Shaftsinker

First Goldman, Now Apple?

Hey Tom B if you continue to ignore what people are buying and thinking maybe you can will the stock back to $200.

The fact remains that the iPhone now has competition where there was previously none, and as opposed to Vista the general public perception of Windows 7 is absolutely excellent.

No matter how much you love all that is Apple and despise anything that isn't, these are facts.

Cramer's Mad Money - The Most Despised Bull Market in History (12/2/09)

What was the name of Todd Harrison's book again?

"BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"

Comcast, NBC Universal Merger: Will it Work?

Look like Gary Bettman's gamble of putting the NHL on Versus could see a big payoff through these distribution channels...

I'm guessing that's peanuts compared to what else is at stake in this deal, but as a Canadian it's what I'm most interested in!

Is it possible NBC with it's Olympic, NFL, and NHL coverage will be looking to build up Versus and go head to head with ESPN?

The Bond Bubble Theory for a Continuing Market Rally

A post showing faith in Bernanke on Seeking Alpha... oh boy you're gonna get pounced on

I do agree with you though, too often people have the assumption that the boys running the Fed somehow haven't observed what other countries have tried to do in the past.


On Dec 02 08:44 AM DormRoom wrote:

> Bernanke is an authority on Japan's lost decade, and her policies
> post bubble. I'm sure he foresaw the problem with big banks not lending.
> Thus I'm assuming he'll advise the administration to include a provision
> in Obama's stimulus 2.0 for direct lending to small/medium businesses
> under a certain market cap.

Facebook's Dual Class Shares: Another Reason to Avoid This Company

Good article

If one decides to become a Facebook shareholder, faith in Facebook's business model will have to overcome the obvious: Zuckerberg's interests will not lie in himself and his position of power rather than shareholder value.

$59 Billion Dubai Debt Default Could Have Much Wider Implications

Looking at the comment section... you bears are now using a 56 Billion dollar debt restructuring as a sign that the world economy will start retreating again.

The desperation is palpable.

Murdoch’s Bing Bluster Will Hurt News Corp, Not Google

I disagree with this article. The news industry as is cannot survive the direction it is headed in. Murdoch knows this and is attempting to turn the short sighted "put everything online for free" (even last.fm is now charging for its radio! Every other traditional media outlet has figured out that the free online model doesn't work! There's just not enough income from advertising! Why would the news be an exception?) attitude on its head first by pitting Bing and Google against one another and then eventually charging for content.

Hopefully other news companies will follow and start turning profits. While mainstream news is more biased then ever, I still fear the day where we'll be checking Sgt. Grunt's twitter page and jarheadm16's blog for updates on Afghanistan because news companies can't afford to send correspondants to the middle east anymore.

"If I am Fidelity or Goldman or E*Trade, where would I advertise? In Wall St. Journal or to 300 million Google visitors?"

Comments like this are just completely ridiculous. You can't honestly think of one reason why a stock trading platform would prefer to advertise directly to a core demographic of financial pages enthusiasts as opposed to an online search engine? Just look around at the ads on this site and understand why you failed marketing 101.

10 Common Myths About ETF Investing

Great article

Two more publishers say they may yank stories off Google's (GOOG) search engine and hand them exclusively to Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing, following Rupert Murdoch's (NWS) lead. MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of the Denver Post, plans to block Google when it starts charging readers for online content next year. And Morning News owner A.H. Belo (AHC) says it may start charging online subscription fees and block Google.

Murdoch is a visionary... hopefully this can save the newspaper industry. I fear the day where we'll be checking soldiers' twitter updates to see what's going on in Afghanistan because no news organization can afford to send a correspondant.

