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The Permabull's Guide to Wall Street Lingo
Analysts: Highly paid cheerleaders who figure out ways to make stocks appear cheap
Bad news: Events that cause the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates so that share prices go up
Bears: Sad, lonely people who don't appreciate why equity prices invariably move higher
Brokers: Specially-trained relationship managers who convert mere mortals into super-bulls
Bulls: Well-bred equity investors
Bond market: The place where stock market bears are sent out to pasture for their wayward views
Cash: Realized gains that equity investors spend on fancy vacations and assorted luxury items
Dividends: A positive influence on stock prices
Economy: An irrelevant side show to what happens in the equity market
Fear: An emotion that bulls experience when they are not 100% invested
Federal Reserve Board: A group of public officials who do their best to ensure that bulls are happy
Fundamentals: Anything that can help explain why stock prices rally
Greed: The only emotion that matters when it comes to playing the stock market
Hedge funds: Aggressive investors who use lots of leverage to ensure that stock prices eventually go up
Interest rates: A factor that occasionally serves as an explanation for why stocks rally
Leverage: The fail-safe strategy of using borrowed money to boost returns as share prices rise
Losses: The net result of selling short and listening to bond traders
Mutual funds: Investment vehicles that enable bulls to remain fully invested in the equity market at all times
Short-sellers: Dour individuals who scramble to cover bad bets as stock prices rally
Strategists: Highly paid cheerleaders who figure out ways to make stocks appear cheap
Wall Street: The place where bulls congregate and fawn over one another.
Source: The Big Picture(USA), August 2007
Analysts: Highly paid cheerleaders who figure out ways to make stocks appear cheap
Bad news: Events that cause the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates so that share prices go up
Bears: Sad, lonely people who don't appreciate why equity prices invariably move higher
Brokers: Specially-trained relationship managers who convert mere mortals into super-bulls
Bulls: Well-bred equity investors
Bond market: The place where stock market bears are sent out to pasture for their wayward views
Cash: Realized gains that equity investors spend on fancy vacations and assorted luxury items
Dividends: A positive influence on stock prices
Economy: An irrelevant side show to what happens in the equity market
Fear: An emotion that bulls experience when they are not 100% invested
Federal Reserve Board: A group of public officials who do their best to ensure that bulls are happy
Fundamentals: Anything that can help explain why stock prices rally
Greed: The only emotion that matters when it comes to playing the stock market
Hedge funds: Aggressive investors who use lots of leverage to ensure that stock prices eventually go up
Interest rates: A factor that occasionally serves as an explanation for why stocks rally
Leverage: The fail-safe strategy of using borrowed money to boost returns as share prices rise
Losses: The net result of selling short and listening to bond traders
Mutual funds: Investment vehicles that enable bulls to remain fully invested in the equity market at all times
Short-sellers: Dour individuals who scramble to cover bad bets as stock prices rally
Strategists: Highly paid cheerleaders who figure out ways to make stocks appear cheap
Wall Street: The place where bulls congregate and fawn over one another.
Source: The Big Picture(USA), August 2007
If you sweat while trading, you may want to turn up the air conditioner
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,291543,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,291543,00.html
US pr0n Industry Makes $12 Billion/Year
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/11/01/8392016/index.htm
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/11/01/8392016/index.htm
Pyjama game
The Age, July 17, 2007
LOOKS like Jupiter Mining doesn't have a monopoly on naked company directors.
Kenmare Resources, one of Ireland's biggest listed companies, is embroiled in a scandal of its own ”” its board wants deputy chairman Donal Kinsella to start wearing his pyjamas.
The trouble started for the company when Kinsella was on a business trip to the Moma Mineral Sands project in Mozambique in May.
Kinsella, 64, was discovered standing naked at the bedroom door of Kenmare's secretary and financial controller, Deirdre Corcoran.
Kinsella blamed a combination of prescription drugs, drinking and "inveterate sleepwalking" for his actions. He also said he had forgotten to pack his pyjamas.
On the night in question Kinsella sleepwalked three times from his bedroom to the door of Corcoran's room.
In 2004 Kinsella awarded a $US220 million contract to Australia's Multiplex and joint-venture partner Bateman to provide engineering and construction services for the project.
The Age, July 17, 2007
LOOKS like Jupiter Mining doesn't have a monopoly on naked company directors.
