Archive for the 'Research' Category

Announcing the CPI-F (flat)

The WSJ’s Heard on the Street column is generally pretty good. So the title of a recent entry, “Housing Bubble Continues to Haunt Fed“, made me interested to hear adults talk about the current stagnancy in real estate and how the hangover from the bubble still lingers. But I didn’t hear any of that malarkey. Instead, I learned that people are debating whether housing plays too big a role in the CPI; specifically, the “problem” is that the housing portion of the CPI is exerting upward pressure on the overall number. Y’know because consumers typically live somewhere and pay for that privilege.

“OER [editor’s note: “owners’ equivalent rent”] is expected to jump to 1.2% year-on-year in December from 0.6% in February, despite a sluggish housing market.”

1.2%!! This is getting serious.

So what should we do?

“Some suggest alternative inflation measures.”

Oh ok. Well, what are “some” proposing?

“A ‘supercore’ alternative excludes not just food and energy but shelter, too, to gauge underlying trends.

There is great opportunity for the Govt to reduce CPI by excluding more items. In fact, this looks eerily reminiscent of another highly successful endeavor in metrics improvement: LoS’s change from GAAP to SAAP (Seldom Accepted Accounting Principles). By changing our standard, we could change our metrics, and by changing our metrics from EBITDA to EBE (Earnings before Everything aka “supercore earnings”), we greatly improved our profitability.

As visionaries in the SAAP space and masters in specious metrics, LoS would like to be included in the “some” who are suggesting alternatives ways to measure CPI. Considering that the evolved goal of the CPI is to show a slight and consistent level of inflation, we propose that the CPI no longer include any components that are increasing in price level more than 1.5%. These items will be increasing as a percentage of the index, thus throwing off its accuracy. Similarly, items that are increasing in price level less than 1.5% or even decreasing should also be excluded since a) we are not interested in deflation and b) the accuracy of the model depends on items maintaining a consistent (rather than falling) proportion of the total index. It’s important to note that any price changes greater or less than 1.5% could skew the whole thing we are trying to measure and render the CPI not just unreliable, but practically useless.

This new CPI, CPI-F (flat), will provide data on all changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services whose prices demonstrated a slight and consistent level of inflation. We expect it to have the most consistent and consistently low inflation readings of all the CPI measures. Its current reading is 1.5%. In the future, the monthly CPI-F level will be reported on the 5th of the following month, unless there is no change to the index, in which case you can continue to use the prior month’s reading. Here is a pro forma chart that demonstrates what inflation would look like as measured by CPI-F since 1900.


Me-too shop BofA goes “Long-on-Women”

LoS has long been long-on-women ever since we learned that they were the only source for babies. According to years of research and field study, women have a de facto monopoly on having babies. And despite numerous damning letters we have sent outlining the grievous impact this monopoly has had and will continue to have on love markets, the FTC and other international regulatory bodies have shown no interest in taking any antitrust action against women. These agencies appear to be either corrupt or incompetent. Maybe, like the SEC, they are both.

Ultimately, we are not ideologues; we are handsome and incredible investors who lean towards real-world based pragmatism when investing our real fake dollars. And if you can’t break up a trust, you gotta go long it. We have been long women and their various body parts for years: ideas for “Pink Dollar” products for female drivers, long legs, short breast cancer (basically), short penis, playing the menstrual cycle, short girl-on-girl, sexual harassment arbitrage and probably most appropos, an analysis of high-end female assets. Hell, in a 2006 piece of research we did for MSFT, gratis, we exhorted the company to “change the packaging of [their products to appeal to women]“:

Change the packaging of your products. Very few women buy your products, Mr. Ballmer, and you are missing out on their money, or as we like to call it “the Pink Dollar.” You may assume that the key to attracting the Pink Dollar is to improve the content of your offering or to tailor your content to women. WRONG! Substance matters little to the average female. Focus instead on the superficial aspects. Make all your packaging pink, and have a little bow. They eat this crap up. Something that has worked for us on occasion is to put in a little note that says “Sorry.” You don’t have to specify what you are sorry for. It’s important to note that while it’s tempting to enclose a $100 bill, this will only insult and irritate the average female consumer.

