I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.
-Jonathan Swift in “A Modest Proposal”

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

This week, Oakland began sending out ballots in a special mail-only election on four revenue-generating ballot measures, including Measure F, a tax on medical marijuana.

…

The clubs see the ballot measure as a way to help the broader cause of medical marijuana.

“Criminals don’t pay taxes,” said James Anthony, an attorney for Harborside Health Center, one of the dispensaries. “Law-abiding citizens do. We are nothing if not law-abiding citizens.”

The strategy at work is what is known as “Crack Strategy.” Crack Strategy can be broken down into four phases.

1. First one’s free: Give your customer product for free.
2. Get’em hooked: Wait for your customers return. If they are not suitably addicted, repeat Phase 1.
3. Kill your competition: Your profits are surging, but competition remains and is a constant threat. You must crush them.
4. Buy an Island: A place where you can retire to. Phase 4 is almost never reached before death.

Recommendation: California medical marijuana dispensaries are currently in Phase 1 of their Crack Strategy as they attempt to get the Government hooked on their tax money. As we know the Government has a very addictive personality. If the weed firms succeed in attaining addiction to the extent we expect, Phase 3 will occure and a rash of related violence will commence as larger firms seek to crush their competition. This would lead to a surge in demand for hemp garrotes, brass hackey sacks and kabongs (explosive bongs). It is here where you can build your position ahead of the inevitable gap up in prices. Phase 4 is a pipe dream so it shouldn’t be used in any of your modeling.

Everything is black and white. A sparse room lined with white tiles. Decrepit but also clean in a clinical way. Women are being herded into the room from a narrow entryway.

Voice comes over a tinny loudspeaker haltingly:

“Women! Do not be afraid! Let the Infusium 23 enter your hair!”

Floating bottles of Infusium 23 descend down dripping a viscous shampoo into our heroine’s hair. As the Infusium 23 hits her hair, it ceases being black and white and transforms into full color. She is seen shaking her hair in slow motion as its lavishness becomes apparent. Her whole face looks energized and she flashes a large knowing smile.

Narration provided by Miley Cyrus:

“Don’t let your hair be put to a dry death. Liberate your hair with Infusium 23’s new (moistur)ologie line of shampoos and conditioners. Infusium 23’s (moistur)ologie line corrects, restores, and structurizes your hair. It infuses hair with 23 essential pro-vitamin and treatment ingredients, and helps restore moisture for soft, silky feel. Infusium 23 — commit genocide against dry hair.”

Close up on a bottle that is coming towards the screen and growing in size.

End scene

Rejected advertising for Infusium 23.

Sentencing for Bernie Madoff: 57-61 years
Total number of Madoffs sentenced to jailtime by 2011: 1-3
“Life”* remaining for Madoff: 7-9 years
“Life”* remaining for Walter Noel: 3-4 years
Attempts on the life of a Noel male in the next five years: 2-3

*Life here refers to whether someone has not been deemed “legally dead.” As we know from the Kenneth Lay situation, if you time it correctly you can be legally dead but also still living. A great way to free yourself from jail time.

Sometimes in life you have to realize a poor investment and cut your losses. Write that down.
-Van Wilder Sr.

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Jay-Z rapped 99 Problems to this historical current

The year is ‘09 and your world is gone
You’ve just realized you’re alone, broke an’ one dumb pawn.
The financial forces y’all trusted are total shit,
That Ben behind the Fed curtain is not legit.
I ain’t trying to see no returns erased with Me.
We’ll head now to your situation, cut to the chase quickly.
Broker calls, “Son, do you know why your statements say zero”
‘Cause I’m young and I’m dumb and from Toledo?
Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don’t know.
Are you jerkin’ me off or should I guess some mo’
“Well you was overweight emerging markets like a schmoe.
Now you’re broke, and can’t afford your new McHouse or car.
Are you hidin’ any cash in your mattress, I know a lot of you are”
‘I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, it is someone else’s bullshit.’
“Well do you mind if I look at your finances a little bit.”
‘Well my car is leased and my house is underwater,
And I know my rights so the Govt gonna bail me out o’ there.’
“Aren’t you dumb like Nails, you some type of retard or something?”
Or a real mouth-breather or somethin’?”
Nah, I ain’t no rere, I passed my GED,
Smart enough to work for Ohio’s DMV.
“We’ll see how smart you are when the squid lord comes”
You got eleven trillion problems and squid is THE one.

