Finding Holiday Uses for Stock Shares
By Barry Ritholtz - November 27th, 2008, 9:00AM
Amusing CNBC.com piece about what you can buy with your near worthless stock shares. For example, a single share of Microsoft buys you a 10 pound Butterball turkey.
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Thanksgiving Day Dinner:
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Holiday Shopping:
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Source:
Holiday Shopping with Deflated Stocks
Ariel Nelson
CNBC.com, Monday, 24 Nov 2008
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27888369
November 27th, 2008 at 9:15 am
OT here but yesterday I caught a bit of Power Lunch interview with Jim Rogers. Doing the interview with were Bill Griffith and Michelle Caruro-Cabrera (or is it vice versa). Anyhow as everyone probably knows Rogers lives in Asia and is completely bearish on the US Market and virtually all paper thingies of corporations. He was and going forward still recommending that the best place to put your money was into commodities as they are not impaired with all sorts of balance sheet crapola. Griffith however kept insisting that Rogers give him a company that he recommended for buying. Repeatedly telling Griffith that he would not and could not recommend any paper but only real commodities, the camera briefly caught a look of complete exasperation on Roger’s face. It was telegraphing a “What doesn’t this clown understand”.
Excuse the long rant but CNBS is getting worse and worse by the day. I don’t know the CV of any of these people but they seem to be just plain stupid.
BTW….everyone have agreat Thanksgiving.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am
You could write a thesis on the back of your AIG shares about how Ponzi schemes got started…I already posted this and the sarcasm here is very thick, but this is truly alarming. At least people with credit card debt have the decency to use different credit card companies to pay off the debt from the most pressing card. With Hank Ponzi, you don’t even have to change companies….
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081126/aig_investment.html
AIG receives $40 billion from government program.
“AIG said it will use a portion of the $40 billion investment to pay off part of the previous loan from the Federal Reserve.”
I truly find this unbelievable…this is wrong in so many ways. Forgive the rant, I just think this is mindless now at this point. Loans to pay off loans…and this is the federal government..
I think next year will be very very interesting.. a very slipperly slope we are on..
Happy Holidays.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:18 am
They overpaid for the turkey.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Hmm…
100 Shares of AIG or Guitar Hero World Tour?
I’d have a hell of a lot more fun doing my best John Entwistle impersonation, and I know the game will still be around in six months.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I could swap a share of Citigroup for a festive bottle of Boone’s Farm. (I like to save the Ripple for special occasions since it is mighty scarce now.) Maybe a couple of shares of Microsoft could be traded for a carton of smokes and a stick of beef jerky. These guys are lame. But some of them are pretty good at going after spare change.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I was pretty surprised at the cost of the turkey this year. Have they risen a lot recently or am I getting like my parents who keep talking about being able to buy a loaf of bread for a nickel back in the 1930’s?
November 27th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I thought a share of Citigroup will now only buy you a bottle of Two Buck Chuck?
November 27th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
to the editor
todays’ quote of the day is missing some words, i think:
‘Reported in Shove, “The place of Marshall’s Principles in the development of economic theory,” —Wildon Carr, Economic Journal December 1942, p. 323.’
November 27th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Loved the MSFT turkey, C candyland and the AIG frozen veggies (frozen is about right and the meat was stolen by execs). Windows 95 included a fax program. Windows Vista only includes fax with the premium edition. Progress in charging people for the air they breath is America’s business model. Billy Goat Gates is a poster boy for greed and deserves his losses richly.
Off topic but I just read this and it shines a powerful light on the intractability of our present financial situation; i.e. until greed becomes shameful, there will be continued chaos.
It’s at Counterpunch by Walsh: The Root of Our Problem. WAGES!
November 27th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
What does recovery for the US economy entail? Certainly not giving more to the banks which have a disappearing class of worthwhile debtors and hence no one to lend to. But that is precisely the strategy which W. and Obama are pursuing. Such a strategy cannot possibly work because there are no credit worthy borrowers – and so far it has not. Quite simply the system has to reverse itself to save itself – and there is little sign of that. The idea that the rich should get poorer and vice versa has no precedent in this society. And Obama shows very little of such tendencies, and his advisers are dead set against it.
So here we are – with a capitalism that has been too successful at extracting wealth and no remedy in sight. Quite simply there are ever fewer people who can afford to buy Mr. Ford’s cars. This is simply a crisis of overproduction – not a new idea, of course, but one that seems to explain the present state of affairs very adequately. Could it be the end of the road for this system? Probably not, because it has still a role to play in the developing world. But it would seem that we are in for a lot of suffering, a lot of turmoil and considerable opening for some radical changes in our way of life – for better or worse.
John Walsh is a professor at U Mass. He is not an a practitioner of the Dismal Science, and he frankly doubts that “economics” as taught in the universities now, as distinguished from political economy, is a valid discipline. He has some knowledge of the physicists and mathematicians who put together the Wall Street “instruments” that have triggered the present crisis. Many of these people knew that they were simply providing their bosses with simulations that proved what the bosses wanted proven. And many of these former academics openly referred to themselves as “whores.” It may be dangerous to let too many physicists go unemployed. He can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Hey guys… I’m thinking of stinging on my Christmas dinner celebrations to buy Microsoft, AIG, Exxon Mobil and GE… hehe… they all seem like a great deal now…
November 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
With all gloom and doom everywhere, one would think that a US consumer is standing somewhere in a soup kitchen line, but in reality they continue killing each other for a big screen TV.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html
The bears might be surprised in December by the power of lower gas prices (equivalent to two stimulus packages) and growing incomes (0.3% according to the latest Personal Income and Spending report).
November 28th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Food and bottled water were not on sale at the Wal-Mart store.
Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vaccum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as “The Incredible Hulk” for $9.