Kenmare Resources, one of Ireland's biggest listed companies, is embroiled in a scandal of its own ”” its board wants deputy chairman Donal Kinsella to start wearing his pyjamas.
The trouble started for the company when Kinsella was on a business trip to the Moma Mineral Sands project in Mozambique in May.
Kinsella, 64, was discovered standing naked at the bedroom door of Kenmare's secretary and financial controller, Deirdre Corcoran.
Kinsella blamed a combination of prescription drugs, drinking and "inveterate sleepwalking" for his actions. He also said he had forgotten to pack his pyjamas.
On the night in question Kinsella sleepwalked three times from his bedroom to the door of Corcoran's room.
In 2004 Kinsella awarded a $US220 million contract to Australia's Multiplex and joint-venture partner Bateman to provide engineering and construction services for the project.
No medals for Australia at the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships
http://www.savonlinnafestivals.com/en_MMtulokset.htm
http://www.savonlinnafestivals.com/en_MMtulokset.htm
McDonald's employee who over salted burger jailed
September 9, 2007
UNION CITY, Ga. /USA -- A McDonald's employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick.
Kendra Bull was arrested Friday, charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and freed on $1,000 bail.
Bull, 20, said she accidentally spilled salt on hamburger meat and told her supervisor and a co-worker, who ''tried to thump the salt off.''
On her break, she ate a burger made with the salty meat. ''It didn't make me sick,'' Bull told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But then Police Officer Wendell Adams got a burger made with the oversalted meat, and he returned a short time later and told the manager it made him sick.
Bull admitted spilling salt on the meat, and Adams took her outside and questioned her, she said.
''If it was too salty, why did (Adams) not take one bite and throw it away?'' said Bull, who has worked at the restaurant for five months. She said she didn't know a police officer got one of the salty burgers because she couldn't see the drive-through window from her work area.
Police said samples of the burger were sent to the state crime lab for tests.
City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger ''without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it.''
AP
September 9, 2007
UNION CITY, Ga. /USA -- A McDonald's employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick.
Kendra Bull was arrested Friday, charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and freed on $1,000 bail.
Bull, 20, said she accidentally spilled salt on hamburger meat and told her supervisor and a co-worker, who ''tried to thump the salt off.''
On her break, she ate a burger made with the salty meat. ''It didn't make me sick,'' Bull told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But then Police Officer Wendell Adams got a burger made with the oversalted meat, and he returned a short time later and told the manager it made him sick.
Bull admitted spilling salt on the meat, and Adams took her outside and questioned her, she said.
''If it was too salty, why did (Adams) not take one bite and throw it away?'' said Bull, who has worked at the restaurant for five months. She said she didn't know a police officer got one of the salty burgers because she couldn't see the drive-through window from her work area.
Police said samples of the burger were sent to the state crime lab for tests.
City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger ''without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it.''
AP
2007 Ig Nobel Prizes
::::::::::::::
Ig Nobel prizes a mouthful of fun
By MARK PRATT, Associated Press Writer
October 4, 2007
BOSTON ”” Good news for your Viagra-using hamster: On his next trip to Europe he'll bounce back from jet lag faster than his unmedicated friends.
The researchers who revealed that bizarre fact earned one of 10 Ig Nobel prizes awarded Thursday night for quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements, from the mathematics of wrinkled sheets to U.S. military efforts to make a "gay bomb."
The recipients of the annual award handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine were honored at Harvard University's Sanders Theater.
A team at Quilmes National University in Buenos Aires, Argentina, came up with the jet-lag study, which found that hamsters given the anti-impotence drug needed 50 percent less time to recover from a six-hour time zone change. They didn't fly rodents to Paris, incidentally ”” they just turned the lights off and on at different times.
Odd as it might be, that research might have implications for millions of humans. The same cannot be said for another winning report, "Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects," published in the British Medical Journal last year.
It was the world's first comprehensive study of sword swallowing injuries, said co-author Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tenn., one of only a few dozen active sword swallowers in the world. Not surprisingly, throat abrasions, perforated esophagi and punctured blood vessels were the most common injuries.
"Most sword swallowing injuries happen either after another smaller injury when the throat is tender and swollen, or while doing something out of the ordinary, like swallowing multiple swords," said Meyer, who went a month without solid food after doing the latter in 2005.
