Pick up those new GPS systems, now on sale at Best Buy, Wal-Mart and other fine stores for under $100!

Don’t forget that flat-screen TV that’s suddenly within your price range!

Remember to stop by the gigundo superstore to stock up on potato chips, lawn furniture and frozen shrimp!

Swing by the enormous drugstore! Get medicine! Print 100 pictures for only $1.00! While you’re there, load up on toys, nostrums and personal care products! The holidays are almost here!

Hit the department store for pantyhose, shoes, perfume, purses, and those fabulous studded denims you’ve had your eye on — they’re all on sale today only!

On your way home, stop by your local American automobile dealership and nab a new Ford, Chevy or Chrysler! Terms are great! Quality has never been better!

If you’re an investment banker, kick the tires on an underperforming entity! You’ll be glad you did!

Somewhere out there in this great, shining land of ours, there’s a product, service or asset waiting for you! We’ve been in the doldrums far too long! Make Black Friday lead to Black Saturday and then Black  Sunday and then a tsunami of Black Weekdays! Get out there and express your love of all that’s good and strong about our nation! Let commerce ring!

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?

I was perusing today’s gallery of top performing Fortune 500 stocks on CNNMoney.  Some are well-known, like Wal-Mart (WMT), McDonald’s (MCD) and the repository of their activity, Waste Management (WMI). Others, like C.H. Robinson Worldwide (CHRW), which is a logistics provider, are less intuitive.  But scanning the 24 bear baiters, I realized they all had one thing in common.

I don’t own any of them.

Not W.R. Berkley (WRB), the insurance holding company, not Darden Restaurants (DRI), which brings families together over steaming plates of shrimp and/or fettucine alfredo at the Red Lobster or the Olive Garden. Not a share of either. Not even Pulte Homes (PHM), which builds, obviously, homes. I could have bought some at some point, I suppose. But I didn’t.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that I’m stupid and should have somebody providing me with sound, reliable investment guidance. While this is quite possibly true, I believe it ignores the real, underlying phenomenon at work here, one that is backed up with ample evidence.

These 24 companies are doing well for the simple reason that I am not invested in them. That’s the cause that has produced this happy effect in each and every one of them.

Let’s look at the record. In the early 1990s, I invested in a number of tech companies that had been doing very well indeed. Immediately thereafter, they all went into the tank. I’m not talking weeks later. I’m talking hours later. Like, I bought a stock and that afternoon it lost 10% of its value. The next day another 15%.  By the end of that week, down 55% and falling. My broker, as they will, usually told me to hang on until the next upturn, which then did not arrive, ever. On several occasions, the upturn did come, though, but only after I sold the stock. And I’m not talking about weeks after, either. Again, hours. Like, I would sell and within minutes the security would experience a significant and inexplicable bounce.

But it wasn’t inexplicable to me. It was me. I did it.

About 10 years ago, I decided it would be smart to stop messing around with high-risk, fast-growth companies and go with conservative, blue-chip firms that had produced value year in and year out. You know the companies. I’m not going to mention them. I don’t want to hurt them. They employ many nice people and I have nothing against them. True, I lost money with every single one. But that’s not their fault. I’m sure they wondered why their stocks were down. Now they know. It was me. Many are still languishing at fractions of the value at which I bought them. That’s because  I still hold them. The ones I sold at a loss are doing better now.

Most recently, I purchased Google (GOOG) at $700. You know how that’s doing. Analysts are still a bit flummoxed as to why this great company is now trading at a less dramatic multiple than before. Some ascribe the decline to the challenged advertising market. Others cite the economy. It’s none of those things. I think we can now be relatively confident about the true reason. It’s me.

So as I look at this list of companies that are facing the recession and achieving uncommon success, I come to one conclusion. As tempting as a call to my broker would be, I will refrain. I have incredible destructive power within my grasp, and I have to use it judiciously. This recovery that’s in the wind is a delicate thing and I’m not one of those guys who’s looking for ways to kill it.

Today come reports that the gloom and doom peddlers are still at it, looking a gift market in the mouth. The S&P is showing a heartbeat lately. But wait a minute, they say. We’re not out of this yet. This is merely a pleasant meadow we’re skipping through on the way to the next abyss.