Another Crisis Looms Right Around the Corner

Partying like it's 1999 in here

High Gold Prices: It's the Oil, Stupid

There's no point in saving the planet if we turn it into a world I don't want to live in! Let's call this plan z


On Nov 24 09:09 PM G. L. Turner wrote:

> Re: Natural Gas -
>
> The reason that NG is not being used in the US is because Gov. Sachs
> has not figured out a way to control the 'global price' of NG - perhaps,
> its because this is a domestic resource that can't be manipulated
> through ICE.
>
> Second: Since each beef steer consumes the equivalent of 155 gallons
> of gasoline in its short lifetime, and the American Public eats a
> huge amount of meat, to it severe detriment and that of the planet,
> on average and across the board - at least once every day...about
> 7 times the average amount around the globe - we if would just cut
> back our beef consumption by half...we would most probably cut our
> imports of foreign oil by close to half. This would substantially
> improve our health, save alot of money domestically (personal budgets/health
> carecosts) and reduce our foreign outflows by a significant amount
> as well as make a decent impact on carbon emissions...and most importantly,
> all this cost us nothing...
>
> Go figure!

Investing in China: Why the Nine Nations Matter

Great article

U.S. Government's Size: The Slow-Motion Crisis

The sceptic tank law makes sense...

I dunno how you guys work but here in Quebec we have a law stating that if a flaw in your house needs to be repaired, and you can prove that the damage was caused by a previous owner (and missed by an inspector), then he/his insurance is responsible for the damage.

What probably happened is a lot of these sceptic tank cases went to court since nobody was actually checking them when a house's ownership was transfered, and the indirect method of checking was proven to be innaccurate in dating the damage. That's why it doesn't matter if it's 6 or 25 years old it's all about confirming whether or not there is damage at the point of transfer.

But of course it's easier to just rage at the man than actually think critically about why these things came to be.

Actually now that I think about it this might have been pushed by the insurance lobby since all their investigative costs are then eliminated and the homeowner now has to cover the cost of the initial sceptic tank inspection. My point is, the law definitely arose because of case studies that repeatidly occured, and you should look into those to determine if this law really is a waste. There was no lawmaker twirling his mustache as he conjured up a diabolical scheme to get new homeowners to spend an hour or two reveailng their sceptic tank covers, "Hmm how can I ruin peope's lives today?!".

However as for your overall point though, I totally agree. Government beaurocracy only grows. It's always more, never more efficient, and that is definitely unsustainable in the long run. You know how when companies get bloated in size, they'll more in order to streamline their pverlapping operations? How is it that government agencies have never merged when it's been consistently proven to dramatically reduce costs in companies that compare in size with these departments?

The U.S. Budget Challenge in International Context

What's the deal with Iceland

Didn't the whole country implode on itself

Cramer: Flat Wrong on GameStop

I'll have to disagree.

First look at the holiday Wii console sales of the past 3 years compared to this year. The Wii is practically in the home of everybody that wants one. You can't expect nowhere near the holiday surge of previous years.

Second, Gamestop's competition doesn't only come from other retailers. One of Gamestops most lucrative business' has been selling second hand games of the past generation, games that are now being made available through Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft's direct to console online stores and selling extremely well through these channels. As for new games... for example Steam is PC an online game purchasing platform for PC that has been single handidly credited with saving the PC gaming markets. Everything we're seeing from console makers right now indicates a push towards this kind of platform for game purchasing (which is also preferred by publishers), and once hard drives get bigger the gaming retail market will take a significant hit.

"I do not know what other games are expected to be a hit this season but clearly the demand has never been higher."

This just displays a complete lack of understanding of the videogame marketplace right now. There are virtually zero marquee titles available his holiday season, since every publisher was terrified of competing with Modern Warfare 2, a game that has been seemingly already been purchased by everybody who wanted one. Modern Warfare 2 sales don't indicate an increased demand for videogames, everbody who bought this game will be playing it right through Christmas since the online experience is what drove these kinds of sales.

Not to mention last year's holiday cash cows, the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, are now practically dead franchises thanks to their respective companies absolutely milking them and oversaturating the market.