The stock market looks set to plunge on the day they got the worst job figures since 2003. This announcement followed the figures from yesterday showing much higher consumer spending than expected.

The thing that makes me smile is that according to the timing of the stats, this higher spending spree came from this dwindling number of employees. Ergo, to increase the retail sector outlook, be a good American boss and get rid of as many employees as possible.

The genial Video professor on the advert seems such a nice man. He is smiling broadly as he promises to teach you everything you need to know about Word, Excel and dozens of other software titles. And if you don't learn a thing, just return the CD and he will send you $10 for your time. How can you go wrong with a deal like that from a guy who gives rather than grabs?

Read the litany of complaints in Infomercial Scam.com and you may be less inclined to order a CD from the good Video Professor. To be generous to him, he is not heading a multi-million dollar felonous scam, but to be even more generous, I will say that this educational company, accused by 126 people of fleecing its customers, is not a reflection of its leadership.

Let's just say that the accounts department isn't quite as easy going as the boss in the advert. The faceless bean counters have a tendency to put the onus on customers to bat back an unexpected flood of CDs (and demands for payments) that follow the initial jovial transaction.

When 126 people go to the trouble to say they aren't happy, you have to think someone somewhere is being a greedy bastard. And how stupid to be so greedy, when the product is worth a lot of money even if marketed modestly without resorting to gouging. Greed is stupid!

Markets rise, markets fall and splatter. Back in February, Peter Eliades, editor of the Stockmarket Cycles newsletter, stated that a certain top-related breakthrough could be a hard one to pull off.

The top to which he refers is that of the NYSE Advance/Decline line. This line, of course, is calculated by adding a given day's plurality of advancing issues over declining issues on the New York Stock Exchange to the cumulative total from previous days. (Yahoo Finance)

Of course, how silly of us not to know that. The cumulative effect of reading this gobbledeygook was two flickering eyelids and a desire for alcohol/dinner. As Wall Street rollercoasts along, his theorems get better.

...the stock market's recent strength has finally brought the A/D line back within striking distance of that 1959 high.

Most interesting. I will have to see if this is related in any way to my minus 99.7% return on a penny stock that was guaranteed to kill the competition for in-flight entertainment. Something must have been out of whack, because my judgement was faultless! Maybe a faltering A/D line at the time was responsible for just 3 inflight installations in a Garuda airlines fleet of hundreds, and a wrong invoice to a jet-setting Russian oil tycoon.

What importance should technical analysts place on all of this (A/D line)? Eliades writes that he isn't sure.

Marvellous answer. He must be an economist or a financial adviser to have come out with that inconclusive conclusion. But then Yahoo, who posted this ludicrous speculative mumbo jumbo article must have threatened to push him off the fence if he didn't come up with a definitive course of action for the fabulous A/D line.

"We do not claim to have the answers to those questions but based on all the other technical information at our disposal, it would not surprise us to see the cumulative advance/decline ratio stall at these levels."

I think I will become a financial stock picker, invent acronyms, create a theorem and end up as successful as this clown.

Imagine a little girl sat in the back of an ice-cream truck that is not even selling ice creams, and some punk approaches and shoots her as the truck drives away.

To be honest, I find it hard to imagine. It is something you see in a sicko gangsta movie. Usually the main reasons why one real human would ever act like that towards another is if they were on drugs, or performing a gang ritual to earn their colors.

Or perhaps it was part of an economically motivated hit? And I am not referring to a need for a few quick bucks today.

Ice cream wars

Ice cream is big business this time of year. Maybe this guy was trying to scare the family away so he or his associates at the basketball court could make a few bucks this summer to pay for their many bad habits. Just conjecturing, you know, based on a case that happened in Scotland in the 80's during the Ice Cream Wars. This is so over the top it can't possibly be true? It is fact, sadly.

Petrol was poured into the tenement flat in Ruchazie where the Doyle family lived on 16 April, 1984. Christine Doyle Halleron, 25, her 18-month-old son, Mark, James Doyle Snr, 53, and his sons James Jnr, 23, and Anthony, 14, were killed in the resulting fire.

No business idea is safe these days.

The family were targeted because they refused to give up their van route in Garthamlock. Many ice-cream vans were believed to be used as a front for selling drugs, attracting the attention of gangsters keen to take a slice of the huge returns on offer.

If you remove the Scottish accents and misty weather and think US yesterday, the principal reason behind the shooting may well be to secure an opportunity for drug pushing. Doesn't sound like anyone thought of that angle.

Hot dog van wars

In the UK there were Hot Dog Van wars too, when hoodlums would turn up at a mobile food vendor's wagon parked in a truck stop and turn the thing over with the guy inside frying his greasy eggs and bacon and serving weak tea. All to intimidate and get them out so they could get their own vendor installed in its place.

And even last week, there is a real t-do going on between ice-cream and hotdog vendors on the sunny Newquay coast. Scratch those eyes out.

Billboard wars

And the other gang-related hassles involved another a seemingly innocuous business - billboards. The sites at the sides of roads in prominent positions are worth a fortune and perish the thought you would erect your own billboard on what was considered someone's existing turf. Considered is the vital word, because even if your new billlboard was going up all perfectly legally, all hell would break loose if the billboard mafia felt threatened.

And in Silicon Valley, although no blood was shed, there were plenty of casualties in the billboard wars between Informix and Oracle. Highway 101 has never been the same since it all ended.