By the cold calculations of Wall Street, the settlement was an economic success for the banks. Had they originally provided the $15.4 billion of debt originally committed to the deal, they would have faced billions of dollars in loan losses. Now the direct cost to each bank is just over $300 million, a far more palatable figure.

Recommendation: Huntsman’s cash settlements from their anti-business segment (received from Apollo, DB and CS) in the last twelve months are about as much as their entire current market cap. This doesn’t even factor in the additional value received in these transactions from below market rate financing of convertible and unsecured debt. We like the stock in equal measure to the extent they are able to find new anti-business partners that will allow them to grow their nascent and extremely profitable anti-business segment.

Dangerous Fund I will specialize in positions that lack defensible absolute return theses. Assets will be allocated so as to leverage Tinderbox Capital’s expertise in trades of which they have little understanding, so-called “dangerous” trades. These trades will include vega convergence bets, investments in opaque levered pass-through instruments, naked red/black hedge trades, and proprietary coin-in straddles. Their due diligence process will include a rigorous “bottoms up” analysis that is comparable to the processes of Fairfield Greenwich Group and other top investment management firms.

Tinderbox Spokesman Johnny Debacle:

“We see a clear need for an investment vehicle for people who want to lose all their money. Competitors out there have lost on average 30-40% in this cycle. We think we can lose more, especially with our so-called ‘dangerous’ trades. Our trades are dangerous because we don’t fully understand them. Frankly, we may not understand them at all. Take a vega convergence bet where we form a pair trade with options with two assets with similar, but not the same, underlying. We make that trade and we’re pretty sure something happens we just don’t know what it will be. Does anyone? I may not have the details of that trade correct either. That is a core strength of our investment process.

Scores and Scores of bottoms up due diligence will strengthen everything we do. We aren’t content to just sit on our haunches while someone else just dances about doing work on our junk [bond portfolio]. No, we plan to do that and more, which is what makes our “bottoms up” approach so powerful. We will spend money and get the most bangs for your buck. We will get our hands dirty and our pinkies stinky if that’s what it takes to better understand the trades we make and ascertain their appropriateness.

We know that young risk-seeking investors demand places to put their money to work, places where they can allocate $10,000 and potentially lose it all. This is the niche that Dangerous Fund I will fill. We give you all the risk you will ever need and guarantee that we will potentially lose it all. Additionally Dangerous Fund I will be appropriate for investors whose portfolios are overweight return and underweight risk and are thus seeking proper balance.

We just need your money to fuel our fire.

Tinderbox Capital LLC is an investment firm that offers a focused set of investment products to a global institutional and high net worth client base. Tinderbox Capital LLC is currently structured to directly manage strategies in so-called “dangerous” trades. Despite this structure Tinderbox Capital is uniquely unqualified to manage your money well, and uniquely qualified to manage your money poorly. You would do well to simply light your money on fire instead because at least then you get the benefit of the heat it generates. Or you could just wait for Dangerous Fund II which Tinderbox Capital LLC is in the process of registering. It will seek to disintermediate the middleman from the process of lighting money on fire by physically igniting investors’ dollars for them. It will charge a traditional 2 and 20 fee structure.

The Mexican Navy says it has seized more than a tonne of cocaine hidden inside the carcasses of frozen sharks.

Armed officers found slabs of cocaine inside more than 20 sharks aboard a freight ship in the Gulf coast port of Progreso in Yucatan state.

Recommendation: We still think Chile’s creativity and ability to craft “the beautiful coca”, makes them the odds on favorite for the 2010 Copa della Coca, but you can’t count out Mexico or Bolivia. Perennial favorite Colombia is likely to have an off year, but it will come down to the draw.

Author’s note: This story was especially personal for me and difficult to write. As many of you may know, my Mexican grandfather was smuggled into this country in a shark in 1952. That experience would go on to shape his entire life. When he was young, before the shark experience, he was gregarious, charming, the kind of hombre who could saunter into a room and turn it into a fiesta. But after being smuggled in a shark, he was much darker and he’d often drift off into thought mid-sentence, never to return…as if swallowed by a shark. When we’d go to the beach, sitting enjoying churros, his mood would change as soon as I approached the water. “Don’t get eaten by any sharks, Johnny! If you do you’ll never be the same!” he’d shout warningly at me as I stepped into the ocean. I blame that shark for why I never really knew my grandfather.

