John from Concord

Would You Pay $1,000 for This Book?

fatcat, you must be new to this Internet thing... it's on the web in a pdf BECAUSE various young Wall St wankers have bid the price of hard copies up so high. Just as -- if you know where to look -- you can find pdfs of all kinds of expensive textbooks, Ferrari service manuals that the company charges $1000+ for, rare occult texts, etc., etc., it was inevitable that this would appear.

The principle at work is this: If a piece of information becomes a) expensive and b) highly desired, those who have time and creativity but not money will arrange to get access to it. Sure, buying a hard copy is expensive -- but getting and copying one from a library isn't, and from there to the internet is but a few minutes' work -- and it lets the cool kids in on the info the suits consider so valuable. Given all the hype around this book in recent years, I'd be shocked if it weren't available.

Boeing (BA) wins a $750M contract with the U.S. Air Force for modernization and maintenance of Boeing-built B-52 Stratofortress bomber's weapons system. The B-52, dubbed BUFF for Big Ugly Fat Fellow, first entered combat in 1965 during the Vietnam War. (DoD)

"Fellows", eh? Well, I suppose that's the family-friendly variation.

It's probably worth noting that the *newest* B52 airframe dates to something like 1963, and last I checked the USAF plans to keep flying them until 2030. The way USAF leadership obsesses over/lavishes resources on fighters at the expense of other aircraft types that are far more useful and relevant to today's world (bombers, transports, tankers) never ceases to amaze me.

U.S. Debt Default, Dollar Collapse Altogether Likely

Let's just say that I hope you are very, very long this position, and I hope you have the testicular fortitude to come back in a year and tell us how very, very wrong you were. Good luck!

Would You Pay $1,000 for This Book?

If you're anywhere near Boston, go to the business branch of the Boston Public Library downtown. They have a copy, and while they won't let you take it out of the room, the room in question does have a photocopier... takes about 30 min and less than $20 to copy the whole thing. I did it about 3 years ago, and the librarian who helped me joked that it was almost certainly the most-photocopied book in the entire BPL system.

It's a good book. Not anywhere near $1000 good, but good.

5 Reasons Why the $700B Bailout Could Translate to $250 Oil

blunderboy, "Yves" is a man's name... and his blog looks fine from here.

"Peak Oil Pundit" Predicts Rally to $500 a Barrel

I hear IPET is going to $1000 a share, too! Oh, wait, that was last decade's bubble. Never mind.

If You Think the Dow Did Well Today, You're Wrong

Look at the timezones. It was the last rally of the week. It's the one that folks sold into. If you look at intraday it's pretty clear that there was a lot of profit-taking going on into the afternoon.

SEC Bans Shorting Financials

(The whacked part above said "end of the world". Weird.)

SEC Bans Shorting Financials

Man, this is fun, in a pop-popcorn-it's-the-e... kind of way. Between this and the revive-the-RTC-zombie plan that everybody thinks is going to magically detoxify the banks, how far do you think they can kick the can down the road?

GM Volt: Dream Car or Road to Bankruptcy?

Jim, you do know that GM has (enormous, substantial, profitable) operations outside of North America, right? There's no takeover in their future. Sorry. Betting the house on the Volt is, more than anything else, about changing GM's internal culture. They set it all in motion long before there was any suggestion they'd need a "bailout". And FWIW, it's working.