Henry Paulson Waterboarded The Banks
It is old news that Henry Paulson forced major banks and brokerages to take TARP money at meetings on October 13 of last year. But, it is nice to have documents that show how…
All Work
Douglas A. McIntyre
Adios To The Car Dealer
Chrysler and GM (GM) propose closing 3,000 dealers in an effort to save money by narrowing down their distribution networks. Some of the larger dealers probably employ 100 people. In an economy that is…
The Texas Fire Ant Puzzle: Innovation And The Recession
A huge population of red ants has bedeviled Texas farmers for years. By some estimates the insects cost state businesses close to $1 billion a year due to crop and machinery destruction. Killing the…
Media Digest 5/14/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYT, FT, Bloomberg
Reuters Obama hopes to have healthcare bill by July Reuters Documents on Paulson’s meetings with banks forcing them to take TARP have been released Reuters Banks sued MBIA (MBI) over its $5 billion restructuring. Reuters …
Asia Markets And Europe Open 5/14/2009
Markets in Asia fell sharply. The Nikkei was off 2.6% to 9,094. The Hang Seng was down 3.3% to 16,501. The Shanghai Composite fell .9% to 2,640. At the open in Europe, the FTSE…
Virtualization War: Oracle/Sun & VI Acquisition vs. VMware & Microsoft (ORCL, JAVA, MSFT, VMW, EMC)
Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) is already in the process of acquiring Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA). This morning came an announcement that Oracle was buying a private company called VirtualIron. Normally private company buyouts…
Whole Foods Unexciting, Yet Perhaps Enough (WFMI)
Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFMI) has reported its quarterly earnings at $0.19 non-GAAP EPS and $1.86 billion in revenue. Thomson Reuters had consensus estimates of $0.18 EPS and $1.87 billion in revenue. Be…
Karmazin Gives Up 30 Million Share Options (SIRI)
SIRIUS XM RADIO INC. (NASDAQ: SIRI) submitted an SEC Filing today noting a significant forfeiture on the surface. CEO Mel Karmazin voluntarily forfeited an aggregate of 30,000,000 non-qualified options to purchase shares of SIRIUS…
Analyzing Whole Foods Earnings, Post-Double (WFMI, KR, SWY, WMT)
Whole FoodsWhole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFMI) is set to report earnings after the close of trading today. We have Thomson Reuters targets of $0.18 EPS and $1.87 billion in revenue. We will be…
PG&E Bringing Solar Power For 530,000 Homes (PCG, CVX, MS, BP, STO)
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), has entered into a series of contracts with BrightSource Energy, Inc. While we consider most individual projects essentially as footnotes at large…
Many Biotechs Barely On Life Support (BPAX, CEGE, EPIX, IDMI, LJPC, NRGN, NFLD, TPTX)
We have run a watch list of companies under their own strategic review, and the number of biotech (or grouped with biotech) stocks under this description is just staggering. We published a full review…
The Stress Test Placebo
The results are meaningless, which is why the market loves them. By Nancy Miller of The Big Money The stress tests on the country’s biggest banks sparked a new round of confidence in the…
California Home Prices Plunge, And State Faces Need For US Aid
The RealtyTrac reports that one in every 138 housing units in California received a foreclosure notice last month. Foreclosure activity in the state is up 42% from April of last year. The trend has…
Oil Inventories Starting To Back Off (USO)
Oil has just seen its first drop in inventories from the DOE in what feels like many weeks. The DOE reported that weekly inventories fell by -4.7 million barrels in crude oil to 370.6…
GM At $1.00, DJIA and S&P 500 Index Issues (GM)
It was just yesterday that shares of General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) went to the lowest price since 1933. Shares were around $1.15 on that alert. It has become even worse. Shares hit the…
GT Solar Misses By a Mile (SOLR, SPWRA, WFR, AMAT)
GT Solar International, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOLR) makes the equipment that other companies use to manufacture photovoltaic solar panels. Thus, when the solar panel makers are suffering, so is GT Solar. The company is suffering and…
Is The U.S. “AAA” Rating Really At Risk?
If you have ever seen a market get spooked or wanted to see something cause a stir, imagine if the U.S. government’s prized “AAA” rating was at risk. That is exactly what the Financial…
At Cliffs, Everybody Sacrifices in Prosperity (CLF, ANR, FCL)
In the wake of a poor first quarter report, iron ore producer Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE:CLF), formerly known as Cleveland-Cliffs, has tightened its belt and the belts of all its shareholders. The company’s…
Retail Sales Drop As Import Prices Rise
Equity futures just tanked on economic reports coming in worse than expected. Retail sales for the month of April were -0.4%, which is worse than the +0.1% that economists were looking for. There is…
Top 10 Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades (ANF, CE, FLEX, FCL, HD, HMIN, LNC, MRO, OSG, SON)
These are ten of the top analyst upgrades and downgrades from Wall Street we have seen early this Wednesday morning with more than two hours until the market opens for trading: Abercrombie & Fitch…