ALL I CARE ABOUT IS... ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR HAIRCUT?

THE TOP FIVE THINGS THAT BOTHER ME TODAY:

#1 - People who think I’m dumb – JP Morgan has today announced that it will raise its offer for Bear Stearns from $2 per share to $10 per share. For all you liberal arts majors out there, they’ve quintupled their offer. This leads us to ask, why? Need to ask why? But didn’t JP Morgan give a reason for upping its offer by 500%? Yes, yes they did, and here it is: “we want to pacify angry Bear shareholders.”

Really? That’s the best they could come up with? In essence, they’re asking you to believe that they’re willing to quintuple their offer, not because they think that Bear Stearns is a steal even at five times the price, not because the government has essentially indemnified you against any loss by guaranteeing $30 BILLION in losses, but because they want to appease people who are angry? Who believes this crap?

They upped the offer not because angry people would reject the offer and further weaken the economy, but because they’re greedy vultures who, after thinking they’d safely snuck away with a well preserved carcass found themselves under the glaring spotlight of other vultures, vultures who asked; why didn’t the government ask me if I’d pay more to buy BS? Vultures who said; hell, the building alone is worth over a billion dollars and really, how much can they be on the hook for over and above $30 billion in guarantees? (I grant you that the whole ‘vulture’ analogy fell apart rather quickly, unless of course vultures have an organized system of government with a central bank and spotlights, but I feel like the comparison remains apt.)

#2 – People who discuss their aberrant lifestyles on the bus – Things I don’t want to hear a man talking about at 8am: 1) The various threesomes in which you have engaged 2) The moral hazards of dating two sisters and why you should be excused for their violations (morals and sisters) 3) Interest rates on 15 year T-bills in relation to junk bonds. That last one was unrelated but you know, it’s still annoying.

#3 – Time – I can’t decide if I want it to go by faster or slower. It’s really making me sound like a hypocrite. Though maybe we could have some sort of relativity machine that makes time feel slower on weekends, but faster on weekdays, but not on legal holidays, or sick days or vacation, or at night when I get home from work. OK I think I may need some more time with this.

#4 – Internet sites that hide customer service numbers – Who on God’s green Earth decided that a FAQ list could take the place of a customer service number? You know what question I asked frequently? Where’s the damn number! Didn’t see that on their precious little list. Now I know even if I get to customer service I’ll get screwed worse than those two sisters, but dude, come on, at least pretend like you care that I’m unsatisfied. Throw me a bone!

#5 – Reporters and their dumb questions Part II – There was a shooting outside some sports bar in the Bronx last night so of course the local news sent a reporter up there to interview people who live in the area. This particular reporter had exactly one interview make the cut. Her interviewee, a man who lives in the neighborhood, did not witness the shooting, and knew nothing about the bar, or the people involved. In fact, his knowledge, he said, was limited to the fact that there was a shooting. So what insightful question did our intrepid reporter ask this man with no useful information? Wait for it...

“Does this incident make you feel less safe living here?”

Bam! There it is. The only redeeming feature was the man’s response,

“Well, someone got shot, that doesn’t make me feel more safe.”

MOMMY, WOW! I'M A BIG KID NOW!

Hello all,

Before we begin today I just want to ask if any of you caught The Daily Show last night, if so, you'd have heard John Stewart deliver a joke that pretty much copied my 'Oh, he only made those racist threatening remarks because black people are angry, THAT'S a relief' joke. Now I'm not trying to say I have a copyright on the joke, though if any of you out there know anything about copyright infringement, call me, but I thought you'd appreciate knowing that, as a devoted reader of the best blog on the interweb highway, you're always ahead of the current events/comedy curve. Go on, give yourself a pat on the back.

Today's Thoughts:

This Bear Stearns news is becoming fishier and fishier. In case you aren’t aware the trouble started last week when rumors started circulating that BS had a liquidity issue. (Now, while I admit I may not grasp the full depth of the crisis posed by a lack of liquidity, I do understand that when people come asking for money you owe them, you can’t pay them back in office space.) BS responded by saying, no no, we don’t have a liquidity issue, we’re the Evian of investment banking, the Perrier of sub-prime mortgages, the Poland Spring of cash on hand (This may not be the central cause, but as an incidental point, it’s probably not the best idea to invoke Poland, the polish or anything that brings to mind a Polak joke, when defending your business acumen, it could lead to well, more jokes, e.g., how does a Polak solve a liquidity crisis? By selling his stock for a 93% discount!).

Anyway, it would seem people believed these rumors, not the Chairman of BS (though really when evaluating the trustworthiness of a statement, I feel like the guy called the Chairman of BS is at a severe disadvantage.), and in response called in their debts. Accordingly, a liquidity crisis, whether real or imagined before, became, unquestionably, real. What interests me, however (and if it interests me you can be sure you’ll see it on the Daily Show), is that the SEC is now investigating the source of those rumors; attempting to discover if they may have been perpetuated and perpetrated on the market by people who had shorted BS’s stock. In other words, if people made crap up so they’d win their bet about BS going down. This, apparently, is illegal.

More to the point though, I mean rumors are rumors, and people will always wonder if they’re true and maybe speculate on their own (unless they’re about Tom Cruise being a nutbag Scientologist who brainwashed his wife and thinks Earth was spawn by alien’s, in which case they ARE true and doubting them makes you kind of a ‘tard), but what we’re talking about here are rumors, possibly unsubstantiated ones destroying an entire investment bank. BS stock wasn’t sold by uninitiated tourists from Omaha who flinch at the sight of a working car, it was dumped by professionals, people at the top of their field, if they were hookers, Elliot Spitzer wouldn’t be able to afford them. Yet, these supposed masters of their domain, these MBA waving, hair gel smearing, gym at lunch going, fat bonus taking, cowards, wet themselves at the thought of a BS liquidity crisis, like a thirsty octogenarian with bladder control issues. These are the people in charge of our economy, the people’s who’s confidence and fears decide whether we will have to continue pretending the Canadian dollar is worth less than our own or whether we can go back to using them as kindling and toilet paper (surprisingly soft, though not very absorbent) Does this not concern anyone else?