Goldman Sachs Is Doing “God’s Work
By Douglas A. McIntyre Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (GS) has put an unusual spin on the bank’s activities. He says his firm is doing “God’s work.” This may seem like an…
All Work
Douglas A. McIntyre
Wal-Mart (WMT) Lends Hand To The Poor One $2 Meal At A Time
The cynic’s view of Wal-Mart’s (NYSE:WMT) new expansion of its Great Value private label food brand is that it is aimed at making as much money as possible from those who are out of work…
NBC Universal Gets A $30 Billion Valuation
NBC Universal, the entertainment arm of GE (NYSE:GE) which is 20% owned by Vivendi, is worth $30 billion. That is the figure that GE and Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA), the cable company that intends to take…
Waiting For Another Recession In The Spring
Some experts raised the issue of how long the recovery can last as unemployment went over 10% last week and the total number of people out of jobs or looking for full-time work topped…
Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 7 And The Renewal Of The PC Industry
Microsoft (NYSE:MSFT) Windows 7 sales in the first week after its introduction last month outdid Vista sales during the first week after its launch in January 2007 by 234%, according to industry research firm…
24/7 Wall St. TV: McDonald’s (MCD) Consumer Service Lesson: Seconds Count
McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) spends a great deal of its test kitchen time trying to beat the clock. It has occurred to the fast food chain that a customer who expects to wait 30 seconds for…
Media Digest 11/9/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg
Reuters: Hurricane Ida is heading toward Gulf oil fields. Reuters: Kraft (NYSE:KFT) will make its bid for Cadbury. Reuters: GE (NYSE:GE) and Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) have agreed to an NBCU valuation. Reuters: The IMF is…
Asia Markets And Europe Open 11/9/2009
Markets in Asia rose. The Nikkei was up .2% to 9,809. The Hang Seng rose 1.7% to 22,208. The Shanghai Composite was up .4% to 3,175. At the open in Europe, the FTSE was…
Top 10 Earnings on Deck This Week (ERTS, ENER, PCLN, SQNM, TYC, AMAT, M, JWN, WMT, DIS)
Earnings season has wound down now with over 85% of the S&P 500 Index having reported. Still, there are some key companies posting their quarterly results and some companies were screened out of this…
GM To Axe Jobs At Opel
GM executive Bob Lutz, who has been a senior executive in the car industry longer than any man alive, will become the new chairman of Opel. GM has decided to keep ownership of Opel…
AES Debate: China’s Infrastructure Grab (AES)
China is at it again buying key infrastructure access. AES Corp. (NYSE: AES) disclosed on Friday, along with earnings, that the company was raising significant cash. This is a capital raise which also may…
United Security Of Sparta Georgia Is 116th Bank Failure Of 2009
United Security Bank, Sparta, Georgia, was closed by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, which appointed the FDIC as receiver. The two branches of United Security Bank will reopen during their normal business…
Home For The Holidays: Consumer Credit Falls Apart
It looks more and more like people will not be traveling or shopping this holiday season. The Federal Reserve released its monthly consumer credit report which showed activity decrease at an annual rate of 6 percent…
Buffett & Berkshire Earn Dough (BRK-A, BRK-B, BNI, MCO)
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) has just reported its Q3-2009 earnings ahead of the formal expectations. This will be perhaps one of the last similar earnings reports with a relative comparisons because…
Motorola (MOT) Droid Visits Manhattan
By Douglas A. McIntyre Some pieces of news are worth mentioning only in passing because they are interesting, but may not mean a thing. CNET says that over 100 people lined up at midnight…
Is Citi’s Primerica IPO For You (C, MS)
It has been some time in the making and won’t be the last IPO or divestiture out of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C). The company is proceeding to divest its Primerica Inc. via an initial…
GE No Rescue for Financial Junk Stocks (GE, FNM, FRE, AIG)
General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) may be the one single bright spot taking the market higher this Friday when you consider the 10.2% unemployment rate and when you look over the latest round of…
Today’s Best Market Rumors (11/6/2009) (RTP)(BHP)(BRK.A)
Updated throughout the day. Citigroup (NYSE:C) will re-launch some of its least successful hedge funds (FT) The stock market is at risk of not holding 10,000. (TheStreet) AIG (NYSE:AIG) will not hold a conference call…
Charting the Employment Data: Unemployment At 17.5%
Unemployment data were released today, showing the national rate to have reached 10.2% in October, its highest level since April of 1983. This number is the Government’s headline unemployment number, which is formally…
Double-Digit Unemployment… Just How Lagging Is It?
The Labor Department has just reported the unemployment rate and non-farm payrolls data for October. It isn’t pretty. The unemployment rate screamed up into the double-digit territory to 10.2%. The non-Farm Payrolls shrank by…