One might think that higher oil prices would have gurt stock prices, wrong. Oil and stock prices rose from 2002 thru most of 2007.  The fact was that the economy could afford higher oil prices, to a point. At times since 2007, lower oil prices have boosted stocks. This last few days fear of oil suply interruptions actually boosted oil prices and cased some retreat in stocks. But, as hurrican fears subsided, and Gustav passed, stock prices might rally, right?  Wrong again, after stock prices jumped this morning, they spent the rest of the day in full retreat.

The news went back to what it was, fears of a softening economy were huring stocks. And so, DELL dropped over 4%just today.  But wait, DELL is about to introduce a hot new mini laptop, like that cute AZUS, right?  Well yes but that did not help. Fears of fewer computer orders ruled the day.

The moral of this story is that prices in the market are the story.  Other things tend tobe distractions from teh big picture. So in this case, Guxtav was indeed, just so much cool air….

The thing that makes a disaster a disaster is the element of surprise. If the cunard Line had anticipated the iceberg, the Titanic sinking might have b een better managed.  Gustav was anticipated and indeed not a Katrina, but had it ben a Katrina, the loss of life would have been much lower due to expectations.

My point is that financial or natural disasters are unanticipated events. The financial crashed of 1929 and 1987 were unexpected, that was what intenesified the selling. The Koke Earthquake in Japan or the tsunami in Indonesia were not anticipated, ditto the earthquake in China recently the lack of warning made the events oh so much worse. It is important to understand this in analyzing financial events.

Oil was declining in price before Gustav, it briefly blipped, and then fell again today once the danger passed, the trend resumed. Remember the trend is your friend until that trend changes.

Numerati author  Baker would have us believe that behavior and outcomes can be reduced to a number diagram.  And so number geek companies like IBM are trying to categorize employee activities by the number. Take a click and see what you think.

Frnakly ths sounds like the old conundrum, unless you have exerpience doing this you cannot get the job, which raises the question, how do I get the experience? 

Television and movie studios are forever working this problem, who is the right person for the part?  Would Frank Sinatra have been a better Godfather than Marlon Brando, I doubt it but Frank was considered. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan was originally cast to play Rick in Casablanca, happily Bogart ended up wtih the part and as they say the rest is history. But then I never got to see what Ron would have done with the role either.

My point about the movie connection is that I am not sure a number strategy can refine such  qualitiative differences.

I am aware that many of you are having trouble logging on to both websites and Homework Manager

 

Rest assured that I understand and have had plenty of trouble with all sorts of such things since my arrival. We will work this out and you will not be penalized in any way for such difficulties beyone your control.

The website for the Gibson book in Fin Mgt course  is the unwieldly

http://websites.swlearning.com/cgi-wadsworth/course_products_wp.pl?fid=M20bI&flag=instructor&product_isbn_issn=9780324657425&disciplinenumber=400

After looking  at this it is no wonder I prefer mcgraw hill books which feature an incredibly simple system. If this were mcgraw hill the log on woudl be

www.mhhe.com/gibson8e

now which is easier, it is not a mcgraw hill the agove is a hypothetical example.  It will not work!

 But this is a great book despite this, put it in and then bookmark it so you do not have to enter again.

DLE

Increasingly employers are interested in 'extra curricular' employee activities.  Increasingly employers are doing searches of You Tube and such sites looking for inappropriate behavior.

Well that just happened to the President of Iowa Central Community College.  Robert Paxton will receive a $400,000 severance package but will no longer be President of that school.  We caution readers to be careful both what they themselves post and what others might do. And, well, the old saying still holds, if your Grandmother would not be comfortable in a situation, you should probably not be there either.  The photo appeared in the Des Moines Register.

 A few posts back I mentioned Twilight, the wildly popular vampire series about a girl with a vampire boyfriend. I linked this to the donwturn in markets, ie, popular culture refelcts and drives the economic evniroment. Some of you doubted the causality. Well, guess what

Dead Until Dark  is another populare vampire series again featuring a young gal with a vampire boyfriend. In this tale, vampires have come out of the dark so to speak and taken residence where else, in a town in northern Louisiana, Bobby Jindal take note. True Blood is the artifical drink of choice which keeps the vampires fed and off the local residents. This was such a great mainstream idea that, are you ready,

True Blood will debut this September on HBO as a regular show. In the prequel on how we made True Blood, the producers link vampire society to of course, everything social, sexual, racial, you name it.

