capitalism *is* fun :-)

In an unprecedented action, the US government has decided to start putting an end to all the corporate greed, people have been complaining about. On behalf of 305 million US citizens, the government has bought up AIG (NYSE: AIG) making every American man, woman, child, immigrant, terrorist, etc … a shareholder in AIG.
The deal was closed at a very good price for the investors, a total of 85 billion dollars. That’s $278.68 for each one. Now, the people OWN the corporation.

Keep an eye out on your mailbox! Soon, along with your next economic stimulus check, Christmas spam and foreclosure notice, you will also receive your AIG shareholder certificate printed on a unique 278.68 bill, which will only be printed on one side for economic reasons. To further help the economy, you are recommended to immediately contact a stock broker at Lehman Brothers, to help you place your shares on the market. Along with that, don’t forget to also open a few short positions, and some other exotic related financial instruments which you don’t understand, to help prop up the falling stock market. We personally advice you to invest part of your profits in a few long crude oil positions, to help drive up the price of crude oil, and help the struggling oil based Russian economy.

AIG stocks plummeted today. Down 60.79% by market close.
Reading through the news, I couldn’t resist not laughing when I saw a comment posted by a guy:

“I invested a s**t load in AIG, approximately 432,000 thousand dollars in it. This stock has totally f****d me over and I think I should commit suicide before my whole family finds out because we are doomed. Unless this stock shoots up about 900%, I’m DONE!!!
PS: thanks a lot America…”

It collectively breaks our heart, that this poor guy invested all his money into one stock, hoping to turn that amount in a couple of hundred million dollars in a few months. Why go the long way and diversify a portfolio like the rest of us, when you can place all your best on one stock.
This kind of reminds me of a guy that I know, who couldn’t tell the difference between a stock market and a role of toilet paper, but he wanted to invest all his money in a blue chip stock, because he heard that it doubled in value in the past year.

Next time you want to invest all your money in one single stock, take my advice: Before doing that, get a mortgage loan on your house, max out all your credit cards (apply for as many as you can), sell everything you can on eBay, ask your friends to lend you some money and then wait until the stock hits a 52 week high, and then buy with confidence.

No wonder that stocks around here are down 50% this year, as long as long as local banks advertise loan products specially created to use the money to exclusively invest in stocks. Doing that is the moral equivalent of handing out loaded guns to children in a kindergarten.

Just don’t do what these “investors” did. Those guys really know how to shake a market.

I was surfing the Internet to check out some news, when I have came across something.
If all your friends were making comments on your sexual orientation as not being straight, because you use Skype, then the time of revenge is here. With Hulger’s PAPPA*PHONE comes a $300 hand crafted handset, made from walnut.

You can buy one here.
Honestly, it looks to me like something that doesn’t have a straight sexual orientation, if you know what I mean.

Putting this thing on the market, is the moral equivalent of  giving a 10% discount on new Ferrari’s for homeless people, or mailing a Smith & Wesson catalogue and discount coupon to everyone who just bought a new iPhone 3G.

A couple of months back I downloaded a copy of InstallShield for evaluation purposes. I had to fill in a form with all my details, etc. So far so good. After a while, I get a call from a guy with an indian accent, asking me if I want to purchase a license, or if I need any assistance, etc. Again, so far so good.
I decided that I won’t be needing their software so I have kindly thanked them for their time and so on.

After a couple of weeks, my phone started ringing every week. Same questions, same discussion, and me telling them every time that I don’t need their software. To no good, however.

The phone kept ringing every week. After a while, I just used to simply hang up the phone in the middle of the discussion. And it kept going on. After a while, they emailed me and started introducing me the new 2009 edition of the software. “No problem sir that you don’t need the current version. How about the 2009 version?”. And again, I politely told them I don’t need it.

This morning I woke with their call …. introducing me the 2009 Professional Edition.
I mean WTF? Can’t these guys take NO for an answer?

I swear to God if he calls again, I turn up some Bhangra music to full volume during the conversation, and start imitating his accent and make some pranks on the guy.

P.S: Even after telling them that I am absolutely not interested, not even in the 2009 Professional Edition, I still received a personal email with documents attached, details, etc.

I guess it’s the indian way of selling software: “You download, you buy, sir” … or we will keep calling you until you end up in a mental hospital.

