BerkeleyBob

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

AndrewBaker makes me feel warm all over towards the toiling selfless bankers. Let's make sure that Hammerin' Hank Greenberg gets back in the game to finish to good work and maybe we ought to let Mozillo have a free pass too.

Cramer's Lightning Round - Boeing Takes a Nosedive (12/4/08)

I bailed on BA a while ago, although it does pay a decent dividend. I think management underestimated the willingness of the machinists to take the pain of a prolonged strike, and their policy of outsourcing guaranteed further erosion of jobs for union members. The Dreamliner will be a technical triumph and a fuel-efficient replacement for an aging airline fleet. On top of BA's most recent announcement of a further 6 month delivery delay and low fuel price and passenger count, I would get back into BA only when there is some good news or positive catalyst. One plus for BA is that is not completely dependent on either the military or civilian market. The latter does not look good, and we don't know what will happen with the new military tanker procurement, except that it will take a long time to generate revenue. Please note that whether you agree or disagree with my post, I am not simply parroting Cramer, but doing as he suggests, doing my own homework.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

The continued railing against the CRA is a bone in the throat of the free market idiologues but CRA was a relatively small part of the activities of Freddie and Fannie. Those agencies did some things wrong (accounting mis-statements, lobbying, confusion about who they were working for) and some things right.(Probably more realisitic appraisals and underwriting on their own loans) Encouragement of home ownership was a Bush-approved policy. Bush's statements about the unfolding global fiscal mess is characteristic, but irrelevant. On his watch and lax regulation, the US exported toxic debt fraudulently ratified by the rating agencies as high quality.

Boeing: Intrinsically Undervalued

Perhaps BA will increase significantly, but I am not getting back into it until I see the white of the Dreamliner's eyes and Boeing gets its delivery and debugging further along.