The point from a socionomic standpoint is that this age old idea of vampires being creatures of the night has become quite mainstream. While readers will once agin question the causality of this, we would point out that HBO was certainly free to bring back musicals, say a contemporary version of Grease. They did not and we maintain this is no accident but a social phenomenon.  The show should debut just as the financial markets make a last high at least within a week or so would be my guess. If so, the mood of True Blood will match the mood of  the market which is to say down.

 Make mine a Oh Positive, shaken not stirred.

Boeing like other companies is trying to move away from the defined benefit plan, but of course the union wants one.  And no doubt AIRBUS with a lot of European employees has one.  And so Boeing is caving and apparently going along with the idea rather than face a strike. I would say this is a short term mistake, they might as well cross this rubicon now.

This is an excelelnt article as we study the libaility and equity side of the blanace sheet in Intermed II as well as Fin Statement Analysis. The FASB does not make companies own up to all their future liabilities in this or the operating lease area. IF they did Ford and GM would be out of equity.

Speaking of Ford, it went to a new low of $4.35 yesterday. GM is a few cents above its low at $10.04. Rather than excoriating the members of the other party on their national televised party conventions it seems to me this would be a good time to engage in a dialog. Will America have American owned car companies or not? Reminder, Britain does not have any, it could happen here.

Again, this is an important article.

Kindle is Amazon's electronic book reader.  Go to Amazon.com to take a look.  I have written about this on the blog, both Sony and RCA have tried marketing elec book readers without much success. Now AMZ has sold $100 M of the $360 device since last November.  AMZN is now buying websites that feature used books or articles about books to encourage people to download. 

Listening to music on an iPod is a natural act since one does not have to 'read' the music.  Watching a movie on an elec player is a natural act since one watches rather than reads the movie. But the book experience is rather different. I subscribe to Business Week becasue I would much rather have the paper copy to highlight and carry around. I can read it anywhere without a computer.  For me there is a river to cross in the elec book realm not present in movies or music. How about you?

I can certainly see the advantage of the elec book from the standpoint of storage. Once read, it would be much handier to have it electronically, particularly to search for a passage. And facing another move, it would certainly be easier to haul around 200 books, the capacity of a current Kindle, than to box them up, move their weight, and then find a place to put them.

THe next edition of Kindle will reportedly cost $300 and like all devices be thinner faster etc. It seems to me that to kick start this device, it needs  a  bonus promotion like

AMZN partners with a major textbook publisher, the publisher makes a semester of books available on the Kindle, the book price is discounted and for participating, Kindle is bargain priced at say $99, the whole bundle of books plus Kindle is less than the purchase of the printed books themselves, now that would be a raionale to do this for the student

or the reader Kindle, needs to incorporate an MP3 player at least, would Apple be interested in an iBook, now there is an idea, which would play music and allow you to read a book, maybe listen to music and read, a bad idea but no doubt a popular one

Your thoughts?

The number of people taking the GMAT is the best indicator of grad business school enrollment.

College enrollmentis actually counter to the economy. Economy down people rationalize they might as well be in school as htey cannot get the job they want now anyway.  The hyperlink describes that this is the fourth year of increased GMAT testing.  So which is it, does an improved economy call for more and better educated students or does an imporvement mean that jobs are so plentiful that one does not need more eduction to get into the workforce?

Conversely when the economy slows and more go to college, does the supply of college grads increase out of porportion to jobs availa ble?  Or am I just sounding like Karl Marx here….

Okay amid Michelle Obama's speech, Russia's incursion into Georgia, trhe housing slump, what is it that has Americans riveted with attention, well you might have missed this were it not for the blog but

American Idol will add's  a foruth judge next season. Actually I do have a few observations about this.

Resistance to New ideas – When Simon Cowell pitched the idea for an AMerican version of Pop Idol which had huge audiences in Britian, all three traditional networks turned him down. Indeed it took a call from Rupert Murdoch's daughter to Rupert to get the idea considered. Moral, it is tough to get anyone to buy into a new idea.

Benchmarking –  Now however American Idol is an established idea in its product maturity stage, so what to do to change things up. Do you note the spin in the article, Paula has had to endure being the only female! 

My guess is that Paula has been thrilled to be the only female judge, it certainly revived her moribund career! Now she gets to share the stage with a genuine talent who writes songs sung by Idol winners (no accident there I would say) and who is clearly, gulp, younger.  I am sure Paula is saying oh swell, but at least she is still on the panel, eh?d  Paula was opriginally a cheerleader for a Pro Team that bvecame a sort of manufactured pop singer by a reccord label. Her actual talent is choreographing dance routines, not surpising given the cheerleader background. By the say, can you name the signature Paula hit tune, I didn't think so….