Kangaroo Money

( Please see Kangaroo Money’s Disclaimer published as Disclaimer 2010 on 01/03/2010 . )

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In the Business World, timing is everything.  Good timing, bad timing, up timing, off timing, some timing, and my personal favorite, two timing.  The entire premise of the success of a process change, of a product launch, of a company buy out or a well placed comment to drive a moment home, has timing as the foundation for that particular success…or for it’s failure.  Timing as the key factor for success is not isolated to business when it comes to being a critical item.  An example?  Earlier in January 2010, many rumors made the rounds that President Obama would have his first formal State of the Union speech on the same night as the final season premiere episode of the well loved television show “Lost”.  So many rumors were made in the media and on the world wide web in fact, that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs felt it necessary during the January 8th, 2010 press conference to insure that the State of the Union speech would NOT take place on the same night as that episode of ”Lost”.  As we said, timing is everything.

World wide business efforts over the last 18 to 24 months have been focused on timing as the result of the problems that the nation, and indeed the world, have in their lap today.  When people were buying houses in 2005 and 2006, the banking world was screaming that the time was right, that the market had never been better, that there was nothing safer than buying a house now, Now, NOW!!!.  To an extent, the banks were right.  It was the right time for the banks to lend money and sell houses in 2005 and 2006.  Banks did nothing to discourage people from making one of the biggest mistakes that all people make sometime in life — too much of a good thing can be a bad thing in a hurry.  Like the college frat boy with two girlfriends knowing they wouldn’t be around forever, owning 4,5,8,10 houses in 2006 seemed great so long as you only owned 1 house and 1 mortgage in 2007.  Many, indeed MANY people just didn’t get the 2nd part of that memo.  And 2008 showed exactly why too much of a good thing was just too damn much of anything.

Ah timing.  Wouldn’t it be sweet to have been the person who sold 20 houses in 2007 for 3,4,5 times their actual value and then be able to go back and buy the houses again in 2009 for 1/2 or 1/3 their sale value?  Or better yet, wouldn’t it be fantastic to be the bank who held the 20 houses bought in 2006, foreclosed on them in 2007 and then sold them all again at an lower rate in 2008, looking towards the future?  3 times the money for only 1/2 the work.  Say what you want about it being unethical business but nobody forced anyone to buy houses they couldn’t afford, lie on their mortgage applications and wait with baited breath for television shows like “Flip This House” to come on every week.  Two important personal notes that we should all pay attention to: 1) if sounds too good to be true, it isn’t true and 2) if the only household income you have is from a part time or even full time job at a fast food restaurant, you can’t afford a house with a mortgage and all the associated necessary household payments, no matter who lives with you.  And it won’t matter if your lender is a Government Entity — think Fannie Mae or Freddi Mac, both of whom are still around but are wishing it was 2007 again.

As you have probably noticed during 2010, time and timing has been a cruel and harsh mistress indeed to the KangarooMoney.Com Team.  Due to the circumstances of the real world, our writing team has been off and on during these first few months and it has been difficult to have the same type of witty conversations and debates that were so ongoing in the Fall of 2009.  But times change, people change, jobs change.  The good news is with the laptop and web camera technology available today, it’s possible once again to have those rousing roundtable discussions like before.  If only it didn’t seem like a bad special effect from an old Superman movie…

Now that Spring is here and the conversations have fully restarted, that television re-run season is starting up again like the old days ( except that “Lost” thing ) and all of the business scrambling of 2008 and 2009 SEEMS to have passed, perhaps some normalcy can return the lives of the KM Team and KM Partners.  We CAN say that friends and clients alike have calmed greatly, realizing that the video song that made their eyes instantly go to the top of their foreheads had it so correct before the Bad Times came.  The Circle of Life does indeed go round and round, hitting the high points just as surely as hitting the low points.  Sometimes, it just seems like the Bad Times will never end, which makes us all forget that we thought the Good Times would never end when we were howling at the Moon.  Before there was a VE or VJ Day, there was a Pearl Harbor, and before that there was a 1940, and before that there was a 1929, and before THAT there was the Roaring Twenties.  Everything in a circle, all that follows leads.  Even 9/11 had a 9/10 and a 9/12.  Time can be viewed in many directions.

So while we tip back in our deck chairs, some wearing spring jackets and long pants while others have loose shirts and flip flops, I’ll leave you with the important phrases from two very wise men.  The first is a song writer and performing artist, best selling author, restaurateur and all around party type of guy who wrote “No, you never see it comin’, always wonderin’ where it went, only time will tell if it was time well spent; It’s another revelation, celebrating what I should have done, with these souvenirs of my trip around the sun..”  That Little Joeys is from Mr. Jimmy Buffetts’ song “Trip Around the Sun” which we recommend for this 2010 Springtime listening in order to shake off a little of that 2008 & 2009 dust so as to be ready for the rest of 2010 in fine form.

Which leads us to the second promised quote.  This was from a gentlemen who was also a best seller but not in music or books, per se, but rather in being of the Universe…and understanding it.  He helped us to understand the Universe as well and some of his writings, lectures and accepted laws of science still help us to grasp the huge hugeness of the Beyond The Earth there is out there.  In fact, we here couldn’t think of anyone more qualified to wrap up this little beat on time then this gentlemen who once said ”The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.“  Which, if you were a banker or a bankee in the last two or three years, you have to appreciate the phrase!

