(Prosperity - Brian S Glaser)
Recap for the week of 18 February 2008. President's day weekend.
-Gloomy and Doomy: Are all of the subprime loan problems and market woes starting to get to you? Seems like it's getting to lots of folks: reports out Friday showed that the "index of consumer sentiment" has taken a big hit, and factory output is lagging too. All told, the latest numbers point to bleak times getting just a bit bleaker. Which at least is good news for the consumer-polling industry. Need a subprime primer?
-Nah-hoo!:The board of old-school web company Yahoo! rejected the unsolicited bid from even older-school tech behemoth Microsoft this week. After a (very) temporary boost to Yahoo!'s stock price, word got around that the Yahoo! folk opened talks with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Since Murdoch hasn't bought any major online companies in at least a couple of weeks, he's no doubt eager to fatten up his already hefty web holdings.
- Hurricane Hugo: The pissing match between Exxon Mobil and Venezuela's Have continued this week, with Hugo C. issuing threats against future shipments of Exxon's black gold. Chavez may be winning the PR war at home, but Exxon is standing tough (so far).
-Aesthetic Returns: Modern art is a risky investment, but when it pays off it pays off big. At least that's what a trio of thieves was thinking when they swiped $163 million worth of paintings by Cezanne, Degas, Monet and van Gogh from a gallery in Zurich.On the plus side, a long-missing painting by Norman Rockwell (value: $700k) turned out to have been in Steven Spielberg's collection all along.
-Let's Get Specific:Now that the presidential-candidate field is narrowing (but not quite one-on-one yet), this might be a good time to see who's got the specifics to back up their one-liners on TV. Why not take a sec to visit (in alphabetical order) www.hillaryclinton.com, www.mikehuckabee.com, www.johnmccain.com and www.barackobama.comto peruse their position papers and economic plans to see who's getting specific? It never hurts to know if your favorite candidate is actually on top of your issues.
