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    Moo Lah     Archives up to Oct.23, 2008p

October 23, 2008: Former Fed chief Allen Greenspan Admits Errors to hostile house plan ends up being the headline of the WSJ on Oct. 24th. However I think the better word for it would be poor oversight as far and the banking issue goes. The real mistake that no one is saying anything about is the fact that he kept the interest rate at about 1% most of the time Clinton was in office. Sure it kept the economy rolling along, but inflation had its way with things. And the bankers only took advantage of the low cost of borrowing money and the crooks wrote bad paper in the process. Greenspan only saw what Clinton wanted him to see and sure didn't give a damn about the out fall, and now the House wants answers. Hell they already knew all the answers, but they are just looking for someone else to blame.

October  21st, 2008:By the way, I read today Oct. 21 in the WSJ that people in Thailand are scarffing up car that run on natural gas. (Brazil and Pakistan are right behind.) Funny thing about all this is even though Honda offers a natural gas Civic in the US, they only manage  to sell a few thousand of then each year.
     Get this natural gas prices on the stock market are 47% below their July  peak.
 And what is it with this: Barrels of oil where up to about $140 per barrel at one point and I saw the price of diesel at $5.30 per gallon. But now that a barrel of oil is running about $70.00 I only see Diesel at $4.69 per gallon. Gee I would think it would drop to around the $2.50-$3.00  rang wouldn't you.
       But no way; OPEC is just going to cut production to make it go back up.
     See more about this @ BBC Oil at 16 month low.
AS
And for those who think the US should become independent upon oil from other counties. You don't know what you are talking about, because I did the math. If the US used only US oil, the US would run out of oil in less than three years. So I say buy it up from other countries, as much as we can get at no matter what the price, because in a long run, who ever has oil in the end wins.  
     We shouldn't even be burning petroleum in are vehicles and we should be saving the oil for plastics and rubber.
      What gets me is: Australia doesn't have any oil, however they have natural gas, yet they pay a premium for gas and diesel. But the real troubling thing about it is that they are building ships with big tanks to ship natural gas to other countries. I gotta tell you that there is something wrong with that. 
   Another thing that is happening, is that Officials from Russia, Iran and Quatar are meeting to discuss establishing an OPEC-style cartel for natural gas. The US as well as energy importing nations in Europe are a little nervous about that idea because the three counties own about 60% of the natural gas reserves. The EU depends heavily on Russian natural gas. Critics on the proposal say "energy supplies have to be sold in a free market." Yeah but what are they going to do about it?
  Smells like trouble to me.

October  8th, 2008: Six Central Banks around the world lowered lending rates by at least a half a point so the major banks will find it easier to barrow from one another.
Funny thing I noticed:
The US lowered it's prime rate from 2% to 1 1/2%
While Australia, went from 7% to 6%
Also I noticed the exchange rate between the two has picked up more differential that when I was down there.
It's running 1.4 to 1 now and only a few months ago it was 1.1 to 1
When I was down there it was about 1.3 to one.

Iceland is about bankrupt. However the Russians my just step in and give them a loan for  $ 5.4 billion

The British government is coming up with it's own $87.5 billion rescue plan.

Germany also put together a rescue plan for $ 50 b?
Funny, the US is using more paper than all the countries put together.

Container shipping companies sure didn't see this coming. They've got so many orders for ships, many of the new ship may be converted to tankers or cruise ships and sold at a loss. The busiest routes - Asia to Europe are so slow - they shipping 40 ft. containers Asia to Europe for about $1,500.00 and from Europe to Asia the same container can be ship for as low as $200. According to a bit in the WSJ today.

