Rainy Thursday

Rep. Elijah Cummings is on CNBC right now talking about the hearings that are going down today over the BofA/Merrill deal. The question at hand is whether Bernanke forced BofA to do the deal.

Cummings' point seems to be that the U.S. voters deserve more transparency since there is $45 billion in taxpayer money on the line in the form of TARP funds to BofA. I guess he means transparency into whether one party was coerced. I'm not sure why I need that specific piece of information.

What I'd like some transparency into is what is happening to the $68 billion in TARP funds that are being repaid. As I understand it, rather that retiring debt or money that was issued specifically to shore up the banks, the money - billions - is going into the administration's General Fund so that they can spend it on whatever they want. With no transparency.

Lovely.

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I said yesterday that I am expecting a correction so there's no need for me to comment on the market today. Futures are a little higher, though.

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Looks like Michael Dell is back in the house. His company sold $1 billion in bonds last night and he is in the press stating rater plainly that Dell will do a large acquisition soon.

Since this is almost exactly what I would do in this situation, I think it's brilliant. There is almost no unit growth left in the PC market and Dell and HP have about as much market share as they're going to get. Time do play a different game.