I’ve never taken the high road BUT I tell others to. Because it leaves more room for me on the low road. (Driving gesture)
-Tom Haverford on “Parks and Recreation”

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

I hereby launch my new fund Doomsday Device Partners Fund I LLC. This is a private equity-style product specifically focused on the acquisition and exploitation of doomsday devices. The fund will develop a diversified portfolio of doomsday devices, which may include particle accelerators, nuclear research and generation facilities, underground virus research laboratories and key religious artifacts. Nicolas Cage will be Chief Investment Officer and Milla Jovovich will be Chief Risk Officer.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, Long or Short Capital already has a Doomsday Device fund, one which is itself a doomsday device. We designed it with an automatic trigger system, a sophisticated system of arrays and failsafes such that, if any competing doomsday fund were ever to be launched, we would be able to retaliate no matter what happened to the value of our assets.

And unfortunately for you, and really all of us, we may not have been entirely sober when we designed this system. We called it The AYFKM system, but we generally referred to is as “No Whammy.” Kaiser conceptualized the structure. The first part of the design is an array which monitors an assortment of global communication channels. There is also a direct line of communication from No Whammy to the Long or Short Capital bunker, which is not a euphemism for our moms’ basements.

The device can be activated in one of three ways:

1. If No Whammy’s array detects that any doomsday fund has started pitching investors, the No Whammy goes live.
2. If the Long or Short Capital bunker signals for The AYFKM device to go live, it goes live. An instance where the line of communication between the LoS bunker and The AYFKM device is severed or otherwise goes down, The AYFKM device goes live. Just in case.
3. If there is seismic activity in Manhattan greater than 0.7 on the Richter scale or an unusually large flock of Canadian geese, No Whammy Goes Live.

What does it mean for No Whammy to go live? It means that within 72 hours, thermonuclear missiles will be fired from silos we have across the globe, rendering the Earth uninhabitable. We did design a fail-safe in case of a mistaken triggering of No Whammy. We have a bunker with a single person in it who has access to a button that can stop the process, provided he first gives enters the correct password.

Unfortunately for you, and really all of us, that bunker is staffed by Yuri, a drunk and a loudmouth. And Dmitri absolutely HATES Yuri. Dmitri, you see, was the first button-pusher we hired. We had a following out over a heated game of Risk in which one party did not honor an agreed upon alliance, and in fact, exploited the truce that the illusory alliance provided in order to build up forces and launch an invasion from said party’s Kamchatka base. We immediately replaced Dmitri with Yuri, because we are a responsible firm, one who cares about things like not negligently letting our doomsday device render the Earth uninhabitable. But what we could not control was how many times Yuri had had sex with Dmitri’s wife Ludmilla. Or in how many different positions. Or on how many internet webcams. And when he learned of them, these numbers very much upset Dmitri and he refused to divulge the appropriate password to Yuri. Or to us. So if No Whammy goes live and at that time Yuri deems it appropriate to stop the launch of the missiles, it’s on Yuri to correctly guess the appropriate password.

And thus here we are. Not for long mind you, but here we are.

Recommendation: This is a clear demonstration of how important it is that when deploying an automatically triggered doomsday device, one must first SIGNAL that such a device is being deployed. That is really the whole value in the device in the first place. This is a mistake we won’t make again, we promise you. Amazingly, this has happened before.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then plagiarism is the sincerest form of imitation.
-Malcolm Gladwell plagiarizing from his friend Jacob

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Rosanne Altshuler, co-director of the Tax Policy Center in Washington, says that the checks “seem to be pure pandering to seniors.”

Indeed, the politics are attractive. People over 65 vote in large numbers. Saying no to them is never easy.

This is demonstrably false. After reading this article, I immediately set out to the street. There I spotted a female senior citizen. Although I didn’t cut her in half and count the rings, which we all know is the only way to accurately tell a woman’s age (and much more polite than asking her), she was definitely over 45. I could tell because I had no manly desire for her. I snatched her purse from the clutches of her arthritic claws.

“Give it back!” she said.

I said NO. And boy was it easy. Her arms didn’t hold the strength to dissuade me, being as scrawny and infirm as they were.

I trotted at a medium gait towards the river. She followed me on her senior scooter device. By the way, she had a senior scooter device.