The Ig Nobel for nutrition went to a concept that sounds like a restaurant marketing ploy: a bottomless bowl of soup.
Cornell University professor Brian Wansink used bowls rigged with tubes that slowly and imperceptibly refilled them with creamy tomato soup to see if test subjects ate more than they would with a regular bowl.
"We found that people eating from the refillable soup bowls ended up eating 73 percent more soup, but they never rated themselves as any more full," said Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior and applied economics. "They thought 'How can I be full when the bowl has so much left in it?' "
His conclusion: "We as Americans judge satiety with our eyes, not with our stomachs."
Harvard professor of applied mathematics L. Mahadevan and professor Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago in Chile won for their studies on a problem that has vexed anyone who ever made up a bed: wrinkled sheets.
The wrinkle patterns seen on sheets are replicated in nature on human and animal skin, in science and in technology.
"We showed that you can understand all of them using a very simple formula," Mahadevan said.
His research, he says, shows that "there's no reason good science can't be fun."
Other winners include a Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds, and a man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers.
This year's planned Ig Nobel program included a two-minute speech by keynote speaker Doug Zongker consisting only of the word "chicken," and a mini-opera entitled "Chicken versus Egg," performed by professional mother-daughter opera singers Gail Kilkelly and Maggie McNeil.
Most winners are more than happy to accept their awards from real Nobel Laureates at the typically rowdy ceremony, including seven of the 10 winners this year. But there are still a few sticks-in-the-mud, magazine editor Marc Abrahams said.
The U.S. Air Force won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year for its proposal to develop a "gay bomb" ”” a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers want to make love with each other, not war with the enemy.
Abrahams talked to a number of retired and active Air Force personnel to try and get someone to accept the prize in person on behalf of the military. None would.
"Who in their right mind would turn something like this down?" Wansink said.
___
On the Web:
Ig Nobels: http://www.improbable.com
::::::::::::::
Ig Nobel prizes a mouthful of fun
By MARK PRATT, Associated Press Writer
October 4, 2007
BOSTON ”” Good news for your Viagra-using hamster: On his next trip to Europe he'll bounce back from jet lag faster than his unmedicated friends.
The researchers who revealed that bizarre fact earned one of 10 Ig Nobel prizes awarded Thursday night for quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements, from the mathematics of wrinkled sheets to U.S. military efforts to make a "gay bomb."
The recipients of the annual award handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine were honored at Harvard University's Sanders Theater.
A team at Quilmes National University in Buenos Aires, Argentina, came up with the jet-lag study, which found that hamsters given the anti-impotence drug needed 50 percent less time to recover from a six-hour time zone change. They didn't fly rodents to Paris, incidentally ”” they just turned the lights off and on at different times.
Odd as it might be, that research might have implications for millions of humans. The same cannot be said for another winning report, "Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects," published in the British Medical Journal last year.
It was the world's first comprehensive study of sword swallowing injuries, said co-author Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tenn., one of only a few dozen active sword swallowers in the world. Not surprisingly, throat abrasions, perforated esophagi and punctured blood vessels were the most common injuries.
"Most sword swallowing injuries happen either after another smaller injury when the throat is tender and swollen, or while doing something out of the ordinary, like swallowing multiple swords," said Meyer, who went a month without solid food after doing the latter in 2005.
The Ig Nobel for nutrition went to a concept that sounds like a restaurant marketing ploy: a bottomless bowl of soup.
Cornell University professor Brian Wansink used bowls rigged with tubes that slowly and imperceptibly refilled them with creamy tomato soup to see if test subjects ate more than they would with a regular bowl.
"We found that people eating from the refillable soup bowls ended up eating 73 percent more soup, but they never rated themselves as any more full," said Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior and applied economics. "They thought 'How can I be full when the bowl has so much left in it?' "
His conclusion: "We as Americans judge satiety with our eyes, not with our stomachs."
Harvard professor of applied mathematics L. Mahadevan and professor Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago in Chile won for their studies on a problem that has vexed anyone who ever made up a bed: wrinkled sheets.
The wrinkle patterns seen on sheets are replicated in nature on human and animal skin, in science and in technology.
"We showed that you can understand all of them using a very simple formula," Mahadevan said.
His research, he says, shows that "there's no reason good science can't be fun."
Other winners include a Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds, and a man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers.