Oct  2nd, 2008: I saw Warren Buffet being interviewed the other night. Warren is very passionate and if he wasn't so wealthy, I'm sure there could be shrinks whom have Dr. degrees out there that would like to say the guy is crazy. It's called derailment. The way both he and I will have a difficult time trying explain something in a simple way. We know we can't go off on the other segments of what it's all about because we will likely loose the simple minded people. So we are suppose to keep it short and simple: like Stupid Rule Number 5.
     Warren said the Bail out was needed, however European countries are taking a different approach.
@ BBC Link to No banks bail-out fund for Europe.
 @ BBC Link to Major German bank faces collapse
     Funny how the European auto manufactures are looking for hand outs just like the ones in the US. But the way I look at is how can they say they (Chrysler) want to sell you a truck at a 40% discount? It only looks to me as the regular price had plenty of profit already. And if they say they are selling them for less than it cost to build them; then they are not the kind of company the US tax payers should be loaning money too.
  
General electric went knocking on Warren Buffet door with a offer quite similar to the Goldman Sachs deal. The difference is that it was for $3 billion in preferred stock with a dividend of 10% instead of $5 billion at 10%.       Instead of offering another $5 billion within 5 years it was for another $300 million in common stock at $22.25 per share for the next five years.
     GE is looking to sell a minimum of $12 billion of stock to Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and others.
     One thing to take note of is that the other GE stock holders are not so happy about it because it will dilute the value if the existing GE shares by about 6%.

Sept 30, 2008: Yeah. Yeppee. Wall Street probably set a record and lost 777 points yesterday. All because the feds couldn't agree on how to bail out the people with bad investments.
     Heck, lets get stupid here. Give the $700 billion to us poor working class people who work for lousy wages have no money in the stock market. The people who do, or did, have or had more money than they knew what to do with. Hell if the government wants to spend $200,000.oo of each and every one of it's taxpayers money. Why don't they just mail the damn checks directly to us. The poor working class people. We won't need to go to a failed bank or a banker trying to skim money off the top of everything we buy. We'd just take the money and go buy the piece of shit car with cash. And without even using a credit card, we'll go out and spend the $2,000.oo on the 24 inch wheels and give way the stock one's while they still have 80% of the tread on them. And oh yeah, the 48 inch flat screen TV's will be flying out the door of the local electronics store. That's the way to generate the economy with our own money. Don't go giving our money to the crooks who wrote bad paper. Let the rich people take the fall because they already had more money than they knew what to do with. The idiots should have know what they were doing in the first place. Morons - boy are we getting dumber by the day or what?
             Rich people's toilets will always need scrubbing. Farmers will always grow more food, and the government will always hand out welfare checks. What more do we need?

Oh Gee, I see that today in the WSJ page B-18 Sharon Terep and Jeff Bennet wrote a bit on the change in the market for trucks. That is what is in their minds as the "hard core buyer." All I can say is they must have been to the current events page at Synchro-link.com for some ideas to write about. However, I doubt it if Mr.Joseph Barker, the senior manager of North American vehicle sales forecast for CSM, even understands what a good work horse should be. It certainly would be built like a cheep ass car and it wouldn't matter it there is stitching in the dash board.

Sept 28, 2008: It looks as though the US government has figured out how to spend $200,000.00 of every taxpayer's cash; by bailing out the banks on Wall Street.      
       Basicly it won't help the people who have lost their homes, or have their homes in forecloser, or owe more on their homes than they are worth. However, it will help people get loans for a new car, student loans and new credit cards.
       Boy the last thing people need to do in this country is buy another piece of shit car and a new credit card.  Ah 1 out of 3 can't be too bad for such idiots who run this county. Hell ten years ago you could buy a nice home for $200,000.00 but now all you get for it is another damn car that will fall apart and another credit card to fix it with. People are in debit already, they sure as hell don't need any more of that crap.
             Sorry I must say again: Stupid Rule No. 51

Sept 26, 2008: Warren Buffet knows a good deal when he see's one. Like how many of us can walk into a bank and get 10% on our money. Well Warren did it with $5 billion at Goldman Sachs. He was savvy and bought some stock at about 55% below the 52 week high of $250.70.  His stake doesn't have anything to do with the bad mortgage-related assists and the investment is just preferred stock of ownership in Goldman Sachs that pays a 10% dividend. Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway company also get the right to buy $5 billion in common stock within the next five years  for $115 per share.
 Just the word of his investment on the 24 of Sept. sent the stock up $7.95 to $133, so Warren was already ahead by $18.00 per share.