A typical woman laughing because she is more valuable than menNet-net women are a fantastic investment (with the caveat that if the baby making monopoly is broken up or the cephalopods enslave the human race (2026 is our best estimate for the latter), multiples will come in substantially). So we do not begrudge the me-too boutique bank/research firm, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), agreeing with our genius; we quibble instead with their failure to recognize and properly cite our genius. A sample of their report:

In continuing to focus on the “long-on-women” investment theme that explores the growing importance of female [assets], David Bianco, head of U.S. equity strategy research, said that [womenfolk’s illegal and terrible monopoly on baby production is]increasing discretionary income for women, which should benefit companies that sell specifically to women.

“Women may increasingly become the higher-income earners of U.S. households, and since they [tyrannically] make the bulk of household spending decisions as it is, we think their stronger purchasing power relative to men bodes well for spending on a wide range of categories from vacations to cosmetic procedures to home furnishings,” said Bianco.

Not a single mention of LoS or the other firms whose research they have cribbed.

Recommendation: Short BofA, for being bitches. Maintain long on women, for having all the power.


Important Caveats

When evaluating an investment in a new product, one whose markets had previously been thought to be so niche as to be theoretical, this is the kind of language that would make a savvy sophisticated investor feel longer:

[It] also seems like there will be a high likelihood of these vehicles making their way to high-end rental destinations.

Sounds great! Product X will almost definitely be better off if a rental infrastructure develops around it that allows the product to be consumed in small increments by people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. Think movies (back when they were $100+ to buy), or timeshares, or NetJets, or Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), or whatever it is that Rent-A-Center (NASDAQ: RCII) does for poor people, or the idea of…renting as a business model. It works.

But after I tell you that “Product X” is a jet pack (btw “Product X” is a jet pack, rad I know) I think it’s important to note that there is an important caveat in this whole “jet packs being bought by high-end rental firms” thing. Let’s read the unabridged portion of that quote (from this article):

Assuming the first few owners don’t die horribly, it also seems like there will be a high likelihood of these vehicles making their way to high-end rental destinations.

I have bolded the important caveat for the benefit of unsophisticated investors, as well as the Japanese. When evaluating a product’s feasibility in the market place, and the returns one hopes to generate from an investment in such a product, it is crucial to ascertain the percentage probability that the first few owners die horribly. I can’t stress enough how bad the first few owners dying horribly would be — I mean it would be horrible to your investment. So try and avoid that.

Advanced sophisticated investors may also try to map out the percentage probabilities that the last owners will die horribly (see “Segway, The”). If the last owners were to die horribly, it’s likely your investment’s value will similarly fall right off a cliff.

HT to DWL


Stick and the Eskimo

I once spent an inexplicable amount of time with an Inuit who told me that you can “reason” with a brown bear or a grizzly bear. If you happen upon either type of bear, you simply bargain – i.e., “Look, bear, I have so much salmon, you want so much salmon. Let’s be reasonable and cut a deal.” This Inuit claimed, however, that a Polar Bear was the one type of bear with whom “you cannot reason.” I hope that this is so, if Soros is indeed being pursued by such a bear.

Any amount of time with an Inuit is inexplicable. There is a reason the Quebecois detest them.

But it’s true, we are eminently pragmatic. And our desire for pragmatism is only boosted by our physicality. The carrot looks pretty good to your counterparty when your stick is a 1500lb bear that can knock your head off with one swipe. Hence, pragmatic, reasonable solutions to problems tend to happen. The government knows what I’m talking about. There is nothing else you will need to know.


If It Can Go Up, It Can Go Down

In front of me stood the majesty of the Mt Saint Elias, or as it’s know in bear — “Roarpaw Pawpawroar”. Snowcaps like candy. Its veins suffuse with glacial flows, drip-drip-dripping down to become streams, to become rivers, to become oceans. I stood on all fours, daintily perched on old Fisherbear’s stone, a sort of reverse-oasis in a fast moving current. As a 4 year old bear, there was no more exciting place to be in the middle of the salmon run. Your bear friends and family all looking on, depending on your savvy to bring home the salmon bacon. How I miss those days.

The Soros’* and Icahns of the world liken the salmon run to particularly memorable days in the market like Black Monday. Days when fortunes and reputations were made, and fortunes and reputations were lost. That works for me, being both a bear and a master of markets. And there resides an apropos lesson in that delicious little swimmer, the salmon.

Salmon are born in the shadows of the mountains. They swim downstream out into the ocean and flourish for years. Normal stuff, stuff you’d expect from any animal. But then they do a crazy thing, something oppositional to common sense. They swim BACK upstream. They fight for every inch up these fast-moving currents, just to spawn. All this takes so much out of them, they die right after. Science calls this semelparous. Bears call this fucking crazy.

But this taught me an important lesson about markets. Markets go with the flow for the most part and do the sensible thing. But eventually they will swim upstream, spawn and die. There is nothing else you will need to know.

*Last I saw George, he was being stalked by a particularly ornery Polar Bear with an appetite for FX speculators.


Bear With Me

ROARRRRRRYYYYYRRRRRRRRRAWNNNNNNNN! I am SOOOO sleepy. You people (I can say that shit without being racist, I’m a bear as sure I shit in the woods (which is amazing btw)) get all worked up and jonesing for frappucino when you have hunkered down for like 8 hours tops. Can’t function, face like a sat-upon powdered donut, hair like a goddamned hippy. Try 6 months, fools! You know what hibernating is like? Thermonuclear halitosis, especially if you didn’t do a good job flossing out them salmon bits. My hair looks like a frazzled mess. And dreams so vivid I could taste the shark in my mouth from when I gave it a massive dream beatdown. Still bracing from my return to a reality where not even Vegas will sanction a proper BvS fight.

Anyhow, I don’t know where the jokers who kept me in this cave are. I am mostly sure I didn’t eat them but the timing of my nap compared to the timing of their departures…and the fullness of my belly…and these human bones scattered about…that all begs some mighty serious questions. But fuck’em, I’m here and they’re not. It’s great for you because now I have the run of the place, and perfect timing based on what’s been going down.

So by way of proper introduction, I am Bear and I have an MBA from the “Harvard of Grizzly Maze.” Here is a shot of me at my desk. There is nothing else you will need to know.


Translating Corporate Speak: Wynn [Unforeseen Upside Edition #4]

Steve Wynn continues to host the most interesting quarterly conference call in corporate America. Suffice it to say, he has an opinion that he’s willing to share. [The bold is all our emphasis.]

Steve on Wynn’s geographic mix:

Listen, we’re more of a Chinese company than American company today as we’re having this call. I love it. Thank God for being outside the United States today. There isn’t an executive in the world that isn’t thrilled about being outside the United States today. What are we supposed to do, draw great hope and satisfaction from the behavior of the senate and the house of representatives? If that isn’t enough to give you heartburn, I don’t know what it is.

Steve on the political process:

I don’t think anybody in America is arguing. There’s a furious-ness in the country about the irresponsibility. $100 million a month we’re supposed to borrow? $100 billion a month we’re supposed to borrow for the next five or six years? Why, it’s totally unsustainable. It’s lunacy. I remember the nexus to Tocqueville, I think it was around 1909, the great political philosopher from France wrote, “The American system of democracy will thrive until that moment when the politicians discover they can bribe the electorate with their own money”. And those (expletive) fools have done it.

Steve on the administration’s impact on Las Vegas and the hospitality industry:

If you’re talking about strictly convention bookings, you can say that 2010 is better than ’09. And you can say you see trend of increased bookings. It is totally irresponsible and naive to say based upon this life trend, we project this infinitely into the future and give you some rosy baloney story about what’s going to happen in 20’11. I am warning my investors that may be on the call, to the extent that you hear any of that from our competitors, beware. There are more questions afoot in this market, in America, that will impact 2011 that I have hair on my head, I’m happy to say, and I still have a full head of hair. No, you will not get any of that us. I don’t see it. I have more questions that answers, I have more pessimism that I had before, and it’s based upon the political environment in which we are living today. And it definitely is impacting Las Vegas.