HT to FuManChu

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
-H.L. Mencken

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

from: Connie Perry < [redacted]@monteiroandco.com>
to: [mrjugglesemail]
subject: ” To Err is Human, To Really Screw Up, You Need a Computer” Popular Campus T-Shirt, CA 1980

Hello,

We are working with [Author], Director of the [Something Fancy Sounding at Some Place], Haas Fellow in Finance, and author and speaker. We are excited to be working on his new book [Book Title] ([Book details, including ISBN and price, redacted]).

I’ve included a brief description of its content below:

[Author's] [Book] is a serious yet funny book about how technology, markets, and machines rose to prominence and how the geeks came to rule and still rule the Street. In it he explains the role of technology in the crisis of 2008 as well as ways we can avoid such calamaties in the future. The book is peppered with quirky historical facts and witty comments to balance out how hard it is to see the difference between financial markets and computer networks. There are also some great visuals. [Author's] conversational style and good humor gives us a better sense of how technology shapes today’s markets. He also takes a serious and insightful look at how Wall Street should participate in the future of electronic finance.

Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

Thank you and cheers,
Connie Perry
Monteiro and Company
[redacted ph#]
www.[redacted].com

Below are a few of [Author’s] favorite quotes:
“Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code.”
—Hacker Proverb

“A computer does not substitute for judgment anymore than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage.”
—Robert McNamara

“Progress may have been all right once, but it’s gone on far too long.”
—Ogden Nash
PS: Here is a link to David in the late 1990’s presenting introductory material from [His Book]: [Youtube link]

Note that not only did she misspell “calamities”, but the emails included a black border on the left, the kind that happens when text is sloppily cut and pasted, or forwarded. My reply:

Connie, do you see that line on the left side of your email? That means you forwarded it, I believe. Not only that, but you in no way sent this to me, a person, with feelings, a heart and my own identity, because you don’t reference my feelings, my heart or my own identity in any way. You blasted this to a group of random people and the result for this poor chap [Author] is that I will never read his book. In fact, if someone asks me about [Book name], I will tell them that it is bllody [sic] awful, and that you are better off buggering a tree than attempting to read its hackneyed prose and its overly wrought conclusions.

Think about this fact the next time you lazily blast a bunch of strangers in a coldly worded spam email.

On an unrelated note, do you want to grab a drink or maybe just cut right to making out a little bit in the back of a town car? Call me.

Her reply came back within a few hours:

Well, well I take a mild offense at “lazy” and “random blast.” With my superior intellect I researched various bloggers whom I believe have feelings, heart and identities that may relate to and with a writer who is covering a very relatable topic. So sorry not to have addressed you as Mr. Juggles, sir in my hello. I guess I’m in a hurry to promote a good book. What a mess I am, doing my job.

Now on an unrelated note, I’d rather read than swap spit with you today. Please don’t call.

And my final reply:

Actually, your note which you marked as “unrelated” was actually “related.” And it’s funny that you indicated that you’d rather read than have to deal with my advances. You and your ilk, the cold-emailers of the world, do exactly the same thing to me, except in an unsolicited fashion. You probe my email account when I’d rather be doing just about anything else. It doesn’t work. Stop doing it. Try developing a relationship with a site, or a person, like by making out in the back of a town car. That is how you serve your clients’ interests.

Operator: Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Piratery Corp Inc first quarter update call. Please note that today’s conference is being recorded. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over to Captain Bigdee Mofapalous.

Captain Bigdee Mofapalous: Thanks be to ye operator wench. Firstly, if it be pleasin’ ye, I would indeed be likin’ to apologize for not releasin’ our Q4 numbers to ye sell-side sons of merbitches. But there be good reason!

Ye see, we failed to report our Q4 due to certain affairs pertaining to our accounting crew. Ye may be awares that on a piratery ship, the sailors be keepin all CPAs n’ all accountin’ staffers in a dingy, dragging behind the boat. Aye it be true, to be keepin them from contaminating the crew with their ways. But we be a courteous folk, and as such, we always dispensed their fair share o’ the rum, as well as one thoroughly depreciated whore, for the purposes of retainin their manity. Well, they got on with their drinkin’ n’ whorin’ to such excess, that they fullly created a reinvention of the double-entry accounting system, if ye know what I be sayin!!!! Whilst all this debitin’ n’ creditin’ was goin’ on and about both entry points, they was entirely forgettin’ to mind the astral calendar and let us pirates be knowin’ that fiscal year 2009 had ended indeed! Verily, an honest mistake which ‘as henceforth been fully rectified, astrally, if ye know what I be sayin’. HAR HAR. HAR!

