn’t say anything about ex CEO, Maurice Greenberg’s future.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Blind People, Half Price Knowledge News this week reported that the BBC lets seniors view its programming free, but charges blind people half-price.
Stop, You’ll Go Blind Speaking of blind people, remember what your mother told you not to do or you’d go blind? Well it turns out she may have been at least partially correct—there are reports circulating that Viagra, Bob Dole’s pill of choice, causes blindness in some users. On second thought, maybe it wasn't the pill; maybe they were, you know…doing what their mothers told them not to.
Seeing Stars The New York Times reported that Canadian astronomers—at least according to the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia, whatever that is—deliver more scientific bang for the buck. This is surprising? Canada is dark. There is not hockey. It has long winters. It has few people. It has a big sky filled with, as Carl Sagan would have said, billions and billions of stars.
Empty Keys Ruth Laredo, that grand dame of the keyboard, died this week. Pianos around the world shall miss her touch, Rachmaninoff will need to find a new soul, and listeners everywhere shall miss her incomparable banquet.
Eat Me In her sexiest role yet, Paris Hilton gets her licks in on a Carl Jr. burger. Make mine rare, and who said the advertising industry couldn’t be original? Wonder what they’ll come up with for the lowly frank.
What’s That on Your Nipple Don’t like airport security’s hands hovering near your privates? Don’t worry. If Homeland Security, the color code people have their way with their new scanners, they’ll be able to see every last crook and nanny, including nipple and other less visible adornments,
Pssst! Wanna buy a Bolex? The second or third oldest profession, hawking phony goods on the sidewalks of New York, is in full swing. No name tag? No problem—for five bucks extra, the handbag becomes a Kate Spade. Don’t want the girlfriend to think you’re a cheap bastard? Here, drop this bunko price tag inside where she’ll be sure to find it.
Shop Suey Been to the world’s largest shopping mall? Been to seven of the ten larges shopping malls in the world. Ah so. By 2010, China will ray craim to both titles.
Stop, You’ll Go Blind Speaking of blind people, remember what your mother told you not to do or you’d go blind? Well it turns out she may have been at least partially correct—there are reports circulating that Viagra, Bob Dole’s pill of choice, causes blindness in some users. On second thought, maybe it wasn't the pill; maybe they were, you know…doing what their mothers told them not to.
Seeing Stars The New York Times reported that Canadian astronomers—at least according to the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia, whatever that is—deliver more scientific bang for the buck. This is surprising? Canada is dark. There is not hockey. It has long winters. It has few people. It has a big sky filled with, as Carl Sagan would have said, billions and billions of stars.
Empty Keys Ruth Laredo, that grand dame of the keyboard, died this week. Pianos around the world shall miss her touch, Rachmaninoff will need to find a new soul, and listeners everywhere shall miss her incomparable banquet.
Eat Me In her sexiest role yet, Paris Hilton gets her licks in on a Carl Jr. burger. Make mine rare, and who said the advertising industry couldn’t be original? Wonder what they’ll come up with for the lowly frank.
What’s That on Your Nipple Don’t like airport security’s hands hovering near your privates? Don’t worry. If Homeland Security, the color code people have their way with their new scanners, they’ll be able to see every last crook and nanny, including nipple and other less visible adornments,
Pssst! Wanna buy a Bolex? The second or third oldest profession, hawking phony goods on the sidewalks of New York, is in full swing. No name tag? No problem—for five bucks extra, the handbag becomes a Kate Spade. Don’t want the girlfriend to think you’re a cheap bastard? Here, drop this bunko price tag inside where she’ll be sure to find it.
Shop Suey Been to the world’s largest shopping mall? Been to seven of the ten larges shopping malls in the world. Ah so. By 2010, China will ray craim to both titles.
Friday, May 20, 2005
But Did Cher Sing? Prosecution singers against grad gala thrower, David Rosen, accused of under reporting by $700 thousand Hillary’s Hollywood bash, include James Levin (after copping a plea to have his sentence for past sins—ripping off Chicago public schools—reduced to something less than the twenty years of rock pounding he currently faces), and Raymond C. Reggie (friend of Bill and brother-in-law of EMK, the senator from Massachusetts) who, it seems, likes to defraud banks and impersonate police officers and wants to get his five years and $3.5 million fine slashed in return for blabbing and having a wired dinner with Rosen. P.S. Cher sang at the gala, twice; and the tape, the Rosen/Reggie tape that is, didn’t make it into the evidence pile.
Okuda, 28º C, and Body Odor What do they have in common? Visit Japan this summer and you may find out. To save energy, Japan’s public and private offices will be a toasty 82.4º F. But fear not, Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor (think GM when GM was GM) will dance down the runway in a short-sleeved shirt (sans tie no less) and slacks thereby announcing to the plebes (Japan calls them ‘salarymen’) that they too can shuck the sweltering suit. Even the rules committee of the lower house of parliament will vote next week to allow its members to hang their coats on a hook in office and committee rooms—can jeans and tees be far behind?
Chainsaw Massacre You gotta stay with me on this one. Remember Chainsaw Al as in Al Dunlap, former CEO of bankrupt Sunbeam Appliances, the guy who perpetrated a huge accounting fraud, getting abhorrently rich while screwing Sunbeam shareholders and creditors in the process? (And who, in my humble opinion should be in the slammer instead of sipping gin and tonic on his private beach). Meanwhile Ron Perlman, CEO of Revlon, the guy who bankrupted Marvel Entertainment (WAM! POW! SOCK! the investors) the same guy who drives Revlon’s bus of beauty while it’s ugly stock $2.86 sits at about one-eighth of ’96 issue price of $24 and about one-twentieth its 1998 high of $56.37, gets $1.5 billion because Morgan Stanley (yes, the same people who are trying to dump their CEO) arranged the financing in 1998 when Sunbeam acquired a bunch of camp stoves and lanterns (Coleman) from Perlman for $1.5 billion. Because Perlman didn’t cash out, he got ‘chainsawed’ like Dunlap’s other investors. But unlike Dunlap’s other investors, it seems Perlman might be the only one getting his loot. This cesspool emits more stink than justice.
Real Estate - $600MM PSI That’s what the white space on Google’s home page seems to be worth based on its market cap of $66 billion. Shareholders better pray that’s what Google gets, i.e., $600 million per square inch, or the Google bubble is going to burst and splatter green googley gobs on everyone who paid $200 ++ bucks per share.
Doomed Marriage? You’ve heard it before: one partner lives on the West Coast, the other on the East Coast, a commuting marriage they call it. It doesn’t work. Soon, one or the other or both will start looking around, maybe innocently at first, but one night and a few drinks and bang, into someone else’s bed. If one partner had a ton of money, maybe the other would decide the risk wasn’t worth getting caught in sweaty sheets, but in the case of money losing America West and US Airways, the saints of saved airline mergers will need to put in a lot of overtime.
Irony Quit smoking, gain weight. It happens to everyone. Durham, NC used to be the home of big tobacco. Now, it calls itself the ‘Diet Capital of the World and one in four residents is employed in healthcare.
Okuda, 28º C, and Body Odor What do they have in common? Visit Japan this summer and you may find out. To save energy, Japan’s public and private offices will be a toasty 82.4º F. But fear not, Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor (think GM when GM was GM) will dance down the runway in a short-sleeved shirt (sans tie no less) and slacks thereby announcing to the plebes (Japan calls them ‘salarymen’) that they too can shuck the sweltering suit. Even the rules committee of the lower house of parliament will vote next week to allow its members to hang their coats on a hook in office and committee rooms—can jeans and tees be far behind?
Chainsaw Massacre You gotta stay with me on this one. Remember Chainsaw Al as in Al Dunlap, former CEO of bankrupt Sunbeam Appliances, the guy who perpetrated a huge accounting fraud, getting abhorrently rich while screwing Sunbeam shareholders and creditors in the process? (And who, in my humble opinion should be in the slammer instead of sipping gin and tonic on his private beach). Meanwhile Ron Perlman, CEO of Revlon, the guy who bankrupted Marvel Entertainment (WAM! POW! SOCK! the investors) the same guy who drives Revlon’s bus of beauty while it’s ugly stock $2.86 sits at about one-eighth of ’96 issue price of $24 and about one-twentieth its 1998 high of $56.37, gets $1.5 billion because Morgan Stanley (yes, the same people who are trying to dump their CEO) arranged the financing in 1998 when Sunbeam acquired a bunch of camp stoves and lanterns (Coleman) from Perlman for $1.5 billion. Because Perlman didn’t cash out, he got ‘chainsawed’ like Dunlap’s other investors. But unlike Dunlap’s other investors, it seems Perlman might be the only one getting his loot. This cesspool emits more stink than justice.
Real Estate - $600MM PSI That’s what the white space on Google’s home page seems to be worth based on its market cap of $66 billion. Shareholders better pray that’s what Google gets, i.e., $600 million per square inch, or the Google bubble is going to burst and splatter green googley gobs on everyone who paid $200 ++ bucks per share.
Doomed Marriage? You’ve heard it before: one partner lives on the West Coast, the other on the East Coast, a commuting marriage they call it. It doesn’t work. Soon, one or the other or both will start looking around, maybe innocently at first, but one night and a few drinks and bang, into someone else’s bed. If one partner had a ton of money, maybe the other would decide the risk wasn’t worth getting caught in sweaty sheets, but in the case of money losing America West and US Airways, the saints of saved airline mergers will need to put in a lot of overtime.
Irony Quit smoking, gain weight. It happens to everyone. Durham, NC used to be the home of big tobacco. Now, it calls itself the ‘Diet Capital of the World and one in four residents is employed in healthcare.
Friday, May 13, 2005
United We Fall Where will United Airlines be a year from now? Management is trying to cut costs by reducing employee benefits including termination of its pension plans and unions are threatening to strike. Wake up people—this is another airline drama like Eastern and Pan Am that’s got ‘The End’ written all over it.
