Moody’s now has SIX rated as C or well into the junk debt category. WAshington Redskiin owner Dan Snyder seems to be having problems handling the debt he amassed in buyin SIX..

Now that Ford has spent billions fixing the problems, we think TATA netted a great deal with Jag and Land Rover.   Apparently Henry Ford II always envied the cachet of Jag.  Ford bought the firm two years after his death. Ford poured billions into it to fix terrible quality problems.  But Ford in my…

Carl Icahn is demanding a breakup of Motorola MOT. This is an excellent story to help you understand the equity side of the balance sheet.  Icahn is described in this BW article as famous for taking a stake and demanding change in a company. This is a practice that gained prominence in the 1980s Corporate…

Scottish chip maker Wolfson said it will not get the nod for its chips in the next generation of media players from ‘one customer.’  That would be Apple. The stock dropped 22%. Now would we make an accounting entry to reflect that? The answer is no.  Following our discussion in class Tuesday, should there be…

A Texas District Judge has ordered a group of banks to fund the Clear Channel Buyout loan package. Why is a judge involved? Well, the banks all backed out of the funding amid their unknown losses in the subprime mess. Here is the evidence that lending standards are being tightened but as they say,the barn…

Robert Samuelson offers some perspective on recessions.   If the average recession lasts 10 months, well if we started last summer say August, we are about tne months in now. Here is an interesting site, www.minyanville.com.  Definitely a different point of view, and clearly they subscribe to the socionomic perspective that I frequently discuss. In…

Pop Photography says these are the top ten Wedding Photographers.  I don’t see many outside the US, don’t people in Europe and Asia get married? Anyway, here is a  service business that is about as recession proof as anything gets. How would you use cost volume profit and budgets to make this work for you?

Thornburg Mortgage TMA has proposed a new re capitalization scheme.   Well I guess I am prejudicing my point of view with the noun, scheme. Please read the article and consult the current balance sheet of TMA, it is on financy.yahoo.com. Now What will common stockholders get What will existing preferred holders get (read those…

Thinking outside the box, TAT Motors has investedin a car driven by compressed air.    A fill up consists of airing up a compressed air tank. The compressed air is then released to move the pistons in an engine configured for this purpose.  Now why didn’t GM or Ford or Chrysler think of that?No doubt…

It is hard to see how J P Morgan can lose on this deal.   They put up a fraction of the financing, the FED guarantees the deal, and Blackrock does the work.  As Jim Rogers observed, the Bear partners keep their bonuses and their Maseratis, we get their losses.  Now you and I own…