_vagrant_joe

The Credit Spreads Blow-Up

while a normal capitalistic system should seem to favor those with strong balance sheets and reasonable or negligible debt, our current system and those of many of our european counterparts seem to be shunning the predictability of capitalism in favor of russia's oligarchical corporatism -where politics and political friends matter almost as much or even more than sound business practices. The only predictability of this system would seem to be disaster -but when, where, and among whom are unknown. When a company such as Citi can take $20B from the US Government, an amount equivalent to their entire market cap, only give up 4.5% of their company (in the form of warrants), and then use that money to buy other companies -the idea of capitalism as the United States' working model is turned on it's head. And this scenario has happened at an alarming rate (even though just 1 instance should be alarming in an of itself). This has an unknown effect on companies that play by the rules. Those playing by the rules might have the most to lose as their balance sheets can just be a good meal to a competitor with more or better-connected lobbyist/bribery-artis... and a blank check from a Chris "countrywide" Dodd, Barney "fannie-man" Frank, Nancy "JPMorganGoldmanSachsC... Pelosi, or Hank "hug-a-bank" Paulson, et. al. If a competitor that is doing worse that you, suddenly is able to use their fragility as a reason to pick up a check larger that the value of their entire company, buy out suppliers/distributors... or whatever with no restrictions, then these scenario's need to be factored into portfolio decisions.

Two Winning Bank Stocks: U.S. Bancorp and BB&T Corp.

I've been a business banking customer of US Bank for a few years now. They still have problems with their internet banking, seem to consistently have trouble with wire transfers (both domestic & international), are a hit or miss as far as employees go -but their saving grace seems to be the appearance of stability during this banking mess. However, they recently took $4 Billion from the Fed under the TARP program -which indicates anything but stability. So far, I have seen no disclosure as to what sort of dilution this will cause to shareholders -or what sort of restrictions the Federal Governments additional involvement will place on their business operations. If they were as financially sound as they claim to be, they would not have a need to participate in the bailout.

Two Winning Bank Stocks: U.S. Bancorp and BB&T Corp.

I've been a business banking customer of US Bank for a few years now. They still have problems with their internet banking, seem to consistently have trouble with wire transfers (both domestic & international), are a hit or miss as far as employees go -but their saving grace seems to be the appearance of stability during this banking mess. However, they recently took $4 Billion from the Fed under the TARP program -which indicates anything but stability. So far, I have seen no disclosure as to what sort of dilution this will cause to shareholders -or what sort of restrictions the Federal Governments additional involvement will place on their business operations. If they were as financially sound as they claim to be, they would not have a need to participate in the bailout.

Why the Bailout Bill Alone Won't Solve the Credit Crisis

Since Warren Buffet is to investors what the Kaa'ba is to middle-easterners, we may want to note that Warren Buffet has balked at buying MBS's -and instead bought stake in the company best suited to get the gov't to pull the MBS's off of their books (GS -Paulson's alma mater). If Buffet wouldn't buy them at less than 20 cents on the dollar, that tells you something right there...

Why the Bailout Bill Alone Won't Solve the Credit Crisis

Heya Steve. Morgan Stanley sold off a bunch of their MBS's back in June for 22 cents on the dollar. Prices have dropped and foreclosures have risen since then. Maybe now worth about 18 cents on the dollar. Most estimates that I've seen have the Gov't (you, me, etc.) paying 70 cents or higher on the dollar. Heck, at 70 cents on the dollar, why buy the paper when you can just go over & pick up the foreclosure for much less than that? The idea that buying these MBS's at .70 on the dollar is a good investment seems more than a little retarded.

Oh, and with the anti-oversight clause in this bailout package (no one can prosecute Paulson for misuse of the funds and he has complete discretion on where it's spent), he could spend all $700B on strippers and there would be no recourse. That's your tax $$$ at work!

Google’s Chrome Saturating an Already Crowded Browser Market

So, here's the scoop. Firefox has been a better browser than IE for quite some time. The plug-in choices to make browsing better are amazing. Yet, after several years, IE still retains like 60%+ market share. Why??? People feel comfortable with a name they know & quasi-trust. Google's Chrome won't eat into Firefox's market share -but, it will definitely eat into IE's share. The same people that trust Microsoft will also trust Google -and maybe moreso. Is this good? IMO, yes. The amount of code workarounds that developers have to do to support IE's poor rendering is unbelievable -and can often double the amount of time spent on a web project. Google's underlying rendering engine will likely function very similar to Firefox -so, the addition of Google's engine probably won't significantly increase development time. However, if Google can help bring down the IE marketshare down to, say, 10% -then they probably will save more of their own developers man-hours spent on compatibility than it costs them to launch the competing browser. Thus, Google accomplishes two things. One, they save developer costs. Two, they hit Microsoft hard and potentially keep Microsoft from being able to compete in the emerging mobile browser market. Developers over at Mozilla/Firefox aren't sweating over this, but you can bet that Ballmer & Co. are screaming expletives that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush.