The Bing Blog

Oh happy day!

2008-07-25T15:32:06Z

I’ve got a song in my heart and a smile on my face today, and not just because it’s the end of the week in the middle of summer and all the big cheeses are melting at the beach.

I looked at the news line-up this morning and saw a trend I had not noticed in quite some time. Did you spot it, too? Happiness is busting out all over, surprising the guys who make gloom for a living.

… stocks were up at the opening of the market… well, that’s nice…

… new home sales were stronger than anticipated… of course they were. People are expecting nothing but downers right now. In spite of how much we read or download or link to, we’re always surprised because what we believe will happen next is always in line with what’s going on right now… and that’s not a fair assumption at all… so we’re always surprised, both on the downside, when it arrives and then by the upside, when it inevitably comes creeping in.

… hm… durable goods orders also are up, shocking those experts whose job it is, really, not to be shocked. Are we paying them to be shocked?

Oil prices declining! Gas prices slipping back to ONLY $4 bucks a gallon! Gas up the car, mom!

There’s more! Cleaner, greener diesel? and Honda (HMC) reporting record profits, which means it still may be possible to be a car company if you know how to do things right?

And I don’t know about you, folks, but there’s part of me that just plain enjoys seeing guys whose business it is shorting stocks taking it in the, well, the shorts, you know? Bet against us, will ya?! Well, eat the hose, shorty!

See? Nothing but good stuff, all the time. Things are looking up. The sand is hot. The breeze is cool. The banks have hit bottom and are screaming back up the ramp. Our own auto makers are retooling their plants, getting ready to sell us a whole new generation of tin cans that get 30 mpg and better, and to sell those they’ll need to advertise, bringing up the whole media sector. And there’s a new iPhone, too! And a HUGE line around the block not far from here, loaded with happy consumers who can’t wait to ignore all the party poopers raining on the new gizmo. Go, Apple (AAPL)! Spread that sunshine, right? Sure!

Could it get any better? Well, okay, it could, I’ll grant you that. But I’ll take what we’ve got for now.

Monday will come soon enough.

Ask Bing: The case of the ghost bully

2008-07-24T19:43:59Z

An interesting letter in today’s Ask Bing grab bag. It’s been a while since I’ve looked over your questions - I don’t know why, that’s just how I roll.

Have you noticed that, by the way? “That’s how I roll.” It’s very big. That and the ironic fistbump, first pioneered by Mr. and Mrs. Obama on a national scale.

Anyhow, take a peek at the questions today. And send yours along to bingblog@gmail.com. I’ll be waiting there for you.

6 things to do with an “activist investor”

2008-07-22T17:53:56Z

News that Carl Icahn will be joining the board of Yahoo (YHOO) is clearly good news for everybody involved. One can only imagine the sense of eager anticipation with which Jerry Yang and his fellow board members are anticipating the arrival of the “activist investor.”

I put the phrase “activist investor” in quotes because it’s something of a euphemism, sort of like “freedom fighter” when used in association with the word “Afghanistan.”

Be that as it may, I’m sure there is nothing but smiles and capitalist fist-bumping going on in the streets and corridors of Sunnyvale, where Mr. Icahn’s insights into the daily management of the Yahoo business organization will, I am sure, be most welcome, as will be the pleasure of his affable and reticent company.

Sometimes when an important visitor or new associate comes to call, it’s tough to figure out how to prepare for the great event. Here are a few thoughts on how Mr. Yang and his associates might work it out:

As a statement on how seriously Mr. Icahn takes the various strategic options facing the company, fellow board members could don conical caps with elastic chin straps and greet his arrival with the tooting of little paper horns. Confetti will be optional.
As an expression of fiscal restraint, lunch should be served on paper plates. Plastic spoons and forks are advisable. While Spam is not required, mid-shelf cold cuts should suffice.
In recognition of Mr. Icahn’s expertise as an operating executive, every piece of paper generated by the company’s various segments should be deposited in a polite pile by his seat. A subsequent meeting should be set up immediately to glean wisdom based on his command of the details.
During all board meetings, an open conference call line should be established between the Yahoo board room and the office of Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer in Redmond, Washington, to avoid confusion and lack of clarity in subsequent communications.
While it is almost certain that Mr. Icahn, with limited experience with the Internet and its many challenges, will take a low profile at board meetings, management and the existing board should make sure to listen carefully to anything the new member has to say, in the unlikely event he is moved to speak on any given issue, and to avoid the impulse to blurt imprecations. A fresh perspective from a smart source untarnished by jaded experience is always valuable.
Under no circumstances should Mr. Icahn or any of his associates be offered any financial incentive to go away. This would obviously be a highly insulting move, since he has joined the board as an activist dedicated to the well-being of fellow Yahoo shareholders everywhere and by no means for personal lucre.

Those are just some initial thoughts. I’m sure Mr. Yang and his team are coming up with more and better ones even as we speak.

Mogul madness in paradise

2008-07-21T19:10:20Z

Just a little story from the dark edge of the continent.

I was staying for the past few days at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It’s a really nice place. A few years ago, it had gone kind of tatty, but they implemented a big revamp not long ago and did a terrific job. Sometimes when they buff a joint up after a long period of escalating decrepitude, they excise its character, history and whatever charm the old edifice had left. Sometimes, also, they fix up the lobby and leave the upstairs rooms still haunted by the ghosts of dead guys who were murdered in their bathtubs.

I stayed at one of those places a few weeks ago. In the lobby were pictures of all the great movie stars who were feted there, back in the day when you could fit all of the motion picture industry into one ballroom. How glam those pictures were! Clark Gable! Betty Grable! Tyrone Power! The Duke! All drunk off their butts, happy to be clustered like the pleiades around their glittering tables. My room upstairs, on the other hand, smelled of cheap cigars and the tired feet of washed-up private eyes hired to spy on the naughty couple down the hall.

The Hilton today is no such thing. Downstairs and up the walls are bedecked with pictures of the gang that loved to hang there when glamour walked hand-in-hand with talent and success. My favorite is in the Men’s Room on the Lobby Floor. Frank, Dean and Peter Lawford, walking down the strip near the Golden Nugget, lean and happy, skinny little ties over their cool, flat tummies. Opposite this shot, Bogart stares out, slightly petulant, a just-read letter in his elegant hand, from a picture by Hurrell, circa 1935. Near the ballroom, where so many grand events were held when there were such things, Louis Armstrong, Tony Curtis and his then-wife Janet Leigh, Marilyn, James Dean… all shot pretty much right where you are standing as you look at them and wonder where all that, whatever it was, has gone.

On the ground level, Trader Vic’s, long a sort-of tikki joke with cheesy drinks and flaming stuff on sticks, once dark and cramped under a low ceiling, has also been knocked open to the pool and sky, keeping what was cool and worthy of retro admiration, jettisoning the ironic eau de decomp that had collected around the old tropes over the years. Quite a scene there on Saturday night. The aqua lights of the gigantic swimming pool glow, illuminating the crisp, white cabanas and suites that ring its vast, watery depths. After a couple of Scorpion bowls, people can get kind of noisy. Good sushi. Very short skirts are apparently back, and stingy-brim hats and stubble for the guys.

There’s no center in LA, and until you get it, you think that’s a bummer. What it really means is that, like a giant beehive, every little cell in the honeycomb is just as potentially hot as the next. So improbably, where you are right then is just possibly where you ought to be. And the Hilton, right now, is no exception, particularly if you don’t mind the slight sensation that the specter of Norma Desmond just brushed by your elbow.

The rooms, too, are kind of marvellous. Mine was, at any rate. Not fussy. Clean and open, with a little patio you could lie out on to observe the action at the pool and bar down below.

I say all this to make a point as clearly as I possibly can: in the world of business, it really doesn’t get any better. Did I mention I was there on business? Well, I was. And anybody who cannot appreciate an experience like this one in the line of duty should probably be shot, or perhaps be put away. Yeah, that’s right. Anybody who can’t be happy at the Beverly Hilton should be put in a mental institution.

So I was sitting on my little patio taking an hour in which I attempted to entertain not one phone call or a single message on my BlackBerry. The sun was hot. The breeze was cool. The sound of happy people splashing rose from the azure pool several floors below. On the patio above me, suddenly, came a voice. An ugly voice. Harsh. Grating. Aggrieved.

“I told SAM…” it said, “But SAM doesn’t LISTEN… to ANYBODY!… And I am SICK… of HIM!… and I am SICK… of YOU… and everybody NOT LISTENING TO ME!” I don’t know if I am capable of capturing the rhythm of the thing. Tremendous anger, righteous indignation, dripping with bitterness, and the feeling of having sustained a powerful wrong that had been visisted on him by countless enemies both seen and, more heinous, CLOSE BY… The complaints — for the one-way discourse was made up of nothing but complaints — were almost wrenched out of a spirit so tortured it could barely formuate complete sentences.

It went on like this for quite some time. After a while, I took my towel and went inside. I had a meeting to go to anyhow.

The next morning at 7AM, I was awakened by what at first I thought was the squawking of a giant crow. As my head cleared, I realized this was unlikely. Crows do not nest in the upper floors of urban hotels. The only birds I saw there, in fact, were tiny sparrows and the plastic owls they put on the rooftops to scare away other predators. Crows, maybe, come to think of it.

At any rate, this squawking — enraged, deliberate, desperately unhappy – was coming through two layers of heavy curtain and a hermetically-sealed sliding glass door.

“I don’t want to SEE you EVER AGAIN!…” it was saying. “And if you see ME… or any member of my FAMILY!… I WANT YOU TO TURN AROUND!… AND GET THE F**K OUTTA THERE! I’m the one with the MONEY… and PEOPLE… are GOING… to LISTEN TO ME!!”

It went on. I opened the doors and stepped out on the patio to hear as much as I could of the torrent of invective pouring from the opulent space above me. All I saw was the back of a tiny, extremely bronzed bald pate bobbing up and down, and one edge of a small table at which the unnamed mogul in question was sitting. On the table was a glass of orange juice and a glass of prune juice.

I’ve been thinking since then about the number of people I know who are very rich, very successful, and what that access to power and affluence has had upon their characters. And I’m very slowly coming to a conclusion. Yes, we all know that money does not buy happiness. Of course, that’s ridiculous. Of course it does. We know it does. We also know that lack of money very often buys misery. As my dad used to tell me, “Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.”

But thinking about the miserable loser on the floor above me, I find myself wondering whether there is a tipping point, where the accumulation of too much power, too much money, actually produces in their recipient the exact opposite of all that money is supposed to buy. That perhaps it’s lonely at the top because the person you have become when you get there isn’t fit for human consumption. That maybe it’s better to be in the middle of things, because that where people are clustering together for warmth and still having a little bit of fun.