The President of the United States hasn’t missed one single opportunity to squelch Las Vegas. In our particular case, it’s cost us millions of dollars from companies affected by the President’s remarks that have no connection whatsoever to federal bailouts. But we get phone calls, and I’m not going to mention the names of the companies, from chairman who say we don’t want to appear to be profligate because Barack Obama said this or that about Las Vegas. But it’s had an effect on us. The hospitality industry in the United States of America as a whole has suffered disproportionately during this recession. Maybe automobile workers got a break.

But all of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that work in hotels, restaurants and bars in the United States of America have been totally and completely overlooked in this aborted rescue attempt that has squandered billions of dollars in the United States.

Steve on the state of taxation and the US dollar:

It is preposterous that businesses are under attack in the United States of America. Anybody that makes over $250,000 in the form of a personal income tax return is now, by Washington definition, a rich person, when everybody who has got a college degree knows that the personal income tax rate in the United States of America is the business tax of America. Every sub-chapter S, every individual proprietorship and every partnership in the United States of America files tax returns as individuals. And when they do, and they show that they made $2 million or $3 million or God forbid $4 million, they pay the income tax rate, they deduct their working expenses, their living expenses, and then they invest in a new store, a new shop, and most of the time, 25% of their “profits” are tied up in accounts receivable or inventory.

But all of a sudden, all of those people who make over $250,000 are rich folks to be fleeced. And if that’s job formation stimulation in America, I’m Mary Poppins. And if I sound angry about it and disgusted, I am disgusted and angry at the apparent ignorance of the administration and the congress to recognize the fact that the individual tax rate in the United States of America is, in fact, the business tax of America. And if you keep banging on that, you will you destroy the incentive for job formation in the United States of America. And that’s simple truth. Simple truth. And whether politicians like it or don’t like it means nothing to me.

And that’s why I’m pessimistic about Las Vegas, because those are our customers! Those people out there hustling their businesses and God forbid, showing they made a million dollars as partnership or as an individual, yes, they’re the enemy now, they’re the rich folks. Well, until we get over this, America is in for hard times. Because what’s going to happen is, the people that are going to suffer from what’s going on are the working class of America. My 15 to 20,000 employees, they’re the ones that are in trouble. The reason they’re in trouble is this demolition of the dollar is going to reduce the buying power of the working class of America assure as (expletive) as if we gave them a salary cut of 25%.

Steve honestly assessing a bad decision to build the Encore casino in Las Vegas:

Good question. No, it’s not what I thought it would be. I thought that it would add at least $200 million or $250 million of EBITDA to our bottom line, and nothing remotely like that has happened. Of course, it was conceived in a market that was entirely different today, as you’ve just pointed out. It is a beautiful thing that cost $2.3 billion…Or would we just be better off because we would have had $2.3 billion in cash more than we do now?
…So would I build Encore if I had to do it today? No, I’d keep my money. Fortunately we had enough money that we don’t sweat it…


Dear LoS: To Dag or Not To Dag

Dear LoS,

I work for a bank in London. Or rather, I had been working for a bank in London, and now, I have to fight for not only my job, but my life. You see, after the recent bumper bonus tax, my firm is downsizing its staffing levels in London. Some jobs are being relocated to more favorable geographies; others like mine, well, they are being fought over. In a gladiatiorial ring. With knives and nets and shit.

You see my bank, decided to just give the British government what they really want — bankers’ blood. Half a billion pounds sterling is a drop in the bucket, but cutting down bankers for the masses is worth its weight in gold. So for the bank employees who want to continue to be 1) employed in 2) London, my bank is having us step into the ring.