Pig Power Rummy, that dastardly deed doer, that bespectacled defense department denizen who eats small countries with his Wheaties, caved in to congressional porkers, backing down from plans to terminate the C-130J transport, a Lockheed Martin piece of junk that according to those friendly folks at the Pentagon has so many flaws it hasn’t been cleared for combat.
Saks of Cash Apparently a handful of hooligans including the CEO’s kid brother, all of whom work for that famous retailer on the Avenue, Fifth Avenue, where photographers will snap you and you’ll find that you’re in rotogravure, has been nicking the knickers of Saks suppliers by snipping big bucks from invoices and doing some heavy-duty pocket lining. Kinda wilts the lilies on your Easter bonnet, don’t it.
Hold The Pickle So the finger in the chili was a hoax and Wendy’s is giving away free milkshakes to lure its digitally challenged chili chompers back into the fold. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to give away something less lumpy, like clear broth without carrots?
You Vilifying Me Big tobacco is smokin’ over hard hitting ads they say are vilifying. Let’s recap: they kill millions of Americans with a product they know is carcinogenic; they pay a quarter of a trillion (yes, that’s the big T) greenbacks for medical mission work, whatever that is; they get their asses sued by countless others, and they’re worried about vilifying ads?
Mickey Louse Roy (Walt’s nephew) and his constant companion, Stanley Gold, are again suing the house of mouse (when haven’t they), this time to get rid of CEO-to-be Iger four months before he takes over from Eisner. Departing CEO Eisner and Goofy might be the only ones smiling.
Red Alert! Green Confidence! Where were you while Bush biked and Cheney cut and run and Washington fought the war of the Cessna? And just why did everyone get out of Dodge when that killing machine of a two-seater prop job chugged into hallowed space at 100 m.p.h.? They can’t have much confidence in Homeland Security and the multi-billions they spent on making sure we, the people, are safe.
Pig Power Rummy, that dastardly deed doer, that bespectacled defense department denizen who eats small countries with his Wheaties, caved in to congressional porkers, backing down from plans to terminate the C-130J transport, a Lockheed Martin piece of junk that according to those friendly folks at the Pentagon has so many flaws it hasn’t been cleared for combat.
Saks of Cash Apparently a handful of hooligans including the CEO’s kid brother, all of whom work for that famous retailer on the Avenue, Fifth Avenue, where photographers will snap you and you’ll find that you’re in rotogravure, has been nicking the knickers of Saks suppliers by snipping big bucks from invoices and doing some heavy-duty pocket lining. Kinda wilts the lilies on your Easter bonnet, don’t it.
Hold The Pickle So the finger in the chili was a hoax and Wendy’s is giving away free milkshakes to lure its digitally challenged chili chompers back into the fold. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to give away something less lumpy, like clear broth without carrots?
You Vilifying Me Big tobacco is smokin’ over hard hitting ads they say are vilifying. Let’s recap: they kill millions of Americans with a product they know is carcinogenic; they pay a quarter of a trillion (yes, that’s the big T) greenbacks for medical mission work, whatever that is; they get their asses sued by countless others, and they’re worried about vilifying ads?
Mickey Louse Roy (Walt’s nephew) and his constant companion, Stanley Gold, are again suing the house of mouse (when haven’t they), this time to get rid of CEO-to-be Iger four months before he takes over from Eisner. Departing CEO Eisner and Goofy might be the only ones smiling.
Red Alert! Green Confidence! Where were you while Bush biked and Cheney cut and run and Washington fought the war of the Cessna? And just why did everyone get out of Dodge when that killing machine of a two-seater prop job chugged into hallowed space at 100 m.p.h.? They can’t have much confidence in Homeland Security and the multi-billions they spent on making sure we, the people, are safe.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Slave Labor I don’t know the answer, but Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer, pays some of its employees so little money they need food stamps and Medicare to survive. It just doesn’t seem American.
Hand People Who are those people who stick their hands in front of cameras? Do they take special courses? Are they required to have a special hand license? Damn it! I want to see the faces of the crooks they’re trying to hide, crooks who are off to our courts and our jails. We’re paying and we’re entitled to more than a big fat hand in the face.
England vs. US No, not the England with a Queen, the much more powerful England called Lynndie, who, from her lowly rank of pfc, orchestrated the entire prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib. Lock her up and throw away the key—she’s clearly a threat to the American military industrial complex; hell man, she’s a threat to our democratic way of life.
Audience Rests? The prosecution rests. Please, let us be next. Put the trial in thirty-day mothballs and ban any mention of Michael Jackson by Jay Leno or other ‘hard news’ reporters. Violators will be incarcerated for thirty days and nights at Touchy-Feely Ranch.
Inventor of Wheel Buys Car At least it seems that Kirk Kerkorian, who bought another $850 million of GM stock this week, has been around that long. P.S. He For the market players among you, he doesn’t like to lose.
Ban Bermudans! American companies that incorporate in Bermuda to skirt around their US tax obligations should be banned from selling their goods and services in the U.S. If our congressmen and senators (you know, there the ones we elected who accept money from big corporations to do their bidding) won’t do it, then it’s up to us. Don’t buy their stuff!
Dumb Idea Rental Microsoft, the maker of madness in the form of crashed disks, fatal errors, three-day waits for tech support and other life threatening horrors, has decided to tap into its vast resources and lease ideas to startup companies. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the beginning of the end of business in America.
Need an Ambulance? Call a Helicopter Google ‘medical helicopters’ and in .17 seconds you’ll get 733,000 hits. Know why? According to the NYT, that Eminence Grise of the Fourth Estate, 700 medical helicopters operate nationally (double that of ten years ago) at $5 thousand to $10 thousand a pop, five to ten times that of your plain old vanilla ground bound conveyor of carnage and guess who’s paying? Yep, you and I, baby. Medicare coughed up $103 million in 2002. Since the number of flights from 2001 to 2004 was up 58%, a tad of straight line forecasting (ridiculous methodology, I know, since government expenditures tend to increase exponentially) tells me that Medicare shelled out about $150 million in 2004.
Had Your Quorn? Do you really have to know that some people suffer nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating this meat substitute sold broadly by natural-food retailer Whole Foods and others? Isn’t it enough to know that Quorn is made from a vat-grown fungus? Gee honey, here’s a pack of wieners made from a vat-grown fungus—let’s stock up. Not.
Road Runner User Steals Time Warner Employee Data Data for 600,000 current and former TW employees has been lost. Don’t believe it—it was hijacked by a TW customer desperate for the phone number for a real person to answer RR e-mail questions.
Hand People Who are those people who stick their hands in front of cameras? Do they take special courses? Are they required to have a special hand license? Damn it! I want to see the faces of the crooks they’re trying to hide, crooks who are off to our courts and our jails. We’re paying and we’re entitled to more than a big fat hand in the face.
England vs. US No, not the England with a Queen, the much more powerful England called Lynndie, who, from her lowly rank of pfc, orchestrated the entire prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib. Lock her up and throw away the key—she’s clearly a threat to the American military industrial complex; hell man, she’s a threat to our democratic way of life.
Audience Rests? The prosecution rests. Please, let us be next. Put the trial in thirty-day mothballs and ban any mention of Michael Jackson by Jay Leno or other ‘hard news’ reporters. Violators will be incarcerated for thirty days and nights at Touchy-Feely Ranch.
Inventor of Wheel Buys Car At least it seems that Kirk Kerkorian, who bought another $850 million of GM stock this week, has been around that long. P.S. He For the market players among you, he doesn’t like to lose.
Ban Bermudans! American companies that incorporate in Bermuda to skirt around their US tax obligations should be banned from selling their goods and services in the U.S. If our congressmen and senators (you know, there the ones we elected who accept money from big corporations to do their bidding) won’t do it, then it’s up to us. Don’t buy their stuff!
Dumb Idea Rental Microsoft, the maker of madness in the form of crashed disks, fatal errors, three-day waits for tech support and other life threatening horrors, has decided to tap into its vast resources and lease ideas to startup companies. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the beginning of the end of business in America.
Need an Ambulance? Call a Helicopter Google ‘medical helicopters’ and in .17 seconds you’ll get 733,000 hits. Know why? According to the NYT, that Eminence Grise of the Fourth Estate, 700 medical helicopters operate nationally (double that of ten years ago) at $5 thousand to $10 thousand a pop, five to ten times that of your plain old vanilla ground bound conveyor of carnage and guess who’s paying? Yep, you and I, baby. Medicare coughed up $103 million in 2002. Since the number of flights from 2001 to 2004 was up 58%, a tad of straight line forecasting (ridiculous methodology, I know, since government expenditures tend to increase exponentially) tells me that Medicare shelled out about $150 million in 2004.
Had Your Quorn? Do you really have to know that some people suffer nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea after eating this meat substitute sold broadly by natural-food retailer Whole Foods and others? Isn’t it enough to know that Quorn is made from a vat-grown fungus? Gee honey, here’s a pack of wieners made from a vat-grown fungus—let’s stock up. Not.
Road Runner User Steals Time Warner Employee Data Data for 600,000 current and former TW employees has been lost. Don’t believe it—it was hijacked by a TW customer desperate for the phone number for a real person to answer RR e-mail questions.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Stupid is as stupid does! Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco, took the stand in his own defense, admitting to a slight omission in 1999 of a paltry $25 million from his W-2. I guess Denny boy forgot what happened when his Worldcom counterpart, Bernie boy, took the stand and pleaded the ‘stupid’ defense. He was found guilty and faces up to eighty-five years in the slammer and unlike Denny boy, Bernie even looks half-believable.
Washington ethics is still a leaky bucket, but committee rule changes are finally being rolled back so that poor old ethically challenged Tom DeLay can have his day in court. Now if Washington would only punch a few holes in the barrels of morality they keep trying to drown us in...
