Presidential Debates

Remember those college drinking games? Every time I hear a Democratic candidate say, “In the last 8 years” I chug a beer. I haven’t been sober for a month.

I should have bought a keg for tonight’s debate.

Best line: “I’m not George Bush. If you want to run against George Bush, you should have done it 4 years ago.”

CBS Television

Did anyone try to watch Jeopardy tonight? Did it seem like a bad LSD flashback to you?

The first half of the program was ok, then they broke for dead airspace and came back where Alex is interviewing the contestants – deja vu all over again. Recognizing their mistake, CBS immediately went to broadcasting dead air again.  Somebody must have pointed this out to them as they grabbed a Harrah’s tape and put it on continuous play for 5 minutes.

We jumped to final Jeopardy, but only long enugh to flash up the question and then launched into a psychodelic mix of commercials, promos for the 11 O’Clock news, and dead air. Somewhere in this mix, the Clue Crew came up with their end-of-program factoid. All this was finally punctuated by a test pattern just before we cut back to the game – already well in progress: the contestants were filling out their cards for final Jeopardy.

But all that pales in comparison to what I experienced on CBS a couple of weeks ago: I was watching a football game. It’s 3rd and 4 on the 30, the ball is snapped, the quarterback fades back, ”Hello I’m Barak Obama…” (if it were only a voiceover it would have been bad enough) we cut back to the game to see yellow flags being thrown. I didn’t know Barak did play-by-play for CBS.

The Stock Market’s Wild Ride

Let’s face it. There is no group more paranoid than stock traders. Stocks, like money, have on intrinsic value. Their only value is what people think they are worth.

There is a mathematical formula that can be used to predict the value of stock or price of oil or whatever. It is: Value = A * GREED- B * FEAR. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to measure GREED and FEAR and we can compute the coeficients A and B.

What this formula tells us is that when GREED exceeds FEAR, value goes up. Such was the case when oil prices recently spiked. It had nothing to do with supply and demand and everything with trying to make a buck on speculation. However once the market was perceived to “top out”, people started selling off their shares and profit taking took over. FEAR got the upper hand, and people couldn’t dump thier oil futures fast enough before they were worthless. Oil prices went into a power dive back to their previous levels.

My prediction. People will get used to the economic crisis. All other things being equal, FEAR will become less of a factor. GREED will again become the dominating force in the market, and it will go up again. However, having been burned, GREED will me restrained by caution; at least for a while.