“Do not even think about throwing my purse into the river, you [handsome] young man,” she chided from her saddle.

My feet stopped, my cobalt eyes locked onto her gaze, and my lips let lose NO. And again, it was easy to say “NO” to not even thinking about throwing her purse into the river. What could she do? Her aged brain clearly lacked the telepathic abilities that could have forcibly compelled me.

As I cocked my arm and gazed upon the horizon, I thought about her life, who she was, and how much she had given this world. What wonders she must have experienced growing up in the 60’s or 70’s! All those changes and stuff!

“Sonny, don’t throw my purse into the river. I beg you, I’m just a poor old woman on social security and we only got a 5.9% cost of living adjustment last year.”

That old bat’s mutterings gave me pause. Was I wrong? Were the old “not so bad?” Did these leeching frauds who are destroying the young deserve a second chance? A scan of the contents of her purse caused me to unpause. Raising the bag over my head, I turned it on its end, disgorging it of its contents. First things to fly out were wads and wads of counterfeit $100 bills. Then a leather carrying case for a syringe and rubber hose, a baggy full of heroin, 106,328 metric tons of CO2 emissions, a heater with the serial filed off, Polaroids of various women in open-toed shoes, gold bullion cubes, a well-worn copy of Eat, Pray, Love and innumerable kitten heads.

“Listen you old broad, and listen good. No. NO, I will not not toss your bag into the river. NO, I will not consent to you mortgaging America’s future. NO, I will not be ok with giving you a check for $250 so you can proceed to either not spend it, or worse, use it to subsidize Steve the Senior Stud’s cialis purchases at the nursing home, or whatever frivolous way you will deploy this cash. Cash which you clearly don’t need based on 1) the way you have pilfered from America’s future your whole life and 2) the contents of your purse. No no no NO. Learn what that means because I am going to saying it to you a lot.”

And with that, her purse shot through the air, entering the fray of the choppy waters, scored only by a screechy dying old-ladyish “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

Full disclosure: Long or Short is Long Age Warfare.

HT to the love of my life, crampell.

In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Obviously, Science has a different definition of “all goes well” than I do. Things not on my “all goes well” list:

1. Dying in a fire
2. Getting punched in my mini-ballers by a midget (think of the devastating angle they have on you)
3. Being melted by toxic waste like that guy in Robocop
4. RECREATING THE BIGGEST UNIVERSAL EXPLOSION ON EARTH FOR KICKS WITH YOUR FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT WON’T END EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT

But that’s not even the part that really frustrates me. Previously there was a notion that Science had some measure of prudence and competency. But Science has evacuated its collective gourd. From the above linked article:

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Which is worse:

1. Science is speculating there are time-traveling protective fairy particles to save us from ourselves.
2. Science is willing to admit that there is a chance that a “Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature” that time-traveling protective fairy particles would come back to save us from ourselves.

Recommendation: Isn’t this the kind of thing that would give a reasonable person pause? Not Science dude, no Science just plans to plow through it and hope it all works out. Awesome. Science, before we get sucked into the vortex of unexistence, I’d like you to step into the ring with me, mano-a-scienco, I’m done with your shit man.

Math, you’re up next.

As an aside, we are still selling July 2008 End of the World Puts and September 2008 End of the World Puts. Although not technically in the money under conventional physics, with time-travel on the table they could still pay off.

A camel is a horse designed by committee.
-Various

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

According to the Commission’s complaint, issued in August 2009, The M Group, Inc., d/b/a Bamboosa, and its principals falsely claimed that the company’s products are “100% bamboo fiber,” when they are composed of rayon. Rayon is a man-made fiber created from the cellulose found in plants and trees and dissolved with a harsh chemical that releases hazardous air pollution. Any plant or tree could be used as the cellulose source – including bamboo – but the fiber that is created is rayon.

The complaint also charged Bamboosa with making a number of other deceptive “green” claims. Bamboosa claimed that its products retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties. However, even if the rayon used in Bamboosa’s clothing and textile products is manufactured using bamboo as the cellulose source, the FTC contends, rayon does not retain any natural antimicrobial properties of the bamboo plant. The rayon manufacturing process eliminates any of these natural bamboo properties.

