What a week. Stock market indices dropped significantly in last 3 trading days of the week, following many events in the week.
1. Scott Brown won MA senate race
No one see this coming until recently. Looking back this is actually easy to understand. A few days before the Tuesday election, I was thinking, if Democrats want to keep the seat of Ted Kennedy, they should pick Vicki Kennedy. Similar outcome happened in 2002 Senate race in the Show-Me state, in which Gene Carnahan (the widow of Mel Carnahan) took the seat won by already deceased Mel. Note Gene was feature in the campaign ads leads to the election. Remember “don’t let fire go out” ad?
2. Bernanke confirmation in jeopardy
I think he should be confirmed. Some populists claims he was the arsonist who comes back to extinguish the fire. There is some truth, except I would add he was the cheerleader when Greenspan (the real arsonist) started the fire (by keeping the interest rate low, caused the US housing bubble). I would give Bernanke a second chance, after all the world and we all would be in a much worst shape if he did not put out the fire.
This leads me to think another unfortunately guy, Ken Lewis, quoting Buffett’s words “Ken Lewis saved us (investment banks and global financial system to some extent)”. Because if his BoA did not buy Merrill Lynch, ML will fail (following Lehman). And you know what, Morgan Stanley will follow that, at Goldman Sachs will be the last to fall (quoting Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein: we will fall 30 seconds after Morgan Stanley fail). Oh well, because Goldman got money from Buffett and public market, he would have more than 30 seconds, but would still fail (a world wide bank run).
3. Late night show drama (aka Conan, Leno and NBC drama)
I wrote some of my thoughts on late night shows at gutone. But here I am not going to talk about how stupid mistake NBC made etc. I want to praise Conan did one thing well for his employees: he negotiate a decent severance pay for his staffs, and he is also going to pay out of his own pocket to his staffs. Very much like the former founder/CEO of Peoplesoft Dave duffield gave money to employees after the Oracle take over. Note in Tonight Show case, many of Conan’s staff moved their family from NYC to LA. Not a small matter.
4. John Edwards
I don’t know what to say here. I was in one of his rally in St. Louis during 2004 Presidential campaign. I thought of one thing well before his latest news on baby. That is his legal career (see Legal Career section of Wiki). I was thinking, win a lawsuit is in away like winning a lottery (with a better winning chance). While in a way, it protected the consumer rights, or patient rights, but this also put enormous burden on many businesses and doctors. If there is a positive thing comes out of MA senate race, how many tort reform?
5. Google China thing
This thing looks like more and more like a Fu Rong Jie Jie (blog; wiki)show to me. I mean, Google’s “I am going to quit; (a few days later) I have a second thought”.
Oh well, we all know Google is in the “grabbing more eye balls” business, this is exactly what Fu Rong Jie Jie does.
Back to work…