I Want Nuclear!

Jack Dee Live at the Apollo: Cold Calling


Oh, and the markets?

Who cares.

They went up, down, and sideways.

Just keep President Elect Obama at the microphone, Ben Bernanke at the printing press, and Hank Paulson handing out the dough and we'll all be ok.

Yes I'm in a bad mood, I've got a "man cold".



One more thing, make sure you watch this "ugly" post.

DOW Crushed Again

The daily DOW is running hard for the October 10th low, and if we breach that, well let's just say it won't be good.

Watching Secretary Paulson and all the central bankers of the world pulling levers like mad men is at best humorous, and at worst pathetic.

The market is going down.

Trying to bureaucratise the market to save humanity does not seem to be working. The parallels to this activity and Atlas Shrugged are amazing. Read the book.

The governments all claim this activity is required to save us from a depression. What if a depression would be a good thing compared to what may happen as a result of this government intervention?

The so called capitalists are not acting any better than the government, as I don't hear too many telling government to get out of the market. Markets work if left to work. That doesn't mean they can't go down and it doesn't mean companies won't go bankrupt.

The strong are supposed to eat the weak.

If we don't cull the bottom end of industry it weakens the entire system as the the strong now have to compete with the government subsidized weaklings. With governments deciding who survives, instead of the market, it puts the whole economic system on a very dangerous path.

A path leading to a place that could make a depression look rosy.

Hank Speak

I hope the only lesson learned here is not, if you are going to fail, make sure you fail so big we can't afford to have you fail.

Debt should not be used to increase your return on equity numbers, debt is bad, debt is dangerous, debt is to be avoided, always has been, always will be.

I find it odd that companies like Microsoft, that have no debt, grow revenue, grow net income, each and every quarter don't see there stock go up.

While their stock went no where for the last 5 years, leveraged home builders and investment banks saw there stock go through the roof.

For a while.

So now that people are a little "concerned" about their investment holdings a check on the amount of debt a company has may be an idea. I'm an old banker so it's always the first thing I look at.

One reason to check this now is the cost of borrowing is going up, way up, for everyone.

But the best reason to check the amount of debt on the balance sheet is, the last time I checked you can't go bankrupt if you don't have any debt.

Public companies have access to public equity, they don't really need alot of debt. They have taken it on over the past 10 years because it was cheap and they could boost their return on equity number with it.

It looks like those days are over.