As always, they have numbers to back up whatever it is they’re dispensing. That should not surprise us. Economist types always have numbers. They had plenty of numbers while they were running the market up. Now they have all kinds of numbers while they’re trying like hell to drive it down.

The current crop of numbers pertains to retail sales. Sure, the banks look like they may be doing better… but retail sales have fallen and apparently can’t get up. Retail sales drive the economy. So of course the market’s dead cat bounce is a mere bagatelle, an island in the midst of troubled waters that is itself sinking into the Sargasso Sea of despond.

I’m going to use a little economics now on those who continue to cry the blues. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be stupid-smart to get it.

Fact 1: The banks are doing better. Part of this is that they’re not giving away feckless money anymore, at least for now. But another big factor is that America, which was on a spending spree for a long time, has taken a deep breath and started saving more. Remember when all of Punditry opined that we need to save more? Well, we are. Good for us, right? You might think so. Instead, they’re all creepy about it, because…

Fact 2: Since people are saving more… guess what. They are spending less! Duh. Since they are spending less, retail is down from the nosebleed heights of the last several years. We’re still spending, of course. Wal-Mart (WMT) is still up, although perhaps not as much as was expected by the expectorators. But we’re not spending like drunken sailors anymore. We’ve come ashore.

Conclusion: If savings is up, spending is down. Wow! What an insight!

I’m going to tell you a little story and then take off for the weekend. I know a guy who works in a company that has a small debt problem. They have debt and debt is not popular these days. So he talks to a trader friend of his and asks, “Why is our stock so low?” And the trader says, “Well, you have this debt problem that will pop up in 2012 and you have to solve it immediately.” And my friend says, “Well, what if we issued some bonds now? That would solve the debt problem.” And the traders says, “No, that would solve it, of course, but then everybody would criticize you for doing it at this time.”

Moral of the story? You just can’t win with some people. Knowing that, my feeling is that it might now make sense, as the showers of April turn to the flowers of May, to stop listening to certain gusts of the idiot wind and take a nice walk with more pleasant company.

With major companies now trading on the Market for the price of a hamburger, you’ve got to wonder what a SALE! sign means when you see it in every retailer’s window. I don’t think their idea of a SALE! is my idea of a sale. Like, before this whole depression works its way through the system, I think the idea of pricing is going to need a good hard look.

I’ll give you a few examples.

I eat a restaurant that business people frequent in order to a) have lunch and b) feel they’re important. It’s been a hot spot for quite a while, and its prices never really mattered because everyone there conducted their lives on plastic. That of course is changing. The big dudes who are doing all right still go, but the mid-level and borderline players no longer throng.  I want you to guess the price of their cheeseburger. Give up? $35. That’s right. I asked the maitre d’ the other day whether they were planning a Recession Special to keep the seats somewhat more filled. He got very offended and went off on a screed about how expensive it is to maintain a restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Of course it is. But unless they moderate the prices, I’m guessing the grand institution will be out of business soon. Which is better? Selling five cheeseburgers for $35 or fifteen cheeseburgers for $20? You do the math.

In my little California town, there is a furniture store. It’s always had ridiculous prices, but their stuff is nice. There was, in particular, a bedroom dresser that we had our eye on. It was, I think, worth about $400 in real American dollars, so naturally, throughout the Fall, they had it in their window for $2500. No, I’m not kidding you. The store catered to people with too much money, and people with too much money don’t want to pay a little bit for the things they like, they want to pay a lot. Except there aren’t so many of those people around anymore. So last weekend there was a big SALE! sign in their window, as there is right now in virtually every window of every store in the United States, from Madison Avenue to Wilshire Boulevard. And we went in to look at the dresser and indeed, yes, it was ON SALE! For $2000. Come on, man. Give me a break. That is not a SALE. That is not even a recognition of reality. I’m positive that, just as my restaurant paid $1.29 for the meat with which they make their $35 cheeseburger, this place paid $300 at some yard sale for that dresser. When it’s ON SALE for $400 or $500, let me know. Because I like it.