Recommendation: You may have read our initial diligence on Bamboosa called “Why I Do, and Why You SHOULD, Have a Bambooner” in which we erected a strong case for buying Bamboosa. The thrust of that piece lay in this quote: “There are two O’s and a BAM up in this piece, time to get long (I think I just did).” We were bamboozled, legitimately bamboozled, and we deserve a pass on this one, because really, that’s a cool way to lose millions for investors who depend on the legitimacy of our recommendations. I know you’d agree.

HT to Felix Salmon

Me: You and your competitors have very high margins, some are even higher than Catepillar (NYSE: CAT) which is the global leader. Is there any risk that as you all add capacity those margins decline?

Chinese CFO (through tanslator): Uh so he says that there is no risk of a pricing war.

Me: Ok can you tell me why that is?

Chinese CFO: Uh so he says China has 5 main wheel loader companies. And all are good companies and will not start a price war. Also he says the 5 CEOs of the companies meet every month for a dinner and they all agree not to make a price war against each other.

Me (to the translator): Did he really say that?

Translator: Yes.

Me: OK, moving right along.

Carson! I think Obamacare {QUICK DEEP BREATH} by Barrack Obama {QUICK DEEP BREATH}) should be the number 1 video because Barrack is soooooo hotttt and everyone should have should have rad healthcare and it should cost way less and Obama rocks my world!!!! WOOOOO!!!!!

If however you actually want to waste your time arguing about healthcare we thought we’d take a few things we commonly hear and give you some IN YOUR FACE FACTS to drop on your friends and make them hate you more than if you just make outrageous claims that you can’t back-up. Mostly what’s below is true, mostly, and if that standard is good enough for science and math, it’s good enough for us.

People say: For-profit health insurance companies are the devil and the reason we spend so much more on healthcare than other countries (Note: this is a recurring theme of the hot selling book “Healing of Amercia” by T.R. Reid, now available at your local grocery store).

IN YOUR FACE FACT: Healthcare insurance companies make between 5 and 10% profit margins (p.5). So even if you usurped all these profits (assuming you could run the companies just as efficiently) the most you could save is 5-10% of the cost. And by the way many states already have not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. If not making profits made insurance companies give you the same care at lower costs then these BCBS plans would be blowing up like a totally sweet Jenna Haze automatic blow-up doll. But they’re not, they’re slowly deflating like blow-up dolls tend to when you make them wear a spiked choker against their will. Mostly.

In a truly free market, the Invisble Hand has to give the Dollar a reach-around.
-Jon Stewart

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

In the mini-series Band of Brothers, the 101st Airborne’s Easy Company encounters concentration camps and the horrors contained within. After that point, the Nazis were no longer just conquerors who these Americans thought should be pushed back into the bowels of Bavaria. The Nazis were the pure evil and Easy company knew that it was their moral imperative to defeat Hitler’s men, lest the forces of darkness swallow the Earth whole. The title of this episode was “Why We Fight.”

To Gary Barzell, business loans are Nazis. If you need financing, the idea that you would be forced into making secured loans impugns his sense of right and wrong. That is why he will offer you up to $250,000 in unsecured business loans. No questions asked.

How do we know this? Let’s just say that Long or Short Capital is richer by approximately $250,000 at each of our possible levels: parent, opco, several subs and a series of shell entities we created solely to be able to exploit Gary’s generosity.

The best part is that because these loans are unsecured, there is no collateral he can seize from you when things go awry or you fly to Tahiti.

Now you might be saying, isn’t this the kind of reckless no doc no strings financing extended to uncreditworthy entities (like Long or Short, for example) that built the bubble that got us into the current economic mess? The answer is YES. But it’s also this kind of reckless no doc no strings financing extended to unsavory uncreditworthy entities (like Long or Short, for example) that let us know our long economic nightmare is over, that the target for the DOW should be reset to 36,000 from our previous target of 8, and that we will be mini-balling again in no time.

Returning back to Easy company, they realized in “Why We Fight” why they fought. To defeat evil. Like those brave American soldiers, Long or Short has learned Why We Write. We write to get paid and to defeat evil. And to kill Nazis.