I’m home now, by the way, and it’s good to be back. Maybe too much of a good thing is just that.

Bad news travels fast. Good news, not at all

2008-07-21T18:50:14Z

This securities analyst, who himself works for a firm on the brink of ruin, took the opportunity the other day to bring down my entire sector. It wasn’t hard. He simply wrote up the absolutely worst, most pessimistic doomsday scenario for my industry, and then applied it to every company in it.

He was alone in his assessment of the situation, of course. There are dozens of others who don’t see things that way. But in the current climate, he hit publicity pay dirt. Put together depressed reporters on the verge of losing their jobs, nervous - hell, frightened - investors, and a banking industry that is taking the hose, and you have a scenario when any chicken little is immediately promoted to top rooster in the imploding henhouse of capital.

If you say things will be all right one day and here’s why, nobody is going to listen to you right now. If you say that Armageddon is at hand, everybody runs for the hills and tells the world what they just heard. It’s natural. We’re in that part of the cycle.

Dawn will break one day. It always does. But in the meantime, the red death holds sway over all.

In this interim between good cheer and sanity, I’d like to remind you of the following things that were certainly going to happen in my lifetime so far:

A nuclear war was going to sweep across the Earth, ending life on the planet as we know it;
The Russians were going to bury us;
Overpopulation was going to end life on Earth as we know it;
All of Southeast Asia was going to fall like a bunch of dominoes to the commies;
We’re on the Eve of Destruction;
Japan was going to take over the entire world economy and run everything;
Y2K was going to melt down every computer on the planet, leading to the end of life on Earth as we know it;
Microsoft (MSFT) was going to conquer everybody and end capitalism on earth as we know it;
There will be no more honeybees;
Global warming will end life on Earth as we know it.
Nostradamus predicted that life on Earth as we know it will end in about six minutes;
Life on Earth as we know it will end on 12/12/2012. I’m not sure why. Perhaps you can fill me in on that.
China is the awakening giant and will run the world very soon;
Robert Downey, Jr. is done in show business, can’t get insured and will never make another film.

And so forth. Why do we listen to this kind of stuff? Why do we always believe it? If we’re going to make stuff up to conform to our current view of the world, why do the lone, shrill voices of despair always grab the headlines?

And for the record, my business is not going away. We will live to see that security analyst thrust from the bosom of conventional wisdom, exiled to the job of writing and distributing his own newsletter.

Reassurances that really make me nervous

2008-07-15T14:35:36Z

There are several statements that are recognized as famously untrue the moment they are uttered. Some are not printable in this context but have to do with certain aspects of sexual restraint. Others are more businesslike, such as:

“This investment has great upside with virtually no downside risk.”
“Our new pension plan is a terrific improvement on our old one.”
“This company is not for sale under any circumstances.”
“There are no further headcount reductions in the works.”
“I have nothing but confidence in Morty. He’s a great senior officer and a true friend.”

The latter, of course, is the last thing uttered by the CEO before the Morty in question is noisily shoved out a window from a very high floor.

In that regard, the following AP wire story gave me the willies this morning:

ASSOCIATED PRESS – 7/15/08
FDIC CHAIR: DEPOSITS IN NATION’S BANKS ARE SAFE

The nation’s banking system is “absolutely safe” and Americans’ insured deposits in banks protected, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Tuesday.

“Insured deposits are absolutely safe,” Sheila Bair, FDIC chair, said in an interview on CBS’ “The Early Show.” “The banking system as a whole is absolutely safe.”

The FDIC insures bank deposits of up to $100,000 and up to $250,000 for funds in retirement accounts such as an IRA.

Bair said that while there will likely be more bank closings — like that of IndyMac Bank, which last week became the largest regulated thrift to fail — they won’t occur on a large scale and should be put in “appropriate context.”

“We’ve had five bank closings this year,” Bair said. “I won’t say that banks don’t have challenges right now. They do.” But, she noted, “No insured depositor has ever lost a penny of insured deposits throughout the FDIC’s 75-year history.”

Know what I mean?

An open letter to Freddie and Fannie

2008-07-11T16:48:45Z

Dear Kids,

Just a few thoughts on what you can expect when Uncle Sam takes over. It’s not going to be all that bad. But things will be different with your new proprietor, and it never hurts to be prepared for a brand new corporate culture.

First, you’re going to have a lot more paperwork. Oh, I know you think you’ve had a lot so far, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. Financial institutions sort of invented the stuff. Add a layer of government on top of that and you’re going to put the entire logging industry back on its feet. This is because, while large corporate bureaucracies always drive accountability to wafer-thin levels — spreading it out over the entire system if they can – nobody does this better than the Feds. Trying to ascertain who made a decision on an issue is like trying to figure out which bee just irrigated a specific chamber in the hive.

Second, your lunch hours will be shorter, and your workday more regularized. Did you ever read a book about the Siberian gulag, what life was like there? Well, it’s not quite as cold, but not so different. Wake up. Go to the rock pile. Go home. Wake up. Go to the rock pile. You’ll get used to it.