This year's planned Ig Nobel program included a two-minute speech by keynote speaker Doug Zongker consisting only of the word "chicken," and a mini-opera entitled "Chicken versus Egg," performed by professional mother-daughter opera singers Gail Kilkelly and Maggie McNeil.
Most winners are more than happy to accept their awards from real Nobel Laureates at the typically rowdy ceremony, including seven of the 10 winners this year. But there are still a few sticks-in-the-mud, magazine editor Marc Abrahams said.
The U.S. Air Force won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year for its proposal to develop a "gay bomb" ”” a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers want to make love with each other, not war with the enemy.
Abrahams talked to a number of retired and active Air Force personnel to try and get someone to accept the prize in person on behalf of the military. None would.
"Who in their right mind would turn something like this down?" Wansink said.
___
On the Web:
Ig Nobels: http://www.improbable.com
The 2006 True Stella Award for "outrageous" lawsuits
by Randy Cassingham
www.stellaawards.com
#5: Marcy Meckler. While shopping at a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was "attacked" by a squirrel that lived among the trees and bushes. And "while frantically attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, [Meckler] fell and suffered severe injuries," her resulting lawsuit says. That's the mall's fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess of $50,000, based on the mall's "failure to warn" her that squirrels live outside.
#4: Ron and Kristie Simmons. The couple's 4-year-old son, Justin, was killed in a tragic lawnmower accident in a licensed daycare facility, and the death was clearly the result of negligence by the daycare providers. The providers were clearly deserving of being sued, yet when the Simmons's discovered the daycare only had $100,000 in insurance, they dropped the case against them and instead sued the manufacturer of the 16-year-old lawn mower because the mower didn't have a safety device that 1) had not been invented at the time of the mower's manufacture, and 2) no safety agency had even suggested needed to be invented. A sympathetic jury still awarded the family $2 million.
#3: Robert Clymer. An FBI agent working a high-profile case in Las Vegas, Clymer allegedly created a disturbance, lost the magazine from his pistol, then crashed his pickup truck in a drunken stupor -- his blood-alcohol level was 0.306 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Nevada. He pled guilty to drunk driving because, his lawyer explained, "With public officials, we expect them to own up to their mistakes and correct them." Yet Clymer had the gall to sue the manufacturer of his pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it from, because he "somehow lost consciousness" and the truck "somehow produced a heavy smoke that filled the passenger cab." Yep: the drunk-driving accident wasn't his fault, but the truck's fault. Just the kind of guy you want carrying a gun in the name of the law.
#2: KinderStart.com. The specialty search engine says Google should be forced to include the KinderStart site in its listings, reveal how its "Page Rank" system works, and pay them lots of money because they're a competitor. They claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow infringing KinderStart's Constitutional right to free speech. Even if by some stretch they were a competitor of Google, why in the world would they think it's Google's responsibility to help them succeed? And if Google's "review" of their site is negative, wouldn't a government court order forcing them to change it infringe on Google's Constitutional right to free speech?
And the winner of the 2006 True Stella Award: Allen Ray Heckard. Even though Heckard is 3 inches shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years older than former basketball star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot like Jordan, and is often confused for him -- and thus he deserves $52 million "for defamation and permanent injury" -- plus $364 million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering", plus the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers chatted with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue if he pressed on.
by Randy Cassingham
www.stellaawards.com
#5: Marcy Meckler. While shopping at a mall, Meckler stepped outside and was "attacked" by a squirrel that lived among the trees and bushes. And "while frantically attempting to escape from the squirrel and detach it from her leg, [Meckler] fell and suffered severe injuries," her resulting lawsuit says. That's the mall's fault, the lawsuit claims, demanding in excess of $50,000, based on the mall's "failure to warn" her that squirrels live outside.
#4: Ron and Kristie Simmons. The couple's 4-year-old son, Justin, was killed in a tragic lawnmower accident in a licensed daycare facility, and the death was clearly the result of negligence by the daycare providers. The providers were clearly deserving of being sued, yet when the Simmons's discovered the daycare only had $100,000 in insurance, they dropped the case against them and instead sued the manufacturer of the 16-year-old lawn mower because the mower didn't have a safety device that 1) had not been invented at the time of the mower's manufacture, and 2) no safety agency had even suggested needed to be invented. A sympathetic jury still awarded the family $2 million.