I ran down to the nearest convenience store to pickup a few small things. When I was about to pay with my credit card, I have noticed a nice announcement: “We only accept credit cards issued by X bank”. Apparently, in the past days, the bank that offered the POS terminal for the store, decided not to accept any Visa/Mastercard cards, but to only cards issued by them. I bet people will immediately get a new credit card with some obscure bank just because at some convenience store they will only accept *their* cards. When a bank has like 0.00000000000001% of market share, it can force people to only use their cards …. or not.

I wonder if losing all the fees they got so far for processing any Visa / Mastercard will be replaced by perhaps one (or none) person that will get a card from them.

I love this Kamikaze way of doing business: You are do business with us, or die. Oh well … I won’t miss them once they leave the market like many other banks using crappy tactics.

I was in their marketing department, perhaps I would have slashed the fee charged to the convenience store by a bit, in exchange of letting me advertise my products in their store. 

 
Reading through today’s news, something very interesting caught my attention.
Commercial prospector Ma’aden has invested $5.5 billion in equipment and development to prospects the sands of Saudi Arabia … for gold!

It appears that the sand in those deserts is nothing more then the topping of a huge sandwich consisting of various level of desired and expensive commodities, such as oil and gold. I wonder what’s next? Uranium?

People worrying that they will hit the bottom of the oil barrel soon, and run out of the good stuff, should rest assured. The bottom of the barrel is actually made from gold. They do have to sustain all the good life that was once built on crude oil, isn’t it?

This is a bit of an older news, but I loved it:
“Angry investors have attacked the Karachi Stock Exchange in Pakistan, after share prices plunged.“

I love these guys. Investing their money in stocks, in a country which barely has something to be called “an economy”. I wonder what do those people think? That stocks are something which can always be bought for cheap and sold more expensively? And that stock prices are driven by governments or the people who operate the stock market? Did those guys imagined that after trashing the KSE, investors from London would simply start placing BUY orders for huge prices? I think they enjoyed their afternoon tea watching this on satellite TV.

Somebody should create a Stock Plunge Protection Team, to help suffering investors. This almost resembles the US gas price caused, “pain at the pump”. People’s birthright of making tons of money without working (or thinking), must be protected at all costs.

These “investors” looks like they have hedged their portfolios well:

I would love to post more on this one, but I almost spilled Coke on my laptop a few times, laughing, while writing this post.

Best quote from a Pakistani investor:
“I am upset because I am constantly losing money and there is no one ready to help me.“

Please give this guy a hand

I guess you know how oil reserves were formed. I am not going to explain it again. It’s not my fault you skipped school and missed this one.

Penguins don’t do anything all day long. They just sit there and get fat every day. Until they get so fat, that they can’t move there asses and freeze to death. Due to the extreme conditions in the arctic area, things happen at a faster pace, and all those billions of penguins died and got covered with snow. And this is how arctic oil was formed. In much larger quantities then oil which was formed from dead dinosaurs. Dinosaurs used to live long and didn’t get that fat, since they were running around all day after something to kill and eat.
This is how we are about to discover the largest crude oil field ever. And all we have to do, is drill into the snow. Which is easy.

It has taken governments, almost 100 years to figure this one out. Now, my dear readers, you might be wondering how such a discovery just happened. Who are the richest people on this planet? The Arabs. Why? Because they have all that oil to sell. But wait … actually it’s Santa Claus, who is the richest person on the planet. Being able to finance gifts for everyone, for hundreds of years. Offcourse he can. He has all that supply of arctic oil

And now we are about to invade Santa Clause to bring some democracy over there, and take away all his oil to be burned in our Hummers

I open today’s Wall Street Journal. On the front page, there is some article about oil. On the second page, there is another article about oil … and China. This is happening on every news site. There is a fixed set of items, such as: oil, China, Iraq, Obama and some more. Everything is somehow related to these things.

Why aren’t there any articles reporting about the advances in studying swearing in Latin? Or something else? It’s the same crap, fed by the media, every day. Oil has become a major word in everyone’s dictionary. I think that every issue that occurs somewhere, has a simple answer: "You know mate, I think it’s because of the oil"

Oil prices are down. Please enjoy and engage in useless driving, gouging up as much fuel as possible, paying for it with a credit-card, like there is no tomorrow. Please do it with a big engine, not some little white van or some 4 wheel can called eco-friendly car. There are no environmentally friendly cars. Telling people to drive a car that is environmentally friendly, is like asking a child to smoke a cigarette because it’s healthy.

With a staggering 1025.9 Euros per square meter! You have to sit on a pile of crude oil or natural gas, to be able to afford those prices.