“This industry is in a crisis situation not of its own making,” Ron Gettelfinger said in an interview Saturday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal

*for voting Democrat (Thank You!)

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
-Michael Crichton on Global Warming

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

If their advice on how to retire a millionaire is to become a thousandaire…well that is the exact way in which they have managed much of their clients’ retirement portfolios over the past 3 years, so we give them points for consistency.

Recommendation: Take Fidelity public for the sole purpose of shorting it.

HT: AB

A second, normal-sized egg popped out of a giant egg laid by a chicken raised at a high school in Shiga Prefecture, a school official said Saturday after breaking open the shell.

…

But school teachers decided on Friday to remove the shell by using a scalpel and tweezers after finding a crack. They later discovered another medium-sized egg inside the giant egg as the yolk and the white portion spurted out.

…

The hot topic at the high school now is whether another egg is hidden inside the second, medium-sized egg.

Recommendation: Long all eggs, especially large eggs which may contain many smaller eggs Russian doll style. Our expectation is that this market will be launched into speculative frenzy when the large pools of capital which read our site read this report. In fact, if you are still reading this report right now and not buying eggs, it may be too late.

[Ed note: As frequent critics of Greenspan over the years, we feel comfortable saying that this time he’s right.]

We have identified four trends that all start with S. They are also all compelling investment opportunities. Combined, they form the Perfect Storm Investment Thesis.

• Solar power
• Smartphones
• Software…
• …as a Service

Many people correctly believe that:

• In the future, solar power will be the primary source of energy for the world economy. This power will be free, plentiful, and have no environmental impact. Except the unknown impact that results from taking massive amounts of energy that normally would have hit the Earth and shunting it into our cars and smartphones, and the related waste from producing solar paneling on an industrial scale, but other than that, we can assure there will be no environmental impact. As a side benefit, Al Gore will finally shut his piehole, since he will have made his billions from his green portfolio, you know, the book he talks everytime he opens his mouth.
• Smartphones will achieve 207% penetration as most consumers choose to carry more than one smartphone in order to make themselves smarter. Smart people know that it is important to have a persistent buffer from the place you are actually in. That is to say, if I’m driving, I’d be better off talking to Sarah. If I’m on a date with Sarah, I’d probably be better off talking on the phone with Sonya. And if I’m at Sonya’s apartment watching Mad Men in the nude, I’d be better off playing the newest cool iPhone game. Smart people know this is the whole point of smartphones. Apple will have 35% share, RIMM will have 30% share, Palm will have 25% share, and Nokia will continue to be the market share leader with 40% (See, they’re all winners!)
• No one will use antiquated sales programs like Siebel. Everyone will use online, automated sales programs like Salesforce.com and Google Adwords. All sales will take place online. Brick & Mortar stores will be converted en masse into sales kiosk repositories and/or expensive condominiums communities where everyone feels like they know everyone else but in reality are too busy doing something with their smartphone to know anything about the people who breathe the same air as they do.

However, using our superior intellects, we realize all of this will converge. In the future, software as a service tools will be the exclusive sales channel for solar-powered smartphones. We expect they will be able to run all the most important applications including Call of Duty 8, Microsoft Excel, and YouTube. Additionally, by 2012 they will achieve grid parity pricing and begin contributing energy back to the grid. We calculate the total market size for this trend at $8 trillion.

Recommendation: Software as a Service Solar Smartphones will stave off the Perfect Storm of Perfect Storms.

Hey there, bro. We see that you have been having a pretty difficult time of late over there in your unspecified foreign countries. We feel your pain.

But bro, we don’t feel bad about your pain. See all these years, you have been telling US how better you are than US. How you are more fair. How you have universal medicine, or don’t believe in playing spin the bottle with the Middle East and being forced to spend 7 years in heaven with Iraq in the closet, or aren’t populated with rednecks, or graduate more science PhDs or whatever. How you are cultured and not obese. How you were smarter than US, how your way was way better. Well amigo, what is the haps now?

Yeah the US has been going down. Shit’s true, can’t deny that. We have had our financial foibles, our credit crises and real estate bubbles. Our stock market has been getting crushed and many of our leading firms no longer even exist. But you, you RoW, your stock markets have been getting even MORE crushed. Your banks are in even MORE precarious positions than ours. Your culture and economy and currency and utopian ideals are all showing cracks and are ready to break. You don’t know what to do and to be honest bro, you’re probably screwed.

And this is by design. Our forefathers claimed America by giving those Indian bros pox infested blankets. And we are claiming the RoW by doling out our MBS, our structured products, our overpriced assets and a little friend called contagion. FYI pox be in all that crap.

When the US wins, we win. When the US loses, we still win relative to the RoW, taking you down more than US. This is why we are the hegemon, bro.

Sincerely,
US

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
-James Collins outlining the “Stockdale Paradox”

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

“A bank is…a manufacturer of credit. The cornerstone of credit is confidence — confidence of men in men. A panic is a collapse of credit. It is an intensely human affair, and many of the determining influences are of a personal and confidential character, and very inadequately reflected in the cold figures of the bank statement.”
-E.W. Kemmerer (1911)

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

The latest institution asking for a federal loan to help bridge a massive shortfall caused by a bad bet on housing is The Bank Government of California. Their revenue forecast has fallen by $3bn in the two weeks since the budget bill was signed. The budget originally called for a deficit of $15bn on a budget of $100bn. Ooops!

Consider the Fed speaking in Fedspeak below:

The evidence suggests that property tax revenues are quite responsive to changes in house prices. Although it takes several years for house price appreciation to feed through to property tax revenues, the long-run elasticity is on the order of 0.4.

Let me translate: California is just the beginning. Most states will face massive budget deficits in the next two years.

Recommendation: State income taxes will skyrocket in order to cover for a massive shortfall in property tax revenues. Balance a short position in 41 states by going long the 9 states without income taxes.

You may be aware that something is “going on” in the markets. That something is that we squandered all your potential dividends due to what can only be described as The Perfect Storm of Perfect Storms. We’re sorry. We thank you for having faith in us, and our models indicate that if it were not for The Perfect Storm of Perfect Storms, then we would have returned to you 30% per annum, so you should feel confident that you made the right decision according to invest with us according to our models and also to our models.

Now, many of you may be saying “Aren’t you savvy investment professionals, shouldn’t you have, y’know, know better.”

To that we say, “Yes, but also no.” In “The Perfect Storm”, George Clooney captains a ship that catches tuna or red snapper or whatever, and he can make lots of money in a short time doing it. But if George Clooney, George Clooney’s brooding good looks, and George Clooney’s amazing hair, are unable to return a single Gloucesterman to shore in the face of just a single The Perfect Storm (spoiler alert they all die), what hope is there for Long or Short Capital Management in not destroying all subscriberholder value in the face of The Perfect Storm of Perfect Storms?

What hope indeed,
Long or Short Capital Managment

Just to clarify, our definition of “High-end” means “extremely firm buttocks and/or thighs that do not touch while standing”.

High-end Wife: Her position is weak because, frankly, she is a status driven nag. As Man’s ego falls commensurate with his portfolio’s value, Man will tire of her act and reallocate his assets towards strange to try and offset his ego loss. The High-end Wife is likely to adopt a simultaneous “flight to quality” strategy or, in layman’s terms, “pull a Jackie O”. But she lacks the understanding of markets to know that this is a GLOBAL financial and, soon-to-be, economic crisis, so her Aristole will really be a Raffaello. The availability of cheap, made-to-order Eastern European High-end Wives, further puts pricing pressure on a transitioning High-end Wife, whose assets are more aged and more likely to be in need of a refresh.

High-end GF: Below the high-growth exterior, High-end GFs are mainly naive and prone to huge strategic gaffes despite tactical genius and impressive, but depreciating, endowments of natural resources. Her short term position is strong, because as Man is transitioned from High-end Wife, High-end GF will get a small short-term boost. Considering that Man is likely rich, this will be a very small and very short boost. Given that this boost is purely short-term in nature, this is a classic buy on the rumor, sell on the news situation for anyone looking to invest in a portfolio of High-end GFs. Over the long term, her fundamentals will become identical to that of the High-end Wife, with the exception being that her former role as a mistress weakens her bargaining power with respect to Man in terms of Man seeking out new strange.

