All opinions expressed at the website KangarooMoney.Com are the sole views of the authors. You, the reader, should not treat any opinion expressed by KangarooMoney.Com as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or to follow a particular strategy but, only as an expression of KangarooMoney.Com opinions. KangarooMoney.Com opinions at the time of publication are based upon information that it considers to be reliable, gathered from many public sources but, KangarooMoney.Com is not under any obligation to update or correct any information provided on this website. KangarooMoney.Com statements and opinions are subject to change without notice. All writings, articles, comments and published information are the sole property of KangarooMoney.Com and cannot be used without expressed written permission of the owners of KangarooMoney.Com. Past performance is not indicative of future results. KangarooMoney.Com, nor its authors, guarantees any specific outcome, profit or loss, for its readers. You the reader, should be aware of the real risk of loss in following any strategy or investment situation discussed on this website. Strategies and / or investments discussed on KangarooMoney.Com may fluctuate in price or value at any time. Investors may get back less than originally invested. Investments and / or strategies mentioned on this website may not be suitable for you. The material published here does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs and it is not intended as specific recommendations appropriate for you. You the reader must make an independent decision regarding investments or strategies mentioned on this website. Before acting on information on this website, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and you should strongly consider seeking advice from your own financial or investment adviser before making any investment or following any particular strategy mentioned here.
All of us here at KangarooMoney.Com and KM Partners wish you and yours the best holiday season possible for the 2009 and 2010 holidays. During this season of Christmas we hope that your life and heart are filled with the joy and blessings of the season that the day represents.
Moving into the New Year and the next decade in just a week, we here at KangarooMoney.Com look forward to a solid revivial and return to the program that has made us what we are. A new “re-boot” if you will is coming for 2010 with the information that you, the readers, have come to know and expect from KangarooMoney.Com and the KM Partners. We all look forward to a return to the program and process to keep you informed and to have our information and opinions presented to the world.
We have missed you all. We look forward to reconnecting with all of you in just a short while. In the meantime, keep the faith, enjoy the Christmas holiday and prepare for the wonderful New Year 2010!
( Please see Kangaroo Money’s Disclaimer published on WK01 2009. )
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Ah, Sunday again here in the KangarooMoney Office and, while it is not as crowded here as it has been in the past, there is still some quiet bustle going on here. Several of us are reading the latest House of Representatives’ proposed bill on Health Care all the way through — which is more than can be said for our Congress Members! — and others are reading the already passed Bailout bills. After - if! - we get through those novels, eh bills, we will move on to the USoA budget, the California State Budget and finish our feast with the Defense Department Budget. You know, we’re all about the fun here at KangarooMoney!
On a serious note, it is more critical today to be fully informed and knowledgeable about what our Representatives and Senators are trying to pass into law. These bills affect us not just today, tomorrow or next week but will affect us for decades to come. As the people, like in the phrase “We, the people…”, it is our responsibility to know what our officials are doing and what other States’ officials are doing as well. While it is important for the United States of America to act as a true union in its presentation to the World, it seems that the last 4 to 6 years has seen the individual States take exceptional liberties with the National finances for their own low benefit. Now that we are deep into a massive recession that the KM Team firmly believes was caused by a combination of professional greed ( i.e., financial companies of every type basing their incomes on unsustainable models ) and a lack of personal responsibility ( i.e., sure I’ll buy a house, car, tv, clothes, meals, wine, trinkets and baubles on money I don’t have and easy credit — why not??? ), it is time to ask ourselves the questions that our parents and grandparents always asked themselves — what are we going to do about the future? Our future? Our children’s future? Our children’s children’s future? Yes, that time has come. Moaning about potential Global Warming a tenth of a degree at a time and groaning about sea levels rising a tenth of an inch at a time makes for pretty noise and progressive books but if we all starve to death before the high ocean boils away, isn’t THAT more important? And for a country that is still carrying, and counting, debt that it got and gave over 250 years ago, does anyone think that the cost of what our Elected Officials are trying to pass on to us is going to be forgotten and written off? We doubt it. Short term gains for long term pains is what got us into this mess. That kind of thinking will not get us out of it any time soon.
So where is the money to be made today? What industries and companies do the KM Team and KM Partners believe to on the upswing that will make us all rich? As much as we would like to believe that that is why you are reading our humble little blog on The Economy, the truth is that if we had the EXACT information on such knowledge we would be making piles of cash in the world markets. However, we do believe that we have been skipping along the bottom of the USoA recession for some months now. While some industries, think Auto Makers and Banks, are still grabbing headlines and suffering losses, we believe that those things are happening due to “unnecessary meddling by non-professionals” — those are our words but feel free to use the phrase where ever you see fit. As you will see below, not all auto makers are drying up and dying off. Nor are all the banks of the world being marched on, looted and burned down either. But it is amazing how much “help” all of those non-professionals want to give those businesses, even if those businesses don’t want the “help”. Good business people will always do good business. And bad business people will always go out of business — unless the Governments of the World prop them up to continue doing bad business. Sometimes, when the Doctor says “That leg has got to come off, there’s just no other way,” you have them cut the leg off. In the business world, it’s survival of the fittest not the biggest. We would all do well to remember that.
As we wind our way past the Auto Maker Bailout and the Insurance Companies Bailout and the Banking Bailout and increased local taxes, state taxes and Federal “add-ons” ( they’re not really taxes just fees and increased costs ), we would do well to review not only the National Healthcare debate and the probable effects on our economy but we should harken back to the words of our forebears. No, not Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Franklin though that would be an excellent place to start, but rather to someone a little more recent and closer to another tumultuous time in our countrys’ history. The year was 1961 and, hard as it is to believe, the USoA was again waist deep in a National Healthcare debate. A well known private citizen of the United States gave a speech in which he said, “The doctor begins to lose freedom. . . . First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can’t live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it’s only a short step to dictating where he will go. . . . All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won’t decide, when he’s in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.” Hard to believe that was in 1961 and in THIS country, but it was. Can you guess who said it? Write us and tell us you knew BEFORE checking the answer at the bottom of the post. The KM Team is betting you can’t. The KM Partners are not quite so sure. We’ll see.
While you chew and ponder, let’s go to the writing shall we?
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We at KangarooMoney.Com and KM Partners realize and appreciate you taking your time and effort to read our blog. All of us here at KangarooMoney.Com will continue to be here to help you find the way through the economic minefield that seems to have been created. For this week, and going forward, the typical weekly information will appear up front and the new weekly information will appear down below. Enjoy, learn and earn for the future as we all find our way back from the fear and darkness that has been.