#3: Robert Clymer. An FBI agent working a high-profile case in Las Vegas, Clymer allegedly created a disturbance, lost the magazine from his pistol, then crashed his pickup truck in a drunken stupor -- his blood-alcohol level was 0.306 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Nevada. He pled guilty to drunk driving because, his lawyer explained, "With public officials, we expect them to own up to their mistakes and correct them." Yet Clymer had the gall to sue the manufacturer of his pickup truck, and the dealer he bought it from, because he "somehow lost consciousness" and the truck "somehow produced a heavy smoke that filled the passenger cab." Yep: the drunk-driving accident wasn't his fault, but the truck's fault. Just the kind of guy you want carrying a gun in the name of the law.
#2: KinderStart.com. The specialty search engine says Google should be forced to include the KinderStart site in its listings, reveal how its "Page Rank" system works, and pay them lots of money because they're a competitor. They claim by not being ranked higher in Google, Google is somehow infringing KinderStart's Constitutional right to free speech. Even if by some stretch they were a competitor of Google, why in the world would they think it's Google's responsibility to help them succeed? And if Google's "review" of their site is negative, wouldn't a government court order forcing them to change it infringe on Google's Constitutional right to free speech?
And the winner of the 2006 True Stella Award: Allen Ray Heckard. Even though Heckard is 3 inches shorter, 25 pounds lighter, and 8 years older than former basketball star Michael Jordan, the Portland, Oregon, man says he looks a lot like Jordan, and is often confused for him -- and thus he deserves $52 million "for defamation and permanent injury" -- plus $364 million in "punitive damage for emotional pain and suffering", plus the SAME amount from Nike co-founder Phil Knight, for a grand total of $832 million. He dropped the suit after Nike's lawyers chatted with him, where they presumably explained how they'd counter-sue if he pressed on.
Zimbabwe inflation hits record high
Harare, Zimbabwe
17 October 2007
Zimbabwe's inflation rate rose to a new record of 7 982,1% year-on-year in September, from 6 592,8% in August, driven by non-food items, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Wednesday.
The month-on-month inflation rate climbed 38,7% in September, the CSO said.
Zimbabwe's inflation figure remains the world's highest despite a controversial price freeze imposed in June by President Robert Mugabe in a bid to stem runaway price increases.
The CSO said non-food inflation drove inflation higher in September, while food inflation was marginally lower. It said rising water, housing, electricity, transport and health costs were behind the latest price rises.
"Year-on-year food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation stood at 7 759%, 149,1% points down from the August 2007 figure of 7 908,1%, while non-food inflation inflation was 8 096,7% ... from the August figure of 5 983,9%," the CSO said. - Reuters
Harare, Zimbabwe
17 October 2007
Zimbabwe's inflation rate rose to a new record of 7 982,1% year-on-year in September, from 6 592,8% in August, driven by non-food items, the Central Statistical Office (CSO) said on Wednesday.
The month-on-month inflation rate climbed 38,7% in September, the CSO said.
Zimbabwe's inflation figure remains the world's highest despite a controversial price freeze imposed in June by President Robert Mugabe in a bid to stem runaway price increases.
The CSO said non-food inflation drove inflation higher in September, while food inflation was marginally lower. It said rising water, housing, electricity, transport and health costs were behind the latest price rises.
"Year-on-year food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation stood at 7 759%, 149,1% points down from the August 2007 figure of 7 908,1%, while non-food inflation inflation was 8 096,7% ... from the August figure of 5 983,9%," the CSO said. - Reuters
A Lawyer Bride Sues Her Florist
by Peter Lattman -- WSJ -- 16 OCT 2007
Elana Elbogen, a litigator at Kelley Drye in New York, married David Glatt at Cipriani 42nd St. this summer. She wasn’t happy with the floral arrangements. So she sued.
In a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Friday against Posy Floral Design Studios in New York state court, Elbogen alleges that the florist substituted pastel pink and green hydrangeas for the dark rust and green hydrangeas that she had specified for the centerpieces. Other issues, says the lawsuit: “using wilted and/or browned flowers, leaving the event without filling half the centerpiece vases with water, and using dusty and dirty vases.” Here are stories from the NYT and NY Post.