High-end Hooker: Her position is strongest and her assets are acyclical. In good times, men are flush with cash and looking for strange but are also less dysfunctional; this leads to an allocation towards a basket mainly consisting of High-End Wives, with maybe a 15% position in High-end GFs and a 2-5% position in High-end Hookers. As markets worsen and/or crisises take hold, Man is increasingly dysfunctional and looking for ego offsets. It also in this time when Man typically contemplates or engages in life restructuring which can entail simple cost saves, like headcount reduction, or even full-on recapitalization, flushing out the junior capital. A successful market-timing Man will typically have a portfolio composed of 60% High-end Hookers, 30% High-end GFs and 10% value High-end Wives when the market is bottoming. As the cycle comes around, the High-end Hooker position is reduced opportunistically, some of the High-end GF portion transitions organically to High-end Wives and the value High-end Wife position is added to with more growth High-end Wives.

As to relative vulnerability, obviously Man will be ok and everyone else will (still) be fucked in a recession. This is what historically has been true according to the data we have. Additionally, the cross-cyclical trend we see is that everyone else will still be fucked.

Analytiquication Sans L’Informatione: Iceland
Source: Iceland: When Too Big To Fail Becomes Too Big To Rescue

Comment: [Iceland is] fighting powers that they are powerless to fight. It’s like tackling a storm raging in the sea with a teaspoon. The main supermarket can’t get imported goods because they have no currency. The shops are half empty. One of the store managers has advised people to start hoarding. We’re running out of oil. And winter came last night - about a month early.

Analysis: This sounds like panic, and one of the keys to getting out of trouble, even of you find yourself stuck in a fjord, caught below a dyke or being strangled by a pack of bjorks (warning those things may not actually be Icelandic), is not to panic. So do not panic before reading the rest of this comment. Contrarian analysis indicates that if someone says “we’re running out of oil”, it probably means they are not actually running out of oil because they must be aware of how much oil they need so are now appropriately prioritizing it. Like when I used to put pillows on top of my brother’s head, and he used to complain “I can’t breathe JD, stop please!”. Save the words for the birds bro, I know you’re breathing if you’re talking. It was tough growing up an only child.

Comment: This is not right “The shops are half empty” there stores are full Everything is just more expensive and we are not running out of oil, the government will not lat that happen, the government is running thundered of cars, run ships, helicopters,airplanes so they need oil them self so they will not let the country run out of oil. Most of the news we are hearing now in Iceland…well lets say they are not all true.

Analysis: We knew we were right before and that that panicky email was wrong. We were able to use this latest comment in conjunction with our razor-sharp confirmation bias to refute all those who doubted our previous paragraph. This is why analysts need more and more data and deserve to be paid huge sums of money. If we don’t have the former, how can we inundate you with how correct we are, like how I am doing now? If we don’t have the latter, how do we maintain our model girlfriends’ cocaine habits?

Comment: Iceland produce 5% of all aluminium in the world and our mutual fund is bigger than Norways oil fund per person. People forget the fact that we have highest standard of lifing in the world and we will be on the top again next year. There is nothing to fear in Iceland.

Analysis: This does not pass the smell test. Olfactory analysis is key in understanding smaller, niche markets like Iceland. It’s impossible to visit there by plane and very few people have ever even seen an Icelander, so analysts must sniff in the general direction of Reykjavik and glean what they can from the scents. And my Moody’s rated nose indicated that there is no whiff of aluminium. Moody’s rates my nose as a Baa2, which means the implied default rate is only 87%, so you know you can trust it.

Comment: We will see more and more nations literally disappear. Iceland will shortly be returned to wilderness.

Analysis: When the Age of the Cephalopod is upon us, and the Age of Man is at an end, Iceland will be one of the first nations to go, due to its isolated oceanic location and vast volcanic power sources. This comment is right in suggesting that the fall of Iceland may be a catalyst for positioning one’s portfolio for full exposure to cephalopodic plays.

Comment: They’re vikings… Canadians and Americans better watch out, soon there will be a fleet of angry Icelanders landing on your coasts to loot and rape.

Analysis: To paraphrase Robert the Bruce, “you’ve been raped by worse! Now be raped with me!” There are some attractive broads over there, so there really are worse fates. But the truth is, Iceland, it’s too bad you could never rape us…because we would consent.

Recommendation: To summarize, and in summary, do not panic in Iceland or about Iceland, Iceland and the world is not running out of oil, everything is ok, except the fact that Iceland is about to be reclaimed by the sea and subject to, along with the rest of Earth, the rule of giant squid masters, also Iceland can’t rape the US because we have it coming and would likely enjoy it. Invest on that.