Now, it’s time to get on with the show!

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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 2010.  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 2010, 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.  There is now 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 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 current Stock Docket is nowhere near where the original Stock Docket started out.  The dramatic dips, dives and drops of the last few years have caused some serious reconfiguring of numbers as well as some re-evaluations of stocks and companies.  Because of those facts, there will be a last 2008 and 2009 Stock Docket and then the new 2010 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 and 2009 SD up on the BlogRoll just so you can jeer at us in late 2010.  Or maybe you will cheer us, as we expect you to.  As we said, the last few years have given 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 you have written you comments.  For now, enjoy, learn and earn!

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During 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 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.  Continuing this week and throughout 2010, new additions to the BlogRoll will take place that will give you, the Reader, new opportunities to visit some of the websites that the KM Team and KM Partners visit on a regular basis.  Of course, most of these will be financial or news based but not always, so check out the listing to see what new information is available.

This week, the new addition to the KangarooMoney.Com BlogRoll is a very well done and put together website that is chocker block FULL of information and stories but, very, very light on photos, videos and flashy ads — which is very welcome situation.  The KM Team is very happy to see a website devoted to content and not flash, especially when it comes to financial information!  This week, the new BlogRoll site is  wallstreetedition.com so please enjoy this new addition but make sure to useit to your advantage.  Just like everything else we try to give you here at KangarooMoney.Com!

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1. Part of the problem with the Housing Market is that most people don’t realize what the Housing Market consists of.  Hard to believe, it’s more than just…houses.  <click here to read more> While the overall problem over the last two years has been high mortgages, low purchasing and too many houses, the additional impact has been felt across the board in any field that has to do with what we understand to be housing.  It can be said for example, that the land plots, the existing houses and the new houses that were bought over the last 10 years were just that, things.  They weren’t places, they weren’t homes and they weren’t even long held investments.  Because of those facts, the items in those houses were not always used and a great deal of them still remain new or like new.  So, doesn’t this impact items like furniture, appliances, associated trappings, lawn equipment and all of the little home repair products from places like Home Depot (symbol HD, traded on NYSE, currently trading at its 52 week high after a 6 month run up, recommended at this time) and Lowe’s (symbol LOW, traded on NYSE, currently trading just off its 52 week high after a 6 month run up, recommended at this time) and your local hardware store.  More and more, people are not picking up, packing up and moving on down the road.  So this means that the moving companies are suffering like no time in the last 30 years as people are forced to remain where they last find themselves living.  Which is a pity because people are not trying to live in the towns and cities that they find themselves in now.  The towns and cities are also losing as well.  Losing tax proceeds as the overvalued homes sink back to normal rates.  Losing interested citizens who only want to get out at close to break even from when they came in.  Losing ground to keep their town or city on the Fast Track for the next Wal-Mart distribution center (symbol WMT, traded on the NYSE, currently trading near its 52 week high price although the 52 week range is rather narrow at about $9 from the high to the low, not recommended at this time) or to get the show piece high-speed rail stop.  Instead, towns are having to re-evaluate their school systems, the road systems and their water systems, floating bonds instead of ideas.  Yes, the housing market bubble that popped was and still is, made up of much more than a glut of homes, a lack of mortgages and a faithless buying public who saw dollar signs on the For Sale signs rather than a wonderful place to live and raise a family for 20 or 30 years.  Those are the same people who are beating down the doors of Congress in weak attempts to recoup their money from big banks and big mortgage companies.  For the sake of the economy and the country, let us hope that people learn to love their current homes, increase their value as they spend time and love on them and stay in one place long enough to return value and respect to the phrase “homeowner”.
2. Staying with the housing theme, let’s turn back the clock just a little bit here at the KM offices.  Sherman, set the Way Back Machine for Week 37 2008! <click here to read more> During Week 37 2008, the KM Team spent serious efforts savaging the economy as we faced hurricanes (remember Gustov, Hanna, Ike and Josephine…all in a 14 day span), the beginnings of a major strike at Boeing, and simple pleasures like 9% of all homes in USoA covered by mortgages were in default and a climbing unemployment rate of a horrific 6.1%.  What we wouldn’t do to see those numbers today!  Well, not the hurricanes but the rest of the numbers.  At that time we wrote in horror of the potential of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac possibly being “bailed out” by the Treasury Department, whatever that meant.  Boy, did we and the American Public ever find out just what “Bail Out” really meant.  The critical run of the two housing giants Fannie and Freddie became front page news, put home ownership on the same level as running Enron and made babbling fools out grown Congressmen.  Nearly two years ago, the coming storm in September 2008 had given forth thunder like peals but had yet to rain down on us.  Now, it feels like Spring Thaw in Fargo ND.  But scariest of the scaries was that between them, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned approximately 6 BILLON US DOLLARS of the total USoA mortgages in existence at that time — which was one half of all USoA mortgages currently in existence at the time.  One half of all mortgages.  Think on that for just a moment.  Now think on the history of Fannie Mae for a moment, that it was created in 1938 during the height of the Great Depression with the goal being that it would buy and securitize mortgages as a way to insure that backing funds were always available.  Fannie Mae was also designed to make more mortgage funds available for low income families of the time, very different than the present day concept of the low income family.  Because of changing times, the USoA Government in 1968 converted the existing corporation into a private shareholder owned company, which would remove the monies involved from the Federal Budget.  Less than two years later in 1970 the USoA Government created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation known as Freddie Mac to compete in the secondary mortgage market with Fannie Mae ( symbol FRE, trades on NYSE, no recommended at this time).  Prior to August 22, 2008 — does this time frame sound familiar? — the rating service Moody’s had given Feddie Mac an A1 ranking.  But, on August 22, 2008 it was revealed that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had tried to gain Warren Buffett and others as investors which caused Moody’s to cut their rating down to Baa3, which is essentially what we all call Junk Bond Status.  We bring this up because somewhere between 1968 and 2008, those 20 short history filled years, the American Public bastardized the concept of “owning your own home” into “home ownership”.  The two are not the same despite how it reads to the eye.  When you “own your own home” you are committing to many, many years of living in, adding to, personalizing, showplacing a building that before you and your family moved in was a lifeless, soulless, historyless building but at the end of 10, 20, 30 years was a place of family joy filled with happy memories tuned especially to the owner family.  But to be in a “home ownership” mode, you were a business, a corporation that has many buildings in it but no personal attachment.  In the interest of the public and the bottom line, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became corrupted in the bottom purpose and sold out to the bottom line.  Was it the USoA Government’s fault?  Was it Fannie Mae and Freddie Macs’ greedy managers fault?  Was it purchasers of the mortgages fault?  The answer is no, no and no.  Once again, it is the American publics’ fault, not for allowing this situation to happen but for forcing this situation to happen.  The American public’s demand for personal profit without future planning forced this situation to spiral so far out local and eventually national control that the “housing crisis” didn’t just happen, it still remains today as this is written.  It also didn’t help that the American Public bailed quickly at the local level as soon as it looked like people with multiple buildings / mortgages might be held accountable for their actions.  The result of this selfishness?  Not only the “housing crisis” but also the ”banking crisis” as well as the banks got caught stuck with all that bad unmovable debt.  The lesson here is clear for all to see.  But, that lesson was clear in 2008 and well before then as well.  Now the lesson should be, make a plan for the future and learn the history of the past before you make a move in the present. 