Aye, and to show ye the good faith, we were intendin’ to be havin’ a PRE-release of our earnings, followin’ on our no-release of Q4 and fiscal year 2008. But we had been bein a-worried that any premature earnings release would spook ye investors, not knowin’ that it just be somethin that be a-happenin’ to a man so accustomed to whorin’ and not knowin’ that our situation held an entirely reasonable explanation! We be apologizin’ for these ‘ere delinquencies as enumerated above.

Secondly, I now be addressin’ our trends, which ‘ave become much less grave in character since our Q3. Aye the headwinds ‘ave abated, and now be blowin’ in an easternly fashion. We no longer be havin’ to tack for all hours o’ the day, a far more sailable sea than than the choppy waters o’ Q3 n’ Q4. Margin hatches ‘ave been batted down, but such’s pirate life in times like these. We be seein’ a resolute stabilization across the board. The wenches still be wenchin’ weakly, but the rate at which their wenchin’ was weakenin’ hasn’t worsened. When it comes to wench segment, we take what spread we can get, and they take what we be givin’ them!!!!

Lookin’ to the horizon over yonder, we’ve not seen nary a sight of the Spanish fleet that aligned itself with Captain Mopling Downstarable, one o’ our biggest competitors on all seven seas. We not be ablin’ to guarantee that nothing ruinous may happen to our fleet, except by assurin’ ye that we be the saltiest piratery dogs in this ‘ere entire piratery industry and that we not be interestin’ in doin’ anything but guttin’ that blubberours blabbering Downstarable from groin to gills!! We look to be flyin’ his intestines on our here flag ship! Expectations bein’ what they be, we point ye towards believin’ that we deliver a firm 4500 in dubloons for revenues in 2009, and earnings per share o’ 1.2 dubloons. Rapewise, 2800 be a good number to model about in ye spreadsheets, with our wench fleet at 2350 after some dispositions of the routine variety.

Operator wench kindly release the lines!

Operator: Your next question comes from Douglass Fairfundoffunds of Credit Suisse. Your line is open, please proceed.

Douglass Fairfundoffunds: Just wanted to say, great quarter guys. Just wanted to say, great quarters guys. Just wanted to say, great quarter guys. Just wanted–

Captain Bigdee Mofapalous: Operator wench, please cut off the line o’ the broken sell-siborg, the automaton be in possession o’ an infernal glitch.

Operator: Certainly sir. Our next question comes from the line of Morgan Crumpacker. Mr. Crumpacker, your line is now open.

Morgan Crumpacker: Hi, guys. I just want to echo what Doug said in congratulating you guys on a great quarter. I totally agree with him.

Captain Bigdee Mofapalous: ARGH BE GETTIN’ ON WITH IT.

Morgan Crumpacker: Sure. Just a quick question for my model. When you put our your 2007 guidance in 2006, you indicated that 2009 should be the time in which you had fully incorporating the Silver Train acquisition onto your raiding platform. But looking at your ratios for early 2009, I am having trouble seeing whether it’s flowing through or not. How should I think about that?

Captain Bigdee Mofapalous: Aye, your answer be arrivin into the pea brain on ye shoulders in the form o’ a recipe from a good friend o’ my own, one Captain Bethusela Dabringalo Scrotum. To paraphrase, in a time long ago, pirates be long lost at sea, lookin’ for wenches to commence wenchin’ with. They come across one Morgan Crumpacker and decide to be makin’ him into a wench accordin’ to the specifications o’ the sea. But after takin’ to rapin and abusin his carcass, they be hungerin’ fo’ a mighty feast! This be the recipe those sailors did employ indeed! A dead Morgan Crumpacker, a large cauldron, a casket of rum, and equal measure potato beer. Boil off Crumpackers skin, add salt to taste, and stir his carcass to keep it from stickin! Operator wench, next question.

Operator: I am showing no further questions.

Captain Bigdee Mofapalous: Aye, may ye pleasures be manifold n’ may ye enemies die in a ship fire!

Operator:With that, we conclude today’s teleconference. Thank you for joining us today.

In our research report entitled, Using Zimbabwenomics to Win Elections, we outlined the ways in which zimbabwenomics can be used to better understand election outcomes as follows:

Under normal political analysis, there are two result paths from an election, only one of which is victory:

1. Win the election
2. Lose the election

From a Zimbabwenomic perspective, there are also two result paths from an election, the difference being that BOTH lead to victory:

1. Win the election
2. Lose the election, but actually win the election, because your opponent pulls out

Ahmadinejad understood these basic concepts, and applied them to the Iranian election. He created an offshoot of the second zimbabwenomic path wherein he lost the election, but actually won the election, because he controlled the voting process and had the backing of the Supreme Leader.

As you may know, America had been the rising zimbabwenomic star of the last two years. But these recent events demonstrate that Iran now positions itself as a potential alternative to America as the center of zimbabwenomic thought.

Catherine Gillis Odelbo is president of equity research for Morningstar, responsible for Morningstar Equity Research, Financial Communications and Publications, Morningstar Real-Time Data, and Morningstar® Indexes.

Odelbo joined Morningstar in 1988 as a mutual fund analyst and from 1995 to 2000 served as senior vice president of content development, as well as publisher and editor of stock and closed-end fund research. In 2000, she was named president of retail, overseeing all print and online products for individual investors.

Sounds impressive, right? All that jazz is irrelevant too.

The key to Catherine Odelbo, and the reason you should be so long on Morningstar, all comes down to the remunerative powers of OO. Odelbo is pronounced “Oo-dle-boo”, making it the single most powerful name in the corporate world. That she has risen as high as she has is almost definitely solely due to her devastating front-back OO combo she sports, obviating the entire rest of her resume. Sets you up with an OO, slams it home with a BOO.

Recommendation: Long MORN. Our recommendation on all things Odelbo that exist to today, or will exist in the future, is long. E.g. if she ever gets securitized, or if you find some other way to invest in her, do so without hesitation.

Previous Rating: BFFAE
New Rating: BFFBAS

There has been so MUCH gossipy chatter about those other rating agencies (not mentioning names, but Moodys, S&P and that Fitch Bitch) and whether they should or would downgrade the credit rating of our country, the United States of America. But no one has asked me Melissa Moody! And my answer is YES!!!! I would!

I know a thing or two about the rest of the world. I have seen most of Europe. I have stayed in its five star hotels. I have slept with Italian boys who wooed me with vespa trips to hilltops. I have even been to Prague. You would know this already if you checked my Facebook update I did with all my pictures from my JYA. I know what is up. And I know that the US has some shaky credit and the other countries I have been to know it too, because they are so worldly and interesting and have a much better way of life than us.

I also know a thing or two about using massive amounts of credit card debt to stimulate your economy. My sophomore year was very difficult on me. I felt like I had lost a step, gained a pound or two and lost that twinkle in my eye. I tried my own version of stimulus spending, racking up $15,000 in credit card debt to spend on “infrastructure” — a little lipo, a personal trainer and a dozen dresses from bebe that were super sexy. It seemed like I would be able to hot my way right out of slump!!!! But then the bill came. Literally, the bill came and I saw it and I was like “OMG” because I totally had no way to pay it off. And that’s when I started working the street….JK!! No, my dad paid it off and I was like “I love you daddy!”, but as far as I know the US doesn’t have a daddy who can pay off their debt burden, they only have an Uncle and he wears a creepy beard and is probably too busy pointing his old-man finger at people to help out.

I am downgrading the US to Best Friend Forever But Also a Slut. My rating would change upwards if the United States reins in its seemingly unchecked fiscal recklessness, or if it shows it has a daddy who can pay off the trillions in debt they have racked up on their Treasury card, but until that time, they will be notched as a slutty issuer.

Ratings Methodology:
Hey everyone! It’s me, Melissa Moody…not that other Moody’s you have been reading about. Actually that’s why I’m here I’m just so sick and tired of that other Moody! Their ratings stink, and they don’t know nearly as much as I do about debt, it’s true, I’m maxed out on 4 out of 7 credit cards I know I have a problem but I just can’t stop,ha ha. I can do a better job than Moody’s and that is what I’m gonna do! And let’s face it, their old ratings were too complicated. I mean Aa3, Baa1, Caa2, B1 who knows what that means? My ratings will be simple:

• BFFAE (Best Friends Forever and Ever)
• BFF
• BFFLAF (Best Friends For Like Almost Forever)
• BFFBAS (Best Friends Forever But Also a Slut)
• BFFBIHH (Best Friends Forever But I Hate Her)
• Whore

I am glad to see that the current administration has proven faithful to its philosophy and is now distributing jobs without regards to qualification or merit.

The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling GM

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born.

