What About the Bank BailOut Money ?

Lots of articles in the past few days wondering what the banks are going to do with the bailout money. Its of course a legitimate question. The response of the banks has been that the cash goes into a pool of capital and you cant segregate the new capital from the bailout capital. Fair point….

You Know Chrysler is Toast Because..

The CEO takes out a fullpage ad in the Wall Street Journal today to thank the American Public for “investing” in Chrysler. Lets see, is there anything more idiotic than spending more than 100k dollars on a full page ad “thanks for letting me waste your money ” ad ? Does it make it worse…

The SEC, Madoff and XBRL

You probably have never heard of XBRL. If you havent, and you are the least bit interested in how regulatory agencies can avoid future Madoff like events, and in government transparency for our bailout tax dollars, you should take a minute to get up to speed on what XBRL can do. XBRL is a version…

We Don’t Need an Uptick Rule

This is a simple issue. It used to be that you couldn’t short a stock unless there was an uptick. The idea was that this uptick rule would prevent short sellers from piling on a stock and driving the price down. Then the uptick rule was removed. It became permissable to borrow shares of stock…

Quick Solution to a Detroit Auto Bailout

In reading all the discussion about the possibility of a bailout of GM, Ford and maybe Chrysler, it appears to me that no one has asked and answered the fundamental questions behind the issue. First let me say that this is not about the quality of cars they build. I just bought a Ford for…

PE Obama’s 1st Big Mistake

Its great to see President Elect Obama aggressively taking on the economy prior to his taking office. Unfortunately, the economic advisory team that he has put together looks more like a semester’s worth of great guest speakers for an MBA class than an economic advisory team that can truly help him. There are a lot…

Proud To Be an American

I voted for President Elect Obama. The rest of my votes went almost exclusively to Republicans , Libertarians and Independents. In looking at the Democratic platform, there are a few things I agree with, but on the economic side, other than being ok with him raising my effective tax rate to 40pct, there isn’t a…