Thanks you and God Bless.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he seized the landmark Hilton hotel on Margarita Island because its owners dared to impose conditions on its use by his government to host a summit there last month.

“To hold the conference we had to ask for permission… and the owners tried to impose conditions on the revolutionary government. No way,” said Chavez.

“So I said, ‘Let’s expropriate it.’ And now it’s been expropriate

The hotel was a Hilton, the second Hilton to be seized by Hugo Chavez. How does this affect your portfolio? Quoting myself, something I love to do, this was our first piece on Piratery:

But setting up a lair in a place like Isla Margarita, located off the northern coast of Venenzuela, would be an environment with relatively low piratery penetration but proximity to major cruiseline and OPEC oil routes. An added bonus, Isla Margarita is where non-pirate berserker Lope de Aguirre reached his crescendo.

Revisiting this recommendation, we would downgrade Isla Margarita to “Not a good place to set up a pirate lair” due to the Venezuelan government’s growing presence in the quasi-legal seizure business.

Have you heard the news? Garmin’s (NASDAQ: GRMN) new nuvifone is new?

Recommendation: Short Garmin. It may be my irrational fear of oomlats, my hate of redundancy in advertising or my rational fear of combo devices, but any company that is working all three of these angles, isn’t a company worth a damn. If they had changed the name to “noovifone” they may have had a hit.

“People call this a sport? Raping mother nature’s winds for your own pleasure? Hundreds of feet from your competitors, who like you, are wearing dock shoes, and Nantucket reds and have the complexion of snow. Where is the sport in that? And what is that Somali looking man doing with that RPG?”

Sailing needs something. It needs conflict. It needs physicality. It needs to be more impactful. It needs to feature boarding and grappling hooks.

When Black Beard did the first America’s Cup race back in 17whateverthehell, they didn’t race each other in boats that cost tens of millions dollars, helmed and manned by sons of privilege. They fought each other to death in pilfered pinnaces, helmed and manned solely by maroons and sons of bitches. Race? The only race was to see how long you could survive, and how much whoring and pillaging you’d take down before death.

So obviously things are different. And that’s why sailing needs a sea change, three of them actually.

First things first, the aforementioned grappling and boarding is allowed in all sailing races. Let’s see how many Ted Turners are “courageous” when they face the chance of being gutted from groin to gill by an Australian ex-con named Roggie. As a bonus, this return to its classical roots would make sailing the world’s most popular spectator sport.

Second. All yacht clubs ban popped collars, people with names like Preston, and people rich enough to own a boat. Yacht club membership will remain an exclusive status, but the criteria for admittance will change. Instead of a blue blood test, there will be a red blood test. You have to have killed a man on the sea, justly, to become a full member. Junior membership will be bestowed upon anyone who has won a knife fight or bedded a mermaid.*

Third. Grappling and boarding is also legal at any point on the sea. If you are a “boater” and you love being on the ocean, then you better be able to handle your business with a cutlass. Any boat seized after being boarded would then be lawful property of the seizers, the male crew would be subject to death or impressment, the female crew would be subject to slavery.

*Manatees do not count, regardless of how hot they look. I’ve heard all the hot manatee claims before, and that crap won’t fly with me.

IR contact: “Our leader needs to have a nap.”
MrJuggles: “Ummm…”
IR contact: “He usually naps until 3pm but since you have traveled so far he will meet you at 2pm.”
MrJuggles: “Thank you.”

America will blow up the moon, we have the technology, the time is now, science can wait no longer, children are our future, America can, should, must, and WILL blow up the moon…And we’ll be doing it during a full moon so we make sure we get it all.

Quote from Mr. Show in 1996

I don’t mean to be that monkey, but why are we blowing up the moon? Has it come to this? I understand that this is a search for water but at $79 million, aren’t their cheaper local sources? Isn’t this the kind of thing that leads to more global warming? E.g. sourcing water from the moon and then shipping it here burns more fossil fuels than even bottled water, according to my model at least.

Recommendation: Short moon real estate. While it’s likely to benefit from increased scarcity, it’s also likely to be negatively impacted by being exploded.

• are you still alive?
• where are our dividends?
• have you stopped posting due to being brutally murdered?

The answer to all these questions is yes, yes and yes.

