Why Rick Santelli Should Never Be A Life Guard!

Oh Rick, I have been on your side many many times, but on this Boston Tea Party you are simply wrong. In fact you are being very dangerous in your discussions because what you are doing is dividing the people and making a very bitter situation more bitter. You are letting your ideals get in (more…)

Getting Rid of Smith-Barney is Good For Citi!

I am going to play the contrarian, getting rid of Smith-Barney is REALLY good for Citi. Many like on Fast Money say, "hey why on earth are you getting rid of the cash cow?" And with Citigroup getting a potential 10 billion, I am thinking WAY TO GO CITI!

Why do I think what I do? Because obviously I am the only one in the market thinking this.

“You’re selling out the future to get through the crisis of the present, and unfortunately they don’t have a lot of other choice,” David Trone, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller in New York, said in a Jan. 9 interview.

A Tale Of Two Cities! (Christmas Retail)

In the US Christmas retail sales plummeted.

The holiday shopping season was one of the most dismal in years and even the after-Christmas period, when consumers normally rush to stores to use gift cards and seize on big sales, isn’t expected to be enough to save retailers from a terrible year.

No so in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

One Of My 2009 Predictions (Japan) Is Already Coming True (in 2008)…

I wrote a blog entry on how my 2008 predictions fared, and what I think will happen in 2009. Well, wow, I did not expect one of them to happen that quick.

My prediction was that in 2009 Japan was going down. It seems Japan is already going down. The headlines read "Japan November industrial output falls ‘off the cliff’".

Before people panic and say, "OMG this will happen to us", you need to go back into my predictions on why this is a Japanese problem.

Paul Krugman Calls Germany Dumb! (I say he’s DUMB!)

I am going to defend the German government.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck vilifies Britain’s financial stimulus plan in an interview with American magazine Newsweek, saying that making VAT cuts won’t solve the problem, but rather will build a national debt that will take at least a generation to pay off. The problem? Everyone seems to be against Germany’s solution.

Paul Krugman, the recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, referred to Steinbrueck as dumb, saying that a refusal to cooperate with debt-financed stimulus packages can cause severe damage.

My Call To Microsoft: Split Thyself Up!

So I was reading this article on Windows 7. Let me tell you it is not flattering. In fact it is very critical. I for the most part using Windows XP Professional. Though one of my machines is running Vista. I HATE VISTA! What a piece of garbage. I have quite a few points like always wanting to search my harddisk, making things hard to find, having multiple directories identically named though only one can be clicked, etc, etc.

Another Conversation With My Brother

My brother lives in the former Soviet Republics, and I talk to him to see how things are going. I asked, "how are things." He replied, "me I am doing actually pretty well, our company [x] is shutting down for about 3 months."

I Feel CNBC Crossed The Line

I have been watching less and less of CNBC. I can barely watch the FastMoney weenies. I try for 10 minutes and get so disgusted that I can only turn it off.

But today I thought I would watch Squawkbox, and Squawk on the Street again. David Faber talked about something that I feel crossed the line. His thing today was, "Hey it might be bad here, but it is worse over there". WTF? David, please tell me the value this provides other than schadenfreude?