All of which leads to my question. My fight is scheduled for the next bank holiday in Green Park. It will be a duel between a combatant who is completely blindfolded but has a dagger against a man who has full use of his vision, but has no weapon. He who lives, works. As a Senior VP I have the right to choose which combo I’d prefer. I know you have been going through something similar recently, what would you do here?
-Markus Orlyius

In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. I’ve never had the opportunity to say that in context, so today is a good day amicus (gladiator for friend). A no-brainer — choose sight and then fight a battle of attrition. He can only use that dagger in close, and he cannot flail it around wildly without having to stop. Pick your spots — if you see an opening kick him in the balls, then retreat tactically. Is he crouched in a protective fetal crouch? Maneuver so you can kick him in the head, and again tactically retreat. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Veni. Vidi. Vici. Just grind him down like this, until he gets sloppy and you can get a stomp in on his knife-arm, either getting him to drop the weapon or breaking the arm. Know that he will nick you during this fight, be prepared for that, but just avoid getting gored. You will prevail if you fight like you bank — smartly. Good luck.


The Tiger Syndrome

Swine flu looks tame compared to the current disease sweeping the nation. Tiger Syndrome is the newest, most deadly, and fastest spreading epidemic seen to date. It appears to mainly affect women who date or are married to men who travel for work. The symptoms are grotesque: hallucinatory paranoia, erratic insecurity, and general moodiness. The Syndrome attacks the central nervous system of females, rendering them unable to differentiate between their husbands and famous billionaire athletes. This lack of discernment persists even when the men in question do not own a private jet, hold court in Vegas nightclubs, or appear in advertisements on national TV promoting household products.

Recommendation: If your wife or SO are at high-risk for Tiger Syndrome, it is advised you immediately stockpile tranquilizers, preferably of the fast-acting variety. Chloroform will do in a pinch (be sure to just use a pinch). These will be necessary to calm your wife or girlfriend when her symptoms flare up to the point that (your and) her own safety are jeopardized. A mutated form of this disease, the Uchitel Strain, has been spreading like herpes in a VIP room of a Las Vegas Club, but it focuses on women who resemble knock-off Barbie dolls, whose first name is the misspelled version of a common first name (e.g. Jenn vs Jen or Jammiee vs Jamie) and those who suffer from chronic duck lipitis; our research indicates that no on who has ever read this site is in the high risk group for the Uchitel Strain.


Today I Am Thankful For

Patrick Bryne
You have provided us with years of bizarre entertainment. You may have peaked with the Sith Lord episode and your campaign against naked short selling but you continue to amuse. Your 3Q earnings press release, in which you made various statements about your auditors’ alleged views on Overstock’s latest accounting mishap was excellent. Grant Thornton’s reply to the SEC, in which they basically accused you of lying, took this episode to the next level. But I am really thankful that you took it one step further and “corrected [their] mistatements“.

Steve Wynn & Sheldon Adelson
Wynn always provides great quotes on his conference calls. Whether he is telling investors that he will take advantage of their stupidity or directly confronting the administration for their suicidal policies. Thank you Steve.
And to Sheldon Adelson, thank you for all the amazing commentary you provide on your conference calls. Among the many quotes worth saving, my favorite was your joke that you may be cooking the books at your recently IPO’d Macau subsidiary.

Twitter
Thank you for creating an information firehose that distracts me from work and play. If only I could post half as often as I tweet.

China
Thank you for loaning our country so much money. And thank you for being such a fascinating place, a parallel universe where collusion is OK and business operates on the businessman’s terms. I am hopeful you avoid the credit growth and over-investment fueled crash towards which I fear you are headed.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Please tell us what you are thankful for in the comments.


Risk in our Doomsday Device Fund

Dead_Cat commented on the Screw You, Science piece thusly:

I hereby launch my new fund Doomsday Device Partners Fund I LLC. This is a private equity-style product specifically focused on the acquisition and exploitation of doomsday devices. The fund will develop a diversified portfolio of doomsday devices, which may include particle accelerators, nuclear research and generation facilities, underground virus research laboratories and key religious artifacts. Nicolas Cage will be Chief Investment Officer and Milla Jovovich will be Chief Risk Officer.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, Long or Short Capital already has a Doomsday Device fund, one which is itself a doomsday device. We designed it with an automatic trigger system, a sophisticated system of arrays and failsafes such that, if any competing doomsday fund were ever to be launched, we would be able to retaliate no matter what happened to the value of our assets.