Body mass index? If your BMI (not BM) is above 35, you, my friend, are likely to hear from the fat police over and over and over until you want to do nothing but sit down and eat a double chocolate ice cream sundae, and if you live in Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama or West Virginia, you’ll have a lot of company. These four states have 25% or more of their population with a BMI of 35 or above. Maybe rather than being obese, they’re just too damn short. (Cut and paste the following in your browser to get to the BMI calculator: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/calc-bmi.htm)
Bring your own peanuts. The new Airbus A380 seats 555 with a crew of two. And forget about a second drink, maybe even the first one if the crew of two happens to be the pilot and co-pilot. And forget about 555 seats. By the time one or two American-based airlines get finished, there’ll be eight hundred seats and to get from New York to Cleveland, you’ll have to go through Atlanta or Dallas. (Can behemoths that hold several thousand cattle, er, passengers and fly weekly between the City of Lights and the Big Apple be far behind?)
EC says US accounting rules lacking. Gee, you think. Anyway, it sounds like the Europeans now want us to tell them in advance whenever we’re about to spring an Enron or WorldCom on them. Totally unreasonable old chap, I say. Non! Nein! Let them find out the old fashioned way like we do—like when the shit hits the fan.
Washington ethics is still a leaky bucket, but committee rule changes are finally being rolled back so that poor old ethically challenged Tom DeLay can have his day in court. Now if Washington would only punch a few holes in the barrels of morality they keep trying to drown us in...
Body mass index? If your BMI (not BM) is above 35, you, my friend, are likely to hear from the fat police over and over and over until you want to do nothing but sit down and eat a double chocolate ice cream sundae, and if you live in Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama or West Virginia, you’ll have a lot of company. These four states have 25% or more of their population with a BMI of 35 or above. Maybe rather than being obese, they’re just too damn short. (Cut and paste the following in your browser to get to the BMI calculator: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/calc-bmi.htm)
Bring your own peanuts. The new Airbus A380 seats 555 with a crew of two. And forget about a second drink, maybe even the first one if the crew of two happens to be the pilot and co-pilot. And forget about 555 seats. By the time one or two American-based airlines get finished, there’ll be eight hundred seats and to get from New York to Cleveland, you’ll have to go through Atlanta or Dallas. (Can behemoths that hold several thousand cattle, er, passengers and fly weekly between the City of Lights and the Big Apple be far behind?)
EC says US accounting rules lacking. Gee, you think. Anyway, it sounds like the Europeans now want us to tell them in advance whenever we’re about to spring an Enron or WorldCom on them. Totally unreasonable old chap, I say. Non! Nein! Let them find out the old fashioned way like we do—like when the shit hits the fan.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Getting the Finger. Has Wendy’s in San Jose has been serving extra beef in its chili? On March 21 this year, a patron stuck in her thumb and pulled out a plum, er, finger that so far no one has claimed. Wendy’s hasn’t been forthcoming about which finger, but if you’re missing one you might want to give Wendy’s executive office a call. Late Word. It seems our finger finder might have planted the wayward digit.
Google This! Annualized eps hit a whopping $5.16. Guess what its p/e ration is? Well let’s see, you take its share price of $223 (+-) divided by annualized eps of $5.16 and you end up with something like 43 times earnings. And here we thought that bubble had burst.
SPAM Comes to Broadway! Thought it was only in your email? Think again. Hormel, the maker of that canned delicacy we have grown to love, is sponsoring Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Schubert Theater. Hormel is not alone of course. Other products from credit cards to car wax to tequila are ‘spamming’ their way onto the great stages. Will the gallant steeds in Aida at the Met soon be wearing banners, looking more like NASCAR entries than proud opera mounts? How long, I wonder, will it be before high-school plays attract sponsors? And censors?
My Pyramid. The new food pyramid unveiled this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, besides being abhorrently complicated for all but the food police, now has stairs. I’ll stick to chocolate and wait for the escalator version.
Negative Debt Outlook. Huh? Isn’t debt always negative? Fitch Ratings, the debt rating gurus, revised its Berkshire-Hathaway (as in Warren Buffet’s little group from Omaha) debt rating from stable to negative. What does stable mean? What does negative mean? Why does it have to be so confusing? Investment professionals should already know whether it’s good, bad, or ugly so for schlubs like you and me, why can’t Fitch call a turkey a turkey and be done with it.
In the Toilet. We can all applaud American Standard for coming up with Champion, a toilet that never needs plunging, but Champion? Would that be World Champion or Best in Show or Gold Medalist? And suppose you’re the one in charge of Champion, what do you say to people who ask what you do? You know, sitting in first class winging your way to National Flush Trials in Bumsville, MN when the beautiful person in the next seat leans over and whispers in your ear. Do you lie, or plunge right in. Groan. Hey, don’t give me any crap—if you don’t like it, make up your own.
The Wiener Man. George Molchan, who for decades drove his twenty-seven-foot Wienermobile in parades and around malls across America, died April 12th at age 82. At a memorial service, the Wienermobile was parked near his grave and mourners sang a chorus of the Oscar Mayer jingle and blew short blasts on hot dog-shaped whistles. I didn’t know George other than from TV, but I’ll bet he liked the send-off.
Google This! Annualized eps hit a whopping $5.16. Guess what its p/e ration is? Well let’s see, you take its share price of $223 (+-) divided by annualized eps of $5.16 and you end up with something like 43 times earnings. And here we thought that bubble had burst.
SPAM Comes to Broadway! Thought it was only in your email? Think again. Hormel, the maker of that canned delicacy we have grown to love, is sponsoring Monty Python’s Spamalot at the Schubert Theater. Hormel is not alone of course. Other products from credit cards to car wax to tequila are ‘spamming’ their way onto the great stages. Will the gallant steeds in Aida at the Met soon be wearing banners, looking more like NASCAR entries than proud opera mounts? How long, I wonder, will it be before high-school plays attract sponsors? And censors?
My Pyramid. The new food pyramid unveiled this week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, besides being abhorrently complicated for all but the food police, now has stairs. I’ll stick to chocolate and wait for the escalator version.
Negative Debt Outlook. Huh? Isn’t debt always negative? Fitch Ratings, the debt rating gurus, revised its Berkshire-Hathaway (as in Warren Buffet’s little group from Omaha) debt rating from stable to negative. What does stable mean? What does negative mean? Why does it have to be so confusing? Investment professionals should already know whether it’s good, bad, or ugly so for schlubs like you and me, why can’t Fitch call a turkey a turkey and be done with it.
In the Toilet. We can all applaud American Standard for coming up with Champion, a toilet that never needs plunging, but Champion? Would that be World Champion or Best in Show or Gold Medalist? And suppose you’re the one in charge of Champion, what do you say to people who ask what you do? You know, sitting in first class winging your way to National Flush Trials in Bumsville, MN when the beautiful person in the next seat leans over and whispers in your ear. Do you lie, or plunge right in. Groan. Hey, don’t give me any crap—if you don’t like it, make up your own.
The Wiener Man. George Molchan, who for decades drove his twenty-seven-foot Wienermobile in parades and around malls across America, died April 12th at age 82. At a memorial service, the Wienermobile was parked near his grave and mourners sang a chorus of the Oscar Mayer jingle and blew short blasts on hot dog-shaped whistles. I didn’t know George other than from TV, but I’ll bet he liked the send-off.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Crooks and Nanny. The NYSE is at it again and its nanny, the SEC, seems unwilling or unable to kick ass. You remember – the NYSE is the firm that paid its former chairman and CEO, Richard Grasso, $139 (+) million for his superior leadership. Anyway, it now seems that fifteen NYSE specialists have been indicted for cheating customers and mishandling trades to enrich their firms (and therefore get bigger bonuses), this on the heels of a 1999 scandal when a ring of independent floor traders was found to be illegally involved in proprietary trading. Electronic trading, which the floor traders/specialists profusely and profanely oppose—gee, I wonder why—is long overdue.
Greenberg’s Fifth. In his meeting with Prince Eliot, deposed King Maurice of AIG land invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination dozens of times. Do innocent people invoke the Fifth?
Pray for Tom DeLay. Please __________ (fill in God, Allah, Buddha, etc., as required), save us from this modern-day Caligula; remind him and others of like view that this is the United States, not some third-world republic that will cow to the whims of a misguided would be dictator with a monotheist Christian God complex. Amen. P.S. Anything you can do to expedite our request would be appreciated.
Stough Stuffs Military Personnel. Texas-based broker Louis E. Stough advised military personnel to flip from one mutual fund to others with a 50% first year sales load (fee). Whoops! What he forgot to tell them was they could transfer to comparable funds that had no sales load. Stough was fined $25,000 and suspended for ten months (better keep an eye on him). First Command, his employer, was fined $12 million for misleading investors. (Better keep an eye on them too.) Naturally neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. I guess the devil made them do it.
Plunder Down Under. Rodney Adler, former director of HIH Insurance, Australia’s biggest corporate failure, gets 4½ years in the slammer for offences that the judge said displayed an appalling lack of commercial morality. Glad to read they still have some of that Down Under. Note: HIH’s liquidator said he intends to claim that General Re contributed to HIH’s collapse. This is the same General Re that may have aided and abetted AIG’s profit manipulation, the same General Re that is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the King of Clean, folksy Warren Buffet’s, vehicle. Mr. Buffet, what the hell is going on in Omaha?
Freddie Fraud? You may know Uncle Freddie as Freddie Mac the warm and cuddly dealer in billions and billions of mortgage money that is up to its assets in accounting scandals. Now a broker, to line his pockets with fees, has been peddling unqualified mortgages, the same ones multiple times it seems, to a National City (Cleveland-based bank) subsidiary, offering the bank undisclosed financial incentives. In turn, National City’s subsidiary illegally sold the mortgages to Freddie Mac. National City isn’t talking, yet. According to Uncle Freddie, the amount is an insignificant $178 million, but you stick enough $178 millions together and you soon have enough to hire a good CEO.
AAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Siebel’s Death-Wish? First J. Michael Lawrie, last year’s white knight, gets the big dirty boot all because of a little thing like first quarter earnings going in the toilet. No problem. Siebel goes out and hires a guy that led Webvan Group, a spectacular and expensive dot com fiasco, to the land of flushing waters. You think Siebel might have looked for someone who knows how to make a company profitable, not one who knows the road to bankruptcy, even without asking directions.
MTBE. Huh? Yeah, me too. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, a gasoline additive that replaced lead, is rearing its own ugly head, seeping into and contaminating water systems. So who’s going to pay for the cleanup? Giant oil and chemical companies or you and me? Tom DeLay and friends are trying to shove through a waiver protecting giant oil and chemical from liability. On the other side, product liability lawyers are generating a lot of armpit sweat dreaming of hundreds of millions in contingency fees. Whatever happens, this is going to be interesting reading. If you care, read a lot and yank your senator’s chain.
Doc’s Performance Pay? Scene from a one-act play wherein Medicare tests a performance pay system. Medicare Dictator, sitting behind his oversized desk in his palatial office, asks “Tell me Dr. Smith, how have you earned your bonus this month?” Dr. Smith, dressed in a designer smock and reclining in an overstuffed chair across from Medical Dictator, says “I have kept twenty-seven patients out of the hospital, all of whom said they needed heart surgery.” Medicare Dictator laughs and says, “When will these people learn they can’t keep coming to us with every little medical problem? Good work, and because you saved us $3 million, I’m increasing your bonus to $300,000. If you do the same next month, I’ll double it.” Rising and extending his hand, Dr. Smith says, “Thank you. I can sure use the money what with both my kids in ivy-league medical schools.”
Greenberg’s Fifth. In his meeting with Prince Eliot, deposed King Maurice of AIG land invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination dozens of times. Do innocent people invoke the Fifth?
Pray for Tom DeLay. Please __________ (fill in God, Allah, Buddha, etc., as required), save us from this modern-day Caligula; remind him and others of like view that this is the United States, not some third-world republic that will cow to the whims of a misguided would be dictator with a monotheist Christian God complex. Amen. P.S. Anything you can do to expedite our request would be appreciated.
Stough Stuffs Military Personnel. Texas-based broker Louis E. Stough advised military personnel to flip from one mutual fund to others with a 50% first year sales load (fee). Whoops! What he forgot to tell them was they could transfer to comparable funds that had no sales load. Stough was fined $25,000 and suspended for ten months (better keep an eye on him). First Command, his employer, was fined $12 million for misleading investors. (Better keep an eye on them too.) Naturally neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. I guess the devil made them do it.
Plunder Down Under. Rodney Adler, former director of HIH Insurance, Australia’s biggest corporate failure, gets 4½ years in the slammer for offences that the judge said displayed an appalling lack of commercial morality. Glad to read they still have some of that Down Under. Note: HIH’s liquidator said he intends to claim that General Re contributed to HIH’s collapse. This is the same General Re that may have aided and abetted AIG’s profit manipulation, the same General Re that is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the King of Clean, folksy Warren Buffet’s, vehicle. Mr. Buffet, what the hell is going on in Omaha?
Freddie Fraud? You may know Uncle Freddie as Freddie Mac the warm and cuddly dealer in billions and billions of mortgage money that is up to its assets in accounting scandals. Now a broker, to line his pockets with fees, has been peddling unqualified mortgages, the same ones multiple times it seems, to a National City (Cleveland-based bank) subsidiary, offering the bank undisclosed financial incentives. In turn, National City’s subsidiary illegally sold the mortgages to Freddie Mac. National City isn’t talking, yet. According to Uncle Freddie, the amount is an insignificant $178 million, but you stick enough $178 millions together and you soon have enough to hire a good CEO.
AAARRRRGGGGHHHH! Siebel’s Death-Wish? First J. Michael Lawrie, last year’s white knight, gets the big dirty boot all because of a little thing like first quarter earnings going in the toilet. No problem. Siebel goes out and hires a guy that led Webvan Group, a spectacular and expensive dot com fiasco, to the land of flushing waters. You think Siebel might have looked for someone who knows how to make a company profitable, not one who knows the road to bankruptcy, even without asking directions.
MTBE. Huh? Yeah, me too. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether, a gasoline additive that replaced lead, is rearing its own ugly head, seeping into and contaminating water systems. So who’s going to pay for the cleanup? Giant oil and chemical companies or you and me? Tom DeLay and friends are trying to shove through a waiver protecting giant oil and chemical from liability. On the other side, product liability lawyers are generating a lot of armpit sweat dreaming of hundreds of millions in contingency fees. Whatever happens, this is going to be interesting reading. If you care, read a lot and yank your senator’s chain.
Doc’s Performance Pay? Scene from a one-act play wherein Medicare tests a performance pay system. Medicare Dictator, sitting behind his oversized desk in his palatial office, asks “Tell me Dr. Smith, how have you earned your bonus this month?” Dr. Smith, dressed in a designer smock and reclining in an overstuffed chair across from Medical Dictator, says “I have kept twenty-seven patients out of the hospital, all of whom said they needed heart surgery.” Medicare Dictator laughs and says, “When will these people learn they can’t keep coming to us with every little medical problem? Good work, and because you saved us $3 million, I’m increasing your bonus to $300,000. If you do the same next month, I’ll double it.” Rising and extending his hand, Dr. Smith says, “Thank you. I can sure use the money what with both my kids in ivy-league medical schools.”
Friday, April 08, 2005
Find porn! Hear about the new voice-activated remote for the digitally challenged couch potatoes? It’ll never work unless they figure out how to have it respond to somnambular orifice noises, then they’ll really have something.
Culture clash? Former Morgan-Stanley execs are trying to give CEO Purcell (he gave birth to Discovery Card while an executive at Sears) the big boot, declaring him an unfit parent and put his Discovery baby up for adoption. As I see it, the main problem with Discovery and Purcell is that they came from the wrong side of the tracks, more than the white-shooed golden egos at the Morgan-Stanley finishing school can stomach.
Madden madness. After forty-one months in prison, Steve Madden is being boogied back into Madden Shoes with a multi-million dollar ad campaign. The ads are clever; the idea isn’t. A public company (SHOO - NASDAQ) spending buckets of company bucks to celebrate the release of a stock fraud con (who cares if he founded the company) is nuts.
Speaking of cons, Richard Scrushy, former CEO of Health South, ought to order several dozen wide black and white pin striped suits for his upcoming stay. My guess, ten years of rock pounding before parole is even whispered.
Dough-nuts. Speaking of nuts, second lien loans rank with the nuttiest. Imagine your business in the toilet. No problem, if your name is Krispy Kreme. You get Credit Suisse to hustle a bunch of its clients like insurance and pension funds to take a second lien and pony up a fresh $150 million. Not to worry, says Credit Suisse, because these second lien lenders get a higher rate of interest than banks, they are sophisticated, and they know what they are doing. Huh? When the s--- hits the fan boys, it doesn’t matter if the second tier lenders get a 100% rate of interest, there ain’t no money. Think I’m wrong? Adkins Nutritionals is thinning more than fat bellies—its $79 million second lien loans that it got in 2003 courtesy of Goldman Sachs and friends are being bid @ fifteen cents on the dollar, and second lien loans my friends, unlike fat bellies, don’t regain their losses.
Ugh! Lawyers for UBS, Europe’s largest bank, in a $29 million sex discrimination case that it lost and plans to appeal, argued that the accused manager’s conduct wasn’t discriminatory because he treated everyone badly. Executive management at this bank has bigger problems than sex discrimination. Pay the $29 million, boys, fire the manager, hire new counsel, and stuff the appeal.
Vibrator vibrato not up to par? Panasonic to the rescue with its new Oxyride batteries that promise to spin toothbrushes faster, make flashlights shine brighter, recharge camera flashes faster; volunteers for vibrator tests?
Hmmmm. On Tuesday, Pfizer, as part of an upbeat ‘our problems are behind us’ picture it tried to paint, told the world that sales of Celebrex ($3.2 billion in annual sales) and Bextra ($1.3 billion in annual sales), would begin to revive later this year and in 2006. BLAM! On Thursday, the FDA told Pfizer to stop selling Bextra and to smack a more prominent warning (one of those pesky ‘TAKING THIS MIGHT KILL YOU’ type of labels) on Celebrex. FYI, Pfizer’s CEO made $16.6 million in 2004, a 72% jump from 2003. Ya just gotta wonder.
Culture clash? Former Morgan-Stanley execs are trying to give CEO Purcell (he gave birth to Discovery Card while an executive at Sears) the big boot, declaring him an unfit parent and put his Discovery baby up for adoption. As I see it, the main problem with Discovery and Purcell is that they came from the wrong side of the tracks, more than the white-shooed golden egos at the Morgan-Stanley finishing school can stomach.
Madden madness. After forty-one months in prison, Steve Madden is being boogied back into Madden Shoes with a multi-million dollar ad campaign. The ads are clever; the idea isn’t. A public company (SHOO - NASDAQ) spending buckets of company bucks to celebrate the release of a stock fraud con (who cares if he founded the company) is nuts.
Speaking of cons, Richard Scrushy, former CEO of Health South, ought to order several dozen wide black and white pin striped suits for his upcoming stay. My guess, ten years of rock pounding before parole is even whispered.