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First and foremost, the KM Team and KM Partners have decided to publish our Disclaimer as a separate posting effective January 2009. Please spend a moment reading that posting to make sure that you understand that the writers of this blog are expressing their opinions only. When you have finished reading the Disclaimer 2009, please spend some extra time going back and keeping us honest by reading some of our previous postings — and verifying the dates! — to see how the KM Team and KM Partners have been doing for the past year. The KangarooMoney.Com and KM Partners all think that you will find our “opinions” are better than some other peoples’ so called “facts”.
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You the reader will find the KangarooMoney.Com weekly comments here on this page with more detailed opinions and reasons following after you hit the ( click here to read more ) highlight. ( Currently, the KM Team has turned this feature off so that one and all can get a feel for our writing and to read all that is available. In the future at an to-be-announced date, this feature will be turned back on. ) As an educated reader, you know that anyone can tell you a “fact” in a one or two sentence blurb but, the KM Team and KM Partners like to back up our comments with our own views that you can read so that you can understand where we are getting our opinions from.
Below this weeks articles, there is the Updates and Comparisons Section, or the U & C as we call it here in the office. In the U & C, the KM Team will give you some of the latest information concerning some of the previous comments and articles that have been published here as well as comparing the KM Team and KM Partners take on things as opposed to some of our mainstream and blog world counterparts. The Updates and Comparisons section is a nice way to see if the KM Team is staying the true course in the stormy ocean of The Economy.
Down lower on the page, you will find our Market Mover of the Week feature, which highlights a prediction for the one person that the KM Team and KM Partners believe will be the one person most responsible for shaping and driving the USoA markets and / or economy for the upcoming week. Included in this feature is the follow-up on who the MMW was for the week just past as well as pointing out if KangarooMoney.Com was correct in our prediction of who this was and who we determined to be the real Market Mover of the Week.
Going lower, you will find a similar feature called International Impact Incident of the Week. The Triple I section will highlight an international situation either just passed or an expected upcoming event that the KM Team sees as having a major impact on the USoA financial markets. Similar to the MMoWfeaturein nature, a weekly review will be held each week and you can track how the KM Team and KM Partners preformed in their predictions. With our multitude of International readers, we expect you all to keep us pretty honest in this section.
Still lower you will find our Definitions of the Week. In this section there will be items that explain some of the more technical terms used in our articles of the week. New for 2009 will be a BlogRoll attachment that will allow you to go over to a complied dictionary for our DoW going all the way back to the beginning of KangarooMoney.Com. Feel free to hop on over to the Dictionary whenever you feel the need to get the straight scoop on what we’re talking about. Or even just to check out some of the financial / political expressions of the day.
At this time, the last feature we would like to mention is one that we hope will help you to see where the KM Team and KM Partners are coming from and where we are trying to go to. Up in the BlogRoll section of the page is a little something called the Stock Docket, which is a link to a list of companies and their stock symbols that have been mentioned here in KangarooMoney.Com. The link will take you to a spreadsheet that list the company names, their stock symbols, the index they are traded on, the week they were mentioned here, and a listing of stock prices that included the Friday just past closing price. The KM Team with a firm lead from the KM Partners also highlight which stocks we supported at the time of mention and those that we did not support. While this is a considerable undertaking on the KangarooMoney.Com Teams’ part, we all feel that this will help to determine how things are going and guide us through the minefield of the USoA Economy. Eventually ( meaning 2009 sometime — honest! ) this feature is planned to be moved into an interior page, so please comment on this feature as much as possible before that happens.
Those of us that started the Stock Docket would love to have been right each and every time in this area but we have to admit that the financial meltdown of 2008 caught us all off guard. We feel bad saying that but we also realize that we are in some pretty good company when it comes to “being caught off guard”. All we’re going to say is that Bear StearnsandLehman Brothers are no longer with us and KangarooMoney.Com is still here. It is safe to say that the ending 2008 Stock Docket is nowhere near where the original Stock Docket started out. The dramatic dips, dives and drops of 2008 caused some serious reconfiguring of numbers as well as some reevaluations of stocks and companies. Because of those facts, there will be a last 2008 Stock Docket and then the new choices, new outlooks and new recommendations / not recommended choices will be put forth by the KM Team and KM Partners and will take effect. Like the real world teaches us, choices are rarely life long and unchangeable. We will leave the last 2008 SD up on the BlogRoll just so you can jeer at us in late 2009. Or maybe you will cheer us, as we expect you to. As we said, 2008 gave everyone a left hook from deep center but we didn’t lose the whole pile…did you? Just remember, a share here, a share there and pretty soon it all adds up to real money.
Please remember that the KM Team, KM Partners, KangarooMoney.Com and all of our contributors are not accountants, stock brokers or personal financial advisers, nor are we even Lawyers. Should any one be any of those professions, full disclosure will be made attached to their writing. In the meantime, you need to be sure that you do what YOU want to do. If the KangarooMoney.Com opinions can help you have a better understanding of what has happened, is happening and / or is going to happen in such a way that you decide upon a path to follow, then our blog is serving a purpose. You don’t have to agreed with us and you don’t have to follow what we publish as the end all- be all of the financial world. All you have to understand is that this blog is ONLY guidance and direction as we believe it. If you or yours uses ONLY our humble writings as your sole guidance and direction in the markets and economy dealings of the USoA tobase decisions on, do NOT come crying, or suing, any member of KangarooMoney.Com, the KM Team, or KM Partners for something that has happened that we did not or could not foresee. We certainly hope that this clears up any questions you might have in that regard.
And finally, because we are writing this for everyone to read and enjoy, please don’t be afraid to drop us a comment and let us know how we are doing. This is an ongoing work-in-progress where we hope to bring fresh changes, new site additions and new page features to the blog as we go forward. As the days go by, we won’t forget to tell you how we think we are doing — so don’t YOU forget to tell US how we are doing! Seeing your comments up on the page for all to see is always a rush so be constructive and informative for the community, not selling junk and whining about something deeply personal. Remember, we need to moderate what is written so please be nice and allow us to publish you as is. For now, enjoy, learn and earn!
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In Week 01 2009, the KangarooMoney.Com team determined that some of the attached websites on our BlogRollwere no longer appropriate to be attached here and active. With thatinmind, the multiple discussions that took place in December 2008 in the KM Team offices about taking down the outdated websites and adding new websites to the BlogRollthatare more in line with ourtrainof thought, have now come home to bear fruit. Beginning that week, new additions to the BlogRoll began to take place, giving you, the Reader, new opportunities to visit some of the websites that the KM Team and KM Partners visit on a regular basis. These will be mostly financial based but not always, so check out the listing to see what new information is available.