*prison system

He can’t get IT done, but he thinks we need to get SOMETHING done. That is decidedly NOT getting IT done.

Recommendation: If you are planning to build a CDO where the underlying assets are Hank Paulson Paper, good luck with that. And no, we have no interest in the equity tranche, the AAA tranche or any other part of the structure, thanks.

I’m sorry Hank, it’s not you it, it’s me. I have been violently ill all morning after playing “donkey races” on Sunday. Tequila, speed and tenacity are at once a great combination and a miserable spectacle. Exclusively the latter the next day. And my puking all over your bailout plan has nothing to do with its merits. It looks great, a good win for you and you should be proud. Seriously, good stuff. Like I said dude, donkeys races. Blame the donkey races. I’m sure I’ll be fine by like tomorrow. Or 2014.

Regards,
T. Market

A geographic information system correlation analysis

Fact: Charles Tyrwhitt New York City store #1 is located at Madison Avenue & 46th Street, on the ground floor of the ex-Bear Stearns corporate headquarters

Fact: Charles Tyrwhitt New York City store #2 is located at 7th Avenue & 50th Street, on the ground floor of the ex-Lehman Brothers corporate headquarters

Fact: Bear Stearns is toast

Fact: Lehman Brothers is even toastier

Discussion: While further research is required to determine the exact linkage between Charles Tyrwhitt shirts and recent examples of the massive evaporation of shareholder value, the correlation trend is undeniable. Potential catalysts for Charles Tyrwhitt based shareholder value evaporation include bank risk officers spending their afternoons perusing between 100s of shirts in various cuff, collar, and color/stripes combinations instead of properly valuing CDO securities, an “uppity” British attitude permeating the entire building like the smell of a “5-dollar footlong” from Subway left to rot hidden inside the desk of your work nemesis, or some other, more sinister reason. Our crack team of CFA-certified researchers in Mumbai will stay up for the rest of the month running numbers to further isolate the direct causation between value evaporation and Charles Tyrwhitt, so please look out for our next research blast.

Recommendation: Short anything with a geographic proximity to Charles Tyrwhitt.

Recommendation: Short the US & EU. We are regulating ourselves out of existence while China and the developing world moves in the other direction.

A dark stage, with a single spotlight on Henry Paulson

Henry Paulson: Good morning, ladies and gentleman. My name is Henry Paulson and I run the Treasury. And I don’t mean to make you panic, but if you do not give me a balance sheet that can hold $700 billion on it, and unlimited funding, than the economy will die. That’s right it will die. I don’t mean to cause fear and panic, but those are the only two legitimate reactions you should be feeling right now and you should let those guide you. Let them flow over you, sucking you into my myopic morass which now shrouds my former optimistic obfuscations.

Ben Bernanke: Every other economist disagrees with this proposed bailout but I believe in fear and panic and am drunk on the wine of my new powers. I too must insist that you, the fine people of this country, please give into your fear and panic. It worked in dealing with 9/11, it worked in getting us into Iraq, it worked in re-electing George Bush and now it will work in bailing out this economy. You don’t want it to DIE, do you?

Barney Frank: (Looking disheveled with a bad teen moustache) Blahrm-bram blrankrtrtyc encncmmphphphgh nbmmanana. Bragblahma ththtlthabzzzgh ndragh plghtythmrhm phjalth.

George Bush: I know nothing, if not fear and panic. Trust me, we need this.

Violin solo in the background playing the Vivaldi classic “Short Term Political Cycles Are Mismatched With Jobs Charged With Making Decisions That Have Effect Decades Later”

Congress: FEAR. PANIC.

The Economists: NO!

Congress: FEAR. PANIC.

Wall Street: FEAR. PANIC.

All players dancing on the stage surrounding The Economists who disappear into the floor

A Rational Man: Do we need this?

Henry Paulson: Yes, I need this.

A Rational Man: I said “we”.

Henry Paulson: And I said “I”.

A Rational Man: What will this do? Honestly, I’m a Rational man, thus I have no vote.

Henry Paulson: Maybe, maybe might unfreeze the interbank market.

A Rational Man: But will this save us from recession?

Henry Paulson: No.

A Rational Man: But will this lead to massive inflation?

Henry Paulson: Almost certainly.

A Rational Man: And what about the unknowable second order effects, or third order effects, or x order effects?

Henry Paulson: I ignore them.

A Rational Man: So this bailout is a longshot to do anything positive and it increases the downside risk if it doesn’t work?

Henry Paulson: That is what our math tells us.

A Rational Man: Is this socialism?

Henry Paulson: No, this is necessary.

This is actual e-mail I got sent via Capital IQ, completely unsolicited. I work for a large public mutal fund company. The next note will be one asking me to cash a check for him for $1 million dolalrs…

Hi,

I am writing to enquire whether you’ve had a chance to look at our equity research notes uploaded on Capital IQ. If you’ve not, kindly take some time to look at it or, if you prefer, I could email then to you directly.

Our firm is an investment bank, member of the Nairobi Stock Exchange, in Kenya. We are among the leaders in corporate finance, research and brokerage.

We could work with you to identify and unlock value for your funds right here in our market. Our market currently has attractive bargain opportunities, and being a frontier/emerging capital markets presents portfolio maximization advantages as follows:

(i) Largely uncorrelated to developed world capital markets

(ii) Driven by the pace and momentum of economic development in the economy: which has a very long way to go.

(iii) Listed stocks are in the very strategic and high-growth sectors of the economy whose growth trajectories are much higher than general economic growth rates.

Kindly get in touch with me to explore how we could incept beneficial relationships between our two firms.

Kind regards,

———————————–

[Redacted]

[Redacted] Investment Bank Ltd

[Redacted]

Nairobi, Kenya

Tel: [Redacted]

Cell: [Redacted]

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
-The Bailout Proposal

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing

Recommendation: In any mania, don’t invest in the company that mines the “gold”, buy the company that supplies the “shovels” and “picks”.

I mean isn’t that the whole point of insurance? To make someone pay too much so they don’t have to worry about something. Well I figure being AIG, I’d be an insider and be able to cut myself a deal and not make myself pay anything at all for being insured from ever not making money.

Recommendation: If you can’t insure yourself, who can you insure?

John Thain: Kenny, I know you’ve had enough fun in investment banking, but we are in a lot of trouble here, and I’d be willing the firm to be sold at our Friday close just to give us some stability. $17 per share is fair and you guys can have a couple weeks to check out our books which you must be curious about.

Kenny Lewis: And $29 per share is a higher prime number — Let’s do that!!! Also, we must not wait, we must do this RIGHT NOW, no time to look at those books — who cares what’s on them anyways, not like we have the people to be able to get behind that junk. We bought Countrywide for chrissakes!!!! But we do know that by paying more for a falling knife, you get a sharp increase in prestige and it makes it seem like you weren’t some idiot going in alone and bidding against ourselves. It worked with Countrywide it will work with you guys!

John Thain: You, sir, have a deal.

Kenny Lewis: One thing I would ask Johnny boy is that you get a blindingly orange tan — it helps distract people. When you got the salon, ask for “The Mozilo”.

Fruit Vendor: This is my last orange, as you can see it’s bruised and damaged and, between you and me buddy, I am probably going to throw it away at the end of my shift. I’ll sell it to you for a quarter.

Kenny Lewis: I WILL PAY $1 FOR YOUR ORANGE BUT YOU MUST ACT NOW!!! That orange is the perfect strategic fit for my oranginization and I must have it. It’s even more perfect than the fit of that kumquatwide I bought last year!! Delicious!

Fruit Vendor: You, sir, have a deal.

Supercuts Cashier: Sir that will be $13 for your haircut.

Kenny Lewis: You think the guy in the $5000 pants is gonna pay $13 for a haircut? Come on!!! *As he flings a $100 bill at the cashier*

Supercuts Cashier: You, sir, have a deal.

Drexel: What we have ere, Kenny-boy, is what I like to call a CONundrum. Here is me, having access to this fine fine female over ere and there’s you, dumb-ass white-boy in a suit ain’t even paying no mind to the world of trouble you about to be in if you start up like Charlie Bronson. So looky ere, Kenny, I ain’t go not beef wit you, I just wan’t to make sure my employee gets paid what she worth. $1000, up front.

