President Obamawent to Russia and did a lot of interesting things, none of which was covered by the Russian media. No TV. No Radio. No Obama for the Russkies.
The top company in the world is an oil company, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B). Also the #2 company. Also the #4 company. Also the #5 company. Wal-Mart (WMT) somehow managed to sandwich itself in there as #3, but it’s only a matter of time before all the top companies in the world are selling a product that will one day disappear. One analyst blithely tied the slightly decreasing price of oil to the uptick in unemployment, tacitly verifying my long-held belief that our entire economy is tied to a string whose other end is somewhere far away and very hot and sandy, and I’m not talking about Texas.
The market is very nervous because it feels like all the green shoots have fallen off and the whole fruit seems a little bumpier and less tender than it should. Just as it convinced itself that everything was getting better a month or two ago, it has now scared its little self into a tremblicious state and is now in the process of sticking its tiny head back into its shell until it can’t see it’s own shadow anymore.
Michael Jackson’s mother doesn’t like the fact that the estate is in the hands of two lawyers, neither of which are her. One of them is the guy who helped Michael squirrel away the Beatle’s music library from Paul McCartney. The problem for Mrs. Jackson is that there is reportedly a clause in the will that says if she challenges the document and loses, she must forfeit her bequest, which comes to 40% of whatever is left after the promoters, relatives, banks, agents and assorted advisors, doctors, parasites and other friends of Michael make their claim. There seems to be a fight brewing between those who want the Michael Jackson museum to be at Neverland (the corporation that owns half of it and recently tried to auction off his memorabilia) and the more convenient site for tourists of Las Vegas (the promotion company that mounted the 50-event London concert tour that arguably drove him to his death). On the bright side, as long as this nonsense goes on a significant chunk of the world population doesn’t have to think about what Wall Street is doing for minutes at a time.
The moguls are in Sun Valley again. It’s a little bit reduced in circumstances right now, because the debt and equity people are walking around in adult diapers should an actual deal materialize.
Google (GOOG) is going to launch an operating system next year to compete with Windows, following Microsoft’s (MSFT) majestic launch of Bing the Search Engine, which goes after Google. Competition in the software business! What next?
Seventy-one percent of all young people plan to look for a new job when the downturn is over. Let’s hope they’re not out of the demo by then.
And that seems to be that, unless you want to start talking about Afghanistan. This L-Shaped recovery is kind of a bore, don’tcha think?
In other news, Tums and Pepto-Bismo stocks are soaring, along with liquor and drug sales.