On the other hand, instead of being an employee per se, you will, in fact, be part of a permanent government that rules this nation year-in, year-out regardless of who is in power at the top. Your uber-bosses will change and new ones will arrive who are pretty much the same as the old ones. This is different than corporate life, where eccentricity often confers power. Your immediate managers will be Commissars three levels down from the politicians who pass in and out of government agencies like tumbleweeds over the tundra. They will never go away. But the chance of finding them on a golf course while the bank is burning down is minimal.

You will, of course, have to sell your snappy outfits, tasty footwear and juicy ties and scarves. Go to your local big-box clothing store. Acquire three gray suits. Ties may be in black or gray, and keep the patterns to yourself. A pair of enormous black shoes will complete the ensemble.

Did I mention that if you had an expense account you just lost it? I’m not sure how many of you Freddies and Fannies do lunch. I don’t usually see you out and about. But from here on in, you can break out your attache case, because it’s going to have a permanent PB&J in it or, if you are on the west coast, something with sprouts.

Contrariwise, you can also kiss those long, frenzied weekends and ruined vacations and holidays goodbye. Government workers are not encouraged to do overtime, and they go home at 5:00 p.m. unless the Martians have just landed and some form of response is necessary. Just look at the way they handled Katrina. It’s not like they didn’t get down there, eventually. They just did it on Government time.

On the whole, it won’t be a huge shock, I don’t believe, to move from corporate governance to government corporatude. It might even be an improvement. I mean, how much fun are you having right now anyhow?

Stay in touch. Don’t forget to write. In triplicate, if possible.

Luv ya,

Dad

The case of the unpopped corn

2008-07-10T16:35:57Z

A friend sent me a video yesterday that really scared me. It shows a series of clips of people around the world arranging their cell phones around a small handful of unpopped popcorn. After their phones are made to ring in unison, the corns seem to pop as a result of weird vibes, radiation, heat or whatever is apparently emitted by the cellphones.

I saw the video and my first thought was, “I don’t care how stupid it looks on me. I’m getting Bluetooth.”

This subliminal message turns out to be the purpose of the video. Short story: it’s a hoax, a viral attempt to scare people about their cellphones enough to make the mental leap to the hands-free variety. Why an electronic bug up your canal is preferable to a hot cell in your ear is anybody guess. But that was the marketing concept. And it worked, at least on me.

The Web giveth and the Web taketh. YouTube was used as the medium to disseminate this hoax because, like many online venues, it is without filter for the most part and all things on it are essentially of equal value. True or false is nugatory. Is the cat really saying “Oh my my” or is it just yowling? You decide.

At the same time, others cruise the value-free environment busting people. This is quite evident on wikipedia, where a cadre of tight sphincters patrol to weed out any inconsistencies, frivolities or, at this point, fun. And so it is that Gawker came up with the blog that busted our fraudulent popcorn poppers, pooping on their parade.

What does this all lead to? A general headset, when one is cruising the Web, that all belief should be suspended, that everything that seems real just may not be? That time eventually wounds all heels?

Do we emerge with more or less faith in the things we see and hear? I really don’t know. And I’m still getting a Bluetooth.

7 things that make Sun Valley better than a normal summer camp

2008-07-09T15:56:33Z

As most of you know, I am sure, we are now in the midst of Mogulmania Week at the Herb Allen conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. At that pristine and august location, business honchos meet, break bread, and attempt to keep their gasbags aloft in rooms drained of available oxygen by the collective weight of all that ego.

Me, I’m jealous of the guys who get to go. For many years, my parents sent me to summer camp and, I’ll be honest with you, for the most part it was pretty much a nightmare. If you have to go to a camp — and it’s apparent that for big cheeses this is pretty much a mandatory exercise – Sun Valley is way better than the camps I was forced to attend.

In what way?

I had to travel by bus with a bunch of screaming kids who wanted to punch me in the glasses. The assembled moguls mostly travel to Sun Valley in their own private planes, and are delivered to a tidy little landing strip from whence they are whisked away to their destination in privacy and comfort.
I had to stay in a bunk with a couple of sinks we all had to share and a very public bathroom. One bulb, hanging on a fixture above our heads, provided all illumination. At night, we had to use flashlights to read our comics under the covers. At Sun Valley, moguls have their own private Idahos in more ways than one.
Cabins, of course, were one-sex only, twelve or so boys or girls per bunk. Moguls are permitted to bring their spouses and enjoy full connubial privileges. We had to go out onto the ball field for that.
We were forced to hike up hill and dale and engage in a wide number of rustic activities. On one canoe trip, my face was completely eaten by tiny gnats and I nearly got trichinosis from undercooked pork chops. Moguls at the Allen summer camp do engage in light rusticity, but nothing that would smear their Guccis, and the only one likely to eat your face is very often smiling into it.
Speaking of food, the stuff provided at my summer camp was pretty bad. I’m betting the moguls can do better than meatloaf and canned corn.
Once you got to my camp, there was no way to communicate with people back home and nobody knew what you were doing for weeks at a time unless you wrote postcards or letters at rest hour. At Sun Valley, there are more journalists around than there are ants on a chocolate-covered stick. Five minutes after Bob has a little chat with Betty about the upside implications of subprime, the sighting is reported on a host of online vehicles, generating the kind of speculation infinitely preferable to actual news for many media outlets.
I was very homesick a lot of the time. Not so with our camping moguls. They can yell at people six, seven, eight times a day on BlackBerry and cell phones, then disappear into the gigantic thought bubble that hovers over the place for as long as they like. The best of both worlds!

