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Saturday, April 26, 2003

The New York Attorney General, who made 22 million dollars on wall street before taking on the hinky bankers as a political gadfly, has reached a settlement with most of the hinky investment banks who brought those Dot Con IPOs to market without the good faith of that fox guarding the hen house. He is taking 1.4 billion dollars for the public, which sounds like a lot; but so to was a 7 percent fee, on Trillions of dollars in IPO business that smelled worse than the Fulton fish market at 3pm in July. Years, and years, and years of hinky offerings that amounted to white collar three card monty at the public's expense, and what do we get? We get to write them a ticket that is like fining Walmart 25 dollars for opening on Sunday; and we get Frank Quattrone, the CSFB Banker who brought a lot of Silly Con valley companies to market, as if he did it all alone, without synidicates of other banks selling these "POS" stocks, and without a brainwashing CNBC, and CNNfn, and an Internet trading brigade.

I guess we should feel safe now.

Hinky PR about "the Medical Malpractice crisis" and the looming "litigation explosion" that doctors lobbies, and the Insurance lobbies have been trying to trump up for years, is back on the scene. Even as court settlements and verdicts against doctors dropped last year, and as NYPIRG asserts that the number of doctors making malpractice payments has dropped. Moreover, as a per cent of the population, these malpractice law suits have remained constant since 1960 (yes i am sure, I researched this one up the ying yang 10 years ago). Law suits have not outpaced the population, even as the American Medical Association (which has more power than the Teamsters, as a trade goup) has held the number of doctors down....

Nevertheless, in Albany, New York, Doctor's are lobbying to cap medical malpractice at 250,000; so if you are operated on, and find out that a clamp was left inside you, or you lose a limb, the price of these harms may drop, like everything else. Deflation is a bitch, but 250,000 for a limb? Give me three, and two more keyboards, and two guitars.

I've been singing this song, that will now leave my head. Want to know which one? click here, also, here is a hint:


The man in the street

Draggin' his feet

Don't wanna hear the bad news

Imagine your face

There is his place

Standing inside his brown shoes

You do his nine to five

Drag yourself home half alive

And there on the screen

A man with a dream

Hinky 4:04 PM

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Friday, April 25, 2003

In the New York Sun, Raymond Joseph notes some hinkiness taking place in the Caribbean, as Castro put 75 in jail for free speech (including Cuban journalists, read inmate). Cuba sent Rolando Gomez Gonzales to Part-au-Prince to give a speech to his Haitian brothers about the American threats to the region, as if the people don't know who buys Rolando's pulled pork. With advice like that to the battered, and bamboozled victims of the disaster zone that Haiti remains, we can see that Rolando is a "brother" alright, like Cane was a brother.

As hinky despots cling to power and their tired 20th century ways of shaking down, jailing, beating, scamming and bullying up their subjects, we are bound see a lot toadies like Rolando swinging their swords toward ground zero. As the man said: we may not agree, but should be willing to die for their right to entertain us. But I can imagine anyone coming close to our hinky hero,
the Iraqi Minister of Info.

Also Joseph reports that Pres. Clinton's phone card deal partner, Jean Betrand Aristide, the democracpotically elected leader of Haiti who turned out to be full of hot air, had his hinky capo Simson Liberus running his mouth about Haiti's history of conflict on the island at a time when they are turning up the heat on France for payback for colonialism.

Hinky 10:49 AM

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Thursday, April 24, 2003

The french are back at it, visiting with Iran today; cutting deals with nations that are run by terrorists in the hope that their oil interest will prevail. Hinky french foriegn minister, Dominique de Villepin arrived in Tehran tuesday to meet with a few "presidents" of the world's most forceful religious state. He praised the Mullah leaders for their effort in curbing Nukes, and for their human rights records. After all, they set free almost half the Isreali spies they captured in 1999. Dominique held a joint news conference, where they made statements about what the United States should do, again. No mention was made of the hinky Iranian Pasdaran (their not so secret police)

Earlier this month, former Iranian leader Khatami advised the US to stop threatening Syria, where the Pasdaran have raised kidnapping an artform over the last 20 years.

What they need is to hire this guy to lobby America; set him up on K Street in DC, get him a big black benz and hinky driver who drops off hit dry cleaning and passes messages, while he parks at fire plugs with diploshit plates.

What else is new?

Hinky 10:45 PM

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Tuesday, April 22, 2003

And what if the guide posts are all turn over, like Saddam's monuments to himself, and what if mothers are shooting their children on the Ct coastline, and fathers are killing their expecting wives on the Ca coastline, and the stock market has crashed 3 years ago leaving the longest bear trend in 60 years (which looks just under half over), and what if our faith in corporate executives and fiduciaries is burned away by electronic flashes on the perp walk as these white collar bandits head to trial, and stories about their outlandish paydays; and what if our tolerance for terror has been pulled like taffy at the end of the boardwalk just beyond our freedom and dignity, facing that bankrupt planned community of aging World war veterans who care even less than I do to watch Rosey O'Donnel's wife on the television.

The real question is "would you pay off your credit card, just to avoid that overhanging debt, or would you be more likely to spend on more goodies manufactured in some remote location where that nation's leadership have solid contacts on K street, with their old prep school buddies?" That's the question these hinky higher ups are asking as they survey this broken assed economy, this hinky war, and a few of the few tools they have left to stimulate this broken assed economy. Will they give us more money in the pocket, and cheap money from the banks? Will the people use it to spend their way to prosper again, piling more debt like iraqi oil on a fire; or will they pay down the overhang on their new cars, kitchens, and college tuitions, waiting like Moscovites waiting for a new deal and a half assed job that doesn't feel like another day in detention no matter how hard you've worked for it.

We'd bet our money that America, in spite of its fear of terror, the force of war, and the folly of air port package patrol, will order another round, like the bloke or the wench who drank the last beer at Woodstock, knowingly, and with a sense of purpose, like the most patriotic among us who flips off the mayor, whose car is waiting at the fire plug. Drink up, hinky brothers and sisters of the planet America, while the world looks on in shock and awe, for tommorow we might die, and here's hoping we never will.

Hinky 9:05 PM

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Monday, April 21, 2003

Things are not looking good for the guy who is being held for his wife's death, as stock sag in listless trading. And then there is Applied Materials, which is an estimated no growth business looking out five years, yet trades at a lush 102 p/e. Insiders exercise their options in January-- Somekh Sasson bought in his 50,000 shares at a price of 4.62, chairman James Morgan (no relation to the Captain) bought his 560,000 shares at the same price for a total of 2.5 million. Here is a stock that dropped from 26 to a low of almost 10 in September of 02. But now, it's trading up again, hitting almost 15, like a lot of hinky stocks out there with slow growth and bloated p/e ratios.

The float of these companies are locked, like mosulims; trading in fantasy land, as everyone waits for the other shoe. Sure, money is cheap, but who wants to step up and go on the hook to compete for the last drop of a sqeezed orange?

The goose is laid out; and we are tired. Fucked, I'm to bed.

Hinky 10:23 PM

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