I’ll tell you two places that know what a SALE means. The first is Wal-Mart (WMT). Today I heard an ad on the radio promoting greeting cards that start at 44-cents. Okay. That’s an amount I haven’t heard mentioned in a while. Their numbers beat analysts’ expectations last week. The other is McDonald’s (MCD), where sales were recently up 7.1%. I can assure you that a very good Big Mac in that establishment tops out at well under $35, and is probably a better buy at that price than most bank stocks that come to mind.

Could you lower the interest rates some more? We’d like there to be more money in the system so we can borrow it. Also, the private capital and hedge fund guys could use some easy money, too. How else can they keep on generating wave upon wave of unnecessary, destructive acquisitions and divestitures?

Could you give all of us a break on our existing mortgages, too? Like, if we can’t pay our monthly nut, could you do it for us?

Could you make it easier for us all to get more mortgages after we default on the ones that those mean and stupid bankers gave us a few years back, when they were trying to make a quick buck by fooling us into taking big loans we eventually couldn’t repay?

Could you do something about the dollar, too? Those mean Japanese and Europeans have currencies that are getting more and more expensive against our own. This makes it very difficult to buy their goods and services at the kind of prices to which we had become accustomed. Like, many of us can’t afford two weeks in the south of France anymore. And England is no bargain, either. There must be something you can do.

Could you also see about the price of gasoline? I know you work very closely with Mr. Bush. His family has tremendous contacts in the oil-producing part of the world. Perhaps you could put a word in with him and he could speak to them about easing things up a bit. Pretty soon it’s going to cost nearly $100 to fill up my SUV. That hurts! After all, it only gets 8 miles per gallon. Maybe you could spare a couple of thousand for each of us, so we could turn our cars into hybrids! How about that idea?

Speaking of cars, people are now buying way fewer of them this year, partly due to the fact that car companies have been advertising less because they’re strapped for cash. It’s a vicious circle! They don’t advertise… they don’t sell cars… they make less money… they choke off their marketing and advertising budgets even more… you can see where it’s going. Perhaps if you provided $10,000 to any American who wanted to use it to buy a car? And subsidized the advertising budgets of auto makers at the same time. A key driver of the economy would immediately perk up and thank you bigtime!

Could you at the same time give us all a few thousand dollars to spend at Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and other retailers who are right now having a tough time, too? Helping the big chains that motor our mall-based economy is just as important as helping the big banks you seem so concerned about. How about a $10 trillion bail out for retail?

Mr. Bernanke, you have all the money in the world and apparently the will to wrestle this darn situation of ours to the ground. These are just a few suggestions. I’m sure others could come up with more. You don’t even need to think out of the box. You own the box. Expand it! Dress it up! Make something happen!

Inflation in China is very high. It’s hard to figure how that will benefit us, but on a list of things that come under the rubric “grim satisfaction,” the continual travails of that sleeping giant always register. Bad air. Bad water. Poison in the children’s toothpaste they export. Dead dogs worldwide due to crud in the pet food they offer the world. The explosion of their chief internet provider built almost wholly on illegally purloined music from American labels… so while more rain on their parade is not really good news — particularly since it probably just hurts innocent civilians over there, it’s a laugh riot compared to the rest of the crop this morning. 

Credit Suisse, which today fired a bunch of their traders who misplayed some aspect of the mortgage crisis or other, leading to a modest, single-digit billion problem that will have to be managed this quarter. That’s sort of good news for UBS, which looked really deficient recently when it took a nearly $15-billion writedown. Perhaps they’re high-fiving each other over there.

Wal-Mart beat the Street’s expectations. Of course, at the same time they cautioned that ‘08 might not be the engine for growth that people might want it to be. Earnings came in at $1.04 per share for the fourth quarter and their stock lost four cents. Yeah, yeah, it’s rational.

The head of MBIA is out, replaced with a guy who thought he had retired. That’s always a good sign, except for the fact that people who come out of retirement are generally not as adept at bailout out the rowboat as they used to be. Still, a change will do them good, right? Or the illusion of change, which in our world is almost the same thing.

Let’s see… we’re getting down to some pretty slim pickins for those looking for a lift. Most people are not prepared for retirement, according to one study. That’s not good, especially for Gen-Xers looking to take over anytime soon. Even that new head of MBIA is 59. Where’s the new blood? Oh, I remember. In charge of risk management at the banks. Perhaps the world news offers more hope for the terminally optimistic?