For the sixth new addition of 2009 to the KangarooMoney.Com BlogRoll, the KM Team is adding the website for Bloomberg.Com ( found here http://www.bloomberg.com/ ). The KM Team enjoys the amount of information on the Bloomberg site as the business news it supplies comes from around the world 24/7 and is shown in relative real time as the country it is reporting from. For the true international business junkie who believes a butterfly in Japan will cause a hurricane on due to excessive wing-flap, Bloomberg is a great place to start and stay up all night then the next day too. Also, the KM Partners really enjoy the solid black background that the news is displayed on which gives the headlines and videos a much sharper view when our glazing eyes are checking out the overnights and late afternoon updates. Enjoy this new addition but make sure to use it to your advantage. Just like everything else we try to give you here at KangarooMoney.Com!
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As any regular reader of KangarooMoney.Com will quickly realize, the KM Team and KM Partners have remained bullish and positive on one of the few companies that has seen the tippy top of the mountain, the flatlands of the bottom of the valley and now appears to be headed back up the far side of the mountain to return to the peak again someday. If that simple unabashed gush didn’t tell you who we mean, then you need to read the picture caption on the right. And relax as the KM Team talks about auto companies. Again. ( click here to read more ) Being the one major Big Three American auto company not to accept or ask for a Federal Bailout from the United States Government, a great deal of people had written the Ford company ( F, traded on NYSE, recommended at this time, owned by KM Partners ) off as not quite but soon to be dead, perhaps even worse then General Motors ( for some strange reason this symbol is now — MTLQQ, traded on the OTC and most definitely NOT recommended at this time — the name of the shares is Motors Liquidation ) was looking. How bad were things? How about this Blue Chip multi-Billion dollar company having a stock price drop to just $1.05 per share? Is that bad enough for you? But Ford management had faith and belief in not only their products but their future plans. Having negotiated their UAW union contract as the point company for the Big Three in December 2008, they spelled out to the union faithful just what was coming if both sides didn’t play ball the right way. With that course in place, the new contract froze wages, cut benefits and allowed the Ford Company to use their stock to pay into the UAW run health care program as their part of the compensation. Ford, for their apparent part of the Devil’s Bargain, refused to submit a request for a bailout package preferring to stay on their own. As of this writing, Ford has been handsomely rewarded with a very successful capital raising stock sale earlier this year, an increase in market share AND now, a stock price of $6.75 ( at the closing bell on Friday ) which is not bad for a stock that was in the tank less than six months ago. Which brings us to the story of the companion picture above and its company, Tesla Motors. While this is indeed the Tesla Motors that the KM Team first brought to your attention back in the posting Beginnings of April 2008, the company has remained independent and privately owned but has also suffered some setbacks along the way. Tesla Motors Inc. as we reported last year, was a start-up in CA with a super looking car, hand crafted to spec and nifty battery set up that allows it to go about 250 miles per charge AND go from 0 to 60 in just under 4 seconds ( the website is here: http://www.teslamotors.com/ ). This is a company that is very Green orientated with a state of the art facility in CA and a planned site in NM ( although that decision seems on again / off again ). The struggles come things like going to court to try to determine who can be called a founder of the company, putting what probably is a fake video of a company “investor” up on YouTube to tout new money coming into the company, having Diamler first buy 10% of the company in May 2009 only to watch Diamler sell 40% of that 10% over to Abu Dhabi’s Aabar company ( a report of that story is here, of all places! http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=10714360 ) and finally having its company soul bared as the founder court battle went on. Tesla did gather some nice positive attention witha great placement ad in a hot new television program except that it seems only the KM Team even noticed it. During the 7/16 airing of the “Royal Pains” episode on the USA Network, one of the main characters of this neat little show finally solved his personal transportation problem by being presented with, ta-da!, a Tesla Roadster free of charge. Yeah it was about 3 minutes of air time and the car has not been seen since but, it was 3 minutes of air time on a top rated show in Prime Time. Good press. Oh, before we leave these two companies that are reaching for the stars in these desperate times it would be important to point out that their talent will not be restricted by the Government in their pay structure as neither one of these American Auto Makers took any “bailout” money when it was offered. These two companies DID however, receive some serious Government backing by getting 2 of the first 3 loans from the US Department of Energy from a $25 Billion fund that was set up to help US auto makers retool their factories to make “advanced-technology vehicles”. Nissan was the other company but that’s another KM story for another day. Ford received $5 Billion for its efforts in the electric auto field which should be enough to change out a machine or two in a couple of plants they still own ( Norfolk VA is still empty — how about it Ford? ). Tesla Motors received $450 Million for its efforts which will go towards developing and building a sedan version of its hot roadster. Not bad for a company that has 500 actual cars sold to date. For those of us who are history buffs, that’s 10 times +1 the amount of cars that the last big little upstart to the Big Auto Makers ever built, a company and a man called Tucker. Who knows what a bailout might have done for him, eh?
With so many other signs that the Old Economy has reached a bottom but the New Economy has not begun its proper ascent, one needs to start reviewing the industries and companies that will start to lead us all back onto the rising hill path. Hard as it is to believe, let’s look today at a competitive old school company that should prove to be a very good indicator of the next uptick in The Recession…( click here to read more) While it should not be true that a great deal of new building should be taking place in the good ol’ USoA, the truthis that is exactly what will need to happen to show that The Economy is coming back to where it was before we all got smart about our personal debt. The KM Team is not talking about home building, as there should be enough homes available in the country now so as to eliminate the term “homelessness” from common use, but instead we are talking about the type of big-building type of building that will get manufacturing back into form. The type of building that requires new road work to take place, to have foundations laid and earth moved to make the project happen. That kind of action hasn’t really taken place in the US yet and it probably won’t for another 16 to 18 months when the upticks in business finally begin to make themselves known. But that type of work is happening in other places around the world, mostly with government financing and backing — think China, India, places in Africa and South America. After all, why build 20 factories to allow Capitalism to work when you can build just 1 factory and control it completely? However, you will have to deal with some capitalistic companies to get the equipment you need to build those factories. Caterpillar ( CAT, traded on NYSE, recommended at this time ) has had a serious roller coaster ride in the last twelve months, trading at 70.90 in August 2008, dropping to as low as 23.23 in March 2009 ( even lower in the intraday trading) and now rebounding back up to 41.88 at the close on Friday while traveling a very nice upward trend. Back in the day before all of us could buy, sell and trade stock like we did baseball cards, a stock shooting up nearly double in only 4 months would have caused the Government to investigate. However, in the New Normal, this is now smart and accepted business, requiring only a little digging to find out what caused this double rise in value. Let’s start with the obvious attraction that caught the KM Team and KM Partner’s eye — a 42c dividend payment per share to holders of record as of July 20th, 2009 to be payable in August 2009. This is a regular quarterly dividend that has remained at 42c per share since the July 2008 payout. Not bad at all for a stock that you could have had at less than $25 per share in March for a company valued at $25 Billion in assets as of this writing. While the company did some major cost cutting during the last two fiscal quarters ( read that as layoffs amounting to 22,000 employees worldwide in 2009 ) the overall response to that move was positive as the number of US employees that were outright laid off totaled only about 2300 people. But Caterpillar, much like the rest of people who have had 24 straight months of bad news and bad tidings handed to them day after day after day, sees renewed hope that new projects and new programs will allow their heavy equipment to meet needs. With dealers and suppliers located around the world, cost cutting moves that did cost jobs that could come back in an upturn and a name that is instantly recognized, Caterpillar should make a return to the value stock it was prior to the economic meltdown. Take a look at any major construction site as you drive by or glance at the road construction that is holding you from your office each day. Chances are that there’s a CAT involved. The KM Team and KM Partners think you might like to watch what CAT can do for you and your portfolio. Indeed, for this American, “bailout” free, company, watch what Caterpillar can do for all of us.
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Updates and Comparisons:
Week 01 2009: At that point, which seemed to be very, very deep into a serious roller coaster type drop in the world economy, the KM Team wrote that “Somebody has to make the call. So – Let the RECOVERY begin!”. We thought then what we know now, that the drop in the economy is seen from behind and so is the recovery in the economy. Here late July 2009, it does look like the last quarter was a bottom-bouncing type of 3 months, with a little up here and a little down there along the way. Did the Recovery begin back there in Week 01 2009 as we said? Probably not. But The Economy certainly started to wake up and look around from where it was sleeping. Now we say, watch out Christmas 2009 — it could be a ho-ho-holiday to remember.
Week 02 2009: Please, re-read article 1 of that week. Enough said.
Week 17 2009: During that week, the KM Team wrote about how the New York Times was in the process of mishandling the Boston Globe newspaper, its unions and its writers and how the probable death of the Globe and newspapers in general were over estimated. Certainly things looked dark at that time for the 137 year old newspaper and for newspapers in general. Many daily papers and most weekly papers were folding tent faster than people could boot up their laptops. However, as the KM Team wrote then and still believes now, the death of newspapers is an over estimate of reality. During the end of July 2009 and going into August 2009, numerous bidding groups will come forth to buy the Boston Globe and set its path back on the proper course. The unions and the writers have come to terms with concerns about their pay and contracts as of this writing. Perhaps the Globe will show the way for how American newspapers will once again come roaring back to prominence.
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Market Mover of the Week 31 2009: While it would be easy to give Ford Motor Company CEO, Alan Mulally, the nod for MMW for Week 31 2009 based on his company’s great reports and share price move but the KM Partners remind us that a large amount of that movement upwards was based on additional shares being sold early in the quarter to raise capital instead of actual car sales taking place. Instead, we believe that Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner will reappear on the national news screens again this week to discuss China, Russia, the Koreas and, of course, the current happy-happy trend here in the USoA. We believe that Secretary Geithner will attempt to tell us all is well, the markets are up, gasoline is down and the bottom of the recession has been reached. We also expect the markets to react, shall we say “poorly”?, to these pronouncements by the Secretary. He will just have to learn that getting to the bottom is easy. Getting OFF the bottom is hard. We shall see.
Market Mover of the Week 30 2009: The MMW of Week 30 2009 could have been a star of major magnitude ( yes, that’s a pun ), as many players attempted to deal with the CITGroup almost bankruptcy, but no one person stepped up to take the credit. Then there was the freshmen Democratic representatives who not only voted with the Republicans against the current healthcare platform because of funding issues ( think Rep. Dina Titus and Rep. Jared Polis ) but also the busload of the same group that went to the White House to say “Whoa! Don’t tax MY people!” and, indeed, THEY could have been the MMW but, again, they were not. So who WAS the MMW for Week 30 2009?? We believe the Indian Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, was the major mover of the US Markets for Week 30. His steadfast and almost disrespectful refusal to buy into a proposal by the United States for binding limits on carbon emissions has suddenly found some large companies using his arguments in their own defense. Minister Ramesh helped to begin a wider re-discussion on the major issue of carbon emission overseas and domestically. The KM Team grants him the MMW for Week 30 2009.
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International Impact Incident of the Week: This week would seem to be the week that deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya finally makes the international splash he has been seeking. As we all might recall, President Zelaya was removed from elected office in Honduras, forced onto a plane in his pajamas and sent out of the country on June 28th. Since that time, President Zelaya has repeatedly called for his countrymen and followers to usher him back into power and the United States has found itself on the same side of the crying fence as Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, decidedly strange bedfellows indeed. Still, Chavez once again finds a bullhorn podium to yell from while Zelayaplaysa”I-can-go-in, I-can-go-out” game on the Honduran border and President Obama plays a shell game with the United States opinion of the issue. The KM Team feels that this issue will flashpoint this week and being so close to Home makes it the Triple I of Week 31.
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DEFINITIONS:
Recession: A financial and economic downturn in a country that is typically confirmed when the country suffers at least two consecutive down quarters of its Gross Domestic Product ( GDP ); usually the general population of the affected country knows well before the initial announcement is made that there is recession going on as the economy slows down, lays off occur and businesses and industries suffer or disappear all together; while a recessionary situation in a Capitalistic country can be a problem for 9 months and longer, typically attitudes and markets rebound on the strength of the belief in the overall systems; recessionary times in non-Capitalistic societies usually require direct Governmental involvement which may or may not make things better.
US Department of Energy:A Cabinet-level department of the USoA Government, this office is charged with overseeing and administrating policies concerning all aspects of energy on US soil; it is responsible for insuring safety in all nuclear material within the USoA, commercial and military, overseeing the military nuclear weapons, industries nuclear reactors, enforcing the domestic policies of all others of energy within the US and overseeing radioactive waste handling and disposal; the DOE sponsors most of the basic and specific scientific research within the USoA; the current Secretary of the DOE is Dr. Steven Chu ( website is: http://www.energy.gov/organization/dr_steven_chu.htm )
Intraday Trading:This term refers to the stock value of stock between the opening and closing postition during an official trading day; an example would be the stock CAT trading on the NYSE on any Monday between the opening price at 9:30 am and the closing price at 4:00 pm during that day — any of the price(s) between 9:30 and 4:00 would be intraday pricing; the trading of stock during that time would be intraday trading.
Howard Jarvis + “Network”: As a businessman running numerous small newspapers in California back in the 1970’s, Jarvis was an active member of the almost unheard of Republican Party in that state. During that time, the taxes being raised in California and many other states in the USoA began to look and feel excessive to not only the general population but also to businessmen and owners in particular. Capitalizing on the then very popular 1976 movie “Network” and its anchorman rant of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” ( as performed by the late, great Peter Finch who was awarded an posthumous Academy Award for this performance ) Jarvis led the very successful Proposition 13 tax cutting law which led to a 57% cut in property taxes in California. The success of Prop 13 led to numerous other states’ citizens leading their own tax revolts and rolling back taxes to then reasonable levels. Jarvis and Prop 13 helped to pave the way for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party coming to power in the 1980’s.
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( This weeks quote comes from another time an debate on healthcare and how the United States, all of them or really, all our parents and grandparents through taxes and fees, were going to provide for EVERYBODY a better and much more fair and balanced medical plan across all the classes then in the country. If you remember your history, you will recall there was another popular, progressive and eager Democratic President in the White House back then but as we said, the speaker was a private citizen at the time of his quote. We will say that the man helped to prevent that attempt at Socialized Medicine and then went on to re-enter politics, making a fair name for himself and a generation after the second rise in Democratic politics in the last 50 years. The man was Ronald Reagan and the quote comes from the 1961 Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Socialized Medicine, a program that was being proposed and promoted by then in-power Democratic Administration of President Kennedy. As you might have guess, the program was not put in place and the American people had plenty of other things to think about in 1961, like monkeys and people flying in space, Parisian police shooting down people in the streets and a bubbling pot called Cuba that would almost but not quite boil over. Once again, like the very writers of the Constitution of this country, a citizens’ words come to us from across time and space to address an event that is taking place now but was thought of then. Who knows what the financial burden will be estimated at this time for the program? But unlike the members of the Constitutional Convention from almost 222 years ago, we can listen to citizen Reagan in his own words through time and space and hear just how he felt about that 1961 debate — go to YouTube.Com to hear it for yourself ; just type in Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine in the search box then sit back and close your eyes. Ah, the magic of internet! )
Going forward, the KM Team and KM Partners want to thank you all for reading us and keep those comment coming in. As always, enjoy, learn and earn! The KM Team and KM Partners.
Yet another attempted death knell on the great, but struggling, Capitalism
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Vice President Biden was being held to account again for saying back on June 14th what we all had already known all along — that the Obama administration had, and we quote here, “guessed wrong” when they had originally spoke about the impact of the economic stimulus package that was put forth. VP Biden went even further by saying, and we’re quoting here again, “No one realized how bad the economy was.” ( These quotes come from the website “Breaking News 24/7″ and can be found here — http://blog.taragana.com/n/vp-biden-says-everyone-guessed-wrong-on-stimulus-jobs-number-defends-estimates-81282/ )
This information is, well, old news to anyone who has not been watching American Idiot re-runs 24-7 for the last several months. That would include anyone with or without a job, anyone who has even glanced at a newspaper or caught a commercial for a news program and / or anyone that has even passed by a computer terminal that once had an internet connection. In other words, you didn’t need KangarooMoney.Com or the Vice President of the United States of America to state the obvious. Instead, what has been needed is less Stimulus and more Package. Or better yet, more Capitalism and less Bailout.
The KangarooMoney.Com Team and KM Partners have long advocated a strong business environment with more than just a streak of “the strong shall survive” attitude. The history of America from well before the American Revolution up until this very day has been founded on solid business concepts and theories that can be found in any good business today — make what people want, provide it to those people in a timely and reasonable manner and charge enough to make a fair profit in order to stay in business. Charge too much? People will go elsewhere for the product. Can’t provide enough of the product or keep the market in a flowing manner for the product? People will move on to something else no matter how great the product is or how much people desire it. Can’t make what the people want? People won’t buy you product, ever. If you do any of the items that would make people not buy your product and you just won’t be in business very long. That’s the first law of capitalistic business. Perhaps the only law really. Interrupt that law in some way — can you say Bailout? — and the whole formula gets skewed, sent off kilter.
So where are we going with this line of thought? Only in the direction that last 26 weeks have taken us. Some companies have found the strength and well being in the New Economic Normal. Think Ford, Con-Agra, Caterpillar or Boeing, all KangarooMoney.Com favorites by the way. Other companies have gotten lost, searching for their way out of the business desert that they accidentally wandered into. Think GM, AIG, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, all KangarooMoney.Com dislikes by the way. But you don’t have to believe the KM Team. Just check the stock listings for companies getting US Government “assistance” and those companies that are not.
And then let the KM Team know what you found out. We think that after a little effort, you’ll be on the same page as we are. The KangarooMoney.Com page. Of course.
Which leads us to this weeks quote: “The business of America is business.” A serious line delivered from a serious man during a serious time. In fact, the line was delivered from a man better know for not saying very much at all, which makes the statement all that much more important, when it was said and how it applies to today. When you consider what the statement meant from the man who said it, well, the meaning for today is all that much more critical to the whole point we have been trying to make this week.
In the meantime, enjoy this weeks posting…
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We at KangarooMoney.Com and KM Partners realize and appreciate you taking your time and effort to read our blog. All of us here at KangarooMoney.Com will continue to be here to help you find the way through the economic minefield that seems to have been created. For this week, and going forward, the typical weekly information will appear up front and the new weekly information will appear down below. Enjoy, learn and earn for the future as we all find our way back from the fear and darkness that has been.
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First and foremost, the KM Team and KM Partners have decided to publish our Disclaimer as a separate posting effective January 2009. Please spend a moment reading that posting to make sure that you understand that the writers of this blog are expressing their opinions only. When you have finished reading the Disclaimer 2009, please spend some extra time going back and keeping us honest by reading some of our previous postings — and verifying the dates! — to see how the KM Team and KM Partners have been doing for the past year. The KangarooMoney.Com and KM Partners all think that you will find our “opinions” are better than some other peoples’ so called “facts”.
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You the reader will find the KangarooMoney.Com weekly comments here on this page with more detailed opinions and reasons following after you hit the ( click here to read more ) highlight. ( Currently, the KM Team has turned this feature off so that one and all can get a feel for our writing and to read all that is available. In the future at an to-be-announced date, this feature will be turned back on. ) As an educated reader, you know that anyone can tell you a “fact” in a one or two sentence blurb but, the KM Team and KM Partners like to back up our comments with our own views that you can read so that you can understand where we are getting our opinions from.
Below this weeks articles, there is the Updates and Comparisons Section, or the U & C as we call it here in the office. In the U & C, the KM Team will give you some of the latest information concerning some of the previous comments and articles that have been published here as well as comparing the KM Team and KM Partners take on things as opposed to some of our mainstream and blog world counterparts. The Updates and Comparisons section is a nice way to see if the KM Team is staying the true course in the stormy ocean of The Economy.
Down lower on the page, you will find our Market Mover of the Week feature, which highlights a prediction for the one person that the KM Team and KM Partners believe will be the one person most responsible for shaping and driving the USoA markets and / or economy for the upcoming week. Included in this feature is the follow-up on who the MMW was for the week just past as well as pointing out if KangarooMoney.Com was correct in our prediction of who this was and who we determined to be the real Market Mover of the Week.