Dough-nuts. Speaking of nuts, second lien loans rank with the nuttiest. Imagine your business in the toilet. No problem, if your name is Krispy Kreme. You get Credit Suisse to hustle a bunch of its clients like insurance and pension funds to take a second lien and pony up a fresh $150 million. Not to worry, says Credit Suisse, because these second lien lenders get a higher rate of interest than banks, they are sophisticated, and they know what they are doing. Huh? When the s--- hits the fan boys, it doesn’t matter if the second tier lenders get a 100% rate of interest, there ain’t no money. Think I’m wrong? Adkins Nutritionals is thinning more than fat bellies—its $79 million second lien loans that it got in 2003 courtesy of Goldman Sachs and friends are being bid @ fifteen cents on the dollar, and second lien loans my friends, unlike fat bellies, don’t regain their losses.
Ugh! Lawyers for UBS, Europe’s largest bank, in a $29 million sex discrimination case that it lost and plans to appeal, argued that the accused manager’s conduct wasn’t discriminatory because he treated everyone badly. Executive management at this bank has bigger problems than sex discrimination. Pay the $29 million, boys, fire the manager, hire new counsel, and stuff the appeal.
Vibrator vibrato not up to par? Panasonic to the rescue with its new Oxyride batteries that promise to spin toothbrushes faster, make flashlights shine brighter, recharge camera flashes faster; volunteers for vibrator tests?
Hmmmm. On Tuesday, Pfizer, as part of an upbeat ‘our problems are behind us’ picture it tried to paint, told the world that sales of Celebrex ($3.2 billion in annual sales) and Bextra ($1.3 billion in annual sales), would begin to revive later this year and in 2006. BLAM! On Thursday, the FDA told Pfizer to stop selling Bextra and to smack a more prominent warning (one of those pesky ‘TAKING THIS MIGHT KILL YOU’ type of labels) on Celebrex. FYI, Pfizer’s CEO made $16.6 million in 2004, a 72% jump from 2003. Ya just gotta wonder.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Say it ain’t so! That Dr. E.J. Pellman, MLB’s medical adviser who, testifying before the U.S. Congress, praised baseball’s steroids policy and dissed its critics has seen fit to exaggerate his educational and professional credentials isn’t nearly as bush-league as his attempts to blame everyone else for what appears to be a deliberate attempt to mislead. Maybe baseball has a bigger problem than steroids.
It used to be that nothing was certain in life but death and taxes. It seems taxes ain’t so certain any more, at least to a bunch of cheaters who annually short Uncle Sammy $300 billion plus. That’s twenty-five hundred apiece baby, and guess who’s going to get nicked for the shortfall. Note to Uncle Sammy: Put enough $300 billions together and soon you don’t have a Social Security crisis.
Mickey flips a finger and turns out the lights on Miramax. For years Disney’s been trying to throw the switch and now the brothers Weinstein, fed up with toiling in the deepening shadows, are riding off into the sunset to start a new production company. Disney and the Weinsteins will have their hands in each other’s pockets for years adding yet another layer of complexity to the ‘Black Art of Motion Picture Finance and Accounting’—the new reality flick about the movie investor who gets screwed. P.S. The Weinsteins hope to raise $500 million.
Great gas guzzlers, Batman, oil at $105 a barrel? A super spike in prices? Goldman Sachs seems to think so, yesterday adjusting their price range from 50-105 dollars per barrel from 50-80 dollars per barrel.
Barbarians at the Gate, AGAIN? KKR, that august LBO firm whose storied origins spring from the loony days filled with the likes of Peter Cohen and Ross Johnson and the $25 billion RJR Nabisco buyout, hasn’t, it seems, forgotten its taste for raw meat, shoveling $11.3 billion of other people’s money on the table for SunGard Data Systems, a company that specializes in data processing and backup, a long ways from Oreo cookies.
Calling Robert Campeau, eh. That tart Saks and her virgin sister, Nieman-Marcus, are putting on their Sunday best, hoping to catch the eye and pocketbook of a suitor with more dough than old man Federated with his $11 billion that plain sister May’s landed. Campeau must have a giant ache in his groin, thinking of the $11 billion that, in the late ‘80’s, those two floozies, Federated (yes, the same one) and Allied, wolfed down before sending him north of the 49th, tail between his legs, with a rather messy stop in divorce court along the way.
Ease off! Camilla might not be a raving beauty, but neither is HRH the fairest in the land.
It used to be that nothing was certain in life but death and taxes. It seems taxes ain’t so certain any more, at least to a bunch of cheaters who annually short Uncle Sammy $300 billion plus. That’s twenty-five hundred apiece baby, and guess who’s going to get nicked for the shortfall. Note to Uncle Sammy: Put enough $300 billions together and soon you don’t have a Social Security crisis.
Mickey flips a finger and turns out the lights on Miramax. For years Disney’s been trying to throw the switch and now the brothers Weinstein, fed up with toiling in the deepening shadows, are riding off into the sunset to start a new production company. Disney and the Weinsteins will have their hands in each other’s pockets for years adding yet another layer of complexity to the ‘Black Art of Motion Picture Finance and Accounting’—the new reality flick about the movie investor who gets screwed. P.S. The Weinsteins hope to raise $500 million.
Great gas guzzlers, Batman, oil at $105 a barrel? A super spike in prices? Goldman Sachs seems to think so, yesterday adjusting their price range from 50-105 dollars per barrel from 50-80 dollars per barrel.
Barbarians at the Gate, AGAIN? KKR, that august LBO firm whose storied origins spring from the loony days filled with the likes of Peter Cohen and Ross Johnson and the $25 billion RJR Nabisco buyout, hasn’t, it seems, forgotten its taste for raw meat, shoveling $11.3 billion of other people’s money on the table for SunGard Data Systems, a company that specializes in data processing and backup, a long ways from Oreo cookies.
Calling Robert Campeau, eh. That tart Saks and her virgin sister, Nieman-Marcus, are putting on their Sunday best, hoping to catch the eye and pocketbook of a suitor with more dough than old man Federated with his $11 billion that plain sister May’s landed. Campeau must have a giant ache in his groin, thinking of the $11 billion that, in the late ‘80’s, those two floozies, Federated (yes, the same one) and Allied, wolfed down before sending him north of the 49th, tail between his legs, with a rather messy stop in divorce court along the way.
Ease off! Camilla might not be a raving beauty, but neither is HRH the fairest in the land.
Friday, March 25, 2005
SOB, it seems, is a multi-use acronym. First, it can be used to describe ‘Sons of Bosses’ tax shelters that were, until 2000, aggressively peddled to high rollers by financial advisers like PriceWaterhouseCoopers and KPMG (remember Arthur Anderson?) until the IRS held its nose and told everyone involved to stop stinking up the joint. Second, to describe their financial advisers, it can be used by the high rollers who have to pay the $3.2 billion in taxes and penalties because of the SOB the SOB’s got them into. Third, to describe everyone richer and their advisers, it can be used by us, the tax-paying poor, usually along with ‘Serves the bastards right.’
OK, now it’s getting personal. Bad enough that a few unnamed high rollers try to take Uncle Sam for a big ride, but when our popcorn and meatballs and sloppy joe’s decide to get in on the act, that’s where we draw the line. Con-Agra, owner of ACT II popcorn, Chef Boyardee, Manwich and a lot of other stuff we cram into our gaping mugs, made one of those #@*%!&%@# errors that will cause it to restate fiscal 2004 and first-half of fiscal 2005 earnings because OOOPS, it made a $200 million income tax error. Don’t you think a company that wants us to trust it enough to buy its stuff, no questions asked, at least owes us a comment or two? Oh, and let’s not forget the $200 million.
International currency exchange guru and multi-billionaire, Hungarian-born George Soros, got nicked by those pesky Napoleonic French for 2.2 million euros (that’s like a cent—make that a yen—to Soros) for insider trading. Question: can anyone ever, who is as well connected as the preeminent money-king George, buy stock without insider knowledge? Answer: NO! So the real question is: Whom in France did Soros, uh, irk?
Speaking of yen, Softbank and Livedoor are passionately courting Fuji TV Network (Fuji) in a plot that would reduce Stella from Streetcar to a mere chick on a NYC bus. To get 14.67% of Fuji, Softbank borrowed Fuji shares from Nippon Broadcasting, Fuji’s largest shareholder, while Livedoor was surreptitiously buying Nippon Broadcasting shares to gain control of the same Fuji shares. Translation: While Livedoor wines and dines old man Nippon, Softbank makes off with the daughter in the old man’s car. I think I’ll put my money on Softbank.
Is nothing sacred? Prince Eliot has his nose up Jester Don Imus’s butt for WSJ reported allegations (vigorously denied by Imus who called the reporter a punk and a liar in typical tactful Imus-ese) of lax financial controls at and personal use of his charity ranch for critically ill children. I believe anyone who sings ‘I don’t care if it rains or freezes as long as I got my plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car…,’ as Jester Imus has on his NBC morning radio show, ought to be ‘probe’ immune. Like Soros, you gotta ask: whom did Imus, uh, irk?
We are sad for you, Terry Schiavo. When the madness stops, your voice will be heard.
OK, now it’s getting personal. Bad enough that a few unnamed high rollers try to take Uncle Sam for a big ride, but when our popcorn and meatballs and sloppy joe’s decide to get in on the act, that’s where we draw the line. Con-Agra, owner of ACT II popcorn, Chef Boyardee, Manwich and a lot of other stuff we cram into our gaping mugs, made one of those #@*%!&%@# errors that will cause it to restate fiscal 2004 and first-half of fiscal 2005 earnings because OOOPS, it made a $200 million income tax error. Don’t you think a company that wants us to trust it enough to buy its stuff, no questions asked, at least owes us a comment or two? Oh, and let’s not forget the $200 million.
International currency exchange guru and multi-billionaire, Hungarian-born George Soros, got nicked by those pesky Napoleonic French for 2.2 million euros (that’s like a cent—make that a yen—to Soros) for insider trading. Question: can anyone ever, who is as well connected as the preeminent money-king George, buy stock without insider knowledge? Answer: NO! So the real question is: Whom in France did Soros, uh, irk?
