Obama on Health Care

What?

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I give up.

One Bad Deed Deserves Another

The aftermath of the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch deal has gotten very little press since Ken Lewis' Washington hearings. The travesty continues today, as chronicled in the Financial Times.

The short story goes like this: as the deal was about to close, not-so-careful inspection of the books by BofA execs revealed that Merrill's balance sheet was unraveling quickly. BofA considered backing out of the deal, may or may not have been coerced by Uncle Sam to go ahead with it, but in any case didn't tell shareholders what a mess they were overpaying for.

Very poor performance by BofA execs. The result? The SEC required BofA shareholders, not execs, to pay $33 million in damages. Now NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is considering taking more money from BofA shareholders in exchange for the misdeeds of Ken Lewis et al.

Bad stuff.

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Underwriters Morgan and Goldman announced the IPO for A123 Systems, Inc. today. Does this mean we have officially run out of decent company names?

Back to School

Back to normal for the markets. Kind of chaotic out there.

• Gold is above $1,000
• Futures are moving higher
• Oil is participating to the upside
• The dollar continues to be weak
• Morgan Stanley either upgraded or downgraded everything in tech
• It's the one day yearly on which my kids are excited about going to school

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The average iPhone user has spent more than $80 on apps according to a recent survey by AppsFire. I guess that also means that the average iPhone user has spent more on apps than the average person spent on their non-iPhone phone.

This is What They Were Worried About

If you've checked in here even semi-regularly, you probably know that I'm not a fan of the policies or strategies of the President, even though I understand that he might be a great guy. That being said, those that were worried about the implications of him addressing American students tomorrow were way off base. The White House released the text today:

"Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer [the diffficult] questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down."

I read the whole thing, I didn't just cherry pick a quote. He will not talk about any issues whosoever that are worrying some of his right wing opponents, so unless you are against your kids getting an education or working hard, calm down.

I don't mind my kids listening at all. Quite the opposite.

Happy Labor Day

Or Labour Day to you non-Americans.

The S&P 500 is up 12.5% year to date and I am confident that for a significant majority of investors out there, it hasn't felt like a better than average year. After getting pounded in 2008, the first 2 1/2 months of this year were relentlessly down. Unless you ignored the whole thing and hung in there, or made some good moves around the March bottom, you are probably up less than the 12% that the averages show.

Even though the summer is over, there is lots of time between now and Christmas for the market move a lot in either direction, or both. Stay flexible.

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It is curious that Cadbury turned down big premium from Kraft to be taken out today. Cadbury's stock is acting like their board may be right that the price is too low. Kraft's offer was at a 31% premium to Friday's close. The stock is trading up 41% as I write this.

By the way, I thought the dollar was too weak for deals like this to happen.

Ha-Ha-Harwood

From DailyKosTV.

NBC/CNBC/MSNBC White House correspondent John Harwood on how ridiculous not allowing Obama to speak to students would be:

"MONICA NOVOTNY: John, what about this controversy over opposition to Obama’s speech to school children?

JOHN HARWOOD: I gotta’ tell you Monica, I’ve been watching politics for a long time, and this one is really over-the-top. What is shows you is there are a lot of cynical people who try to fan controversy, and let’s face it, in a country of 300 million people, there are a lot of stupid people too, because if you believe that it’s somehow unhealthy for kids, for the president to say "work hard and stay in school," you’re stupid. In fact, I’m worried for some of those kids of those parents who are upset — I’m not sure they are smart enough to raise those kids."