• U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion
    Posted by on February 17th, 2010 at 10:01 am

    The Onion:
    WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.

    Read more…

  • Odd Lots
    Posted by on February 16th, 2010 at 4:44 pm

    The Absurdly Arrogant Tweets Of Nassim Taleb
    Gasparino Going to Fox
    Alan Blinder – It’s Time for Financial Reform Plan C
    Hank Paulson – How to Watch the Banks
    Navigating Your Taxes
    Measuring the Speed of Light…With Chocolate
    4 charged after uproar at Memphis Chuck E. Cheese

  • JP Morgan Offices in Athens Bombed
    Posted by on February 16th, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    Reuters:

    A bomb exploded outside the JP Morgan offices in Athens on Tuesday, causing minor damage to the building, police said.
    There were no immediate reports of injuries. Police had cordoned off the area after a local newspaper received a warning call.
    Police cars, ambulances and fire engines have blocked streets in the upmarket central district of Kolonaki, where JP Morgan’s Greek offices are situated, a Reuters witness said.
    “It was a time-bomb at JP Morgan’s offices,” a police official who declined to be named said. “The explosion damaged the outside door and smashed some windows.”
    No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, the official said.
    Banks and foreign companies are a frequent target for bomb attacks in Greece, which has been rocked by a wave of urban violence since the police shooting of a teenager in December 2008.

    In September, there was a bombing outside the Athens Stock Exchange.
    Incidentally, JP Morgan’s headquarters on Wall Street were bombed 90 years ago. The damage is still visible at 23 Wall Street.

  • Good News! General Mills Expects 18% Sales Growth
    Posted by on February 16th, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    This is totally awesome good news!

    At an investor conference on Tuesday, General Mills Inc. said it expects its revenue to grow to $18 billion in fiscal 2015, up roughly 18 percent from its forecasted $14.7 billion in sales this year.

    Wait. By 2015?
    Let me get this right. They expect 18% sales growth over the next five years?
    Annualized that’s 3.4%. A five-year Treasury currently yields 2.34%.

  • Stocks and Earnings Estimates
    Posted by on February 16th, 2010 at 8:58 am

    Briefing.com has an interesting chart showing the rise of the S&P 500 along with the rise in earnings estimates over the coming four quarters. It’s not a perfect match, but clearly both have been going higher.
    briefing021610.jpg
    For 2010, analysts sees earnings for the S&P 500 at $78.92. The index is currently going for about 13.7 times this year’s estimate.

  • North Dakota’s Socialist Bank
    Posted by on February 16th, 2010 at 8:36 am

    From the AP:

    It has no automatic tellers or drive-up windows, doesn’t issue credit cards, and tends only a few thousand checking and savings accounts. Its only location is a glass, steamboat-shaped headquarters near the Missouri River, where the business moved from its original 1919 home in a former auto assembly plant.
    The Bank of North Dakota — the nation’s only state-owned bank — might seem to be a relic. It was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and one-time Socialist Party organizer during World War I.
    But now officials in other states are wondering if it is helping North Dakota sail through the national recession.
    Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Oregon and a Washington state legislator are advocating the creation of state-owned banks in those states. A report prepared for a Vermont House committee last month said the idea had “considerable merit.” Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore promotes the bank on his Web site.
    “There’s a lot of hurt out there, a lot of states that are in trouble, and they’re tying the Bank of North Dakota together with this economic success that we’re having right now,” said the bank’s president, Eric Hardmeyer.
    Hardmeyer says he’s gotten “tons” of inquiries about the bank’s workings, including questions from officials in California, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Washington state. North Dakota has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate at 4.4 percent, soaring oil production and a robust state budget surplus — but Hardmeyer says the bank isn’t responsible for the prosperity.

  • Odd Lots
    Posted by on February 15th, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Don’t laugh at Europe’s woes
    Three Greek buys from Altucher
    Capitalism and the Jews
    Brooklyn Decker can give the stock market a rise.
    Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

    Men risk anticlimax with anatomy-boosting pants
    Computer Engineer Barbie
    School mistakes huge burrito for a weapon
    And finally, a bar watching Porter’s interception:

  • Inflation-Adjusted Prices at the Pump
    Posted by on February 15th, 2010 at 2:42 pm

    Joe Weisenthal notes that Energy Information Administration projects that gasoline will hit $3 a gallon later this year. Here’s a look at the average retail price for gasoline (all grades) adjusted to today’s dollar.
    image907.png
    In the last 11 years, real prices at the pump have more than doubled.

  • Volcker Keeping It Real
    Posted by on February 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    From CNBC:

    “If a big non-bank institution gets in trouble and threatens the whole system, there ought to be some authority that can step in, take over that organization and liquidate it or merge it — not save it,” Volcker said on CNN.
    “It’s called euthanasia, not a rescue.” As Congress debates financial reform in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, Volcker has argued for fencing off investment firms primarily engaged in market speculation from commercial, deposit-taking banks.

  • Lilly’s Latest Drug is a Flop
    Posted by on February 15th, 2010 at 11:25 am

    Bad news for one of our Buy List stocks. Eli Lilly‘s (LLY) latest blood thinner drug is a massive flop. Lilly’s problem continues to be its lousy pipeline of new drugs.

    “A research philosophy is fraught with risk and opportunity,” Mr. Fernandez said in an interview. “And over the last five years, Lilly has seen more of the risk of drug development than they have the reward.”
    In a note to investors, Mr. Fernandez wrote that Lilly must move aggressively on partnerships and acquisitions to increase its revenue because more than 70 percent of its forecasted sales from existing products would lose patent protection globally by 2017. That includes the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, the antidepressant Cymbalta and the cancer drug Gemzar, all blockbusters with more than $1 billion in sales.