Or it’s that the stimulus is working but we have to respect our arrangement with the Blog Czar. If you missed the Abstract Investment Idea Investment and Recovery Act of 2009 (you did), you also missed that President Obama appointed a Blog Czar to oversee the compensation levels for authors of arcane and imaginary investment ideas. It’s only fair that compensation is regulated for these blogs given the staggering amounts of taxpayer money they have received from the federal government. Obviously, we at Long or Short have received far more than our share of the pseudo-real investment blog bailout. Again, it’s only fair.

We were also able to negotiate an agreement whereby we submit our commentary for regulation rather than our compensation. You see, if our compensation is regulated, we will no longer have incentive to research new, cutting edge fabrications for publication*. However, if our commentary is regulated, but we are still well-compensated, we will continue to be productive as ever, dreaming up incredible and illusory investment opportunities which we can then publish to the public. Unless, of course, the Blog Czar regulates our speech. Which he normally does, because if he didn’t, what would he really have to do? It’s only fair.

So, in summary, we are alive. We are still as inventive and imaginative and profitable as ever (moreso!). And we are excited to bring you all the commentary that isn’t regulated by the Czar (probably not much, to be honest) and to reap massive profits on that which is censored.

As you can see, it’s all quite fair.

* We will also be unable to contribute to the ruling party at the levels we would like to (if we are overly compensated).

The Administration is more of a problem than they are of a help usually, if you read the headlines. Everyone is frightened to death about runaway inflation if these deficits are allowed to take place. The good news is the Senate seems to be slowing it down.
But we can’t see where it’s good for business to have that debt as a percentage of GDP go from 30% to 60% or 70%. That sort of makes us an emerging country. But maybe wiser heads will prevail and some of the things that are on the table, these amazing misunderstandings of how the system works, will get slowed down in Washington.
Right now, we are more afraid of Washington that we are the economy. We’ve got people on our backs saying don’t go to Las Vegas, which is preposterous. And people are beginning to ignore this kind of bombastic rhetoric from the White House and from the Administration, and that is encouraging.

Translation: Politicians suck and are doing their best to destroy American business.

My own feeling is the government of Macau will protect and so will the central government of Beijing and the regional government in Juhai at Guangdong province, at Guangzhou. The government will do a very enlightened and thoughtful job of protecting the interest of the citizens and the business enterprises that support the health of those businesses.
In America, we have a government that has decided that anybody that creates jobs must be bad, that the job creators should have a target painted on their back. What a remarkable misunderstanding of how the United States of America works. I tell you that that is not the case in Macau, and it’s not the case in the People’s Republic of China. And maybe we could all learn a lesson by watching what happens there.

Translation: I currently prefer to do business in a People’s Republic than the USA.

I think that the Encore tower when it debuts in a few months is going to give people a really clear insight as to what we will do next, and the level at which we will be operating in China. It is a great place to do business — really wonderful. None of the anxiety that we have at the present time in America.
I have been self insuring my employees, up to 40,000 of them, for 40 years. And everything I am reading about Obamacare is a train wreck. And I say that as an insurer — a train wreck.

Translation: No, seriously, I prefer the communist country.

We put Beyonce in here on the toughest weekend other than December 19th of the year. We did it on purpose. This is — conventions and stuff like that start the first part of August. We picked a real trough in the traditional revenue seasons. And so she is a special event as opposed to an ongoing entertainment event. And a remarkable, and as I said, lovely, lovely lady.
…
I should tell you that we own the life rights to the Bee Gees. And we’re working on a show about that. Garth Brooks was here as a friend. He didn’t charge. That was just a buddy singing. As a matter of fact, Garth is going to be here tonight to watch Beyonce with his wife, with Trisha Yearwood, and his three daughters — going to sit with me.
And I think that Garth Brooks is a stay-at-home dad, and take his kids to school every morning — he really does actually take his children to school every single morning — an extraordinary fellow, really extraordinary.

Translation: Please allow me the luxury of dropping a few names to remind you that I am richer and having a more interesting life than you.

My name is Juggles, I belive it´s like so solely cause, ever since I was aware of my paws, I had all kinds of balls in my hands, spining them, throwing them in the air and doing all sorts of tricks with them!
At the moment I´m practising a special trick by balancing them stacked towerly like on top of my head … do you think I´ll be able to pull it off?!