Finally, after all was said and done I made friends at summer camp that I missed very much when I went back to my real world.

I don’t think moguls really have that problem.

Financial websites: A call to action

2008-07-08T17:19:39Z

I just spent a few minutes on a variety of websites. I’m not going to single them out, not because they’re not good (of course they are, they’re quite deft and professional and excellent in every way).

They just made me want to kill myself.

Now, as lachrymose as I may be at times, this is a solution to life’s problems that has rarely occurred to me since I was out of college and stopped reading Kafka for laughs. But I believe it would now be easy to make the case that this is the worst things have been since the Depression of the 1930s. Looking at the news, it’s possible to come to the conclusion that any light anybody sees at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train.

The last time this happened to our economy, the public had one great solution to the challenge of keeping the national spirits up: stupid movies. This explains the entertainments that were popular between 1929 and World War II. Screwball comedies. Musicals featuring concentric circles of feathered women dancing, swimming. Horse operas.

The Internet now faces a similar opportunity which, if not taken at its crest, may lead to the demise of the medium. This is most true, I think, of financial websites, which may, if they are not careful, assume the role of the cranky old uncle at the wake who sits in a chair in the corner and refuses to get drunk with the rest of the mourners.

The job here is quite clear: to amuse as well as inform, and to give people something to think about while we all wait out this suicidal swoon brought about, in large part, by the same people who still control the message issued by the markets. Lehman Brothers (LEH), for instance, recently wrote down a staggering amount as a testament to its lack of overall comprehension in advance of current events. Yet Monday, when its analyst wrote down the entire media sector, Wall Street jumped off the ledge along with him. Go figure.

But the hell with that. That’s not going to change. What we can change is the agenda of what we’re putting into our heads. Do we need to hear about more layoffs? More writedowns? More end-of-the-world scenarios? I think not!

Instead, let’s consider the following:

Summertime brings with it great weather and a chance to relax… except for those who have to stay at home with a bunch of screaming kids and can’t go on that vacation away from it all because of the price of fuel driving the cost of travel through the roof…

No, wait. That’s not right. Sorry. Let’s start over.

There has never been a better time to buy an automobile! Prices are way down, incentives are up, and some companies are even paying for two years of free gasoline in order to get you into the showroom… because… well… hm.

Okay, then. Let’s try this:

The marketplace now offers a host of fabulously-priced securities that are quite literally trading at a fraction of their true value. If you believe in the system, and that this old economy of ours will come roaring back very soon, now is absolutely the time to pick up all those terrific properties that are hopefully trading at all time lows.
Homes, too, are now available that were once out of reach, as more and more people are forced to default on their mortgages and surrender their family abodes to the harsh gavel of foreclosure.
And puppies are still so darned cute!

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Wake up and smell…no coffee

2008-07-02T15:16:23Z

Aren’t analysts obnoxious? On the heels of the news that Starbucks will be closing about 5% of its stores nationwide, the Associated Press reports that assorted pundits feel the cuts haven’t gone deep enough. “Starbucks Corp.’s (SBUX) plan to close several hundred stores is a step in the right direction,” says the AP, “but analysts say it may not be enough to solve the problems facing the company.”

Isn’t that just like the Street? You give them 600 on the altar of sacrifice, and they want more. They’re like kids with potato chips or cookies. They can’t stop eating once they’ve gotten a taste of the good stuff. No, wait. Maybe that’s like sharks with a bucket of chum.

The story goes on to suggest an interesting aspect of the situation. “Starbucks did not give details about which locations will be closed, but Stephen Kron of Goldman Sachs said he thinks the closings will be weighted to areas that have been hit the hardest by slumps in the housing industry and the broader economy.”

This would make sense. We are already a nation of haves and have-nots, of huge discrepancies between the rich and the poor, two sides of the tracks, the good malls with cool and sexy anchor stores and the ones that depend on acres of wholesale shoe establishments.

It would not be surprising to find that we are now a nation in which some people have access to really good coffee and others do not, where those who have defaulted on their home loans must walk for miles to get a decent latte. They sure can’t afford to drive.

Of course, who can?

The bear rears up and… whines despondently

2008-07-01T17:25:20Z

So we’re officially in a bear market. You don’t have to tell anybody in a publicly traded company about it, of course. We’re in it every day. We feel it in a million different ways, in everything we do. Here are just a few:

When you talk with a reporter covering your business, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. They sigh. They mutter. They can barely come up with coherent questions. “So…” they murmur into the phone, their hearts heavy with impending layoffs and industry doom, “… what’s the rationale for your acquisition/divestiture/other again?” Much of the time, they haven’t even read the associated documentation. They’re just too sad to party.
When you talk with an analyst about your business, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. They snarl. They growl. They are defensive about their indices. Their last six write-ups have been dead wrong for a variety of reasons, but analysts have a tough time being wrong, they are never actually wrong, not really. Something must be wrong with YOU that made them be wrong, so they are quite naturally churlish about your whole situation. There is no upside. Why do you keep talking about one?
When you talk with sale people, they can barely lift their heads from their tabletops. Their knuckles are red with knocking on doors that will not open.
When you talk to merchandisers, automotive manufacturers and others who must advertise in order to sell their products, they can barely… well, you know. They cannot buy ads because their have less free cash flow with which to do so, but if they do not sell ads they will not move product and so will not have cash to buy ads and move product. They are hamsters on a wheel, with the smell of yesterday’s sawdust in their nostrils.
When you talk to investors… it’s not advisable. They will chew your face off if you do.

Except for the guys who saw the dark side all along. The short sellers. The crafty few who saw the whole thing coming all along and bet correctly on which way the water would spin on its way down the vortex. They’re the ones walking down the Street, whistling a merry tune. Makes you want to smash them, don’t it?

The revenge of the Blackberry

2008-06-30T15:54:27Z

I tried to do the impossible last week. I tried to get away. And I did it, too. For about three hours. And then… Then I paid for it.

Last Thursday morning, I woke up in Santa Barbara. It’s a beautiful town, a little chilly in the morning, but it warms up nicely after the sun burns off the haze. I had left strict instructions to my department not to bother me unless the world was exploding. The world rarely does that, actually, so I thought it might be possible for me to leave my cell phone and Blackberry in our room when we went downtown for a little walk in the California light.

By way of background, let me articulate my long-held Law on the subject of vacation: Every minute of interruption for a business reason requires an hour of time to re-establish equanimity. I refer to this, modestly, as Bing’s Law. It means, for instance, that a one-minute phone call produces anxiety, aggravation and thought that demands a full hour to burn off. A ten minute call eats up 10 hours of head space. And a full conference call can wreck a whole weekend.

For this reason, I try to make sure, on the few days I escape from the crushing, omnipresent, omnivorous business bubble, that my electronics are near for only one very early morning interchange and a similar shot of reality near bedtime. Anything more and I might as well be working.

Fine. I took a walk analog. Sue me.

At about 2 PM, my wife looked at her cell phone, probably to check for the time, and saw that she had six messages. That’s not good. She checked in. It was my office. In the two or so hours I had been out of touch, Atlantis had cracked open and fallen into the sea. I’m not going to tell you what it was. Some butthead did his butthead thing, that’s all. Suffice it to say my presence was required, if only digitally.

So I sat on a bench next to a bum with a smelly sleeping bag and a foot-long beard. I envied him.

I dealt with the situation until it was resolved as much as possible. Then I got up and tried to re-enter the world where people have uninterrupted thoughts and feelings for a few hours now and then.

In the end, it’s the illusion that gets you, the hope that truly destroys your peace of mind. Or maybe it’s just the hubris to believe that escape is possible. Hubris is always punished. We must appease the gods.

For the rest of the weekend, I carried my cell phone the whole time. It didn’t ring once.

Building Consumer Confidence

2008-06-25T17:52:28Z

I’ve read a bunch this morning about how we’re all losing our consumer confidence. It’s no wonder. I don’t have to tell you the reasons. People have confidence when they have a feeling of stability. When the bedrock under your feet starts to shift, you lose that confidence. Between the price of fuel, the value of our homes declining, and the raft of daily bad news we are now addicted to shoving into our faces every day, it’s almost inevitable.

Just think back the days when we didn’t have cable news, didn’t have online updates, didn’t have BlackBerrys or cell phone alerts. We woke up. We had breakfast. We went to work. We came home. Maybe we checked in with the news now and then, either on all-news radio or on the nightly network news program, delivered to us by some gray avuncular presence who always played it pretty much down the middle and seldom, we believed, reported total hooey.

Flip forward. Addicted to the CNBC crawl. Glued to stations that blare BREAKING NEWS about stuff that isn’t breaking one bit. Trends played like forest fires. Buttheads opining like giant flaming gasbags 24/7. Newspapers competing with bloggers to see who can catch the common attention for the next five minutes. Is it any wonder we’re freaked out?

Sure, there is a reality that we’re all aware of, and it does certainly bite. But doesn’t reality always kind of suck? If you lived during the Crusades and were forced to march to the Middle East to kill total strangers because they were not Christian, would that have been a better time in which to live? If you were kicking around in the 1950s and had to offer loyalty pledges every day at your job, wondering all the time when the big mushroom cloud would blossom over the city around you, would that be better? How about the 60s? Was that better? Or the 90s, where a fine mist of greed suffused the air and working people had to watch as their companies were gobbled up by guys who are now widely perceived as philanthropists?

Look. Throughout the course of human history, life on earth has been a struggle, a disappointment to most, a tragedy to some, a triumph to a few. But for most of us, the small things in life make it worthwhile, not the megatrends that make us nuts and take place around us. People managed to live through the plague years in Europe 500 years ago. Aren’t things better than that now? We have IPods.

After all the windbaggery, all the “news” offered by the depressed and desperate people who work in the media business, all the grotesque ploys being foisted upon us by oil barons, hedge hogs and other forces of chaos, there is still every reason to have confidence, if we want it.

Here’s my recipe:

Drive less
Keep your home until it regains its value. You know it will.
Stay in your job and try to be as happy as possible.
If you don’t have a house, now is a good time to buy one.
Don’t buy stocks. Only people who run the stock market profit by it.
Invest in only safe, insured vehicles that you don’t need to watch every day.
Get out there every goddamn weekend and pump as much money as you can back into the economy.
Stop watching cable news, financial news outlets, and get off the frickin’ blogs, except for this one.
Use the Internet to buy things. That’s what it’s for.
Wait until things get better.

They will. They always do. We can, in fact, hurry that process up. Three-quarters of our economy is built upon our willingness to part with our money in exchange for goods and services. We can affect that metric. But only if we have the confidence to do so.