Speaking of yen, Softbank and Livedoor are passionately courting Fuji TV Network (Fuji) in a plot that would reduce Stella from Streetcar to a mere chick on a NYC bus. To get 14.67% of Fuji, Softbank borrowed Fuji shares from Nippon Broadcasting, Fuji’s largest shareholder, while Livedoor was surreptitiously buying Nippon Broadcasting shares to gain control of the same Fuji shares. Translation: While Livedoor wines and dines old man Nippon, Softbank makes off with the daughter in the old man’s car. I think I’ll put my money on Softbank.
Is nothing sacred? Prince Eliot has his nose up Jester Don Imus’s butt for WSJ reported allegations (vigorously denied by Imus who called the reporter a punk and a liar in typical tactful Imus-ese) of lax financial controls at and personal use of his charity ranch for critically ill children. I believe anyone who sings ‘I don’t care if it rains or freezes as long as I got my plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car…,’ as Jester Imus has on his NBC morning radio show, ought to be ‘probe’ immune. Like Soros, you gotta ask: whom did Imus, uh, irk?
We are sad for you, Terry Schiavo. When the madness stops, your voice will be heard.
Friday, March 18, 2005
A big bouquet to Ashley Smith for defusing Brian Nichols before he killed again. Is that lady cool, or what? Give me one-tenth of her courage and grace under fire and I’d be happy.
Is Warren getting Buffett-ed by Maurice? Has AIG been intimate with General Re in an earnings manipulation maneuver? Did Prince Eliot get the octogenarian King Maurice tossed from his AIG throne? Will Emperor Warren the Clean’s reputation be sullied? Will Berkshire’s stock come crashing down from yesterday’s per share close of $88,200? Answers: Not much, Maybe, Yes, Not much, Probably not. Whatever, don’t cry too hard for King Maurice—he’s got enough gold to buy a bunch of thrones.
Not poor old Bernie though. Ratted out by his former wing-man, Scottie Sullivan, Bernie flinched his way through nine for nine GUILTY verdicts. The way I got it figured, Bernie, you’ll be a hundred and fifty when you get out—possibly just in time to put together an intergalactic communications company that you can name OuterSpaceCom. Meanwhile, maybe you’ll get lucky and end up in the same joint as Scottie.
Play STEROIDS Ball. Opening day for the Washington Congressionals: March 17, 2005; opening day for the Washington Nationals: April 14th, 2005. Boy, talk about shrinking giants. Sad days.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Martha, they said you did the crime, you said you’d do the time, now we say please shut up lest we start to think you might actually be guilty, and that’s not a good thing.
TOYS ‘R’, er, uh, W’R’ US? Five billion in debt, boys and girls, that’s what KKR, Vornado, and Bain—think Darth Vader—are piling on to the fat $2.3 billion already sagging TOYS’ shelves. Here’s the problem: since the current owners can’t compete against WalMart now, how can this new troika, smart beyond smart though they are, hope to do so with an additional $5 billion in debt in a rising interest market? That’s gonna take a lot of Lego’s baby, or maybe they’ll buy WalMart.
So one day Little Red Riding Hood decided to skip through the dense forest surrounding her granny’s big white house, fully expecting to find Big Bad Wolfie hanging out, whereupon she planned to give him such a piece of her mind. Well, imagine her chagrin when she discovered granny had kicked Wolfie out, sent him packing to the World Bank she had. “But what about all those poor little dictatorships that want to borrow billions and billions of dollars?” she asked. “Eh? What’s that? Borrow billions? Dictatorships? WMD’s? Don’t worry sweetie,” granny grinned with her big teeth.. “Wolfie has a plan.”
Is Warren getting Buffett-ed by Maurice? Has AIG been intimate with General Re in an earnings manipulation maneuver? Did Prince Eliot get the octogenarian King Maurice tossed from his AIG throne? Will Emperor Warren the Clean’s reputation be sullied? Will Berkshire’s stock come crashing down from yesterday’s per share close of $88,200? Answers: Not much, Maybe, Yes, Not much, Probably not. Whatever, don’t cry too hard for King Maurice—he’s got enough gold to buy a bunch of thrones.
Not poor old Bernie though. Ratted out by his former wing-man, Scottie Sullivan, Bernie flinched his way through nine for nine GUILTY verdicts. The way I got it figured, Bernie, you’ll be a hundred and fifty when you get out—possibly just in time to put together an intergalactic communications company that you can name OuterSpaceCom. Meanwhile, maybe you’ll get lucky and end up in the same joint as Scottie.
Play STEROIDS Ball. Opening day for the Washington Congressionals: March 17, 2005; opening day for the Washington Nationals: April 14th, 2005. Boy, talk about shrinking giants. Sad days.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Martha, they said you did the crime, you said you’d do the time, now we say please shut up lest we start to think you might actually be guilty, and that’s not a good thing.
TOYS ‘R’, er, uh, W’R’ US? Five billion in debt, boys and girls, that’s what KKR, Vornado, and Bain—think Darth Vader—are piling on to the fat $2.3 billion already sagging TOYS’ shelves. Here’s the problem: since the current owners can’t compete against WalMart now, how can this new troika, smart beyond smart though they are, hope to do so with an additional $5 billion in debt in a rising interest market? That’s gonna take a lot of Lego’s baby, or maybe they’ll buy WalMart.
So one day Little Red Riding Hood decided to skip through the dense forest surrounding her granny’s big white house, fully expecting to find Big Bad Wolfie hanging out, whereupon she planned to give him such a piece of her mind. Well, imagine her chagrin when she discovered granny had kicked Wolfie out, sent him packing to the World Bank she had. “But what about all those poor little dictatorships that want to borrow billions and billions of dollars?” she asked. “Eh? What’s that? Borrow billions? Dictatorships? WMD’s? Don’t worry sweetie,” granny grinned with her big teeth.. “Wolfie has a plan.”
Friday, March 11, 2005
Again we mourn. We mourn for the four young Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen killed this week in Canada and we mourn for the young men and women of the military killed in armed conflict and we mourn for the all the other men and women and children around the world killed through equally senseless acts. And we will mourn again…and again, until we reach that intellectual Shangri-la where conflicts are dissolved with an elixir of peace and not dumped into boiling cauldrons of hate and fear.
What, no cameras in the courtroom? Not fair! Michael’s trial (and Kobe’s and Scott’s and OJ’s and all the others before that) is costing a bundle; my guess: several hundred millions a pop after you add in the thousands of 24/7 television personalities and grunts. Who pays? You and me, my friends, up the wazoo. Here’s how it works: in addition to taxes (isn’t that where W used to govern?), when TV companies spend a dollar, advertisers are whacked two dollars; when advertisers spend two dollars, working stiffs of the world are whacked four dollars. OK, so now that we’ve established who’s paying for all of this crap, why shouldn’t we get to see every last nanosecond of live coverage: in the court, in the jury room, in the toilet? Besides, law shouldn’t have a hiding place.
“Badges, we don’t got no stinking badges!” (Paraphrased from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.) If it were being written today, it might say, “Badges, we got stinking badges.” It seems two of NYC’s finest have been flashing badges for the mob, killing and kidnapping a few ‘bad fellas,’ all for a few lousy bucks…well, quite a few lousy bucks.
Scientists have discovered a genetic variation tied to age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of severe vision loss in the elderly. Did you ever think that maybe God intended that old people see less? Hey, we get ugly when we get old. Do we really need to see it better?
Guess who isn’t coming to dinner? Congress is flapping its armpits over steroid use in baseball, sending subpoenas to everyone it can think of…EXCEPT BARRY BONDS?
Psst! Know a good bankruptcy lawyer? Your creditors are paying tons of money so congress can get itself re-elected, provided it first agrees to pass new laws that put you in stocks and bonds (no not those, the others). Final passage is expected in April, likely the ides, perhaps a good day to boot your elected representative’s butt.
So Delta loses $5.2 billion and dumps its pillows. I don’t know about you, but I’ve about had it. We’ve lost gourmet meals served with real silverware, we’ve lost friendly and attractive stews who cared that we existed, we’ve lost ass-wiggle and knee room, we’ve lost olives, we’ve lost really good peanuts, and now horror of horrors, we’ve lost those wonderfully plump, large pillows. What’s next? Oh please, not the blue ‘blankies.’
What, no cameras in the courtroom? Not fair! Michael’s trial (and Kobe’s and Scott’s and OJ’s and all the others before that) is costing a bundle; my guess: several hundred millions a pop after you add in the thousands of 24/7 television personalities and grunts. Who pays? You and me, my friends, up the wazoo. Here’s how it works: in addition to taxes (isn’t that where W used to govern?), when TV companies spend a dollar, advertisers are whacked two dollars; when advertisers spend two dollars, working stiffs of the world are whacked four dollars. OK, so now that we’ve established who’s paying for all of this crap, why shouldn’t we get to see every last nanosecond of live coverage: in the court, in the jury room, in the toilet? Besides, law shouldn’t have a hiding place.
“Badges, we don’t got no stinking badges!” (Paraphrased from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.) If it were being written today, it might say, “Badges, we got stinking badges.” It seems two of NYC’s finest have been flashing badges for the mob, killing and kidnapping a few ‘bad fellas,’ all for a few lousy bucks…well, quite a few lousy bucks.
Scientists have discovered a genetic variation tied to age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of severe vision loss in the elderly. Did you ever think that maybe God intended that old people see less? Hey, we get ugly when we get old. Do we really need to see it better?
Guess who isn’t coming to dinner? Congress is flapping its armpits over steroid use in baseball, sending subpoenas to everyone it can think of…EXCEPT BARRY BONDS?
Psst! Know a good bankruptcy lawyer? Your creditors are paying tons of money so congress can get itself re-elected, provided it first agrees to pass new laws that put you in stocks and bonds (no not those, the others). Final passage is expected in April, likely the ides, perhaps a good day to boot your elected representative’s butt.