“The use of predominantly pastel centerpieces had a significant impact on the look of the room and was entirely inconsistent with the vision the plaintiffs had bargained for,” says the lawsuit, according to the Times. They paid in advance for the flowers, which cost ”” yikes! ”” $27,435.14. After the wedding, they asked for a $4,000 refund. Now, they’re asking for $400,000 in damages.
Paula and Stamos Arakas, the florist owners, told the media they’re stunned. “I can’t believe this. I put my heart and soul into this wedding,” said Paula to the Post. Said Stamos: “My father used to tell me, ‘Don’t deal with lawyers.’ Maybe hewas right, God bless his soul.”
by Peter Lattman -- WSJ -- 16 OCT 2007
Elana Elbogen, a litigator at Kelley Drye in New York, married David Glatt at Cipriani 42nd St. this summer. She wasn’t happy with the floral arrangements. So she sued.
In a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Friday against Posy Floral Design Studios in New York state court, Elbogen alleges that the florist substituted pastel pink and green hydrangeas for the dark rust and green hydrangeas that she had specified for the centerpieces. Other issues, says the lawsuit: “using wilted and/or browned flowers, leaving the event without filling half the centerpiece vases with water, and using dusty and dirty vases.” Here are stories from the NYT and NY Post.
“The use of predominantly pastel centerpieces had a significant impact on the look of the room and was entirely inconsistent with the vision the plaintiffs had bargained for,” says the lawsuit, according to the Times. They paid in advance for the flowers, which cost ”” yikes! ”” $27,435.14. After the wedding, they asked for a $4,000 refund. Now, they’re asking for $400,000 in damages.
Paula and Stamos Arakas, the florist owners, told the media they’re stunned. “I can’t believe this. I put my heart and soul into this wedding,” said Paula to the Post. Said Stamos: “My father used to tell me, ‘Don’t deal with lawyers.’ Maybe hewas right, God bless his soul.”
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Maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed.
If you are going to make frivolous lawsuits, you might want to make sure your profile isn't on the web.
I wonder how much hate mail she got
If you are going to make frivolous lawsuits, you might want to make sure your profile isn't on the web.
I wonder how much hate mail she got
Please read the comments on the lawsuit:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/10/19/revisiting-the-lawyer-bride-who-sued-her-florist/
Commodity traders superior to chimpanzees...
http://blog.risk.net/2008/01/commodity_traders_superior_to.html
http://blog.risk.net/2008/01/commodity_traders_superior_to.html
Why Italians grab their crotches to ward off bad luck
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/29/wcrotch129.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/29/wcrotch129.xml
Things are looking up -- at the pawn shop
David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2008
The economy is tanking, banks are scrambling for cover, the Fed is repeatedly cutting interest rates . . . and business is booming at pawn shop Crown City Loan & Jewelry in Old Pasadena.
Standing behind a display case brimming with hocked watches and jewelry, owner Doug Robinson can only smile when asked how things are going.
"Business is very good," he said. "The loan business is very good."
These aren't just any loans, of course. Robinson said the money he hands out -- no questions asked -- in return for people's collateral typically comes with an annual interest rate of about 60%.
He declined to say how much his loan balance was. But Robinson said it's risen about 40% in the last year and he expected to do even better this year.
"We've been on a continuous uphill run for a number of months," he said. "I don't see anything that will stop it."
For all the reassurance from the Bush administration and Federal Reserve that steps are being taken to keep the U.S. economy from going down the toilet, the harsh reality from the consumer's perspective is that times are tough and getting tougher.
Last week the Fed cut rates for a sixth time since September and assisted in JPMorgan Chase's bargain-basement purchase of stricken investment bank Bear Stearns. President Bush tried to put a brave face on an economic outlook that most prognosticators say will be increasingly chilly.
Hi, Mr. Recession!
"I understand there's short-term difficulty," Bush said. "But I want people to understand that in the long term we're going to be just fine."
I conveyed that sentiment to numerous people in and around Old Pasadena the other day, and none seemed convinced that fineness was just around the corner.
"They say they're going to turn things around and help people," said Pasadena resident Darryl Austin, 41, who works as a security guard after serving 12 years in the Marine Corps. "I'm still waiting. I feel like a stepchild in my own country."
Burbank resident Saul Powell, 45, said that no matter how hard he worked, he was having a hard time keeping his fiscal head above water because of rising gas and food costs.
