Tell It To Al

Michael Gilliland, former  CEO of Sunflower market and founder of Wild Oats Market, is headed to jail for five months after pleading guilty to a felony count of pandering.

Click here to read the details reported in the Arizona Republic. Mr. Gilliland fell for one of the most common law enforcement traps in the book. He answered an ad from a woman posing as an under-aged prostitute who was really a police detective.

Click here to read the column I wrote on Mr. Gilliland last year. How dumb can a CEO be? Hasn’t Mr. Gilliland ever watched “To Catch A Predator” on MSNBC?

I really thought, given his resources and unblemished record,  Mr. Gilliland would find a lawyer who could help him beat this rap, sick as it is. And that losing his CEO job would be the worst of his problems.

Now he’s trading organic fare for jailhouse food.

If you were reincarnated as a dog, it would be difficult to find a better owner than PetSmart CEO Bob Moran.

Mr. Moran runs a company with 1,250 giant pet stores, and the value of his stock has nearly tripled throughout the financial crisis and the sluggish recovery that has followed.

His dog, Tatum Shea, has lived the canine version of a Dickens tale. Born with a birth defect, abandoned, and then rescued by Mr. Moran’s wife to become part of the family.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has posted a new study on his website,  Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences by economist William White.

 The 45-page paper outlines what most sensible observers already know: “There are limits to what central banks can do.”

Flooding the world with easy money doesn’t even help  banks in the end, and it juices our government’s reckless spending habits.

“Ultra easy monetary policies can eventually threaten the health of financial institutions and the functioning of financial markets, threaten the “independence” of central banks, and can  encourage imprudent behavior on the part of governments,” the paper says.

Mr. Fisher has long argued that the Fed has done enough already. ( Click here to see my previous posts and columns on Mr. Fisher.) Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, meanwhile, has said he’s willing to ease even more if necessary.

The Fed meets Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyo., but despite Mr Bernanke’s pronounements, there’s a good chance it will disappoint those awaiting another round of Fed easing, particularly given the growing sentiments Mr. Fisher is expressing.

Jumping off the fiscal cliff may be the best thing we can expect from a gridlocked Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office says this will throw us into a recession in 2013. Click here to read its report. But what’s another recession when we’re already in a depression? With a national debt approaching $16 trillion we are coming closer to the day when we all have to give up on the idea that it’s the government’s job to borrow money to manage the economy.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Let’s say you are on the board of a dying big box retailer.

You know it’s going to die. It’s been dying for a long time. It business model has been completely supplanted by Amazon.com. But luckily, there’s someone crazy enough to buy it before it slides into its final state of retail oblivion. Do you ignore this buyer?

Best Buy’s board should be thanking founder Richard Schulze for his offer to take the struggling company private. Instead, Schulze is running around Wall Street begging analysts for help to influence the board. Click here to read more on that.

I think Best Buy’s board should sell it to him. It’ll be his funeral.

You don’t hate the rich, the rich hate you.

And now they’re displaying their contempt on a Tumblr blog, Rich Kids of Instagram.

The contempt and entitlement is so thick, I had to call a shrink to understand where it was coming from. Thanks to Dr. David Reiss for the professional help I needed after viewing this website.
Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

The economy is almost bad enough to be good again.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is getting closer to another bond buying binge, which may become known as QE3.

“There is scope for further action by the Federal Reserve to ease financial conditions and strengthen the recovery,” he said today.  Click here to read more from MarketWatch.

Every Quantitative Easing program, and just about every other measure, seems to be less-effective than the one that preceded it. Launching QE3 may juice the stock market, since Wall Street loves free money, but now much else.

It’s difficult to imagine as many as one million people being taken by yet another Ponzi scheme, but here it is, even after Bernie Madoff and R. Allen Stanford are safely locked away.

The case of ZeekRewards.com shows people just don’t learn. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges it was a $600 million Ponzi scheme.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch. And click here to read more from the SEC.

Struggling bookseller Barnes & Noble narrowed its losses thanks to the erotic bestseller “50 Shades of I’m An Aging Pervert,” I mean, “50 Shades of Grey.”

Click here to read more on Barnes & Noble’s financial results.

I had no idea that someone could write down every sick thought he ever had and turn it into an industry. Sales are up at bookstores, and adult novelty shops as well, thanks to this literary genre being popularly dubbed “Mommy Porn.”

It’s not that I’m repulsed. I’m just wondering if I made a mistake working for family newspapers for so many years, where they train you not to write this stuff.

“The road to financial ruin is paved by schemers who think they are just sly enough to take the money, line their pockets, and make enough to satisfy obligations before they are caught.”

- U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian

Click here to see story about a mother and son convicted in a $14 million loan fraud.