Recommendation: It appears increasingly likely that a) most jobs will be controlled by Washington in the future and that b) these jobs will be distributed on a semi-random basis, with little regard to qualifications or merit. This provides an excellent opportunity for anyone wishing to find employment, change careers, or remake an American industry according to their hastily conceived notions. If you fall into one of these categories, we suggest you immediately contribute a modest sum to the Democratic Party of Hope, move to Washington, and wait. Develop a special trait such as a “beard that appears and disappears” that will allow you to catch the eye of a patron. Then re-design the industry of your choice. I’ve always had a taste for Plastics, myself. Or maybe Cable.

Woe to the company that ignores the customer.
-Fritz Henderson, CEO of General Motors

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Ars Technica is aimed at computer enthusiasts, Apple zealots, Microsoft fans, humans interested in science, humans interested in gaming, stop me when I get to something that indicates a woman would ever visit this site, programmers, open source advocates, the list goes on. According to a survey from last year, 2% of the readership is female. So 98 cents for every dollar (whether in terms of advertiser’s actual dollars or the publisher’s pageview inventory) spent on this ad was essentially lit on fire. If it were on the main page.

But only probably 2% of that 2% would be likely to click on this article in the gaming section (called Opposable Thumbs), a review of a game called Prototype which features a paragraph describing it thusly:

Battles between your character and the military feature bodies and cars flying this way and that as civilians are treated as little more than shrapnel. To fill your energy you can grab anyone in the world and “consume” them, first killing their body and then absorbing their body into yours. The game gleefully counts up the number of military and random passers-by you kill in each mission.

Sounds like Gossip Girl mixed with the Bachelor dressed up in a pink bow!

Recommendation: Now, this comes down to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), not Brooks Brothers or Ars, since it’s Adsense and that ad is pay-per-click. How can Adsense still target so poorly so often? Short Adsense.

General Motors — once so mighty, it made half of all new cars in the United States — has humbled itself before the American consumer. Its new television ad begins with a man’s voice intoning: “Let’s be completely honest. No company wants to go through this. . . . General Motors needs to start over to get stronger.” The ad, a montage of images seemingly meant to show everyday American life, is part of a multimedia campaign called “re: invention” that includes a corporate Web site, where consumers can track the company’s progress through Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“Because the only chapter we’re interested in,” the GM ad concludes, “is Chapter One.”

And that’s the problem. The Chapter you need to be writing is the chapter titled “Cars People in America Want to Buy, Made At Prices at Which We Will Be Sustainably Free Cash Flow Positive”. That chapter still doesn’t seem to be in your book.

More simply, the OLD GM, y’know the one that filed for bankruptcy protection a few weeks ago and the one that since 1980 has hemorrhaged cash like it was Prince Alexei after a Rasputin beatdown, looked like this:

While the new GM looks like this:

Spot the problem yet, Private Motors?

The campaign is the result of consumer research beginning last December, when the company’s executives were pilloried for haughtily coming to Washington — on a private jet — to ask for aid. After that fiasco, GM asked consumers: What do we need to do to regain your trust?

“They just kept giving us the same feedback — that we need to be brutally honest,” said Jay Spenchian, GM’s executive director of North American marketing strategy. “We need to ‘man up,’ was one of the terms that came out of the focus groups.”

I repeat, you’re a company not a lover. GM, I know that this it is difficult to even conceive a reality where this would be the case, but ideally people want to buy your cars, not get into bed with them. You don’t need to man up, or regain trust to make us open our wallets. You need to cut costs and make things people want. They just don’t understand that their goal is to make money. Nothing else.

Recommendation: Short GM. But give them credit where credit is due. They will probably bang a couple insecure freshman chicks with their sensitive-guy “trust” shtick. These girls will be drunk, and later full of regret. They’ll move GM into the friend zone during their Psych 101 Lab section a few days later. But good for GM, another notch on their belt and maybe the best they can hope for.

To be a “dick” is not always bad. Certain situations call for it. Waiting in lines requires it, whether those lines be traffic, or for takeout or taxis. Getting your best possible deal on a car? Dickhood is a must for the circumspect auto-shopper. Attractive female assets? The dick status is practically a down payment on fantastic strange. Sure, you don’t want your friends or loved one to think you are always a dick, but at the end of the day, a dick is more likely to have a great res at fantastic restaurant with a sexy broad on his arm than a Schmoe.