"Prices just keep going up," he said. "Why did the government get so aggressive helping Wall Street but isn't doing anything for Main Street?"
There it is. Many consumers might think that a series of aggressive rate cuts would be helpful for things like mortgages and credit cards. But that's apparently wishful thinking.
After the latest cut of 0.75 of a percentage point was announced Tuesday, the average for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell after weeks of increases, but not as much as might have been expected, considering how much interest rates for 10-year Treasury notes -- a benchmark for mortgages -- have come down.
Analysts say the spread between mortgages and Treasuries is increasing because banks are reluctant to reopen the credit spigot that got them into so much trouble with the sub-prime mortgage mess.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan was 5.98% last week, according to a national survey by Bankrate.com. This compares with 6.19% a year ago.
Similarly, credit card rates are budging very little. Six months ago, the average piece of plastic was costing users about 14% in interest for revolving balances. Now it's about 13%.
Things also aren't getting any better for people who believe in squirreling away cash for a rainy day. All those rate cuts are taking their toll on savings accounts, money-market accounts and certificates of deposit.
That's not to say your money is going to disappear, even if your bank goes belly-up. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures ordinary accounts up to $100,000 and retirement accounts up to $250,000.
On the other hand, six-month CDs and money-market accounts are currently paying an annual rate of less than 3%. The cost of living, by contrast, was up 4% last month from a year earlier.
That doesn't bode well for savers like 19-year-old Brittany Green, who attends Pasadena City College while also raising an 8-month-old daughter. She told me she had about $1,500 in savings and wasn't sure what to do with it.
I told her that by slashing interest rates, the government basically wanted her to do one of two things: go out and spend it or invest it in the stock market. Either one would give the economy a little boost.
Green shook her head. "I'm not spending it," she said. "And I wouldn't put it in the stock market. That's like playing the lottery."
Back at the Crown City pawn shop, Robinson, the owner, said his vantage point on the economy suggests that people need money just to get by, but they're having a hard time getting it from banks.
"People have used up their available cash and credit," he said. "We loan to people that the banks do not. If you bring in something worthy of a loan, we'll make the loan."
Robinson said about 89% of his loans last year were eventually redeemed by customers, despite the sky-high interest rate. He said he wasn't so sure about this year. People just might not have the money.
In that case, though, Robinson said, he'd just sell off whatever was left as collateral -- a Rolex watch, say, or a pair of diamond earrings.
The government can be doing more to cushion people from the economic downturn. For one thing, why aren't lower rates for banks to borrow money being passed down the financial food chain in the form of lower rates for consumers?
Whether that takes a gentle nudge from the Fed or more overt regulatory action, it would help convey that we're all in this together.
It'd also be nice to see more concrete measures to help people who are either losing their homes or in danger of being turned out on the street. The government did this during the Great Depression and it could certainly provide a helping hand now.
Bush may be right -- things will be fine over the long haul. But for the moment, things seem quite grim.
Down the street from Crown City, I encountered Chad Pratt, a 44-year-old lawyer, who said his business was also thriving, thanks mainly to the desperation of many of his clients.
"There are more evictions, more divorces," he observed. "People are losing their homes, their jobs. You can feel how scared people are."
I replied that it was kind of sad that Pratt was doing so well off of other people's misery. He nodded his agreement.
"I'm a bottom feeder," he said with a what're-you-gonna-do shrug. "I'm a predator. This is how it is."
And no rate cut's going to change that.
David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2008
The economy is tanking, banks are scrambling for cover, the Fed is repeatedly cutting interest rates . . . and business is booming at pawn shop Crown City Loan & Jewelry in Old Pasadena.
Standing behind a display case brimming with hocked watches and jewelry, owner Doug Robinson can only smile when asked how things are going.
"Business is very good," he said. "The loan business is very good."
These aren't just any loans, of course. Robinson said the money he hands out -- no questions asked -- in return for people's collateral typically comes with an annual interest rate of about 60%.
He declined to say how much his loan balance was. But Robinson said it's risen about 40% in the last year and he expected to do even better this year.
"We've been on a continuous uphill run for a number of months," he said. "I don't see anything that will stop it."
For all the reassurance from the Bush administration and Federal Reserve that steps are being taken to keep the U.S. economy from going down the toilet, the harsh reality from the consumer's perspective is that times are tough and getting tougher.