And unfortunately for you, and really all of us, we may not have been entirely sober when we designed this system. We called it The AYFKM system, but we generally referred to is as “No Whammy.” Kaiser conceptualized the structure. The first part of the design is an array which monitors an assortment of global communication channels. There is also a direct line of communication from No Whammy to the Long or Short Capital bunker, which is not a euphemism for our moms’ basements.

The device can be activated in one of three ways:

  1. If No Whammy’s array detects that any doomsday fund has started pitching investors, the No Whammy goes live.
  2. If the Long or Short Capital bunker signals for The AYFKM device to go live, it goes live. An instance where the line of communication between the LoS bunker and The AYFKM device is severed or otherwise goes down, The AYFKM device goes live. Just in case.
  3. If there is seismic activity in Manhattan greater than 0.7 on the Richter scale or an unusually large flock of Canadian geese, No Whammy goes live.

What does it mean for No Whammy to go live? It means that within 72 hours, thermonuclear missiles will be fired from silos we have across the globe, rendering the Earth uninhabitable. We did design a fail-safe in case of a mistaken triggering of No Whammy: we have a bunker with a single person in it who has access to a button that can stop the process, provided he first gives enters the correct password.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, that bunker is staffed by Yuri, a drunk and a loudmouth. And Dmitri absolutely HATES Yuri. Dmitri, you see, was the first button-pusher we hired. We had a following out with Dmitri over a heated game of Risk in which one party did not honor his agreed upon alliance, and in fact, exploited the truce that the illusory alliance provided in order to build up forces and launch an invasion from said party’s (it’s Dmitri, duh) Kamchatka base. We immediately replaced Dmitri with Yuri, because we are a responsible firm, one who cares about things like not negligently letting our doomsday device render the Earth uninhabitable. But what we could not control was how many times Yuri had had sex with Dmitri’s wife Ludmilla. Or in how many different positions. Or on how many internet webcams. And when he learned of them, these numbers very much upset Dmitri and he refused to divulge the appropriate password to Yuri. Or to us. So if No Whammy goes live and at that time Yuri deems it appropriate to stop the launch of the missiles, it’s on Yuri to correctly guess the appropriate password.

And thus here we are. Not for long mind you, but here we are.

Recommendation: This is a clear demonstration of how important it is that when deploying an automatically triggered doomsday device, one must first SIGNAL that such a device is being deployed. That is really the whole value in the device in the first place. This is a mistake we won’t make again, we promise you. Amazingly, this has happened before.


Nanna, NO

The seniors want to steal $250 each from our kids. We should say No.

Rosanne Altshuler, co-director of the Tax Policy Center in Washington, says that the checks “seem to be pure pandering to seniors.”

Indeed, the politics are attractive. People over 65 vote in large numbers. Saying no to them is never easy.

This is demonstrably false. After reading this article, I immediately set out to the street. There I spotted a female senior citizen. Although I didn’t cut her in half and count the rings, which we all know is the only way to accurately tell a woman’s age (and much more polite than asking her), she was definitely over 45. I could tell because I had no manly desire for her. I snatched her purse from the clutches of her arthritic claws.

“Give it back!” she said.

I said NO. And boy was it easy. Her arms didn’t hold the strength to dissuade me, being as scrawny and infirm as they were.

I trotted at a medium gait towards the river. She followed me on her senior scooter device. By the way, she had a senior scooter device.

“Do not even think about throwing my purse into the river, you [handsome] young man,” she chided from her saddle.

My feet stopped, my cobalt eyes locked onto her gaze, and my lips let lose NO. And again, it was easy to say “NO” to not even thinking about throwing her purse into the river. What could she do? Her aged brain clearly lacked the telepathic abilities that could have forcibly compelled me.

She kills kittens and hates the environment

As I cocked my arm and gazed upon the horizon, I thought about her life, who she was, and how much she had given this world. What wonders she must have experienced growing up in the 60’s or 70’s! All those changes and stuff!

“Sonny, don’t throw my purse into the river. I beg you, I’m just a poor old woman on social security and we only got a 5.9% cost of living adjustment last year.”