Light traffic in LA, and other upsides of a down economy

2008-06-24T18:38:55Z

I’m in the LA office today, a lot earlier than usual. Know why? I mean, not why I’m in LA because that’s none of your business, but why I’m in early? Because there was no traffic.

Let me say that again. There was no traffic. This is LA, and there was no traffic.

Those unfamiliar with LA may fail to appreciate the magnitude of that statement. Let me give you a few others that may equate:

I went to the supermarket and there was no pensioner in front of me on line with 10,000 coupons;
I sat in Coach the other day, and there was no crying baby spitting up right next to me;
I took a rush-hour subway in New York yesterday and a group of thugs got up to give an old lady a seat;
I went to a Paris boutique last week and they were very friendly in spite of the fact that I didn’t buy anything;
I had lunch at a midtown restaurant last Tuesday, and they didn’t offer me $16-per-bottle water five times until I finally relented and bought some;
I went to Las Vegas recently, and nobody commented on how the 115-degree heat didn’t matter because “it’s dry heat”;
On my last visit to Japan, nobody offered me their business card.

I rented a car at LAX and took the 10 into town. It was clear sailing the whole way. Yesterday, I went to the office and it took me ten minutes. There was a minor hangup at one traffic light. And then, this morning, I made a trip that used to take me an hour… in eight minutes. It was creepy. It was like the early scenes in an apocalyptic movie. The fluid road stretched out before me, and my rented Avalon cut through it like a hot shark through the overly warm Pacific. And now I’m here, with time to kill.

No traffic in LA. More people car pooling? Summer, and people working from home?

Thousands of cars owned by people who can no longer fuel them up?

Anyway you look at it, it’s good news. Unless, you know, it’s not.

Recession? Inflation? Help is on the way!

2008-06-23T14:40:25Z

I took a look around the blogosphere this morning, and it’s clear we’re in need of some kind of assistance.

Half the places offer guides for how to deal with recession. The other half give us how-to’s on what to do about inflation. The third half give us both. Do the math. Something’s not right.

The recession guides offer a bewildering array of interesting facts, approaches and common sense bromides. The take-away, pretty much, is that we’re supposed to spend wisely, save with sagacity, hunker down and don’t lose heart.

The inflation guides often involve purchasing the right stuff in the right places, save what we can, and also do some hunkering of some kind.

Frankly, the whole thing confuses me a lot. I’ve read a bunch of them, on both sides, and it’s hard to differentiate between what to do in a recession and what to do in an inflation. Both situations seem to involve:

Some balance of saving and spending
Some form of hunkering
Patience
Keeping your job if you have one and/or getting one if you don’t
Eating a diet low in saturated fat and salt

I’m kind of doing all those things, but I don’t feel prepared for a sustained inflation, for example. In an inflationary environment, the idea of responsibly saving seems counter-intuitive to me. If my money is dwindling in value, shouldn’t I spend all of it while it’s worth more?

If we’re in an recession, why should I put my money in a bank the way so many pundits, economists and assorted wisenheimers suggest? Shouldn’t I be stimulating the economy? Isn’t that my duty as a citizen?

On the other other hand, why are we now required to read up on strategies for both recession and inflation. This seems unfair to me. I would like to be worried about only one economic Armageddon at a time. I realize these things come in threes, though. Recession. Inflation. What’s next?

Let me know what you think, if you have the time. What would you find more helpful in this space:

More thoughts on what to do during a recession, from one every bit as capable as the next idiot;
Additional wisdom on strategies during inflationary times, offered by an individual whose level of expertise is never in doubt;
A guide to the third alternative (please tell me what it is and I’ll do the guide).

In the meantime, why don’t we all take the rest of the day off? Sure, it’s summer. But that’s a strategy that’s never out of place at any time of the year.

Why the perp walk for Tannin and Cioffi?

2008-06-20T14:33:58Z

Another batch of alleged miscreants was arrested yesterday, swept up in the subprime hedge fund situation, which is the worst financial scandal of the decade, unless you can think of another, which I would be happy to hear.

The thing that struck me was the whole perp walk thing. Yesterday it was the two dudes from Bear Stearns, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi. I’m sure you saw it all on CNBC already. Two well-dressed guys trying with as much dignity as possible to look nonchalant as they are marched, handcuffed, into a hoosegow. If this was the 1950s, they would have had their fedoras neatly draped over the shackles. But men don’t wear hats anymore, unless you count baseball caps and that wouldn’t have really done the trick anyhow.

In passing let me just mention that I think Mr. Tannin and Mr. Cioffi handled their perp walks very well. I have often considered what I would do if I were accused of a crime and paraded like a prize sow down a walk of shame, and I’m just not sure. Crying is bad. Makes you look guilty. Smiling is bad. Makes you look guilty. A thoughtful expression, without a tie, is perhaps best, even though that also makes you look guilty.

Wait a minute. How is it possible NOT to look guilty on a perp walk? The answer is… it’s not.

So isn’t the perp walk essentially punishment BEFORE the benefit of a trial?

So I guess my question is… why the perp walk? Did the several hundred other alleged wrongdoers who were arrested yesterday have to endure it? Were the two going anyplace? Weren’t they in fact surrendering to authorities? Did somebody expect one or both to escape, running like mad through the streets, taking the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building to lob themselves onto the heads of passing pedestrians? Were the media alerted to the time and place of the perp walk, to get the maximum publicity value for prosecutors from the event? Of course they were.