Going lower, you will find a similar feature called International Impact Incident of the Week. The Triple I section will highlight an international situation either just passed or an expected upcoming event that the KM Team sees as having a major impact on the USoA financial markets. Similar to the MMoW feature in nature, a weekly review will be held each week and you can track how the KM Team and KM Partners preformed in their predictions. With our multitude of International readers, we expect you all to keep us pretty honest in this section.
Still lower you will find our Definitions of the Week. In this section there will be items that explain some of the more technical terms used in our articles of the week. New for 2009 will be a BlogRoll attachment that will allow you to go over to a complied dictionary for our DoW going all the way back to the beginning of KangarooMoney.Com. Feel free to hop on over to the Dictionary whenever you feel the need to get the straight scoop on what we’re talking about. Or even just to check out some of the financial / political expressions of the day.
At this time, the last feature we would like to mention is one that we hope will help you to see where the KM Team and KM Partners are coming from and where we are trying to go to. Up in the BlogRoll section of the page is a little something called the Stock Docket, which is a link to a list of companies and their stock symbols that have been mentioned here in KangarooMoney.Com. The link will take you to a spreadsheet that list the company names, their stock symbols, the index they are traded on, the week they were mentioned here, and a listing of stock prices that included the Friday just past closing price. The KM Team with a firm lead from the KM Partners also highlight which stocks we supported at the time of mention and those that we did not support. While this is a considerable undertaking on the KangarooMoney.Com Teams’ part, we all feel that this will help to determine how things are going and guide us through the minefield of the USoA Economy. Eventually ( meaning 2009 sometime — honest! ) this feature is planned to be moved into an interior page, so please comment on this feature as much as possible before that happens.
Those of us that started the Stock Docket would love to have been right each and every time in this area but we have to admit that the financial meltdown of 2008 caught us all off guard. We feel bad saying that but we also realize that we are in some pretty good company when it comes to “being caught off guard”. All we’re going to say is that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are no longer with us and KangarooMoney.Com is still here. It is safe to say that the ending 2008 Stock Docket is nowhere near where the original Stock Docket started out. The dramatic dips, dives and drops of 2008 caused some serious reconfiguring of numbers as well as some reevaluations of stocks and companies. Because of those facts, there will be a last 2008 Stock Docket and then the new choices, new outlooks and new recommendations / not recommended choices will be put forth by the KM Team and KM Partners and will take effect. Like the real world teaches us, choices are rarely life long and unchangeable. We will leave the last 2008 SD up on the BlogRoll just so you can jeer at us in late 2009. Or maybe you will cheer us, as we expect you to. As we said, 2008 gave everyone a left hook from deep center but we didn’t lose the whole pile…did you? Just remember, a share here, a share there and pretty soon it all adds up to real money.
Please remember that the KM Team, KM Partners, KangarooMoney.Com and all of our contributors are not accountants, stock brokers or personal financial advisers, nor are we even Lawyers. Should any one be any of those professions, full disclosure will be made attached to their writing. In the meantime, you need to be sure that you do what YOU want to do. If the KangarooMoney.Com opinions can help you have a better understanding of what has happened, is happening and / or is going to happen in such a way that you decide upon a path to follow, then our blog is serving a purpose. You don’t have to agreed with us and you don’t have to follow what we publish as the end all- be all of the financial world. All you have to understand is that this blog is ONLY guidance and direction as we believe it. If you or yours uses ONLY our humble writings as your sole guidance and direction in the markets and economy dealings of the USoA to base decisions on, do NOT come crying, or suing, any member of KangarooMoney.Com, the KM Team, or KM Partners for something that has happened that we did not or could not foresee. We certainly hope that this clears up any questions you might have in that regard.
And finally, because we are writing this for everyone to read and enjoy, please don’t be afraid to drop us a comment and let us know how we are doing. This is an ongoing work-in-progress where we hope to bring fresh changes, new site additions and new page features to the blog as we go forward. As the days go by, we won’t forget to tell you how we think we are doing — so don’t YOU forget to tell US how we are doing! Seeing your comments up on the page for all to see is always a rush so be constructive and informative for the community, not selling junk and whining about something deeply personal. Remember, we need to moderate what is written so please be nice and allow us to publish you as is. For now, enjoy, learn and earn!
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In Week 01 2009, the KangarooMoney.Com team determined that some of the attached websites on our BlogRoll were no longer appropriate to be attached here and active. With that in mind, the multiple discussions that took place in December 2008 in the KM Team offices about taking down the outdated websites and adding new websites to the BlogRoll that are more in line with our train of thought, have now come home to bear fruit. Beginning that week, new additions to the BlogRoll began to take place, giving you, the Reader, new opportunities to visit some of the websites that the KM Team and KM Partners visit on a regular basis. These will be mostly financial based but not always, so check out the listing to see what new information is available.
For the fifth new addition of 2009 to the KangarooMoney.Com BlogRoll, the KM Team is adding the website for PickensPlan.Com ( found here http://www.pickensplan.com/ ). While this site would not automatically be assumed to be a business website, reviewing the information found there will lead you to find many different business impacting strings of knowledge and thought that will help drive you and your business forward in these changing and challenging times. The information is fresh and current as well as being supplied by some of the best known people in the field of energy supply today. So, please enjoy this latest addition to the BlogRoll and visit PickensPlan.com today.
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One of the things that the New Normal is teaching all of us today is that business entities may die but they don’t fade away. Indeed, businesses may go bankrupt and sell off everything from their brick and mortar buildings, they may cancel all of their debts at pennies on the dollar and they might even erase all of their salaries, bonuses and Board of Directors but, that doesn’t mean that those businesses go quietly into the good night. What do we mean? ( click here to read more) In the first six months of 2009, there has been no shortage of companies with brand names going bankrupt and / or out of business. One of those companies, Circuit City, was pummeled by us here at KangarooMoney from the 2nd Quarter of 2008 ( Week 20 2008 from KangarooMoney.Com ) right up through its declaration of bankruptcy and complete shutdown in January 2009, and we took some follow up potshots at CC after they fired everyone, closed their stores and broke their leases. So can you imagine how members of the KM Team felt when the equivalent of internet circulars starting to show up in our email boxes? And on a fairly regular basis to boot. Before we could really discuss and digest that bit of audaciousness was quickly followed by email flyers for Linen and Things, another company that found life in the real world much to hard to continue. However both of these companies are on the web almost as if nothing has happened out here in real life. Now, one of the great banes of internet life is that you never really know the attitude and true meaning of what is getting communicated to you. Does the writer mean what they are saying in a serious way or was it said with a smile almost a joke? With email and the net you just can’t tell. So when we see the same type of flyer from these “dead” companies coming into us 6 months after we buried them in the Great Business Graveyard it’s a little more than disconcerting. Do these flyers and sales and promise of great products and deliveries mean those companies are back and better than ever? Or are they just pulling our legs with false input? Does it mean that what we bought at the Going Out of Business sales wasn’t as good a deal as we thought? Or does it mean that there really wasn’t any deals at those 75% off counters? ( go here to decide for yourself — http://www.circuitcity.com/ and here http://www.lnt.com/home/index.jsp ) Those of us on the KM Team are reserving judgement for the websites and the businesses that are attached to them. We still don’t agree with what they did in closing down their brick and mortar businesses and giving their hundreds of creditors pennies on the dollar for what they owed. We also still don’t agree with what they did to and for their faithful employees who hopefully have been able to rebuild their lives and move on. The websites and the new business models of these reborn companies promise former glory at future profits for those who continue the effort. The KM Team and KM Partners will keep our wait and see attitudes. We also look forward to see how some the bankrupt restaurant chains might use the internet…but we’ll bring snacks anyways, thanks.
One of the company sectors that has to be reviewed not because the markets are currently bouncing along at their expected lows ( the KM Team had always said a Dow Market would travel at between 8,000 and 8,200 when the recession finally bottomed out and settled down ) but also because you can not help but hear about the situation every day as the summer months drags their way to the cool of the fall season, is the Medical Sector. That particular sector as grouped by that word “medical” can be huge and daunting if you look through the companies involved there. For the KM Team and KM Partners, we found it better to break that group down into smaller bites and look for leaders in not the ocean but the lakes of the medical field. ( click here to read more) It can be, as we said, daunting to go out and research any and all possible beneficiaries of the ongoing loud and rancorous debate on what is coming to be called US National Healthcare. Because of that, the KM Team has been out looking for hidden fishing holes on the smaller lakes of the healthcare field. One of the companies we have found is Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.( http://www.thermofisher.com/global/en/hom.asp). While TMO is a company that is about serving the science community by providing analytical instruments and equipment, reagents and consumables, and software and services for scientific research, analysis, manufacturing of scientific products as well as the discovery of new scientific insights, it has a sizable stake in the medical field. TMO is currently split into two different sections — one is the Analytical Technologies section and the other is the Laboratory Products and Services section. While the sexy art of the business might be considered the analytical side, which has pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government ( including USoA and foreign ) and other industrial areas to work in, that side appears to be the steady revenue stream for the past since the company came to being back in 1956. But it is now the laboratory products and services side of the house that is looming as the happy Accountants favorite hidden spot to go to. By providing products and services designed for customers to allow for research, development and manufacturing of drugs and medical supply systems, the company is positioned well as the healthcare debate carries on this summer. It may be said that Thermo Fisher Scientific is providing the tools to others and having them take all of the chances necessary for success while staying out of the chancy fray of chasing only potential success. Add to that line of thought that as TMO supplys the items to others that are necessary for those to research and discover new processes and drugs, they can adjust their own technology side of the house business based on what is seen on the products and services side. The KangarooMoney.Com Team also sees a company that has roughly 34,500 employees worldwide under its current payroll, a sizable company but not the largest one that was reviewed in this effort. Just the right size for growth going forward however. TMO is as of this writing traveling at almost its midpoint between its current 52 week high ( 62.77 ) and its current 52 week low ( 26.65 ) closing on Friday at 39.23. There has been a slight drop off during the month of July 2009 but that would be true of any company this year as the Spring Rush has dropped back down to Summer Doldrums. However, the last three months has seen TMO gain a steady rise from 32.39 despite announcing a downward revision in their guidance for the remainder of their 2009 forecast in April and May 2009. That rise despite the push down on their earnings could be pointed back to their acquisitions of Biolab in April 2009 and then the completion of their acquisition of Alesco Corporations’ Scientific and Medical division right behind that in early May 2009. Because of all of these factors, we believe that TMO has been pushed upward over the last several months, and will continue to push upward going forward, but slowly and methodically with the proper amount of hiding from causal investors as well as the pursuit of the hard and deep looking investors. The KM Team and KM Partners will continue to follow Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. as the healthcare debate and summer rolls on.
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Updates and Comparisons:
Week 17: In an article from this week, the KangarooMoney.Com Team applauded Delta Airlines, Chrysler and SLM ( aka Sallie Mae ) for bringing their respective call center operations back to US shores during 2009. The KM Team noted that during tough times it was worthy to note that these companies were returning jobs from overseas even though the situation was more customer perception orientated than strictly bottom-line-now orientated. News comes now that Continental Airlines Inc. ( CAL, traded on the NYSE, not recommended at this time ) will be closing its Reservation Call Center in Tampa FL as of July 19, 2009. While the people working there will be offered placement at the Houston and Salt Lake City centers, there will most likely not be that many takers for that choice. After all, Houston and Salt Lake City are NOT Tampa. And while this news is from May 2009 the impact is just now settling in for those folks in Tampa. One step forward, two steps back.
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Market Mover of the Week 27 2009: While we here at KangarooMoney.Com don’t believe for a moment that the handlers at the White House and at Democratic Headquarters will continue to allow Vice President Biden to continue speaking on the economy ( or, to the point, to continue speaking period ), we do believe that the MMoW for WK27 will indeed be VP Biden. His calls for a restudy of the economy due to the Obama administration “misread” is sure to fire debate on additional stimulus funds to be shunted into the world at large. How that stimulus money is paid out, and especially to who, will not come from VP Biden but it is clear that he has started the discussion on the subject and now it must play out. Let’s see where this week takes us little joeys.
Market Mover of the Week 26 2009: In a week that finally saw 100 USoA Senators seated and present for business ( Senator Franken was finally cleared by Minnesota to assume his duties in the US Senate ) it is almost surreal that the main thrust of the week came not from Wall Street or from Washington or even from history as the country celebrated its birthday but instead came from Bentonville, Arkansas. For the MMoW for WK26 one has to award the comments and opinions that were offered by Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke. Mr. Duke participated in a letter signed by a number of others ( including CEO of the Center for American Progress John Podesta and the Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern ) that was delivered to President Obama stating that they were “for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage”, essentially telling not only the President but other large corporations that don’t agree with them that Wal-Mart was going to support requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers. This comment from the nation’s largest private employer ( sorry GM, your day has passed ) has been seen as a huge boost to the efforts of the current administration for universal or national health care but it has also been seen as hedge bet in case, or when, national health care fails. Wal-Mart and Mr. Duke can always say “Hey, we were on your side,” no matter who wins. In any case, Mr. Duke turned the market from what it was doing for the upcoming holiday weekend and redirected it. And that is what a MMoW does. Congrats to Mr. Duke for being MMoW for Week 26 2009.