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Updates and Comparisons:

Week 01 2009:The KangerooMoney.Com Team and the KM Partners loudly protested the coming Socialism-ization of the USoA that drew the vocal ire of many reading Democrats and some leaning Republicans as being too over the top and too critical of the incoming administration.  We ranted about the upcoming additional bailouts for companies that the KM Team felt should have been closed and shut down because their business plans led to failure.  And we lamented the “Audacity of Hope” attitude of some people who want their past mistakes forgiven and their “homes” saved for them, even if they can’t afford them for 50 to 75 years of mortgages”.  We were harsh.  We were critical.  We were blunt.  So the KM Team and KM partners have a question for you — are you better off now than you were in January 2009?  Let us know — make a comment, drop a line, argue the point.  ( But we think you’ll agree with us, not argue. )

Week 02 2009: In an additional article from this week, the KangarooMoney.Com Team spent time talking about a very good book written by Thomas Fleming, “The Perils of Peace” which several of us had just finished reading.  In reviewing that article, we were drawn to the comment made in a letter by the then Superintendent of Finance (a modern day Treasury Secretary) Robert Morris who said “We are likely to become an unruly, ungovernable nation…the confidence of the people being destroyed, the credit of the government lost, its vigour is of course gone, and this unhappily at a time when exertion is most wanted.”  As we stated then, the very scary thing about these comments is that they were written in 1781!!  From that first week in 2009 until now, the feelings of how things are being turned into hopeLESSness out of the great hopeFULness that November 2008 and January 2009 promised.  We deeply hope the high water mark of this Administration is still to come.

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Market Mover of the Week 14 2010: As much as it pains the KangarooMoney.Com Team to pig pile on top of the national media, we can’t help but all agree that we have no choice except to acknowledge that Tiger Woods will be the MMoW for Week 14 2010.  When he tees it up play in the 2010 Masters at Augusta GA, his return will be more than just to golf as a sport.  He will also be returning as spokesman for several companies, testing the absolute limits of how far a great athlete can fall before it is deemed too far both for the public and for the businesses behind him.  No matter where Tiger finishes in the field, just his playing will raise the viewership for the match as well as the ad rates for the weekend.  This is serious test of the publics’ gag reflex and what they will buy when it is tied to a fallen hero.  Thus, the MMoW for Week 14 2010 many need several mulligans to reclaim his appeal, and not on the course. 

Market Mover of the Week 13 2010: Last week the KM Team touted the recent election of the former Prime Minister of Iraq, Mr. Ayad Allawi and the potential impact  of the business community not only in the Middle East but also in the world wide markets as well.  While it appears that the new Iraq government led by Mr. Allawi will not be seated for some time as the government tries to form up, the excellent news is that it appears the violence that so often takes place before, during and after a Middle East country has an election is not going on this time.  Mr. Allawi will have done a great deal if nothing continues to happen in the country due to his election and leadership.  The KM Team is happy to see this trend andfeel that there may be a more serious corner being turned for the business world at large because of this trend.