On the other (left) hand, a “penis” is irredeemably lame, a flaccid creature that brings none of the good qualities of a dick to the table while retaining most of the bad. A penis is immature and ineffectual but nonetheless a douchebag. A dick is aware of what it is, a penis thinks it is a dick and thus is an erroneous prick. “That guy over there with the double popped collars, he is such a penis.”

Recommendation: Long dick, short penis. From an insulting investment perspective, we’d be long “penis” as it should generate higher insult effectiveness returns. As an example, insulting someone with a “penis” can prompt them to onanistically wax for almost 300 words on the internet.

For those 65% of you who failed Level I last weekend, I futurely feel sorry for how much of your life you poured down this horrible Chartered drain. For those 50% of you who failed Level II, I used a time machine to send you well-wishing telegrams exhorting you to “Keep your chin up and next time, don’t be such a tard.” And for those 30-50% of you who neglected to pass Level III, I took a worm hole, dropped into your apartment and left a lifesize model of a failure of the last mile — when your opponent is weak, it’s incumbent upon you to go for the throat. CFAs have to be earnt. Then they have to be acknowledged to have minimal value in the real world and to have been a horrible call on the part of the newly minted CFAer.

Under the government-arranged settlement, Chrysler’s bondholders will receive $2 billion for their $6.9 billion in debt. That amounts to about 29 cents on the dollar. Nine-tenths of the creditors agreed to the deal, although most of them are banks and investment funds that are borrowers from the federal government.

Three Indiana pension funds, whose debt holdings amount to $42 million, contended that as secured lenders they should have received better treatment than such unsecured creditors as the United Auto Workers retiree health care trust fund. The UAW fund will receive 55 percent of the equity in a reorganized Chrysler while Fiat, which put up no money, will receive a 20 percent share as well as effective control of a new Fiat-Chrysler alliance.

Legal commentators have said the union received a better deal than is usual in a bankruptcy.

…

[The] decision on whether to accept the deal should have rested with the bondholders — not presented as a government ultimatum. Protecting the interests of secured creditors is the point of bankruptcy law

Au contraire! That WAS the point of bankruptcy law. Did you get that memo? Now bankruptcy is a place where secured creditors get screwed for political purposes and unsecured claims walk away with the keys to the company, while people ahead of them in line get a quarter for bothering to front the company money when it was needed most. In this case, the unsecured claims forced the filing by being so onerous and non-market, not unlike the market participants who took the most housing risk from 2004-2007, caused the US to file for bankruptcy protection (coming to a theater near you in 2021) and now are looking for handouts, so they can throw other people’s good money after their own bad. While it may be poetic that the UAW will own this slop of shit that makes cars that no one wants to buy, it’s also not fair.

What does this mean? I urge you to consider never lending any secured money to a troubled company, especially one in a political industry that employs a lot of people. It doesn’t matter what kind of collateral you have, or what kind of lien, or whether it’s Debtor-of-Possession or super ultra 1st priority magic loans, you’re risking your patient’s life investors’ money.

Recommendation: Short secured, long unsecured politically supported claims. Short existing bankruptcy law.

People care what I think. I have a prestigious blog, sir!
-Roman DeBeers on Party Down

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

from:Hopman, Bret < [redacted]@condenast.com>
to: “Hopman, Bret” < [redacted]@condenast.com>

subject: Details Magazine

Good afternoon,
In the upcoming June-July issue of DETAILS (on newsstands Tuesday, June 2), we have a piece that looks at [something probably boring and that won't be talked about on your site because there is a much better subject for your site].
Here’s the link to the story: [Redacted].
If you are interested in running something online, please be sure to show the cover (attached).

Please let me know if you have any questions or need anything else.

Thanks for your consideration!
Bret

My reply:

Bret Hopman,

I am confused. Is this a request that we run something online about it? Or are you giving us permission (thanks!)?

I’ll give you an idea of how we do things on the internet. You post something in your men’s magazine, I may or (more likely) may not give a shit enough to read it. If I were to give a shit enough to read it, and I was able to find some means of reading it, at that point I may or (more likely) may not give a shit enough to write anything about it on the internet’s most prominent satirical investment site. If, by some minor miracle, like the one that allows that oragutan in Australia to paint beautiful art or the one that allows people like you to navigate the internet and breath through your mouth at the same time, I chose to write anything about it on the internet’s most prominent satirical investment site, I would NOT in any way ask you how I should write about it nor would I care what your opinion was on the subject of whether or not to include the cover in the post. Bret Hopman of men’s magazine Details, get over yourself.

