A Businessman's View

Similarly to last week, I was so floored by one article (blog entry, in reality) that I have to rehash it here. No, I'm not being lazy. But it is well-known to my readers that I'm not against biting the hand that once fed me, especially when that hand belongs to the Captains of Cash (which is a lot nicer than some other names you and I could have devised). In the blog entry, it examined some of the statements made by these Titans of Treasure in light of the housing crisis and provided their total compensation (salary, bonus, options, and retirement benefits) as a means to see how beneficial it is to be someone who feels "it is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission." So how much does an apology cost? USD$2.3 billion dollars. Yes, that's billion with a "b." Ideally, I'd like to figure out the total years these gentlemen worked collectively as the heads of their respective institutions to determine a cost per year, but a) it...

After writing last week's entry, I came across an article that described something that has been going on in the marble halls of Wall Street for some time: the run-up of oil prices not by supply and demand economics but by the commodity traders on The Street who, by the mere act of betting on the future price of oil, create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This activity is not new to those who have the power to change policy and regulate these types of activity, yet they do nothing about it. To quote one of the best parts of this article... After peaking at nearly 9.8 million barrels a day in August 2007, demand for gasoline has fallen steadily to a low of 8.5 million barrels day in February 2010 — a drop of 13 percent. But in the past 12 months, pump prices have increased more than 50 percent and oil prices have more than doubled. “People are using oil as a store of value rather than as a commodity,” Beutel said. “It’s the investors who are buying.” Reading that should have...

Let me state from the outset that I am not a professional in any of the following industries: economics, law, actuarial science, health / wellness, or making quilts out of belly button lint. (Okay, maybe that last one will never be an issue here but I wanted full transparency.) When I normally sit down to write a blog entry, I scan through the previous weeks' tweets that I made to remind myself of the topics that I thought were important. ( I originally stated that this was a secondary benefit to using Twitter, but that has since been promoted to the primary benefit.) But this week one article, entitled Stocks Soar, but Many Analysts Ask Why , stayed front and center with no tweeting required. The basic premise of the article is (no surprise here) that the stock market has "happy ears" on in a big way. You all know what "happy ears" are: it's the way you perked up when you overheard your parents talking around mid-December about that Red Ryder Carbine...