The R Letter: Casey Anthony Thoughts

I admit it: I didn't watch the trial. Didn't keep daily tabs either. But that doesn't mean I have no thoughts on it. Now that the verdict is in, here are some things that came to mind.

Nancy Grace has egg on her face as it should be. You can't base your show on fueling public outrage and expect no backlash. What I can't figure out is why she should act surprised?
When the prosecution brought in a smell-of-death expert, it had the smell of desperation. Maybe less is more?
No, I doubt someone offered Casey Anthony $1 million to tell her story. That stuff is drawn from the same kind of PR used to air new NFL contracts. The $1 million amount is purely based on several things happening.
There's a debt ceiling issue and a lack of conversation on generating job growth. Mainstream media, wake up or trade in your press credentials.

In any case, this is over. Unfortunately, the media is still paying attention to it. I'd rather listen to some

serious ideas on using public money to plant a seed for private sector job creation.
intelligent conversation on what policies need to be enacted to get people back to work.
brainstorming on possible new careers that will evolve in the next decade because many of the jobs that disappeared over the last three years are gone for good.

Years ago, Michael Moore did a documentary on guns and the NRA. In the film, he posited that news media focuses too little on what affects everyone - instead pursuing stories with shock value. He was onto something.

Casey Anthony is not nationally important. Let's move on.

Stock Market Thoughts

According to Bloomberg, the market for mining truck tires have exploded. The price of one tire would now set you back over $100000. With that, it should at least resonate the future for companies like Caterpillar (CAT) and Cummins (CMI). ... China announced that total debt of local economies approximate 25% of GDP (over $500 billion). Does this mean China needs a debt ceiling debate too? ... The Fed predicts growth in the US at 2.9% for the year, then accelerating to 3.7%, then 4.2% by 2013. Very rosy numbers. The IMF is less optimistic, predicting the US to grow at 2.5% this year and an average of 2.7% over the next five years. Why the difference? The IMF thinks housing will be the main driver in a recovery. If housing is up, then growth will follow. Thus, the IMF thinks housing will drag over the next few years. ... So much for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Oil is back at $100. If oil stays under $100, then any rally can be sustained. Once above $100, it's a high risk environment. No real science. The $100 level is purely psychological.

Bottom Line For Next Week: The rally is pausing and by the looks of it, over. While it could conceivably be just pausing before the next leg up, it could also be starting its pullback with the disappointing jobs number as catalyst.

Current Positions: ABV, COP, SLW
One share: BAC, AAPL, BIDU, LULU, PLG, KSU
85% cash.

Stuff That May Only Interest Me

There's talk of a one-time tax break to companies that do business overseas. The hope is this will compel these companies to use the money saved to build stuff and hire people. This happened once before back in 2005, but instead of building and hiring, companies bought back their stock and increased their dividends to shareholders. Why are the same solutions tried and failed under Bush 43's tenure being reapplied under the current administration? Are there really differences between Democrats and Republicans or is it simply they are controlled by smarter entities? ... I was browsing through the Padres headlines and ran across two peculiarities on this one. 1) On the top left are links to Major League Baseball in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and a link to "padresbeisbol" in Spanish. Yes, four other languages. The NFL offers Spanish along with English. I point this out because the website for the Canadian Football League only sports English even though French is also an official language. Even for South Africa where there are 11 official languages, the website for the Wanderers (cricket team) sports just one language: English. 2) There's a picture of Trevor Hoffman is on the right with an announcement of his retirement ceremony. Look real closely and you'll see that his left leg has been sheered off at the knee - courtesy of Photoshop. ... After all that, I forgot about what the article was about or even why I was clicking on it. Amazing the things that can distract a person. ... About that debt ceiling - an article in The New Republic asserts that president Obama can ignore the debt ceiling and just spend the money anyway. The argument goes like this: The legislative branch already appropriated money for programs, so the executive branch can go ahead and spend it. Obama has a constitutional right to ignore the ceiling. Of course, if he does this, he might as well say "Sayonara" to any hope of getting reelected because of how it will get publicized. Like it or not, Republican media is much more crafty at PR than the left-leaning media. ... Transocean, which leased the rig to BP that ultimately blew up 14 months ago, finally published a report on the explosion. All 850+ pages of it. I'll summarize: "Blame BP, not us. We're not sorry." Nine of the 11 deaths were Transocean employees. At the time of the explosion, just 6 of the 120+ people on the rig were from BP, while almost 80 were from Transocean. In short, Transocean owned and ran the rig. BP spent over 100 times more than Transocean on clean-up and settlements last year. A court battle begins in February to ascertain percentage blame for the disaster. May the best lawyers win. ... Some lawmakers are calling for a Balanced Budget Amendment, but they don't realize that a country technically doesn't have to. For example, let's say you made $100 last year (hope that isn't too close to reality for you). You budget for $103 for this year instead of $100. Now, if you ended up making $103 by year's end, no problem. ... Unemployment rose to 9.2% and that's despite the reduced labor force. Some of that can be attributed to layoffs of government workers (know any teachers who filed unemployment recently?). Just 18000 jobs were created, which is pretty close to zero if you consider the total number of jobs hovers near 132 million. In order to keep pace with a growing population, 150000 jobs need to be created every month. In the meantime, our mainstream media and our politicians are still not banging the JOBS drum. Legislative proposals do not center on spurring job growth, probably because the unemployed are too silent. It might very well require someone to run for the office under the slogan of "I'm running, because I need a job. I could definitely use the lifetime benefits." ... With the final shuttle mission now underway, can we add "Space Shuttle Pilot" to the next unemployment count? ... The movement against teachers and teachers unions is gaining momentum, and I can't figure out how. Budget cuts have been the norm for a handful of years now. The ignorant are pointing about the "high costs of teachers and their benefits", quoting statistics without reference. "High costs"? Where did that come from? I'm trying to find a reference for all the stats talking heads conjure on the idiot box, but I can't find anything to match those numbers. ... VP Joe Biden has a Twitter page now. Given Weiner-Gate and how easy it is to hack into an account, it makes little sense for Biden to start tweeting. He's better off having an aide blog for him from the White House website. Then again, anyone believing that Biden is actually doing the tweeting from his Blackberry probably thinks OJ is innocent and the one-armed man did it. ...

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