Heidi Klum has offered to let Britney live in her house for a while, to help the ailing victim of celebrity back on her feet. That’s nice.

Bono was seen holding hands with Penelope Cruz in San Tropez. That’s like finding out that Al Gore drives a Cadillac Escalade.

And Castro resigned. That’s got to be good for somebody.

As we used to say, without irony: Have a nice day, everybody.

Word comes in today’s USA Today that Thanksgiving, once a non-religious holiday in the United States, has finally morphed into one in which we collectively worship at the central shrine in our culture: Wal-Mart (WMT).

That’s right, new studies of our consumer behavior show that as soon as the first round of turkey is tucked away, an increasing number of us are going online to shop at our favorite stores, and some of us are even leaving the couch for a while to get the Xmas season started early.

In recognition of this fact, stores are now moving their Black Friday promotions to Thanksgiving Thursday, so that people can get busy dumping their wallets into the collective maw of our mercantile establishment.

And so the time we must spend with our families, fruitlessly not working or shopping, once again shrinks to a size even more miniscule than it was before. Already many of our holidays have become excuses to buy new cars or bulk up on consumer goods offered for that day only at fabulous prices. Now Thanksgiving is wide open too!

Ka-Ching! Now… On To Christmas!

The New York Times reports this morning that Wal-Mart (WMT) has extended an improved and less-expensive health plan to its workers in recent years, responding to some extent to image problems and, presumably, to the need to sustain a more stable and appreciative workforce.  That’s nice. I love Wal-Mart. And of course I’d love it if they would advertise on this page. So hey, guys from Wal-Mart. If you’re reading this? Consider this space, huh?

This news came at the exact time I was filling out my corporate health care registration online. I guess I have a good plan. It’s not an HMO, at any rate, although I guess I could choose one from my buffet of options. I wouldn’t, though. A few years ago, one of the first HMOs, the Harvard Community Health Plan, very nearly succeeded in killing me. I won’t go into the details, because they’re boring. I understand where they were coming from. A CAT-Scan is an expensive test for them. And if nothing had been wrong with me, it would have been a completely unnecessary expense.

So I have a thing against HMOs. I know there are probably very good ones. If you know of any, please let me know. I like happy stories, too. Of course, if you have any nightmares to relate, bring ‘em on. I’d love to hear from you, either way. How you guys over at Kaiser doing?

Anyhow, this morning, when I was done with my health care election forms I toted up the damage, and it seems that next year I’ll be spending about $6,000 on insurance for me and my family. I didn’t make $6,000 a year until I was about 30. That seems like a lot to me. On the other hand, I put a ding in my Chrysler last month that cost me $1,250 to fix, and it wasn’t even all that noticeable. A friend of mine had to pay $2,600 for a procedure recently that, while necessary, was highly unpleasant. On himself, I mean. Not his car. So the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to, for sure.

I still have quibbles. As costly as my health care insurance is, I’m always amazed at how little they pay for. They have two ways of dodging costs. First, they pay a hilarious, Eisenhower-era rate for stuff that costs real-world dollars. A visit to a specialist in any major city, for example, costs about $300, at least. My insurance would be likely to pay, what, maybe $115.50 for that, which is what I pay my daughter’s dog-walker in an average week. Dentist reimbursements are even more risible. A crown in New York costs as much as one for the Queen in England. Last year, I had to eat nearly a thousand dollars on one, after I was “paid back” by my insurance. That’s tough to swallow.

The second way they avoid paying a lot of the time is that they don’t pay you a lot of the time. They “lose” paper. They “misplace” forms. They are unavailable for comment for weeks at a time. People handling your case change from Mrs. White to Mr. Gray to Ms. Pink and so forth. You have to be preternaturally patient. One bill last year, I had to send in documentation three separate times. Then I got a mailing saying that all the paperwork was now in, and that I had already been paid. Except I hadn’t. I hadn’t? Really? Could I prove that? Eventually, thanks to my excellent assistant, I did get a check… for 1/3 of the amount I had spent on the service.

At any rate, the hell with it. I’m glad I have insurance, and I feel bad for those who do not. So hats off, once again, to Wal-Mart and to all the fine corporations who take the time to think about and invest in our wellness.

Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus!