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Health Fare For Us All!
“I never met a crisis that I didn’t like.” Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff
The Great Social Security and Medicare Panic – Time Magazine, May 2009
It is becoming increasingly clear that one can gauge the direction of the Obama White House by the crises of the day. It’s the old ying and yang, the [...]
What Makes Obama Tick?
So you want to be a community organizer. You could do worse - after all, President Obama cut his political teeth as a community organizer.
What exactly does a community organizer do? In broad terms, the community organizer engages with an identified group of people, facing specific issues, and who individually have no voice in the [...]
Microsoft To Take A Bite Out Of Apple?
Microsoft (NASDAQ MSFT) continues to play catch up with Apple. (NASDAQ AAPL) While its Windows Vista program can best be described as a bust, they are now rushing Windows 7 to market as quickly as possible.
In fact, the number of people “downgrading” to Windows XP continues to grow. (This user, among them.) The Vista system, [...]
The Government: Putting the ‘G’ in GMAC
It wasn’t too long ago that if you purchased a new car, you often found yourself financing that purchase with a financial arm of the manufacturer. For example, if you bought a General Motors (NYSE GM) product, you financed it through their financing arm, GMAC (NYSE GMA). Same with a Ford (NYSE F) or a [...]
18May2009 | George Stevens | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat’s in General Motors’ Fortune Cookie?
With almost everybody in the business community expecting General Motors (NYSE GM) to be forced into bankruptcy, let’s review some of the reasons why this icon of American industry has fallen on hard times:
Too many marquees. Currently, GM has at least 7 different brands under their banner (depending on what you count as a brand.) [...]
Barney’s Kiss of Death
In the sports world, when a coach or player receives the thumbs up from management, it often bodes poorly for that person. For some reason, the management types feel a need to hide behind “unfailing support” for the person, when in fact they are on their way out.
No one does this better than Al Davis, [...]
Bank of America’s Latest Magic Trick
Alright, help me out here. For some, my earlier confessions of being a financial klutz remains true. I have no comprehension of figures like one billion dollars, much less one trillion dollars. I am slipping even further into the abyss with the release of the quarterly report of Bank of America. (NYSE BAC)
Apparently, famed magician [...]
The Starbuck Stops Here
Come on gang, we’re not doing our part to help salvage those companies experiencing a financial downturn. Case in point, there was a time, (and not too long ago) when I’d drop a quick twenty bucks buying a round of Starbuck’s (NASDAQ SBUX) coffee for the gang at the office.
There was a certain feeling, having [...]
Another Day, Another Bonus
We all remember the furor over the bonuses at AIG (NYSE AIG), Merrill Lynch (NYSE MER), and others, don’t we? How absurd it seemed that millions upon millions of dollars lined the pockets of select employees, all this in light of billion dollar corporate losses.
Many of us were justifiably angry. Here we are, facing a [...]
Leaning Tower of…. Chrysler?
We’re all familiar with spaghetti westerns, spaghetti straps, and spaghetti Alfredo. Today, this designation may be ready to be applied to the rumored head of an American automobile manufacturer: Spaghetti Chrysler.
Chrysler is truly an international traveler, having its ownership moved from the United States, to Germany with Daimler-Benz (NYSE DAI), back to America, and now [...]
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