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International Impact Incident of the Week: This week we have three choices for the Triple I of the Week — 1) the meeting of USoA President Obama and Russian President Medvedev to talk nuclear disarmament; 2) the attempted return to resume his office of President of Honduras by Manuel Zelaya; 3) The G-8 Meeting in Italy. While the meeting between President Obama and President Medvedev is very important to ongoing world peace and the possible flashpoint situation of President Zelayat rying to return to his country is important to Western Hemisphere Peace, there is no doubt that the G-8 Meeting in Italy this week will have more to do with how the economy both in the US and around the World goes forward. While it might seem that no real heavy lifting takes place at the G-8 Meetings, the truth is that quite a bit goes on behind the scenes and thus into — and out of — our pockets. This weeks meeting should be no different, even if it’s not as flashy as the photo ops in Moscow or as combative as the planes trying to land in the Honduran capital.
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DEFINITIONS:
G-8: Group of Eight or G-8, is a term that has come to mean the nations that make up the Northern Hemisphere; those nations are the USoA, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Russian and Japan; the term has also become to be known as the meeting at which the G-8 countries and the European Union ( who is represented and allowed to sit in the meetings but can not be either the Host Country or the Chair of the meeting ) discuss the major issues impacting or about the impact the group; France founded the group in 1975 when it was then called the G-6 in order to have a more direct face-to-face forum concerning issues that directly impacted the group countries; the original G-6 having spawned the G-8 is now also spawning the G-20 which involves developing and / or large nations not necessarily in the Northern Hemisphere
Brick and Mortar:A term that has arisen, strangely enough, due to the internet age that describes a business that does most or all of its primary business out of buildings and not on the internet; a common example of a brick and mortar company would be Wal-Mart with its hundreds of stores and dozens of distribution centers whereas Amazon would be referred to as an internet company due to the fact that, as of this writing, you can not walk into a store called “Amazon” that is associated with the bookseller that we know online.
Health Care:As it is being referred to in the Congressional debates in the USoA as of this writing, it means the delivery and service methods of having someone or some organization describe or provide options to giving an individual and / or their family medical service or advice; this broad term is being used to describe any and all practitioners of medicine regardless of field or level of speciality in order to get as many people as possible involved in the ongoing debates; a fairly generic term that can mean information for preventing possible illnesses up to and including immediate medical attention to help fix a persons’ body due to accidental injury or long term natural diseases from cancer to aids to old age.
Call Center:As it sounds, this describes a central or grouped location where many calls from around the country or the world come to in order to have trained personnel provided the same or similar information to all callers about that business; usually a large warehouse style building with many small and simple office cubicles inside where a person will typically have a telephone and computer and will then answer customer questions and / or complaints about the host companys’ products and services; once the employer of a large number of lower to mid-range wage earners in the USoA, many companies moved their call center services overseas to reduce costs ( employee pay and benefits ) with the mistaken belief that the quality of service would remain the same; call centers are also know as cube farms, an employee term that is not meant as an endearing reference.
Capitalism:The idea that economic and social considerations of trade and the means of industry, manufacturing and product production are controlled by private, non-government entities such as individuals, companies of workers, shareholders and the like, all operating with the goal of a profit being made for the controllers of the businesses concerned; the basic idea is that the capital that is supplied ( money, land, equipment and/ or people ) will drive the business to make not only more than it costs to produce its product but to also return an additional profit on the efforts of what is involved; this particular -ism is in contrast to other -isms such as Communism ( the idea of a “all for one, one for all” community with all getting an equal share of what is done ) and Socialism ( the idea of a government gathering all efforts and dividing the product out equally amongst all ); the current model of the business world as it is known today in almost all nations of the world.
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( This weeks quote comes from an “Oh Yeah!” former President — a man that was well known and well respected in his time but today would rate only an “Oh Yeah! HIm!” reaction from most people. The man in question was more well known for what he DIDN’T say rather the one quote that is most remembered as being his, President “Silent Cal” Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States of America. He came into his own during the turn of the last century, going from Mayor to State Senator to Lieutenant Governor to Governor, all in the state of Massachusetts. During those 20 years of political work in Massachusetts his most notable moments came during the famous Boston Police Strike of 1919, which he was completely against. He was elected Vice President in 1921 to serve with President Warren G. Harding and he ascended to the highest political position in the USoA when President Harding took a heart attack in August of 1923 and died. While lacking a strong demeanor, hence the “Silent Cal” name tag, he was forceful when agitated. His most famous quote that “the business of America is Business”, shows that President Coolidge could turn a word and indeed, he was a skilled public speaker. Being President during a similar time in America as can be found today the only problem is that as opposed to President Coolidges’ lack of spouting off, today’s USoA leaders can’t seem to be quiet. What a difference 80 years makes! A few remaining side notes — President “Silent Cal” Coolidge’s inauguration was the first ever broadcast over radio, he was the first President to give a speech over radio, he was the first President to appear in a talking movie AND he gave 529 press conferences — meeting with reporters more often than any President before or since. Not bad for a man who was seated at dinner next to a person who sat down and said “Mr. Coolidge, I made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you,” to which President Coolidge simply replied…”You lose.” )
Going forward, the KM Team and KM Partners want to thank you all for reading us and keep those comment coming in. As always, enjoy, learn and earn! The KM Team and KM Partners.
It is with great sadness but the utmost respect that KangarooMoney.Com joins in saying that the great, legendary and incredible Walter Cronkite has passed away. He was 92 years old.
Once known as “the most trusted man in America”, he became “Uncle Walter” to most people who watched television when there were only 3 known channels. He was the on air hand-holder for such things as the reporting of assassination of President John F. Kennedy ( and the assassination of his assassin by Jack Ruby ), the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy just so short a time later, the racial and anti-war riots of the 1960’s and ’70’s, the end President Nixon because of Watergate, and the Iranian hostage crisis as it dragged on to a new President.
From the sad times of him telling us that the beloved Kennedy brothers had been shot and killed down to the dark days of the anti-war protests and race riots that were wrapped around and driven by the Martin Luther King shooting, Walter Cronkite held our hands and told us all it would be okay. He got us through the cold, black nights until the bright, sunsets later by being professional, steady and solid in mood and opinion. He was also there during the wonderful, fearful, incredible times like all of the space program launches and moon shots. It was again, “Uncle Walter” who told most of us about Apollo 11 during the launch, flight, landing and return of that famous mission as well as what was going and what it was like be and to talk to the first men on the moon.
Yes, we must all go to somewhere else someday. But that doesn’t mean we can not feel bad when someone we enjoy, respect and loved passes from this place to the next. Mr. Cronkite, who deserves but never asked for the title of “Mr.”, enjoyed all of those things from us here at KM and around the country and indeed, the world. No one had before, or probably ever will again, command the attention of so many at one time in one way. Mr. Cronkite moved us from word of mouth and the printed word to the realm of live pictures and voice over knowledge. He will not only be missed, he will be respected, revered and, above all, remembered.
We’ll miss you Walter.
Respectfully, The KM Team, KM Partners and all who crave the truth without the over opinion…
