Archive for May, 2008

What a jackass.

A donkey is doing time in southern Mexico for assault and battery.

The animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state, police said Monday.

Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills.

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First Buffett, then Greenspan, then Buffett, and now Greenspan again. Talk about a couple of pessimistic twits.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was quoted on Tuesday as saying the United States was still more likely than not to have a recession despite relative stabilization in the economy in recent weeks.

“I still believe there is a greater than 50 percent probability of recession,” Greenspan told the Financial Times in an interview published on the newspaper’s website.

“(But) that probability has receded a little and I think the probability of a severe recession has come down markedly,” said Greenspan.

I wonder how far the economy has to improve before Greenspan feels there isn’t a probably of a recession and Buffett thinks we are out of the recession he has playing in his own mind?

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Don’t you hate it when reporters make themselves part of the story?

A newspaper photographer got a little too close to the action at the state high school track championships — and was speared through the leg by a javelin.

Ryan McGeeney of the Standard-Examiner was spared serious injury in Saturday’s mishap, and even managed to snap a photo of his speared leg while others worked to help him.

“If I didn’t, it would probably be my editor’s first question when I got back,” McGeeney said later.

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Wow. They want their online customers to have that “neighborhood bookstore” experience. Too bad they didn’t think of that, say, seven years ago.

Borders Group is jumping back into online retailing with a Web site designed to evoke the feeling of browsing at a neighborhood bookstore, down to the popular shelves of staff picks that are familiar to its customers nationwide.

But after seven years paired with Amazon.com, analysts say it will be a challenge for the new Borders.com to step out of the shadow of the Web retailing giant.

It will be interesting to see if they pull it off. Barnes & Noble has always been my favorite, even before the AT&T wi-fi and the Starbuck’s coffee.

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This is getting ridiculous. The average person doesn’t even know what the definition of ‘recession’ is, let alone if we are in one or not. In fact, if you ask any of those ‘average’ people who he says think we are already in one, they will probably tell you we’ve been in on since September 11th, 2001.

Since when does the world revolve around Mr. Buffett’s personal definition of a recession? Since when should the ‘average person’ listen to one of the richest men on the planet? Do you really think they can relate to anything he says. I’m sure his words help justify the way they feel though, so it makes sense he is playing to the ‘little people’.

Warren Buffett, whose business and investment acumen has made him one of the world’s wealthiest men, was quoted in an interview published Sunday as saying the U.S. economy is already in a recession.

Asked by Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly whether he thinks the U.S. could still avoid a recession, he said that as far as the average person is concerned, it is already here.

“I believe that we are already in a recession,” Buffet was quoted as saying. “Perhaps not in the sense as defined by economists. … But people are already feeling the effects of a recession.”

Of course, if you read this blog, you know Mr. Buffett thinks we are already in a recession, ‘as he defines it’, since he said that almost three weeks ago.

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Great news! They saved the company. Bad news. They had to cut your job in order to do it. It could be worse you know.

More than 7,600 Bear Stearns Cos’ (BSC.N) employees, about 55 percent of its staff, are expected to lose their jobs as the troubled investment bank is absorbed into JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), JPMorgan Chief Executive James Dimon said Tuesday.

While discussing the historic $1.5 billion Bear Stearns takeover during Morgan’s annual shareholder meeting, Dimon said “we’re retaining 45 percent of Bear Stearns staff.”

Dimon’s remarks confirmed months of speculation that half of Bear’s employees would lose their jobs as a result of the merger. JPMorgan for weeks played down the speculation as premature.

Saving the entire company and 45% of the jobs is a good thing, right?

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People just aren’t attentive anymore.

Thieves took off with a 6-foot-tall, 2,000 pound anchor, and no one noticed. For four months. La Crosse police are searching for whoever took the gray-blue anchor that was mounted outside the Naval Reservist Station.

Someone had to see something. I mean anything. There had to be heavy equipment involved if they took off with a 2,000 pound anchor.

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Personally, I cannot stand the taste of inflated milk. I prefer 2%.

Federal commodity regulators are investigating a price-manipulation scheme by the farmer-owned dairy cooperative that controls about a third of the nation’s milk supply, according to a published report.

Separately, the Justice Department is preparing to investigate a recently disclosed $1 million transfer to a former director of the Dairy Farmers of America, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing people close to the matter.

I know people are innocent until proven guilty, but I wouldn’t doubt that this has been happening. About 6 months ago, the price of milk skyrocketed around here, and it never went back down. This was before oil went through the ceiling, or any other factors could have been attributed to it. I thought they were gouging then, and I still think so.

I wonder where they find inflated cows?

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First it was Lowes, and now Home Depot. Like Lowes, they are not losing money, they just made less money this time. Get over it already.

Two of the largest U.S. retailers said on Tuesday that the weak U.S. economy and battered housing industry were discouraging cash-strapped consumers from making anything more than basic purchases.

Leading home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc and No. 2 discounter Target Corp both reported lower earnings, and warned that results for the rest of the year would be sluggish.

Everyone knew that profits would be lower this year, like 9 months ago. This is not news. The real news is the fact that the economy seems to be rebounding now, and economists are ready to throw themselves out of their high-rise windows because we’re not as close to a recession as they hoped we were.

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I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Seriously. It’s not usually the down payment that makes the house more affordable, is it?

Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. home funding source, is setting a single national standard for down payments on mortgages it buys, including areas where home prices are falling, in an effort to stimulate the housing market.

On loans it purchases, the company will accept down payments as low as 3.0 percent for single-family, primary residences in all U.S. markets starting June 1. That replaces a policy set in December that mandated higher down payments in markets where home prices are dropping, Fannie Mae said on Friday.

The rule change comes as many in the housing industry call for Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N), the second-largest federally chartered home funding company, to make more affordable housing available. The two government-sponsored, shareholder-owned companies buy mortgages, freeing up funds for more lending.

I would think that the overall price of the house in ratio to the buyers income would be a better gauge as to what is affordable. Then again, that’s what got the mortgage lenders into the mess they got into in the first place.

Are we trying for a repeat of history by making things “easier” for the buyers to get into contracts they can’t keep?

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