Professor Elam

I find that most students do not even scan the weekend papers, friday thru saturday.  Yet lots of news happens then. The reason is that newsmakers do not want to announce changes in the middle of market trading. Reagan foolishly announced that Greenspan would replace Folcker during bond market trading hours. Bond prices immeditaely dropped three hundred basis points, which is three percetage points of price.  This weekend the US Government announced that it would bail out or rescue Fannie Mae FNM and Freddie Mac FRE. This should actually rally markets on Monday, why?  Because marekts hate uncertainty, this removes the uncertainty surrounding the government guarantee of mortgage repayment. It also spells more long term trouble for the US Dollar, why?  Because lots of dollars must be printed to cover the bad paper.

David Hedricks, business solumnist forhte SA EXpressdescribes VAlero's presentatino at the Lehman Energy Conference. They point out taht several refineries have been shut in due to Gustav. VLO is down abou 50%. I smell a bottom. Do not expect gasoline to go below $3.

SA did everything it cold to lure Toyota here. Toyota has even kept the 2,000 workers on during its shutdown. So fo course eight 'workers' are sueing cliaming they did not get paid for overtime. There are no automated time clocks in the plant. So I don't kow about the validity of the claim. But now that there is no going back for Toyota on their billion dolalr investment, it is not surprising that the sparring has begun.