Sometimes you wake up (late), wondering things, like why people of deliberate insobriety want to chat you up on Phoenix buses, or why you've not heard a peep from your sister since she found romance on Eharmony, or why the woman you are deeply attracted to asks you questions like, "Do you think people think I am a whore?" And in the early morning that is much too much. You lay there on your cot looking out the window, marveling that it has been raining all night, a true raririty in the desert where two minutes of rain sends the local weathermen into end of the world overdrive, and all you want is more rest.
And after a hard day at work, you return home, stopping at the local supermarket for turkey salad, whole wheat bread, two sugar cookies, cranberry juice, and a Wall Street Journal.
Once home, you sit for a moment thinking about your more settled friends, with their jobs and kids and homes and sense of purpose. You think back for a moment about your dad, who died when you were still young enough to take his advice and follow his footsteps into the financial sector in Manhattan.
But you can't feel too bad, because on the other side of the world, maybe in Kenya, you might be coming home thinking "Mmmm tonight's a cous cous night", only to find that your neighbor Ikthabo (who you even loaned your big screen door screen to one day) is standing with a machete to kill you because you either did or did not support the current president. Darn it all, and you thought international diplomat of mystery Kofi Annan would straighten everything out in no time.
You pop open the Wall Street Journal and, oh no, not again. Not another hedge fund trying to push some company (the NY Times) into doing something against its own will. But yes. It's Harbinger Capital Partners, pens and power in hand, who want the newspaper to better allocate its capital. Morgan Stanley tried the same and failed.
Which kind of reminds you of the minds over at Cerberus, who imagined they could take Chrysler off the German's feeble hands, being firm believers in their own capabilities and wisdom much in the same way that a certain Eddie Lampert over at another hedge fund imagined he could take a mediocre Sears and a mediocre Kmart and create something other than mediocre squared.
Since Harbinger's vision is so large, it cannot be contained by merely inserting it into The New York Times. It is after Media General at the same time. Media General remains less diplomatic than the owners of the large NY paper. The Wall Street Journal quotes the head of Media General who says, "...most investors who aren't happy sell their stock and go on."
Which, when you think about it, is how things should be.
Or, you should own it. Don't tinker. Own it. Indeed, this election will probably be won by those who say they will own the problem and not tinker around the edges, as Republicans are wont to do.
But what the hedge funds and certain investors are trying to do is gain authority, and the rewards that come with it, on the cheap. You have to admire Marshall Martin's bluntness. Not that it's good for a stock to languish for lack of vision. Companies do need to reinvent their own houses, but the way you do that is not by letting a traveling homebuilder come and reroof your house on the quick.
The article had a nice little graphic that showed the downward sloping stock prices of the media companies in question, though it might have been helpful to actually show the performance of those braying loudly to be experts.
Everything is down now and reality is not exactly being reflected in our stock market: a market which remains relatively levitated. One can imagine Bernanke sitting in his Fed chambers, using every ounce of his Fed powers to keep things afloat, and he is starting to sweat. His mind is not a sumo wrestler, able to throw the economy down with a shove of monetary belly. He wonders also if he is too easy with credit, and too open to people who might just be using him for gain. He has seen the pimp hand, and it's not his own hand resting on his hairy thigh.
On Wednesday he will make his move and cut rates, probably, and then what? Markets will ride upwards for a nice little bounce and things being as they are (with nearly every major issue unresolved), the people, who are the market, will get jittery, and sell. Unless this time it is different and what looks so bad in real life is not really an East coast downpour, but a gentle Arizona drizzle.
You pick up your turkey sandwich, and a piece of pickle, and eat, then lie down to rest... again.
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