No pisstaking here, just pointing out that all may not be as innocuous as it seems.



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Tags: Ice cream wars, Scotland, Hot Dog wars

According to Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, three men with Spanish accents broke into a camping store near Strasbourg and stole rucksacks, sleeping bags and most disturbingly, a bunch of lighter fuel tablets. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

The store owner is bemused. He said they could have bought the supplies at any store in Europe, without causing a stir, and he was running a 10% discount day anyway, wtf!

The manufacturer of the fuel tablets says that one tablet could boil water for 9 minutes. Wow wee, not. I once took a tablet that boils heads for hours.

The authorities are saying the contraband could be used for incendiary devices. Like a BBQ?

The press are saying these guys are ETA because they had Spanish accents, and they stole because their organisation has no funds.

ETA are wondering what all the fuss is about. They already have their bombs in place for the next attack, have several million euros from El Gordo lottery win last Christmas stuffed away under the bed. And hey we are Basque, not bloody Spanish.

And El Mundo is a reliable paper?


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Tags: France, Basque, el Gordo, el mundo

When the American government announces one day in the nearish future that China is now the biggest economy in the world and owns half of the US, don't hold your hands up in surprise and horror. And when the current wages of illegals seem like the good old days of fair pay, don't be dismayed. Just remember you heard it hear first on the 15th June 2007!

Housing boom boosts Chinese imports

It is simple inexorable economics. After dressing up a whole house for rental purposes and going half mad in the process, I can categorically state that the post 9-11 US housing boom has provided a bomb-proof platform for China to dominate the world economically. American homes are expensive receptacles for Chinese goods. Every piece of furniture, every frame, piece of cutlery, cookware, rug, corkscrew, you name it, however carefully you shop, bears the mark of a poor Chinese prisoner.

If it has Ikea or Walmart stamped on it, or has any wicker, cane or chintz in it, that item is not made in the US of A - and if it is sold to you in a US superstore by a retiree or school leaver, that equates to a US workforce getting poorer. Head for the fields, the wages there are looking quite good.

Wall St endorses the decline

And now the stock market is going mad over news of low inflation. They are of course ignoring gas prices in the equation, er, in a nation dependent on gas. Good one! That is the end of sanity. The rest of the demise of the US economy is like the A to Z of how to choke yourself on a golden egg.

I cannot believe I am the only pisstaker with a basic grasp of economics who can see the way it is going. I can only presume there are a few knowledgeable people making a quick buck on Wall St?

The red terrors are warring on US soil

One thought that crossed my mind in my delirium as I buckled under the weight of a sofa - maybe the Chinese instigated the war on terror. It makes sense. As I said earlier, a house-building resurgence dragged the flagging US economy along after 9-11, China has the merchandise to equip the empty shells... just a mischievous idea!


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Tags: global economy, Housing

Wanted American Job ???

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6am. While his coffeepot (made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong).

He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (made in Korea).

After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India) he sat down with his calculator (made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (made in Taiwan) to the radio (made in India) he got in his car (made in Germany) filled it with gas from (Saudi Arabia) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB .

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (made in Malaysia), Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (made in Brazil)
poured himself a glass of wine (made in France.! France!! ) and turned on his TV (made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA...

(Doing the rounds of email land - with a little corporate link love of our own thrown in.)

The BBC report: Football Association will contact Tottenham after a fan ran on to the pitch at White Hart Lane and aimed a punch at Chelsea's Frank Lampard. The incident, which the FA described as "totally unacceptable", occurred after Chelsea beat Spurs 2-1 in Monday's FA Cup quarter-final replay.

This was probably Fat Frank's personal trainer taking out his frustration at just how bad that athlete's dieting program is going. If anyone cares to remember the England World Cup fiasco, Lampard was the dough boy who passed the ball back to the opposition goal keeper, in the disguise of a killer shot, at least 7 times a match.

248-dimension maths puzzle solved

So much for progress. The big news in mathematics is the 4 years' of work expended on a formula discovered a century ago. Perhaps for their next project, the brain boxes could explain the secrets of pie-assed squared, or explain why the student got a zero for his answer.

UK inflation rate hits 2.8%

Lies damn lies and statistics?

Again the BBC say, On the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure, inflation in February was 2.8%, up from 2.7% the month before. The figure - pushed up by increases in air passenger duty and thus air fares - remains well above the Bank of England's 2.0% target for the CPI.

It should say, inflation is up by 2.7% for the majority and gone up by 2.8% for a handful of UK elitists who flew every day of February.

The Chinese stock market fell 9% in a day and when the US markets realised it, they did as expected and panicked. China watches and smiles as they see the US markets knee jerk and sell off. Why smile when their own market has tanked? Simple, in China they don't care because it was a short term plan to drum up some business for China! How so?

Outsourcing cures all economic ills

The US stock gurus read the wrong signals coming out of China and thought the world economy was on the way to hell. As a result, there is suddenly no value in any American business that was doing just fine yesterday. Manufacturers in America then think, "Shit, we really need to drop prices to counteract the impending drop in consumer confidence. What do we do? Oh yeah, outsource more jobs to China."

Bingo, China gets more orders and buys more cheap US stock with the proceeds and buys up more debt and so it goes on, eating into US sovereignty and eventually achieving world domination.

I thought stock broker/stock picker type persons had to wear a sober suit and be deadly serious about your profession. The photo I found on the blog of funny stock experts, Wallstreet Fighter, indicates that in Japan, that isn't so.