So Delta loses $5.2 billion and dumps its pillows. I don’t know about you, but I’ve about had it. We’ve lost gourmet meals served with real silverware, we’ve lost friendly and attractive stews who cared that we existed, we’ve lost ass-wiggle and knee room, we’ve lost olives, we’ve lost really good peanuts, and now horror of horrors, we’ve lost those wonderfully plump, large pillows. What’s next? Oh please, not the blue ‘blankies.’
Friday, March 04, 2005
M-m-m Martha!
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie—what ever are you doing? Don’t you know what CEO means? It means CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. It means millions in salary and stock. It means power. It means perks. IT DOESN’T MEAN I don’t know or I didn’t understand or I relied on others. A CEO isn’t entitled to STUPID as a defense. S-o-o-o…after they pack you off to ‘the big wieners in the shower club,’ please drop George W’s friend, Kenny Boy, a line and let him know how it works.
Chop Suey! Try a stunt like this in America and someone goes to jail. The cast: Wang, a Chinese investment banker; Fang, Mayor of Beijing; Goldman Sachs, the august New York investment bank; and $200 million good old George Washington’s composed of a $67 million donation to cover losses at a Hainan Securities(a failed Chinese brokerage firm whose officials, apart from possibly having political ties to Wang and Fang, have been accused of embezzling millions from investor accounts), a $100 million loan to Fang (security not disclosed), and $30 million for a 1/3rd stake in a new joint venture with Wang and Fang from which Goldman Sachs who hopes to reap billions.
And then faster than one can skip five fen across the Sea of Japan, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the man one Japanese station called more powerful than God (but remember Shinto and Buddhism are Japan’s major religions), gets his butt hauled out of one of his luxury hotels and taken away in a police van for suspicion of insider trading and filing false financial statements. (Martha’s cell is empty.) Can Goldman Sachs be far behind?
South of the border down Argentine way, president Nestor Kirchner gleefully announced restructuring $102.6 billion—B as in billion baby—in bonds mostly held by foreigners. Why the glee? Thirty cents on the dollar, that’s why. And who got stuck holding the bag full of three dimes? Besides retail holders like you and me who didn’t have a prayer, the usual suspects were Switzerland, Italy, United States, Germany and Japan. You don’t like it. Tough. The Argentine Congress passed a law making it illegal to improve the existing terms. People in the business call this sovereign risk—I call it getting screwed. If you don’t understand the language, stay out of the bordello.
Closer to home, across the Potomac from Virginia in that cozy cuckoo’s nest we call Washington, DC, some of the same banks involved in the $70 billion Argentine bath managed to get their rich senator friends to pass a law that prevents you and me from declaring the kind of bankruptcy that lets us dump our lousy credit card debt. Let’s see: how many one-thousand dollar credit card users will they have to sue to get $70 billion? Hmmmm? Seventy with nine zeros divided by one with three zeros equals seventy with six zeros. That’s seventy million poor souls just like you and me.
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie—what ever are you doing? Don’t you know what CEO means? It means CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. It means millions in salary and stock. It means power. It means perks. IT DOESN’T MEAN I don’t know or I didn’t understand or I relied on others. A CEO isn’t entitled to STUPID as a defense. S-o-o-o…after they pack you off to ‘the big wieners in the shower club,’ please drop George W’s friend, Kenny Boy, a line and let him know how it works.
Chop Suey! Try a stunt like this in America and someone goes to jail. The cast: Wang, a Chinese investment banker; Fang, Mayor of Beijing; Goldman Sachs, the august New York investment bank; and $200 million good old George Washington’s composed of a $67 million donation to cover losses at a Hainan Securities(a failed Chinese brokerage firm whose officials, apart from possibly having political ties to Wang and Fang, have been accused of embezzling millions from investor accounts), a $100 million loan to Fang (security not disclosed), and $30 million for a 1/3rd stake in a new joint venture with Wang and Fang from which Goldman Sachs who hopes to reap billions.
And then faster than one can skip five fen across the Sea of Japan, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the man one Japanese station called more powerful than God (but remember Shinto and Buddhism are Japan’s major religions), gets his butt hauled out of one of his luxury hotels and taken away in a police van for suspicion of insider trading and filing false financial statements. (Martha’s cell is empty.) Can Goldman Sachs be far behind?
South of the border down Argentine way, president Nestor Kirchner gleefully announced restructuring $102.6 billion—B as in billion baby—in bonds mostly held by foreigners. Why the glee? Thirty cents on the dollar, that’s why. And who got stuck holding the bag full of three dimes? Besides retail holders like you and me who didn’t have a prayer, the usual suspects were Switzerland, Italy, United States, Germany and Japan. You don’t like it. Tough. The Argentine Congress passed a law making it illegal to improve the existing terms. People in the business call this sovereign risk—I call it getting screwed. If you don’t understand the language, stay out of the bordello.
Closer to home, across the Potomac from Virginia in that cozy cuckoo’s nest we call Washington, DC, some of the same banks involved in the $70 billion Argentine bath managed to get their rich senator friends to pass a law that prevents you and me from declaring the kind of bankruptcy that lets us dump our lousy credit card debt. Let’s see: how many one-thousand dollar credit card users will they have to sue to get $70 billion? Hmmmm? Seventy with nine zeros divided by one with three zeros equals seventy with six zeros. That’s seventy million poor souls just like you and me.
Friday, February 25, 2005
AIG might soon be better known as American Investment Gougers rather than American International Group. First, AIG gave us the Marsh McLennan scandal that cost its shareholders $850 million though AIG doesn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing. ($850 million is a hell of a price for doing nothing wrong.) Now it seems C.V. Starr, a private holding company owned by top AIG executives and directors, is pocketing big profits on lucrative insurance business, profits that could be earned by AIG investors. How much? A cool hundred to two hundred million since 1999. AIG’s comment…“The company does not comment on matters in litigation.” Don’t you just feel like slapping someone silly every time you hear that?
Viacom took an $18 billion—that’s B as in BILLION—non-cash write down for its radio and outdoor advertising businesses purchased in 2000. With 18 billion carat gold chutzpah, Viacom’s octogenarian chief executive, Sumner Redstone, said Viacom couldn’t be accused of overpaying. Oh, and the ‘non-cash charge’ crap: someone’s paying, like shareholders whose stock took a dump and tax payers as in you and me baby.
Rather than wasting time trying to hijack Uncle Sam for big bucks, American-based airlines should boogie to Bombay where Jet Airways India’s $400 million (+) IPO sold out in ten minutes and ended up being oversubscribed 18.7 times.
Color-coded Tom Ridge of Homeland Security fame has been named a director of Home Depot. Who knew duct tape and plastic sheeting sales had gone so well.
Was Scott A. Livengood, ousted ceo of Krispy Kreme, liven too good? The United States Attorney’s office and the SEC seem to think so and are poking around for more than a dozen to go.
I wonder if Dracula or one of his pals might have eased the tension between Vladimir and George when they met yesterday at Bratislava Castle in Slovakia. It would seem G may have been Put in his place by V.
So Karen R. Hitchcock, president of SUNY at Albany, about to be tarred with the brush of questionable ethics, scoots north to become principal of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. Canada may need to tighten its border crossings.
Oy robot! MIT has designed a knee-high guy with clothespin like arms, mouse trap feet, a cylinder shaped head the size of a D cell battery, a chrome ring for shoulders and chest from which dangle a handful of crayon-like appendages (one of which must surely be the spare rib for the Eve version) and two metal pegs for legs. The reported beauty of this generation of robots is that they walk more naturally—I guess that’s so they can blend in.
Viacom took an $18 billion—that’s B as in BILLION—non-cash write down for its radio and outdoor advertising businesses purchased in 2000. With 18 billion carat gold chutzpah, Viacom’s octogenarian chief executive, Sumner Redstone, said Viacom couldn’t be accused of overpaying. Oh, and the ‘non-cash charge’ crap: someone’s paying, like shareholders whose stock took a dump and tax payers as in you and me baby.
Rather than wasting time trying to hijack Uncle Sam for big bucks, American-based airlines should boogie to Bombay where Jet Airways India’s $400 million (+) IPO sold out in ten minutes and ended up being oversubscribed 18.7 times.
Color-coded Tom Ridge of Homeland Security fame has been named a director of Home Depot. Who knew duct tape and plastic sheeting sales had gone so well.
Was Scott A. Livengood, ousted ceo of Krispy Kreme, liven too good? The United States Attorney’s office and the SEC seem to think so and are poking around for more than a dozen to go.
I wonder if Dracula or one of his pals might have eased the tension between Vladimir and George when they met yesterday at Bratislava Castle in Slovakia. It would seem G may have been Put in his place by V.
So Karen R. Hitchcock, president of SUNY at Albany, about to be tarred with the brush of questionable ethics, scoots north to become principal of Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. Canada may need to tighten its border crossings.
Oy robot! MIT has designed a knee-high guy with clothespin like arms, mouse trap feet, a cylinder shaped head the size of a D cell battery, a chrome ring for shoulders and chest from which dangle a handful of crayon-like appendages (one of which must surely be the spare rib for the Eve version) and two metal pegs for legs. The reported beauty of this generation of robots is that they walk more naturally—I guess that’s so they can blend in.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
ED is rearing its ugly head again, and those of us in the target market for Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra know all too well it can’t be raised enough. But should Medicare pay for a bunch of guys over sixty-five to run around like sex-craved teenagers? That is the question.
Not yourself lately? Maybe it’s because Choice Point, a gatherer of background information, has sold somewhere between 145,000 and 500,000 private information files, maybe yours and mine, to fake companies that outsmarted its…credentialing process? But take heart, Choice Point hired a—as in singular—retired Secret Service agent to help revamp its verification process—I guess that would be its ‘credentialing process.’