That old bat’s mutterings gave me pause. Was I wrong? Were the old “not so bad?” Did these leeching frauds who are destroying the young deserve a second chance? A scan of the contents of her purse caused me to unpause. Raising the bag over my head, I turned it on its end, disgorging it of its contents. First things to fly out were wads and wads of counterfeit $100 bills. Then a leather carrying case for a syringe and rubber hose, a baggy full of heroin, 106,328 metric tons of CO2 emissions, a gun with the serial filed off, Polaroids of various women in open-toed shoes, gold bullion cubes, a well-worn copy of Eat, Pray, Love and innumerable kitten heads.

“Listen you old broad, and listen good. No. NO, I will not not toss your bag into the river. NO, I will not consent to you mortgaging America’s future. NO, I will not be ok with giving you a check for $250 so you can proceed to either not spend it, or worse, use it to subsidize Steve the Senior Stud’s cialis purchases at the nursing home, or whatever frivolous way you will deploy this cash, cash which you clearly don’t need based on 1) the way you have pilfered from America’s future your whole life and 2) the contents of your purse. No no no NO. Learn what that means because I am going to saying it to you a lot.”

And with that, her purse shot through the air, entering the fray of the choppy waters, scored only by a screechy dying old-ladyish “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

Full disclosure: Long or Short is Long Age Warfare.

HT to the love of my life, crampell.


Science, Screw You

What the science.

In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Obviously, Science has a different definition of “all goes well” than I do. Things not on my “all goes well” list:

  1. Dying in a fire
  2. Getting punched in my mini-ballers by a midget (think of the devastating angle they have on you)
  3. Being melted by toxic waste like that guy in Robocop
  4. RECREATING THE BIGGEST UNIVERSAL EXPLOSION ON EARTH FOR KICKS WITH YOUR FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT WON’T END EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT

Don't worry this doesn't look scary at all

But that’s not even the part that really frustrates me. Previously there was a notion that Science had some measure of prudence and competency. But Science has evacuated its collective gourd. From the above linked article:

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Which is worse:

  1. Science is speculating there are time-traveling protective fairy particles to save us from ourselves.
  2. Science is willing to admit that there is a chance that a “Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature” that time-traveling protective fairy particles would come back to save us from ourselves.

Recommendation: Isn’t this the kind of thing that would give a reasonable person pause? Not Science dude, no Science just plans to plow through it and hope it all works out. Awesome. Science, before we get sucked into the vortex of unexistence, I’d like you to step into the ring with me, mano-a-scienco, I’m done with your shit man.

Math, you’re up next.

As an aside, we are still selling July 2008 End of the World Puts and September 2008 End of the World Puts. Although not technically in the money under conventional physics, with time-travel on the table they could still pay off.


Someone was finally, actually Bamboozled

From this FTC report concerning an apparrel maker whose marketing was not consistent with the actual makeup of their products:

According to the Commission’s complaint, issued in August 2009, The M Group, Inc., d/b/a Bamboosa, and its principals falsely claimed that the company’s products are “100% bamboo fiber,” when they are composed of rayon. Rayon is a man-made fiber created from the cellulose found in plants and trees and dissolved with a harsh chemical that releases hazardous air pollution. Any plant or tree could be used as the cellulose source – including bamboo – but the fiber that is created is rayon.

The complaint also charged Bamboosa with making a number of other deceptive “green” claims. Bamboosa claimed that its products retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties. However, even if the rayon used in Bamboosa’s clothing and textile products is manufactured using bamboo as the cellulose source, the FTC contends, rayon does not retain any natural antimicrobial properties of the bamboo plant. The rayon manufacturing process eliminates any of these natural bamboo properties.

Recommendation: You may have read our initial diligence on Bamboosa called “Why I Do, and Why You SHOULD, Have a Bambooner” in which we erected a strong case for buying Bamboosa. The thrust of that piece lay in this quote: “There are two O’s and a BAM up in this piece, time to get long (I think I just did).” We were bamboozled, legitimately bamboozled, and we deserve a pass on this one, because really, that’s a cool way to lose millions for investors who depend on the legitimacy of our recommendations. I know you’d agree.

HT to Felix Salmon


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