Last week the Fed cut rates for a sixth time since September and assisted in JPMorgan Chase's bargain-basement purchase of stricken investment bank Bear Stearns. President Bush tried to put a brave face on an economic outlook that most prognosticators say will be increasingly chilly.
Hi, Mr. Recession!
"I understand there's short-term difficulty," Bush said. "But I want people to understand that in the long term we're going to be just fine."
I conveyed that sentiment to numerous people in and around Old Pasadena the other day, and none seemed convinced that fineness was just around the corner.
"They say they're going to turn things around and help people," said Pasadena resident Darryl Austin, 41, who works as a security guard after serving 12 years in the Marine Corps. "I'm still waiting. I feel like a stepchild in my own country."
Burbank resident Saul Powell, 45, said that no matter how hard he worked, he was having a hard time keeping his fiscal head above water because of rising gas and food costs.
"Prices just keep going up," he said. "Why did the government get so aggressive helping Wall Street but isn't doing anything for Main Street?"
There it is. Many consumers might think that a series of aggressive rate cuts would be helpful for things like mortgages and credit cards. But that's apparently wishful thinking.
After the latest cut of 0.75 of a percentage point was announced Tuesday, the average for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell after weeks of increases, but not as much as might have been expected, considering how much interest rates for 10-year Treasury notes -- a benchmark for mortgages -- have come down.
Analysts say the spread between mortgages and Treasuries is increasing because banks are reluctant to reopen the credit spigot that got them into so much trouble with the sub-prime mortgage mess.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan was 5.98% last week, according to a national survey by Bankrate.com. This compares with 6.19% a year ago.
Similarly, credit card rates are budging very little. Six months ago, the average piece of plastic was costing users about 14% in interest for revolving balances. Now it's about 13%.
Things also aren't getting any better for people who believe in squirreling away cash for a rainy day. All those rate cuts are taking their toll on savings accounts, money-market accounts and certificates of deposit.
That's not to say your money is going to disappear, even if your bank goes belly-up. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures ordinary accounts up to $100,000 and retirement accounts up to $250,000.
On the other hand, six-month CDs and money-market accounts are currently paying an annual rate of less than 3%. The cost of living, by contrast, was up 4% last month from a year earlier.
That doesn't bode well for savers like 19-year-old Brittany Green, who attends Pasadena City College while also raising an 8-month-old daughter. She told me she had about $1,500 in savings and wasn't sure what to do with it.
I told her that by slashing interest rates, the government basically wanted her to do one of two things: go out and spend it or invest it in the stock market. Either one would give the economy a little boost.
Green shook her head. "I'm not spending it," she said. "And I wouldn't put it in the stock market. That's like playing the lottery."
Back at the Crown City pawn shop, Robinson, the owner, said his vantage point on the economy suggests that people need money just to get by, but they're having a hard time getting it from banks.
"People have used up their available cash and credit," he said. "We loan to people that the banks do not. If you bring in something worthy of a loan, we'll make the loan."
Robinson said about 89% of his loans last year were eventually redeemed by customers, despite the sky-high interest rate. He said he wasn't so sure about this year. People just might not have the money.
In that case, though, Robinson said, he'd just sell off whatever was left as collateral -- a Rolex watch, say, or a pair of diamond earrings.
The government can be doing more to cushion people from the economic downturn. For one thing, why aren't lower rates for banks to borrow money being passed down the financial food chain in the form of lower rates for consumers?
Whether that takes a gentle nudge from the Fed or more overt regulatory action, it would help convey that we're all in this together.
It'd also be nice to see more concrete measures to help people who are either losing their homes or in danger of being turned out on the street. The government did this during the Great Depression and it could certainly provide a helping hand now.
Bush may be right -- things will be fine over the long haul. But for the moment, things seem quite grim.
Down the street from Crown City, I encountered Chad Pratt, a 44-year-old lawyer, who said his business was also thriving, thanks mainly to the desperation of many of his clients.
"There are more evictions, more divorces," he observed. "People are losing their homes, their jobs. You can feel how scared people are."
I replied that it was kind of sad that Pratt was doing so well off of other people's misery. He nodded his agreement.
"I'm a bottom feeder," he said with a what're-you-gonna-do shrug. "I'm a predator. This is how it is."
And no rate cut's going to change that.
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