International Impact Incident of the Week: While technically not an International Incident as the KangarooMoney.Com Team has written about over the time of this blog, we do feel that this weeks Triple I is Easter.  The celebration of Easter impacts so many people, so many countries and so many businesses around the world that the celebration can not be down played as to the impact on the worldwide business community.  Because of that, the Triple I of Week 14 will be the wide impact, disruption and addition to business as we stride into the week ahead.

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DEFINITIONS:

Government Entity: The common term used to describe a local, state or federal department, group or organization that is wholly inside and under control of the associated government.  Typically, this type of department, group or organization has no elected officals within it or directly running it but instead answers to a higher organization on a side “dotted line” authorization chart.  Control and budgeting of this type of organization is fully funded by tax money but does not come under direct taxpayer control.

Flip This House: An American televison show currently on the A&E Network that shows how selected casts of people buy and rehab houses in different USoA city markets for profit above the cost of originally buying the house.  The casts on the show buy homes, add what is necessary to make the house resalable, such as new floors, new windows and / or new appliances, then market and sell the homes.  The goal on the show is exactly the same as in non-television world, to sell the house for more money than the original purchase price plus the cost of any upgrades that were performed.  Considered to be a “reality series” type of televison show, nothing is known to be scripted on the show.

Way Back Machine: Originally a short feature on the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoon show, Mr. Peabody ( a super intelligent dog with glasses ) and his boy Sherman ( a not so intelligent pre-teen boy with glasses ) made use of a machine built by Mr. Peabody that they referred to as the WABAC machine that was actually a time travel machine.  In each short, Mr. Peabody and Sherman would travel backwards to some famous event in history andhave some handinmakingthe event happened as it they knew but not necessarily how it was going to happen without their “interference”.  The short always started with Mr. Peabody asking for Sherman to “Set the WABAC Machine for…” and would always end with some pointed and terrible pun on what just happened.  

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( This weeks quote comes from a man who used to need no introduction, literally.  Unfortunately for us all, he died in his sleep on April 18, 1955 after refusing surgery to save his life, saying “I want to go when I want.  It is tasteless to prolong life artificially.  I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”  This was a man who was a human quote machine for his whole 76 years!  But more than that, he was a man that most people from 1900 until today and most likely in the centuries to come was thought of as one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of Mankind.  His theories and science is still being proven today, 55 years after his death.  This weeks quote belongs to Albert Einstein.  Whom we are quite sure is sticking his tongue out at us all at beyond light speed right this second.  After all, only he could do that, right? )

Once again, the KM Team and KM Partners want to thank you all for reading us and for keeping  those comments coming in.  We do read every one of them and try to respond / answer as many of them as possible.  While we don’t always like being “tricked” by some of you posters, suffice it say that Super-Internet Dan is on the job catching your tricks and quirks from your writing and he is preparing a reverse web bomb back at you right this very minute!  In the meantime, stay in touch and keep smiling.  As always, enjoy, learn and earn!  The KM Team and KM Partners.

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( Please see Kangaroo Money’s Disclaimer published as Disclaimer 2010 on 01/03/2010 . )

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Over the course of nearly the last two years, the KangarooMoney.Com Team and the KM Partners have spent countless hours outside their normal business lives working together to try to explain to themselves, their business customers and to you the reader, the business picture here in the United States of America as well as that impact on the Worldwide economies.  For us to say that these two years turned into the most incredible business period in History would be to put it mildly.  The most compared to time period that has been referred to was the 10 years from 1927 through 1937 — the time of the Roaring Twenties leading into the Great Depression and then into the run up to World War II here in the United States of America.  While Business, with a capital letter, and the government of the United States of America and many other governments worldwide, re-examined the history of the times during and after the Great Depression to use those events as examples of what NOT to do during these last two plus years.  To date, a Great Depression 2 has been staved off…”to date”.  As an old hiking friend once told me, “Just because it’s brighter only means that the sun is higher, not that we’re out of the woods yet.”

What has happened during the time between October 2008 and March 2010?  Too much to spell out in detail but let’s hit the highlights, shall we?  The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped out at over 14,000 points, rocketed down to just over 7,000 points and now has spent time climbing back up to over 10,000 points.  On what reasons and details, few seem to know.  A raucous Presidential Election was held with the outcome somewhat in doubt but on the whole, the final voting was never quite as interesting as the primary voting was.  That election led to the USoA electing its first non-caucasian President who has brought forth a huge sea change on the health care delivery system and the entire insurance business industry.  In two of the overseas wars that have been ongoing for the last 9 years, changes in leaders and strategies have led to the damping of one that seemed destined to gone on forever and the re-flaming of the other which seemed to have died down to almost nothing — Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.  And the story of Government Bailouts has shifted like seasonal tides from bad to good to bad to good to bad and now good again.  Bailouts are still so hotly debated that some such money may still be given out at any minute…or taken back in as well.  It is still too early tell the first “Final Story” on all those bailouts.  Like German companies still surviving from WWII Germany, the stories may beat on forever.

Not bad for two years or so, eh?

For us who remain here at KangarooMoney.Com, these two years have been incredible.  In a good way, because you don’t want to be out here being a flat monotone voice in boring times spewing a stream of black and white data filled with “write this down” terms and definitions.  It is better to be ever changing and challenging to keep yourself on top of your game and filled with interest on your subject.  But also in a bad way, where you never get a chance to catch your breath or grab a full nights sleep or spend long times with your co-workers, friends and families.  During the past two years, I personally have spent more time online with the Japanese markets in view than off having dinner and / or drinks with my friends…by many, many hours and days.  The KangarooMoney.Com Team lost members, gained members, lost members again and regain members again many times over once the Summer of 2009 rolled around.  Several conference calls between the offices started with someone not on the line and someone else saying that person wouldn’t be back again.  Jobs were lost, careers were changed and friendships strained to and past the breaking point.  The old Chinese curse of “May you live in Interesting Times” had hit home with power and speed.  Focus was almost as hard to come by seeing a market or industry trend line.  Sometimes harder.

Sound a little like your life since October 2008?  You’re not alone, trust me.

But now it is Palm Sunday in 2010.  The Great Business Tsunami seems to have found its high water mark and the seas are retreating backwards slowly so as not cause additional damage.  The KM Team is still doubtful that the water is receding properly.  It seems to us that the US Markets are up on spirit and hope, not the two things you want to run any business on.  While some people will tell you that FDR’s fireside chats and speeches preaching “We have nothing to Fear but Fear itself” was the turning point to the Great Depression, there are still many others who will tell you that the weakly hid covert support of Great Britain and Russia against the unrelenting attacks of Nazi Germany helped to bring the country up out of the darkness in the run up to open warfare after December 7th 1941.  To us here in the offices, it seems that we still have the radio on with nothing to do but nod our heads and hope the words are true.

Where is the next great industry?  Where is the next great idea that will get America’s factories working again, put our people to work and allow them the breath they need to stop worrying about retirement money and start worrying about getting enough sleep for work tomorrow?  At the turn of the last century, the airplane filled that need followed closely by the automobile.  The war came and people filled either the ranks or the factories to support the ranks.  Peace came and innovations using new metals and plastics re-invented those staples as well as lent themselves to home building and factory redesigns.  Television came to replace radio, tourism helped to replace the old roadways and desires to own homes and land replaced the landscapes of farms and apartments.  By the time those items played out, the Space Race slammed home right on top a nasty battle with drugs and a nastier war in South East Asia.  When those ended and the Space Race tarnished, there was still so much industrial work to be done that all races and sexes were necessary to fill the work force, requiring that old hates and views be changed to meet those new needs.  Then the Computer Age took over and vaulted us even higher than any of us could have imagined back in 1974.  Now, all that is by the wayside as we wander the wasted landscape of broken Ponzi Schemes, help shovel failed derivatives into the hopper and wonder just how sick we can get before we ask to see what our new medical system looks like.  For all but a select few, no one can work in the business world today on their own or even in large groups.  Airplane and auto factories took huge amounts of people to make them run.  How many people does it take to make a derivative equation?  How many people does it take to EXPLAIN a derivative equation?  Do you see the problem?

It’s true that it is always darkest before the dawn, just before someone comes up with that Next Big Thing that makes them, and later lots of others, piles of money inventing something that everyone wants and lots of people can make, just slightly differently.  That idea is out there, somewhere, right now as you read this.  It’s on a drawing pad in someones bedroom, a cocktail napkin in a suit coat, a notepad at the back of a boring lecture.  It’s out there waiting to be unleashed upon the world for us all to get behind.  Is it electric cars?  Natural gas buses?  Recycled homes?  Better crops?  Better water?  Better…who knows what.  It’s out there.  And when it hits, we won’t notice it at first.  Just like we didn’t notice home computers at first.  Or solar panels for your roof.  Or pollution filter systems.  But when we DO notice it, another 10-12-15 years of “Good Times” will roll again.

Which brings us to our quote for this week: “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”  Who knew that someone we saw almost every week for 15 years could make a forecast like this back then and it would still be true today?  He was a real person and he’s not around anymore but you would hardly think either was the case because of his larger than life being.  think Bill Gates, but in color.

Now, on with the show.

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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 2010.  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 2010, 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.  There is now 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, anda 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 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 current Stock Docket is nowhere near where the original Stock Docket started out.  The dramatic dips, dives and drops of the last few years have caused some serious reconfiguring of numbers as well as some re-evaluations of stocks and companies.  Because of those facts, there will be a last 2008 and 2009 Stock Docket and then the new 2010 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 and 2009 SD up on the BlogRoll just so you can jeer at us in late 2010.  Or maybe you will cheer us, as we expect you to.  As we said, the last few years have given 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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During 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 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.  Continuing this week and throughout 2010, new additions to the BlogRoll will take place that will give you, the Reader, new opportunities to visit some of the websites that the KM Team and KM Partners visit on a regular basis.  Of course, most of these will be financial or news based but not always, so check out the listing to see what new information is available.

This week, the new addition to the KangarooMoney.Com BlogRoll aims to give you an extra page to review for insights on the Financial World at large.  MarketWatch is a member of the Wall Street Journal group, with numerous other websites linked to the site from the WSJ / Dow Jones publishers.  MarkeWatch has a four-page front site that covers almost anything you would like to read about or futher investigate for your investments.  The site will give a multitude of stories that are updated continuously during the day and off-business hours.  Please 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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1. Ah, Springtime!  The time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to…BASEBALL.  Yes, it’s that time of year again when everyone north of Washington DC, Kansas City and Oakland starts thinking about short sleeve shirts, cold beers and warmer days.  Kind of… <click here to read more> Time was when the middle of April would start a weird growth on some people with little cream colored buds and wires leading from their ears to their pockets would appear.  These people were also given to sudden loud emotional outbursts at times that didn’t seem to make sense.  This was back in the Old Days before IPhones, ITunes, IPads, IGiveup ( the 1st-2nd-3rd items were developed by Apple Inc, symbol APPL, traded on the NASDAQ exchange, currently trading at just under its 52 week high due to the release of the IPad in April; not recommended at this time) and were called ear jacks that were connected to transistor radios, usually ones that were made by companies in Japan.  The transistor radio was actually first introduced to the American Public in late 1954 for the price of $49.95 each, about $400 each in current USD as of today.  That price made the pocket sized piece of startling technology, it measured only 3″ wide by 5″ tall and 1.25″ thick, a big deal at the time and THE hot item for people to own.  It WAS the Apple Inc. item of the 1950’s and indeed even into the 1960’s, the thing that anyone who enjoyed music, sports or news on the go just had to have in the pocket with spare batteries near by.  The older KM Team members remember fondly sitting in some boring grade school class near the end of May or early September, focusing not on the teacher but rather on hearing through the static and buzz the phrase that every boy longed to hear, “A swing and HIGH FLY to left…it’s going…IT’S OUT OF HERE!  A HOMERUN!”  Nothing was sweeter than a late inning home run for your team except knowing that you were one of the true few in the class or the school that knew what just happened.  If you did it right, other students around you just thought that you were excited about Algebra or diagramming a sentence.  If you did it wrong, you lost the radio until the end of the school year and had to explain to Dad why he couldn’t sit in the back yard Saturday and listen to the game in a lawn chair.  Those school day afternoons of pro baseball games, static radios and silent victories against the system are gone now, victims of late night pro team television contracts, Digital Recorders and the internet replays of every baseball game back through the 1980 season.  But that wonder of wonders the transistor radio has migrated through time from an earplug and batteries into the Apple items so many people crave today.  It’s not the same company that made I-whatevers that started the transistor radio but it was another American Company that began the march forward, a company still with us today.  Back in the early 1950’s, Texas Instruments ( symbol TXN, traded on the NYSE, currently trading at just below its 52 week high, not recommended at this time ) was developing and shopping around the idea of the transistor radio, a huge leap in design and space from what home stereos and radios were at the time.  The Radio Corporation of America, which you know better as RCA ( currently a part of the revamped & renamed Thompson, it is now named Technicolor — symbol TCH, traded on the NYSE, recommend for REVIEW at this time) turned down the proposal by TI, leaving them to find another manufacturer for the hot new idea.  In 1954, TI was approached by a small Indianapolis company by the typical long 1950’s name of Regency Division of Industrial Development Engineering Associates, or Regency of IDEA.  From there, the Regency TR-1 was created and sold about 100,000 units in the one year, and only one year, that Regency made the TR-1 transistor radio.  After that, the pocket radio took off as did millions of schoolboy dreams of hitting one out of the park to win the game.  That type of radio is more ingrained in our collective minds as a Japanese product rather than an American one, mostly because of the wide range of imports by many different Japanese companies filled our electronic needs in the 1960’s & 1970’s, leading to the sneer “Made in Japan”.  However, not only did Texas Instruments survive that import onslaught to become a strong worldwide company recognized in its own right today, but so did Regency, which became Relm Wireless Corp. ( symbol RWC, traded on the AMEX exchange, recommended at this time ) with a wide range of land mobile radios that may serve to help many First Responders in this post-9/11 world.  As some of us here at KM.Com and others you might know, sit there with their IWhatevers plugged into their skulls, nodding slowly with their eyes half or fully closed and with a cold drink in their hands, we at KangarooMoney.Com can only smile and drift back to the days when those people would be hearing “And it’s a llllooonnnggg drive to left…IT”S OUTTA HERE!”.  Thanks Regency.  ( for an excellent website on the TR-1, please go to http://people.msoe.edu/~reyer/regency/– maintained by Dr. Steve Reyer )
2. There is no mistaking the fact that sports today is a major, major business and driver of business.  Just in Major League Baseball alone, the money mentioned each day when talking about players, ballparks and owner debt staggers the mind so as to think you are hearing the latest budget numbers out of the USoA Congress.  But there is another side to the business and businesses of baseball. <click here to read more> To begin with, let’s remember that there are currently only 30 Major League Baseball Parks in the USoA.  They are in only 28 cities, as there are 2 parks in New York City and 2 parks in Chicago, but these parks are also crowded along the Northeast and Eastern sections of the country ( 10 parks here ) and the West Coast of the country ( 6 parks here ).  The largest park is Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and on game day can hold 56,000 paying customers inside — the smallest park is Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City and on game day can hold 38,030 paying customers ( 2 other stadiums typically seat less paying customers per game but both stadiums are expandable if necessary ).  What this used to mean that was on 162 days a year, weather permitting, about 47,000 people on average would be going to 15 baseball parks to watch their team play a game.  Depending on which team they were going to see, that number could be much lower, like the Mets and Red Sox of the 1960 decade, ‘69 and ‘67 not withstanding respectively.  As a nearby business owner, for 81 times a year, you had a chance to get a throng of people into you business before and after a game.  Your business could be food, parking, food, souvenirs, food, beverages, food.  You may have noticed a theme.  Restaurants and bars were typically grouped around the walls and surrounding parking lots of a major league baseball stadium so that fans could get cheaper eats and drinks prior to going inside the walls and paying the teams’ captive prices.  Still, ask any true fan and there is nothing better than a hot dog and popcorn eaten while seated in the stands of your team.  Most would say a cold beer goes with that opinion as well.  Souvenir stands, stalls and small seasonal stores were also located around the stadium, often selling the same if not very similar items that you could find in the park but at about half to one-third the stadium price.  Those were the old times — these are the new times.  Whereas the parks used to be much more surrounded with restaurants, bars and souvenir stands, the teams and Major League Baseball moved most of these items inside the park so as to allow the team and the league a bigger cut of the valued dollar that fans have to spend.  The food choices in most parks have elevated considerably, no longer settling for just hot dogs and burgers, nachos and popcorn – try items like Ybor City Cuban ( Tampa ), Shrimp Tacos ( San Diego ), Ivar’s Grilled Salmon Sandwich ( Seattle ), Boog’s Barbecue ( Baltimore ) or BBQ Stuffed Baked Potatoes ( Houston ), not something you could easily get even at the restaurants around the cities.  And don’t misunderstand.  In today’s ballparks, this food is not eaten at your seat but rather in multitude of sit-down chain style spots on the stadium concourses.  To wash it down, you still have cold beer but, most of the beer pavilions that have taken over favored viewing spots in parks — Budweiser Right Field Roof ( Boston ), Blue Moon Brewery at The Sandlot ( Colorado ) and of course, Miller Park ( Milwaukee ) the whole park — have moved to charging more and serving less to keep the patrons supplied but not unruly ( $5 per 21 ounces at a Phillies game up to $7.25 per 12 ounces at a Red Sox game ).  Of course, of these three breweries, Budweiser ( symbol BUD, traded on the NYSE, owned by KM Partners, not recommended at this time– but owned by InBev, a non-USoA company ) and Miller and Coors brands ( which through complicated measures are part of the same company that has Miller Brewing, Coors and Molson brands all under the same roof as SABMiller and MolsonCoors combined in 2007 to form Miller Coors — symbol TAP, traded on NYSE exchange, recommended at this time) none are fully owned by American companies any longer.  The stadiums, while having gone to night games in place of the afternoon times that once made baseball such a child adored sport, have moved the chains so to speak in order to keep the fan in their building from start to finish.  Even souvenirs, once the realm of just a set pennant, hat or maybe a shirt has become a vast array of special designs, different team colors ( especially for the women ) and a wide range of “have your picture taken HERE” similar to a DisneyWorld or Busch Gardens ride.  The bottom line?  You will pay more for a fuller experience but in a Wal-Mart world that shuts out the locals who once made the afternoon trip to the ballgame the experience that it was.  Few of the surrounding areas for the Major League parks are filled with the warm but crowded restaurants and bars that once encircled and enticed the fans to the area.  “Battlegrounds” was often, and still is, the phrase used for the areas around Tropicana Field and Yankee Stadium (even the new one of 2009).  Is this better for the business of Baseball Business?  One needs look at the effect of Wal-Mart building on the edge of the dying town center to answer that.  In the meantime, this little Joey can still muscle his way to the bar at the Cask n Flagon for a pre-game beer and then amble over the Expressway to wander down Lansdowne Street to any one of the 20 or so sausage vendors for a pre-game snack.  Ah, to be in Fenway now that it’s Spring again.

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Updates and Comparisons:

Week 01 and Week 31 2009: At the point of contact of that first week of 2009 then while reviewing that assessment during Week 31, the KM Team thought that enough time had passed to start making the call as to the bottom of The Recession and the future economy.  Needless to say, that kind of “hopeful” optimism was misplaced.  While during more business friendly times, that is to say a time when the rush to take over private sectors from multiple business fields and fold them into the Federal Government was not so driven, The Recession would have been more controlled and thus more easily explained at that time, we now find ourselves still traveling very unsteadily down the river looking for calm waters and a gentle landing place.  During Week 31 2009 the KM Team said to look forward to Christmas time 2009 as a point to remember.  Now we are saying that Thanksgiving 2010 the rushing waters may have calmed down. 

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Market Mover of the Week 13 2010: The KM Team usually finds it difficult to accept a foreign influence to the Market Mover of the Week but when a national election is involved in a country of major importance not just to international relations but also to international business, the KM Team must bow to situation at hand.  This week finds that the choice to be Ayad Allawi of Iran as MMW for Week 13 2010.  Mr. Allawi was able to narrowly defeat the sitting Prime Minister in national elections last week, breaking the hold of the majority Shiites in the country.  This election will shape the business industry in the Middle East as well as with allies in Europe.  How Mr. Allawi, soon to be Prime Minister Allawi, takes over the job and efforts of leading Iran, will make him the Market Mover of the Week for Week 13 2010.

Market Mover of the Week 12 2010: The actual deal was done in the middle of a Sunday night ( again ) but the man of the hour showed in the middle of the day what can done when necessary.  President Obama signed the Healthcare Reform Bill into law on Tuesday March 23, 2010.  This concluded the Presidents’ and Democratic Partys’ more than year long battle to bring such a bill to passage…this time.  The President was able with a stroke of pen revamp the entire business landscape of health and insurance companies, staggering the US markets and causing the entire economy to blink twice.  Without a doubt, President Obama became Market Mover of the Week for Week 12.

International Impact Incident of the Week: In Europe, the financial failings of Greece has strained the otherwise cordial visible intra-dealing of the Euro countries.  Unfortunately, Greece was just the first of the Euro countries to have their failings exposed.  Portugal is up next perhaps to be followed by Spain.  It is with wry humor that the great savior of Greece, and perhaps Portugal and Spain too, could turn out to be Germany.  It wasn’t so very long ago that Germany was reuniting from between East and West sides but at the same time was mightily struggling with an economy that was past being ruined.  Now, some 20 years later, the great shining Germany will lend the money to keep Greece afloat.  But only at the prodding of France.  Actually more like a shaming of Germany by France.  The Triple I will come with the final decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the IMF this week.  While all of the Euro countries watch the outcome, none watch more intently than the people of Germany, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

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DEFINITIONS:

The Great Depression: A time typically associated with the USoA Stock Market collapse in October 1929 until about 1939 and German attacks on Great Britain and Russia although no definite end date has been made.  The Great Depression saw a world wide loss of wealth across all social strata at the top echelon of people who had been living on extended credit, loans and non-fully paid for stocks and bonds suddenly found their credit requested to be turned into payments to keep many businesses in capital and thus operation.  When the top level could not get all of their payments made timely and correctly, the waterfall effect from those people trying to collect from people in lower stations soon collapsed the entire system and in some cases, the entire society style and way of life.  This period of time reconfigured the modern world for finance, banking, commerce, international trading and politics on a scale that modern man had not seen as it reached around the world to affect all people and all nations.  The outbreak of World War II is widely seen as not only the logical outcome of the situation but also as the one thing that stopped the cycle of business failures that had started in 1929.

First Responder: Term generally used to describe a medical, fire fighter or police officer that arrives at the scene of an accident or disaster of a large scale.  Typically, the term is used to describe any person whose job it is to arrive at the scene of any accident, large or small, or any man-made or act of God disaster, from building bombings to earthquakes and tornadoes.  Term is used for people first sent to the scene by their respective employers be they Doctors and Nurses, Police Officers, Haz-Mat professionals, Fire Fighters or Armed Services personnel.

Static: The sound heard when a radio signal is disrupted by either electronic or thermal influences between the radio signal broadcast location and the radio receiver.  Especially noticeable on lower radio frequencies such as the AM band commonly used previous to the widespread influx of the higher FM band frequencies now in place.  Distance, heat, excessive movement and using of weak or small antennas also creates static.  Most commonly referred to prior to time of digital tuning and high definition FM radio.  ( Also, refer to your Parents and Grandparents for source reference concerning old radio units they had. )

Major League Baseball:The highest level of professional American Baseball performance, commonly associated with the organization that oversees and operates the American League and National League group of baseball clubs in the USoA.  Consisting of 29 American teams and 1 Canadian team, MLB also oversees most of the operations of the vast Minor League network of teams through multiple lower levels in the USoA.  MLB also directs most of the financial dealings and directions for the individual baseball clubs but not completely dictating all deals and business operations.  The League Team Owners can be considered as the Board of Directors for the business company MLB, as they have power over each other in a single owner-single vote policy on such things as moving ball clubs to new cities, selling ball clubs to new owners and the election of the Commissioner of Baseball who runs the day-to-day operations of the collective MLB organization. 

Transistor: A semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals.  Usually made of a single solid piece of semi-conducting material and needing at least three terminals to support connection to an external circuit.  Voltage or current applied to one set of terminals will change the output from the other set of terminals.  Changing the amount of voltage or current flow will affect the output of the device and allow for an amplification of the output signal.  Most commonly referred to when speaking of older style “pocket radios” from the 1950’s & 1960’s.  

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( This weeks quote comes from a man who made millions, if not billions laugh and smile, grin and grimace, sigh and wonder, all at the same time on occasion.  Many times during his business career, this man was at the absolute top of his game both in getting the latest and greatest idea presented to the masses and in getting the most out of his workers.  Almost as many times during his business career, he failed to cover his programs and goals and had to scramble to find a way to stay afloat.  He himself said he was rich eight times in his life…and flat broke seven.  But he built an empire that spans the globe today, giving people the latest and greatest ideas he could think of and / or get his production teams to produce.  He died in 1966 and the world may not see his kind again for another 50 years but he indeed changed the rules of the game for movies, television and theme parks – Walt Disney. )

 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.

                            Powered byIP2Location.com

 ( Please see Kangaroo Money’s Disclaimer published on WK01 2009. )

II

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? 

II

 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.

II

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”.

II

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!

II

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!

II

 

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…

 II

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.

II

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”.

II

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!

II

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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1. 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.
2. 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.

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