Who else should get one, if these two alleged sleazoids meritied the full treatment? Can’t you think of some? Sure you can. If you’re having a problem, go back and Google “subprime mortgage,” pick out a few of the more dramatic examples of lousy financial management bordering on fiscal irresponsibility… many of those guys are exiting with exit bundles the size of a goiter. Inside traders are routinely harvested. Many have gone on to highly successful afterlives and are quoted with respect in the Wall Street Journal every week or hailed as great philanthropists. Why no perp walk for them?

How about the individuals responsible for the ethnic cleansing of middle Europe? Did you see any of them in a perp walk? Or the former Nazis who have, over the years, been quietly deported back to some jolly fatherland? Or the latest multi-millionaire musician indicted in some violent act on their spouse or artistic competitor?

If he is indicted, will Eliot Spitzer get one when he surrenders to the forces of moral rectitude?

The only full-fledged perp walks I can recall in the recent past are for 1) madams of high-priced call girl services, 2) Paris Hilton and 3) white collar doofuses who were caught after decades of Federal, State and Local inattention allowed many of the crimes they are alleged to have committed.

So what’s the story? Whyfore? Whereas?

The Brooklyn prosecutor who held the press conference after the perp walk was very stern. He outlined all the crimes of which Tannin and Cioffi (among many, many others) are accused. He then virtually scolded his audience, making sure we, the public, kept in mind that people in this matter were innocent until proven guilty and should have every right to establish their innocence in a court of law.

So then… why the perp walk, huh?

PR Kudos of the day… (First of a series)

2008-06-19T20:30:40Z

The award goes to the communications executives for the oil industry both here and abroad, reeling from the common perception that their rapacious greed is destroying our way of life.

Nevertheless, there is a brilliant graphic in today’s USA TODAY Snapshots, which outlines the fact that oil is “cheaper than other liquids.”

Pictured in this marvel of positioning spin are milk, trading at just a bit above the cost of a barrel of light, sweet crude, Tropicana orange juice, even sweeter and lighter at $226 per barrel, and Jack Daniel’s whiskey, which would cost you nearly $75,000 if you filled up your SUV with it.

What a bargain, then, is our current barrel of oil! Let’s bid it up a couple dollars more where it belongs! And how fortunate are we to get it at its current price! Oh benevolent oil companies who still charge so little for it!

Good work, PR guys. Seriously. Nice to see some clean spin punch through the journalistic veil for a change.

Come to think of it, doesn’t it always?

12 bucks to link to an AP story?

2008-06-18T14:56:34Z

News comes that the Associated Press, in one attempt to define the nature of content in the new media, is looking to charge online writers for use of their material — as little as five words, which would cost $12.50. That would mean that the link I just provided would cost me more than it would run me for a lawyer to represent me if I were sued.

Other things that cost $12.50:

A cab ride from my home to my office;
A cup of coffee and one slice of buttered toast from Michael’s Restaurant (including tax and tip);
Two magazines and a newspaper at the airport;
1/2 a pound of organic salmon at a store near you;
One color cartridge for my Epson 2400 color printer. It takes eight, by the way;
Three movies on my Apple TV (purchased, rental is slightly cheaper).

These are just a few examples. I think you can see that each of these things is of greater intrinsic value than five words from the Associated Press. Of course, you could argue that if they were five very good words, that might make a difference.

Following are several phrases that are five words or under that might be worth at least $12.50:

“We the people”
“Call me Ishmael”
“IN THE BEGINNING…”
“My country, ’tis of thee”
“The buck stops here”
“In God We Trust”
“Booyah”

I’d buy any of those for $12.50 for use in my blog. Most of the stuff you see on the Associate Press, however, doesn’t quite measure up to that standard, so in this case I’m not quite sure.

I also am somewhat unclear as to whether the AP seeks remuneration for:

any words at all;
words in consecutive order;
punctuation.

For instance, in the phrase, “Six people were killed in the bombing, which was carried out by an unknown militia,” is the comma a word? If so, does that explain the $.50 cent addition to the base $12 charge? And is the fee for usage of content between 5 and 25 words (the entry point) shared with the source of the report? Suppose it was the usual unnamed government official. Should he or she receive remuneration if the story goes viral? How about a named source? Worth more?

The Internet is a new playground, of course. These rules are being written as we speak. In that transition phase, I would like to make one thing clear here and now:

If you are reading this post, please feel free to link to it, quote it, massage it, spindle it and mutilate it at will. Please, if you would, make sure to tell people where you got it, of course. I don’t mind being ubiquitous, really I don’t, but giving credit where credit is due is just plain good manners, even in this undefined and predatory space.

And now for something completely different…

2008-06-17T20:56:43Z

As any reader of this site is well aware, I have a new book out, Executricks, or How To Retire While You’re Still Working (Collins).

Part of having a new book is having the opportunity to go out and about, talking about it, acquainting potential readers with its existence, and, not to put too fine a point on it, pumping the hell out of it. I have done this for all my past books. Gluttons for punishment, or those simply in love with my face, can actually go to my YouTube channel to see any number of them.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be on a variety of fabulous outlets. I’m quite excited about it. For now, however, I thought I would share with you a recent talk I had with ABC News, which is posted on their website. It’s by no means as profound, amusing or trenchant as the book itself, of course. But it beats a sharp stick in the eye. Take a peek.