Recommendation: No man and no woman can ever own me…unless they have $19 at their disposal.

Analyst Q: The commission cap agreement among the various operators. Sheldon, is there a method set up for enforcing that? And how do you expect it’ll affect your bottom line?

Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) Chairman: Well that’s a good question. There has been no when I was there, I committed to do it on the honor system. The breach of which will be reason to beat people up with a wet spaghetti noodle.

Translation: There is no way to enforce this collusive agreement among the local operators because this is China.

Analyst Q: Can I ask about the Sands on the peninsula? All of the revenue components are down, and yet your EBITDAR margin is up an impressive six points, and your EBITDAR is up 13%. How do you do that?
Sheldon Adelson, LVS Chairman:By cooking the books! Just kidding, just kidding. Mike, do you want to answer that?

Translation: I am the Chairman of a public company and I’m joking on a public conference call about cooking the books of a company that is probably cooking the books*. Draw your own conclusions.

*Our lawyers have advised us to note that, when saying that LVS is cooking the books, we don’t mean that in any kind of legal sense. We may mean that in a culinary sense and look forward to a 4th Quarter quiche.

Success seems to be connected to action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
-Conrad Hilton

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Baker Hughes to Acquire BJ Services in $6.9 Billion Transaction

• Share price premium of 26.9% over the frothy closing price of BJs stock on August 28, 2009
• Pressure pumping cost synergies of $75 Million in 2010 and $150 Million in 2011
• Combination to be immediately accretive to EPS and other easily manipulated metrics

HOUSTON, Aug 31, 2009 — Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI) and BJ Services (NYSE: BJs) today announced that their respective Boards of Directors have approved a definitive merger agreement, which represents a transaction value of $6.9 billion for BJs based on the closing stock prices on August 28, 2009. This agreement represents a share price premium of 26.9% over the frothy closing price of BJs’ stock on August 28, 2009. Under the agreement, Baker Hughes will be coming to BJs’ stockholders with 0.6969 shares of stock and cash of $0.69 in exchange for each share of BJs common stock. Upon the happy ending of this merger agreement, current Baker Hughes shareholders will own approximately 69% of the blissfully coupled company.

“This transaction further clarifies Baker Hughes’ top-tier position preference for the global exploitation of unconventional and deepwater reservoirs,” said Chad C. Deaton, Baker Hughes Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “BJs’ broads are an excellent addition to our portfolio by adding the services, technologies and talented people that are key to helping releasing the value in our reservoirs. It will better position us to thrust forward for international growth and compete in the cut-throat pressure pumping market. Although in the past I have said I would never pay for BJs, this one was too good to pass up.”

Baker Hughes expects to realize annual pressure pumping cost savings of approximately $75 million in 2010 and $150 million in 2011 as it eliminates dry-hole blind date costs, consolidates booty-call marketing efforts, and further rationalizes playing-the-field costs. Baker Hughes expects the combination to be immediately accretive to earnings per share and other easily manipulated metrics.

BJs Chairman, President and CEO Jill Stewart said: “We are very pleased to be offering our services to Baker Hughes and negotiated hard to maximize the consideration paid for our platform [stripper heels]. Their offer blows all the other offers…out of the water.”

Shareholders of Baker Hughes should note Barclays Capital or J.P. Morgan Securities did NOT act as financial advisor or render a fairness opinion in connection with this transaction, so the risk of overpaying for BJs has been significantly mitigated. In addition, the definitive merger agreement does not appear to contain any major gaping holes because Vinson & Elkins LLP were NOT retained to provide legal counsel or investigate management-controlled limited partnerships.

Conference Call

Baker Hughes and BJs have scheduled a joint conference call. To access the call, please contact the conference call operator at 1.866.637.7128, enter your corporate credit card information, and indicate you are interested in connecting to the BJs discussion. You must be 18 years or older to make this call. Management will provide a brief introduction of the transaction, explain what they are or are not wearing, and then begin the Q&A portion of the call. Please download some materials from the web (Is She Filthy) prior to the call to increase the efficiency of the discussion and ensure your phone on is on mute prior to any heavy breathing.