Kenny Lewis: Drexel, I didn’t come here to haggle, I’ll pay two grand in cash plus another grand in BAC shares for an “around the world” with Trixie over there.

Drexel: You, sir, have a deal.

Previous Rating LEH: BFFLAF
New Rating LEH: ?

Previous Rating WM: BFFLAF
New Rating WM: ?

Has anyone seen Lehman (NYSE: LEH) or WaMu (NYSE: WM)??? I am so worried about my girls, I can’t find them anywhere and they are not picking up their cell. So the backstory is that we are all out last night drinking at Normal & Unwealthy’s, the girls’ goto bar. Us girls were dancing up a storm, letting our hair done and getting our freak on!

Well Lehman and WaMU, when they get a little drunk and are in front of guys, they get into kissing each other a little. Totally not for attention!!! They do it because sometimes it’s nice to kiss a girl and they both think each other are so beautiful and they are!! They are so crazy and original, I don’t know why none of their relationships seem to last!!

Anyways, next thing I know, some really old guy (he must have been at least like 30 or even more ancient!?!) with a shaved head and glasses is behind them and grinding them both. He was in a suit and looked totally out of place, when a popped collar or three is all he really needed. It was also weird because I’ve never seen him around them before but he used to hang with this other girl Goldman, who is a slut and a whore but very rich. But that was like years ago!!!

So, like, this guy, he’s grinding them and they are both a little out of it at this point, and when I like come back from a trip to the bathroom, they aren’t there!!! Please if anyone has seen my friends Lehman or WaMu or knows what happened to them, text me, Melissa Moody, and let me know what happened to them. I’m so worried!!!!

Ratings Methodology:
Hey everyone! It’s me, Melissa Moody…not that other Moody’s you have been reading about. Actually that’s why I’m here I’m just so sick and tired of that other Moody! Their ratings stink, and they don’t know nearly as much as I do about debt, it’s true, I’m maxed out on 4 out of 7 credit cards I know I have a problem but I just can’t stop,ha ha. I can do a better job than Moody’s and that is what I’m gonna do! And let’s face it, their old ratings were too complicated. I mean Aa3, Baa1, Caa2, B1 who knows what that means? My ratings will be simple:

• BFFAE (Best Friends Forever and Ever)
• BFF
• BFFLAF (Best Friends For Like Almost Forever)
• BFFBAS (Best Friends Forever But Also a Slut)
• BFFBIHH (Best Friends Forever But I Hate Her)
• Whore

“The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar

If this is true and you extrapolate it out, it is only a matter of time until they discover the end of the Earth and existence as we know it. Who is to say they won’t do that tomorrow? Again, not us.

Recommendation: These securities do NOT benefit from the implicit guarantee of the US government, God or your locally relevant deity. Wink wink nudge nudge, but between you and me, they DO.

I would like to congratulate you on your recent purchase. I am glad I was able to convince you that now is the ideal time to offer an uncapped backstop on a $5.2 trillion book of mortgages. We here at the Treasury Dept (along with our sisters over at the Fed), appreciate your repeat business. I am confident that this acquisition will be a profitable one; perhaps even more profitable than your recent purchase of JPMorgan’s Bear Stearns’ liabilities!

Please know that we are actively seeking more deals on which we can work together. I am confident we will find more interesting opportunities before the end of the year.

Yours Truly,
Hank Paulson

On the Piratery Corp Inc conference call, I think Crumpacker missed a major point. It seems evident that one external factor is driving both the increase in global warming and the decrease in global piracy. I’m speaking, of course, of the rise of our cephalopod overlords.

Obviously, cephalopods must be behind global warming. As our soon to be VP/chief science expert Sarah Palin tells us, humans have played no part in the dramatic increase in global temperature since the industrial revolution. She understands the obvious motive that Cephalopods have for inducing more warming: higher sea levels. How better to expand squid market share than by increasing the size of their domain? When manhattan sinks beneath the waves, cephalopods will laughing all the way to the (undersea) bank.

Of course, squid have been directly involved in the vast decline in piracy over the past hundred years. If ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 2′ taught us anything, it taught us that. By eliminating one link of the supply chain (from freighter->pirate->squid to just freighter->squid), cephalopods are realizing tremendous efficiency gains that show up in their topline results.

Recommendation: Short Piratery Corp Inc, long SQUD. They promise to eat their shareholders last.