Oh I heard somewhere, that if the government bails out Wall Street banks with $700 billion; the price tag for everyone in the US is $200,000.00. The funny thing about it is that there are a few people out there who think that if my truck would have been on the market, newer homes would have been selling for less and there would have been less people loosing their home. That means that a lot of the losses these banks are experiencing may not have happened in the first place.
    For even more salt in the wound: The government is loaning the auto manufactures $25 billion so they may revamp production on higher mileage cars. Gee, they just took you on the SUV gas hogs. Now they are going to get you to buy a highbred piece of junk that will be too costly to maintain once it hit's 100,000 miles.
Goof balls. Rule No. 51

.

Sept 23, 2008: In the news is the bit about our government wanting to hand over $700 billion to the banks that wrote bad paper. Gee, isn't that like rewarding the crooks for doing bad?
      Hell, that money would get lost faster than you could sell your house.
      Woopy Goldberg thinks that the government should forgive the people on their loans. But I say that's a crawk of shit too.
     I think the best route would be to offer low interest loans (from the government,) to the people who are loosing their homes. That way the government has some kind of collateral and their may even be some profit in it down the line some day.
    As for all those investors who lost money by investing in the firms that wrote bad paper? I'd say tuff luck because the stock market is suppose to be a gamble and you are suppose to know what you are putting your money in. Bottom line is that for just about every winner in the stock market, there is a looser. It's that the way it has always been. To worry about the rich CEOs and such, is a bunch of bull.
      I'll be the first to say that I know enough about banking to be dangerous at it and I may not know what I'm talking about.
     But my opinion is that the government should just let the banks that wrote the bad loans tank, and then other smaller firms will just step up to bat.
    Apparently McCain was speaking up about the problem long before it got to this point and Obama just has a few broad words to say about it, (with no pacific answers of course.) 

June 3, 2008:GM announced the closing of four truck plants and the interest of spinning off the Hummer brand; and to build more small cars. The folks in Canada are not going to let it happen as fast as GM wants to (by 2010) because they just negotiated last month on a three year deal.
   The interesting thing about this news is that more than four plants are going to be shut down. Namely: Oshawa, Ontario, Moraine, Ohio, Janeiville, Wisconsin and Tolucia in Mexico.
     Did I ever mention how much fuel I save when I drop my box off my truck? Well I'm doing my part to conserve fuel, but many of you don't have the option. Hah.....

However, the smartest thing GM has come up with is the plan of building a plug-in electric car through the Chevrolet brand called the Volt.  It has a small engine and a generator on board for travels that will go over 40 miles. I happen to wonder what kind of batteries they plan to use. I happen to thing staying with gel-cell is the better option than lith-ion. We'll see.
  For more on this story go to Bloomberg.com

April 9, 2008: Folks in Alaska are getting a little bit excited, becauseConoco & BP PLC are partnering up on a natural gas pipeline project. They are spending $600 million designing a pipeline to go al the way from Prudhoe Bay to Chicago.
         They figure that it will cost than $30 billion to build.
It will take 6-5 million tons of steel and 1,000 permits.
         The benefits will begin by supplying heat and light to Anchorage.  The oil sands refineries  Canada will also be helped out by the piped in gas.
          The new pipeline will run 2000 miles to Alberta plus another 1,500 miles to reach Chicago.They say that it will be able to carry 4 billion cubic feet per day.

Friday Natural gas closed at $10 per British thermal units. Futures are up 30% from a year ago.

April 6, 2008:
Australia is hurting    S@P    ASX200  52 week - 7.7%

Robert S. Miller is stepping down a president of Walt Disney's  Hyperion book publishing company on April 14th. He will be starting a new imprint for the Harper Collins publishing, which is a part of News Corp. which happens to be own by Rupert Murdoch
      Robert S. Miller plans to start up a new imprint that will be a radical departure from the traditional book-publishing practices.
     They plan to not accept returns from retailers because it leads to printing up 30 - 40 % more books than is needed.
      They also won't be paying any advances to authors and they plan to publish only about 25 titles annually, however they plan to print shorter hardcover books to sell for about $20. 
    The question is how are the retailers going to except the no return deal. I can only hope - since they are in a bind too - that they will except the new deal, because it will help self published authors who use print on demand get their book in the stores too.

Robert S. Miller established the Hyperion book publishing company in 1991 and it will be taken over by Ellen Archer who will also retain her existing position as publisher

March 21'08
Starbucks,coffee-shop chain, must pay $105 million in penalties because the company's supervisors in California take a share of servers' tips.
         Judge Patricia Cowett of the San Diego Superior Court issued the ruling March 19 .
          Under California law, employers are prohibited from taking employees' tips, he said. The suit was filed in 2004 on behalf of 100,000 Starbucks ``baristas'' in about 1,400 stores.

Cowett determined in February that Seattle-based Starbucks was liable for the tips. Based on that ruling, she blocked the company from sharing the tips based on ``uncontroverted'' testimony that it ``continues to utilize the distribution of tips from the tip pool to compensate shift supervisors as well as baristas,'' according to Cowett's letter.
        Supervisors are ``precluded from sharing in tips from the tip pool,'' the judge wrote. 
        Starbucks, which said it will appeal, argued supervisors ``deserve their fair share of the tips.''

California law allows employees to pool tips, though supervisors, managers and owners -- anyone with the authority to oversee or direct other workers -- can't be paid out of the pool.
           Cowett ruled Starbucks improperly distributed as much as $87 million to its supervisors, according to the letter. After adding 7 percent in annual interest, Starbucks must repay its servers more than $105 million.

Starbucks rose 3 cents to $17.53 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.
More on this @ Bloom.berg.com

March 16,'08
Bear Stearns shareholders have wasted no time in calling their lawyers to pursue possible legal claims over the company's $2-a-share fire sale to JP Morgan Chase & Co Inc

Bear Stearns is being sold for just $236 million. The deal's value is more than 90 percent below the company's Friday closing share price of $30.85. But JPMorgan said the price tag would total about $6 billion to account for litigation and severance costs.

Shareholders hit by big losses on their Bear holdings are exploring all legal avenues, say class-action lawyers who specialize in bringing lawsuits against large companies. Possible plaintiffs include individual investors, institutions and company employees. The firm's 14,000 staff own about 30 percent of the company.

"I can't divulge privileged conversations, but shareholders don't contact me when they are happy with the way things are going with their investments," said Ira Press, a lawyer at New York-based class-action firm Kirby McInerney, which has spoken with dismayed Bear investors.

"This is a stock that has gone from $50 to $2 literally overnight, and I also know of people who had assumed that the worst had passed when it closed at $30," he said.

Shareholders might sue Bear and its executives and officers for securities fraud, contending they failed to disclose the company's true financial health, lawyers say.

Jeffrey Nobel, a partner at class-action law firm Schatz Nobel Izard in Hartford, Connecticut, said his firm had been contacted by both institutional and individual investors who bought the stock as recently as last week.

Some of these buyers, he said, took their positions after Bear CEO Alan Schwartz said in a televised interview on Wednesday that the company does not see any pressure on its liquidity and had about $17 billion in excess cash on its balance sheet.

"You have investors who are upset because they feel as though the company was not truthful in reporting its financial condition," Nobel said.

Separate suits may be brought by Bear employees who hold company shares that are now virtually worthless, lawyers said.  --Stupid Rule No. 20

What gets me is the federal government has steped in on the deal before they even checked out who did what wrong. Obviously someone was lying to investors.
     Update March 24:
Stocks rose after JPMorgan said the company will boost its offer to $10 per share from $2. The revised plan is aimed at soothing Bear Stearns shareholders upset over JPMorgan's earlier offer, which was made at the behest of the Federal Reserve when Bear Stearns was near collapse.
      Bear Stearns shares doubled, jumping $6 to $11.96, while JPMorgan rose $1.37, or 3 percent, to $47.34..

March 7,'08
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Warren Buffett, the famed U.S. investor who heads Berkshire Hathaway Inc, replaced his friend and Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, Forbes magazine said on Wednesday.

The magazine estimated Buffett's worth at $62 billion in its annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people.

Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim came in second with an estimated worth of $60 billion, pushing Gates to third place after 13 years of holding the No. 1 spot.

The magazine estimated Gates' worth at $58 billion.

Buffett's rise to No. 1 was particularly noteworthy, Forbes said, as it came at a time of great financial turmoil and as Buffett has begun to siphon off part of his fortune to charity.

"Even though he is giving away a piece of his fortune each year, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway, the source of Warren Buffet's wealth, has been rising very rapidly," Chief Executive of Forbes Magazines Steve Forbes said, noting Buffett's fortune climbed $10 billion in the last calendar year.

March 8, 2008: Negotiators for the UAW and American Axle & Negotiators for the UAW and American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. expect to continue talks today, as the two sides try to reach a contract that would end a strike, now nearly two weeks old, at the Detroit-based auto supplier.

The strike at American Axle, which counts General Motors Corp. as its largest customer, has forced the automaker to shut down seven assembly plants. By Monday, the strike is expected to impact, through production cuts or shut downs, as many as 29 GM factories, including engine plants in Romulus and Flint.

The UAW brought 3,650 of its members at American Axle on strike early Feb. 26, after negotiations collapsed and the contract between the UAW and the supplier expired. At the time, the two sides were far apart on issues including wages, buyouts and pensions. The company had proposed cutting the wage of production workers by about half to $14.50 an hour, saying that it needs the savings to compete with companies that already have cut their labor costs. The union has said that American Axle hasn't proven that it needs cuts as steep as it had proposed. 

Talks resumed Thursday for the first time since the strike began.

More on this @ Freep.com

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Currency Rates:
Handy money exchange converter
(I found on Aussie Yahoo 7)

Home Loan Calculator
@ http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/

Record: 1 million homes (2%) are in foreclosure,  and nearly 3 million (6.3%) behind on mortgages in 4th quarter.

And the home equity for the average American has fallen below 50% for the first time since
World War II.  (47.9%)

And we've got a failing economy and inflation at the same time, what a joy.

June 17, 2008: In the WSJ today there was a bit covering the amount of money that the oil companies have been spending for advertising.
    Since gas has hit the $4 mark, there have been a barrage of advertisements to deflect anger over the situation. According to TNS Media Intelligence, the companies and their associations have spent $52.5 million on advertisements in the first quarter. Up 18% from the same period last year. And of course the spending on advertising is expected to jump during the second quarter.
    In my opinion, the should do something better and use the money to pay the cost of shipping the fuel to the stations with it. I don't think they can polish their image by using the media as well as spending the money on their own expenses so that we can see a different image on the sign at the local gas station.

Tuesday March 11, 2008, 7:45 am
News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said he has become "more pessimistic" in the past month about the US economy.

Speaking to investors at the Bear Stearns annual media conference, he said his company, which owns Dow Jones & Co and 20th Century Fox movies studio, is well positioned to gird against an economic slowdown as its reliance on advertising has decreased to about 20 percent from 41 per cent.
 

Feeling the pain of Clinton's
and Greenspan's false economy.
August 18th,'07:

Buyin some stock?

 Oil plummets on economy worries
 March 16'08  By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer

Oil's steep decline — falling $4.17 to $106.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange — came hours after futures rose to a new trading high of $111.80 on the Federal Reserve's surprise Sunday move to lower a key interest rate by a quarter point. In the past several months, Fed rate cuts have fueled rallies in oil prices.

Crude futures offer a hedge against a falling dollar, and oil futures bought and sold in dollars are more attractive to foreign investors when the dollar is weak. Interest rate cuts, and even the prospect of future cuts, tend to weaken the dollar further.  -Stupid Rule No. 22
















 

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