Long or Short Capital

Sweet Pickles are a series of 26 books each about an anthropomorphic animal who is alliteratively named for a letter of the alphabet (eg. Bashful Bear, Clever Camel, Doubtful Dog). The characters are hyperbole’s of their stereotypes and predictably teach kids a life lesson along the way. We highly recommend them if you have kids; if you don’t have kids get them anyway – they’re great if you are stoned and giggly and tired of watching Family Guy re-runs.

What we want to do is brand oft-discussed investors, CEOs, and other finance personalities with a Sweet Pickles name that is so fitting it becomes permanently attached to their persona. For example Dan Loeb, we love Dan Loeb but we think he is a bit of an “Accusing Alligator“. Just like the character, if someone stole Dan Loeb’s shoe he would probably blame anyone he could find, even Loving Lion. If our plan works by next week you’ll be at a conference and overhear something like “. . . yeah the short was working great and then Dan Loeb wrote a letter that I needed a thesaurus to read and all it really said is that he thinks the CEO is a homo and now the stock’s up 20%, I mean what an Accusing Alligator that guy is”.

We’ll try to intersperse these whenever we’re recommending long or short positions in our favorite Wall Street divas. If you have an idea put it in the comments or send us a short post and we’ll help label that whiny CEO a ” Temper Tantrum Turtle”.

Accusing Alligator – Dan Loeb
Bashful Bear
Clever Camel
Doubtful Dog
Enormous Elephant
Fearless Fish
Goof-off Goose
Healthy Hippo
Imitating Iguana
Jealous Jackal
Kidding Kangaroo
Loving Lion
Moody Moose
Nasty Nightingale
Outraged Octopus
Positive Pig
Questioning Quail
Responsible Rabbit
Smarty Stork
Temper Tantrum Turtle
Unique Unicorn
Vain Vulture
Worried Walrus
X-Rating Xerus
Yakety Yak
Zany Zebra

Blood diamonds don’t actually contain any blood. Total bait and switch played by the liberal media on the romantic blood enthusiasts out there. The truth is that the current diamond oligopoly doesn’t want to provide consumers with blood diamonds and goes out of their way to ensure not only that the diamonds are not actual blood diamonds, but also that the diamonds are not even so-called blood diamonds. Ridiculous.

This is why we are bullish on LifeGem,to our knowledge the only company out there creating diamonds made out of people. These are actual blood diamonds:

LifeGem is a company offering to synthesize diamonds from the carbonized remains of people or pets. According to Dean VandenBiesen, speaking on the Stan and Terry show May 7, 2007, the company recently became able to create a diamond from a lock of hair.

…

These synthetic diamonds—precisely duplicate natural diamonds in both optical and physical properties—are touted as “memorial diamonds” and range in price from USD $2,500 for 0.20–0.29 carat (40 to 59 mg) stones to $14,000 for stones weighing 0.90–0.99 carats (180–199 mg). The company can extract enough purified carbon from one human body to synthesize up to 50 gems weighing one carat (0.2 g) each. As little as 227 g of remains are needed to make one diamond. Diamonds made from the cremains of pets are priced the same as those made from human remains, but the size of the animal may be a limiting factor. As of March 2005, LifeGem says it has served 1,000 families since the company’s founding.

Recommendation: Long LifeGem; just imagine how blown away your wife/GF/mistress will be when you give her a diamond not only from your heart, but of your heart.

What separates China from the rest of the world? Accountability.

China’s former top food and drug regulator was executed Tuesday after his conviction on corruption charges, state-run news media said.

Zheng Xiaoyu, 62 years old, was given the death penalty on May 29 after being found guilty by a Beijing court on charges of taking bribes and dereliction of duty. Mr. Zheng, the former director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, appealed the verdict last month, but a higher court upheld it and the execution was approved by China’s Supreme People’s Court, according to Xinhua News Agency, which reported the news.

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Mr. Zheng and other past SFDA officials were accused of accepting bribes in return for approving the sale and distribution of drugs. This past weekend, the SFDA said it had suspended the sale of a drug widely used to treat leukemia and other cancers after a number of patients suffered adverse reactions.

In the US, Secretary of Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff still has his post despite overseeing FEMA during the disastrous handling of the Katrina aftermath. Iraq has been a debacle but Rummy resigned without being fired, and — as far as we know — is still standing. Former CEO of Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Robert Nardelli, oversaw a half dozen years of stock price stagnation and walked away alive with hundreds of millions in cash money.

Does the US really get it any more? I mean besides our high standards of living, long life expectancy and unparalleled freedom –things which only matter to theorists, liberals and puppy dogs. Does the US get it?

In China, the state would have culled the bottom 10% and sprinkled their remnants into Meow Mix so that Western cats would feast on soy-meal based bits of their under-performing souls. That is accountability.

If there was a chance that your performance review would end with your execution, you (even Canadians) would be motivated to effect the kind of growth the Chinese have been able to wring out of their rice paddies and toy factories the last 23 quarters or years or whatever.

And just to demonstrate that you can’t be too cruel:

Another former SFDA official convicted on corruption charges was given a suspended death sentence Friday.

A suspended death sentence is a signal to the People to let them know that while Big Boss expects a lot, he is willing to show some mercy.

Recommendation: China gets how to set a tone and stick to it. This is why when the squids take over, China will be their no.2.

In terms of understanding corporate finance, economists have it all wrong when they say “there is no free lunch”. Rather, the more appropriate comment ought to be “somebody has to pay for lunch – and it isn’t going to be me.”
Martin Whitman, Portfolio Manager of Third Avenue Value Fund

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Being that today is the celebration of US Independence from the tyranny of bad teeth, we thought we would similarily set our reader survey data free from the tyranny of us not setting it free.

Long or Short Capital Blog Reader Survey Results

The digest profile of you, our reader:

• Very white
• Very male
• Urban
• 27
• On your way to a post graduate degree or making $100k+ as an “Analyst” in the finance/banking industry
• Republican
• Watch the Colbert Report
• Have not shopped at Wal*Mart in the last month
• And never consume Tequila

We’ll be seeing you there.

When the Journal gets its Page 3 girls, we’ll make sure they have MBAs.
Rupert Murdoch

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing