Professor Elam

Wed April 18, 2012 11:03 AM CST

Social mood becomes inclusionary at market highs. Positive mood results in a desire to 'come together.'  Jim Rogers observes that most of these deals never work ou, the competing cultures, the lay offs, what ever, and indeed the goodwill paid  is often written off  a few years later.

But consider the recent rash just from today's WSJ

Facebook offers $1 Billion in cash and stock for Instagram. The rationale is that gee FB ought to be worth $200 B and gosh Mr. Systrom at Instagram offers that it should be worth one percent of that, okay make it $1 billion.

Argentina grabbed IPF its largest oil and gas producer. But IPF is owned by Spain's Repsol, welcome to socialism in Argentina!

Audi is going to pay $1.1 B for Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati. Apparently this will allow Audi to parallel BMW's motorcycle business. I don't see the culture mix there but …

Amazon acquired the rights to the 14 classic by Fleming Bond Novels, this one does make sense.

Nestle is buying Pfizer's infant nutrition business for $9 Billion. Their offer beat out Damon and Mead.

Good ideas or bad, it happens during periods of good not bad mood. No one was merging in March, 2009.