Sinceringly,
Mr. Juggles
longorshortcapital.com

Conventional wisdom has held that the transportation of narcotics requires a suitcase for the purposes of concealment and convenience of carriage. Today we learn that Chilean innovators have thrown convention out the window and created suitcases made entirely of cocaine. Moviegoers and cocaine enthusiasts know that this was basically the plot of Traffic (spoiler alert!).

The benefits of this innovation will trickle down to all of us in myriad ways. Cocaine prices should drop as cocaine trafficking efficiency increases. Instead of carrying merely the cocaine they could fit into a suitcase, they carry that much PLUS the suitcase itself all in one trip! And for vacationing miniballers who agonize over the decision of “clothes or cocaine” when packing for their destination of chioce, they can just bring both in their cocaine case with the addeded benefit of being safe from Johnny law.

I know I’ll sleep easier tonight. What’s next, making people out of cocaine?

Recommendation: Long Chilean cocaine producers; short Bolivia and Bolivian pride; long chile (because it’s delicious).

For those of you who do not have a CTA, you’d look at that and see a normal chart, nothing that screams “Trade Me.” But for those of us who are more gifted in the technical arts, we hear voices screaming in our heads saying “Buy Buy Buy” in the days surrounding April 20th. That’s because during that span of time XOM was trading within the “neck” range of a text book Bactrian Double Hump & Pump formation. Let me tease it out for you.

As you can see, the chart is clearly showing a picture of a two hump camel. And if you know anything about two hump camels, you know that when you are traveling from butt to head, after you clear the second hump their neck declines precipitously before a rapid ascent. If you can buy a stock in that desirable neck range, you are likely to experience a short term pop. This is a historically* proven tradeable phenomenon. Here is an overlay of an actual two hump camel:

Aside from the neck, after you plateau in the head range you enter an uncharted area. The stock price becomes dependent upon whether the man holding the reins of the camel decides to jump or not, something that is unknowable to even the most gifted technical analyst.

*Definition of “history” employed in this context is not universally accepted, but is permissable under SAAP

After his death Nonja inherited his paints and carried on the good work, in spite of a boyfriend called Vladimir who eats her artwork if not locked away in his cage.

Keepers believe Vladimir, who tried painting himself but kept making holes on the canvas, is jealous of his girlfriend’s success.

Recommendation: This is not just chatter, but likely insider info, so be careful how you use it. “zoo auction piantings by orangutan” are likely to go way up, sky is the limit for all simian art. Hold’em if you got em, buy’em if you don’t.

1. Have a position in a company which issues tradeable public securities (stocks, options, bonds, etc).
2. Obtain material non-public information from insiders of this same company.
3. Buy, sell, do not buy or do not sell any of this company’s tradeable public securities.
4. Send a letter to the SEC detailing at length the ways in which you are using material non-public inforomation to profit. The at length part is crucial so pretend like you are writing a doctortal thesis that you have to defend against people who will never read it because it was too long and too boring.
5. Profit.

Note: You might recognize Step 4 from How to Commit Financial Fraud and Get Away With It

Most men seek the JD to “make a lot of money” which is really just a euphimism for “power over women.” This means you sign up for four years of college and four years of college debt, maybe a few years break doing something like teaching or navel gazing in Tahiti or some shit while you polish your LSATs, then three years of law school with its accompanying three years of law school debt. At that point you have a full on JD appended to your existence, and henceforth get to spend a lot of time to make a lot of money doing something you might not hate but probably will.

Over the entire course of this process the person who sought the opposite designation, the DJ, will be pulling more strange each night than the JD will in his entire life, all with a designation he obtained at no cost.

DJ is the actual opposite of a JD as not only are its letters the reverse of JD but it goes before someone’s name not after. It comes at virtually no cost, requires almost no talent or taste, and lends itself to sleeping in and having anonymous sex with women who not only are not wearing sweaters but likely do not even own sweaters. By sourcing the “power over women” directly the DJ obviates the need for the “make a lot of money” middleman. Plus the soundtrack of their life is actually the soundtrack of their life. They lived a scored existence.

Recommendation: The fact that so many men continue to shackle themselves to the JD and ignore the DJ is a market inefficiency that will overtime converge. We would change our stance were there to be signs that JD:DJ parity was closer to occurring, such signs being the emergence of three year DJ Schools, an increase in the amount of visible giant headphones, and an uptick in the cases of gonorrhea. For now long me, DJ JD, as I have it coming and going.