Quick, what do the Saab R-7X, Chevy Trailblazer, GMC Envoy, Buick Rainier and Isuzu Ascender have in common? Answer: same production line. What does the R-7X cost? Answer: $39,000 (+-). What does the Trailblazer cost? Answer $28,000 (+-).
Headline: Lawsuits Are Not the Only Reason for Higher Malpractice Insurance Premiums. Doh! Would the other reason be malpractice?
Nielsen is finally going to change its research to something more in tune with what its clients want—talk about independent research. Anyway, the company did propose setting aside $2.5 million to pay for a year’s worth of methodological research. Wow, a whole $2.5 million for methodological research! Maybe they’re going to use the same Secret Service agent that Choice Point hired to revamp its ‘credentialing process.’
Forget all the other definitions of nanometer—this is the only one you’ll ever need: meter is to 400 miles as nanometer is to 1 inch. Oh sure, you could use the old billionth of a meter or one 25-millionth of an inch definitions, but they’re so passé don’t you think?
Have you ever wondered why crickets travel in crowds?
And finally, you’ll be pleased to know that rather than call a newly discovered female cockroach chemical—one that (finally?) might actually work as bait—gentisyl quinine isovalerate, you may call it blattellaquinone. Whew! Glad they got that resolved. Alas, 15,000 virgin female cockroaches (I wonder how they knew they were virgins), probably about one gazillionth of those in NYC alone, had to be dissected in this noble cause. No mention made of the male cockroaches that raced crazily into these baited sex traps. Poor buggers.
Not yourself lately? Maybe it’s because Choice Point, a gatherer of background information, has sold somewhere between 145,000 and 500,000 private information files, maybe yours and mine, to fake companies that outsmarted its…credentialing process? But take heart, Choice Point hired a—as in singular—retired Secret Service agent to help revamp its verification process—I guess that would be its ‘credentialing process.’
Quick, what do the Saab R-7X, Chevy Trailblazer, GMC Envoy, Buick Rainier and Isuzu Ascender have in common? Answer: same production line. What does the R-7X cost? Answer: $39,000 (+-). What does the Trailblazer cost? Answer $28,000 (+-).
Headline: Lawsuits Are Not the Only Reason for Higher Malpractice Insurance Premiums. Doh! Would the other reason be malpractice?
Nielsen is finally going to change its research to something more in tune with what its clients want—talk about independent research. Anyway, the company did propose setting aside $2.5 million to pay for a year’s worth of methodological research. Wow, a whole $2.5 million for methodological research! Maybe they’re going to use the same Secret Service agent that Choice Point hired to revamp its ‘credentialing process.’
Forget all the other definitions of nanometer—this is the only one you’ll ever need: meter is to 400 miles as nanometer is to 1 inch. Oh sure, you could use the old billionth of a meter or one 25-millionth of an inch definitions, but they’re so passé don’t you think?
Have you ever wondered why crickets travel in crowds?
And finally, you’ll be pleased to know that rather than call a newly discovered female cockroach chemical—one that (finally?) might actually work as bait—gentisyl quinine isovalerate, you may call it blattellaquinone. Whew! Glad they got that resolved. Alas, 15,000 virgin female cockroaches (I wonder how they knew they were virgins), probably about one gazillionth of those in NYC alone, had to be dissected in this noble cause. No mention made of the male cockroaches that raced crazily into these baited sex traps. Poor buggers.
Monday, February 07, 2005
Once again Deep Throat has reared his ugly voice and re-enters our consciousness. He’s now very ill, at least according to John Dean, Nixon’s former White House counsel. Remember, if Deep Throat dies, Bob Woodward has said he will tell all, so wash off your Watergate brain cells—it’s time for the guessing game to start afresh. WHO IS DEEP THROAT?
Is Social Security the WMD of Bush’s second term? What’s going on? What can Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, and Condoleezza with two z’s, the dove dream team, be scheming while sending Dubya out to leave us to fretting about our retirement. War in Iran, anyone?
While the Democrats might be guilty of dumping all over the President’s budget, the Republicans are at least guilty of using it as toilet paper. Here’s how I see it: one giant step for the rich, one small step for the disappearing middle-class, one large finger for the poor.
Heather Ross, founder of Munki, Munki, a clothing company, has come out with a line of women’s panties with imbedded cartoon-like olfactory patches that, when scratched, will emit a favorite guy scent. So far she’s got handy man (cedar), BBQ guy (tangy sauce), mower man (grass – the fresh cut variety), couch potato (popcorn), carnie (cotton candy), and surfer (suntan lotion). Hard to know what scent she might come up with when she gets to lawyers and politicians—Chunki Munki?
Do we really want Bin Laden and al Zarqawi thinking they’re worth $50 million? Not according to Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times who says Bin Laden should be marked down to one penny and an autographed picture of George Bush and al Zarqawi should be marked down to a pistachio and autographed picture of Cheney. Why waste the penny and the pistachio?
I’m so dumb. I thought Million Dollar Baby was one of the best movies I’d ever seen, but thanks to the good people who want to wring the queerness out of SpongeBob, I now realize that Clint Eastwood was really trying to trick us into embracing euthanasia.
Is Social Security the WMD of Bush’s second term? What’s going on? What can Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, and Condoleezza with two z’s, the dove dream team, be scheming while sending Dubya out to leave us to fretting about our retirement. War in Iran, anyone?
While the Democrats might be guilty of dumping all over the President’s budget, the Republicans are at least guilty of using it as toilet paper. Here’s how I see it: one giant step for the rich, one small step for the disappearing middle-class, one large finger for the poor.
Heather Ross, founder of Munki, Munki, a clothing company, has come out with a line of women’s panties with imbedded cartoon-like olfactory patches that, when scratched, will emit a favorite guy scent. So far she’s got handy man (cedar), BBQ guy (tangy sauce), mower man (grass – the fresh cut variety), couch potato (popcorn), carnie (cotton candy), and surfer (suntan lotion). Hard to know what scent she might come up with when she gets to lawyers and politicians—Chunki Munki?
Do we really want Bin Laden and al Zarqawi thinking they’re worth $50 million? Not according to Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times who says Bin Laden should be marked down to one penny and an autographed picture of George Bush and al Zarqawi should be marked down to a pistachio and autographed picture of Cheney. Why waste the penny and the pistachio?
I’m so dumb. I thought Million Dollar Baby was one of the best movies I’d ever seen, but thanks to the good people who want to wring the queerness out of SpongeBob, I now realize that Clint Eastwood was really trying to trick us into embracing euthanasia.
Friday, February 04, 2005
In the horse shit department, the US Chamber of Commerce, that august group with nothing but shareholders’ best interests in mind, says that quelling insider trading is a threat to a ‘free, robust, orderly and democratic society.’ Watch where you step.
During July 2000, HealthSouth financial executive William Owens met Richard Scrushy in the middle of a lake in southeastern Alabama to discuss the company’s worsening cash crisis. It seems the only thing that wasn’t sinking was the boat.
In another chapter of the HealthSouth saga, former president and chief operating officer James Bennett was charged in a 39-count indictment. His lawyers’ response (what else): Bennett “was not involved in any form or fashion…” Now we know the government doesn’t always get it right and maybe Bennett is innocent (pause here for skepticism), but just once I’d like to see one of these overpaid crooks stand up and say, “I’m sorry, I did it.” I guess that story that will start, ‘Once upon a time in America…’
In the oxymoron department, the International Luge Federation wants a ‘safe luge’ track and has called off test events for the 2006 Turin Olympics. What did I miss? Isn’t death the whole idea of luge?
Social Security isn’t difficult. It’s like your bank account. If it’s running out of money, either more has to go in or less has to come out, and it doesn’t matter how much bullshit the government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich throws in the air.
Kenny Lay, W’s one-time good friend and former chairman of Enron, said in March 2001 that market manipulation claims against Enron were conspiracy theories. Well guess what? Want to hear a January 2001 taped conversation between an Enron trader and a Las Vegas energy official agreeing to a power plant shutdown for an afternoon of peak energy demand in California? Of course you do.
“This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing,” Enron employee says. “We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down.”
“OK, so we’re just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?” the Las Vegas official asks. “And that’s cool?”
“Hopefully.”
Both men laugh.
And Californians sat in the dark and sweated and their electrical bills went through the roof. Thanks Kenny.
During July 2000, HealthSouth financial executive William Owens met Richard Scrushy in the middle of a lake in southeastern Alabama to discuss the company’s worsening cash crisis. It seems the only thing that wasn’t sinking was the boat.
In another chapter of the HealthSouth saga, former president and chief operating officer James Bennett was charged in a 39-count indictment. His lawyers’ response (what else): Bennett “was not involved in any form or fashion…” Now we know the government doesn’t always get it right and maybe Bennett is innocent (pause here for skepticism), but just once I’d like to see one of these overpaid crooks stand up and say, “I’m sorry, I did it.” I guess that story that will start, ‘Once upon a time in America…’
In the oxymoron department, the International Luge Federation wants a ‘safe luge’ track and has called off test events for the 2006 Turin Olympics. What did I miss? Isn’t death the whole idea of luge?
Social Security isn’t difficult. It’s like your bank account. If it’s running out of money, either more has to go in or less has to come out, and it doesn’t matter how much bullshit the government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich throws in the air.
Kenny Lay, W’s one-time good friend and former chairman of Enron, said in March 2001 that market manipulation claims against Enron were conspiracy theories. Well guess what? Want to hear a January 2001 taped conversation between an Enron trader and a Las Vegas energy official agreeing to a power plant shutdown for an afternoon of peak energy demand in California? Of course you do.
“This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing,” Enron employee says. “We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down.”
“OK, so we’re just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?” the Las Vegas official asks. “And that’s cool?”
“Hopefully.”
Both men laugh.
And Californians sat in the dark and sweated and their electrical bills went through the roof. Thanks Kenny.
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