Pilm

Yahoo! Directors Are to Blame for Lousy Search Deal

Hey, if a "boatload" of money is $0.00, I would of bought Yahoo Search myself!

More Government Market Manipulation on Its Way?

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the price of oil doubling from a low of $30 in March 09 to $70 in June 09 has nothing at all to do with real time supply and demand. Supply and demand do not vary more than 5% in a 1 year time frame, but oil prices do because it's a speculative investment, just like the stock market. If the price of oil were actually linked to real time supply and demand trends, you'd see the price of oil become almost rock solid over the short term. But we don't live in such a fantasy land do we!

Is It Possible the Current Recession Was Caused by Oil Prices, Not Housing?

Falling home prices only <5% of Americans while rising oil prices affect 100% of Americans. In fact, rising oil prices have a double or triple impact since they not only increase our auto gas bill directly, they also increase our home energy bill, our grocery bill, and everything else you buy that requires transportation!

Living in the American Mafia State

About the only thing congress is qualified to do it hold hearings on MLB and other sports cheaters, at least in these instances, they don't have a conflict of interest. When they hold hearings on Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Brokerages, Bit etc, they are all conflict of interests since all these contribute to congressional re-election campaigns. On the positive side, having the Big wigs come to DC allows them to save the cost of a stamp in delivering their brides ... er, contribution checks!

Home Sales Surge 5.1%..err...Drop 4.5%

An average home price of $165k becomes quite affordable with 4% interest rates and the gov't paying $8k for a downpayment. You only need to make $30k a year for that. Problem is there really aren't any $165k homes near places with good jobs (unless you want to live in an inner city slum area), so reality is, if you live in a place with good jobs and desire a home in a place where you don't need to carry a gun to visit the grocery store, you'll still need to pay > $400k for a reasonable home.

Housing: Where Is the Bottom?

Very good article, especially the affordability chart showing relation of avg home price to avg family income. The first thought I have is that avg family income may become flat, or even decrease somewhat in the next 1-2 years, which would extend the time to reach a suitable buyer/seller price. There is also the potential impact of the gov't providing very cheap money (once again), which might tend to shorten the time to recovery, as well as the possible impact that soaring inflation will make more expensive homes appear cheaper. Just a lot of factors to consider.

GM Wants Another $27B at a Minimum: What's the Use?

When I was in high school we were taught the reason America was stronger than Russia was that our businesses were competitive, and competition forced creativity and innovation. Meanwhile in Russia, the government sponsored companies had no competition, and thus, no creativity, that's why everyone drove gray colored boxes for cars that fell apart in 2 years. Is this what we want to do here? Can we afford to support car companies that have no vision or creativity, and depend on the government to cover for their ineptitude? Can we as a country really afford to pay people $50/hour ($75/hour including benefits) to snap together our gray colored gas guzzlers? In a sense, the American people have already answered this question, that's why we buy Camrys, Maximas and Accords.

How the Treasury Bubble Will Burst and Why

treasury yield could go below 0% if people become scared enough and are will to take back less than they invest in order to reach the mythical safe haven.

as for gold, why buy something that the gov't would confiscate if things got bad enough? at that point it won't really matter what you own, worthless fiat money or golf that ain't really yours to keep.

It's Good to Be the World's Reserve Currency

another consideration, when all these foreign countries run out of money reserves (which they are in the process of doing), it won't matter what the reserve currency is, will it?

the oil nations won't run surpluses with low oil. china is planning to send big bucks at home, will also experiencing lower exports. european surpluses are toast. japan is on life support. don't really see where a sustainable source of reserve money is going to come from.

Apple: Like Starbucks and Whole Foods, A Trend That's Past Its Prime

never owned a thing made by Apple personally and don't plan on it in the future. that said, there are more substantial reasons people become Apple devotees than status, the Apple philosophy is a refreshing counter to that offered by Microsoft. nearly everyone complains about Microsoft, yet most continue to use their products (as do I), but a few do trickle over the Apple b/c in the Apple world you won't experience many of these annoyances. additionally, just imagine if Apple were not around to offer more astetically pleasing electronics packaging, we'd all have the same old square computer boxes on our desks today that first rolled out 20 years ago. and probably 50% of the cool things you find in excel/word/ppt were first conceived by Apple, not Msft.

BB&T Bank: A Rose Amongst the Thorns

I have to agree, you cannot base an investment decision on the reported experience of a single individual at a single bank branch. No matter how nice the employees are, it comes down to what is the bottom line in their quarterly reports that's going to determine if your investment is successful of not. I'm sure Countrywide employees were also pretty darn friendly to all those people they fleeced, but that bubble busted b/c they did not make good business decisions.

What Obama's Victory Means for the Defense Sector

Maybe we should turn our miliary power into an oil robbing machine. Wouldn't take long to crush Venezeula and take their oil. Drop a few bombs on Iran and their oil is up for grabs. Figure if all these liberal idiots out there think the US is already warring over oil, we might as well do so and reap the benefit of low cost oil.

Wachovia's Rally & Oil's Decline: Rotation from Energy to Financials?

why financials? why not! they've been beaten to death, and would be an easy market to create a short term bubble on. once oil money begins to pour in and prices rise, everyone will jump in (panic buy) and prices will bubble. then in 6 month to a year they'll exit to create another bubble somewhere else. financial bubbles are a part of investment life now, there are just way too many $$$ out there to avoid it.

Icahn "Encouraged" by Yahoo, But Retains Cudgel

the author calculated a lagging percent change not a leading percent change