Tell It To Al

Like a great economist, or market analyst, I have my own econometric forecasting tool: The Magic 8 Ball by Mattel.

Over the years, it has proven as accurate as any other modeling tool, although it seems to have accumulated a few bubbles over the years, and it was off a tad, here and there, in it’s predictions for 2012.

As for 2013, well, it looks to be like another year full of fits and starts, slight improvements here and there, and always, the looming threat of some kind of unexpected collapse overhead that spoils the whole forecast.

Click here to read my 2013 Magic 8 Ball Forecast  in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

And click here to see what it predicted for 2012. It predicted, for instance, that President Obama would be reelected long before the clown show that was the GOP nomination process really got started, and long before it looked like Mitt Romney could win after a decisive debate victory in Denver.

The reason we had any faith at all in America’s economy in 2012 was because:

A) Our Federal Reserve has seemingly unlimited capacity to print money.

B) Congress would not raise taxes or cut spending, keeping the annual budget deficit at more than $1 trillion.

C) The rich, and the giant corporations they control, were so grateful for low taxes they rewarded all the little people with jobs.

D) America’s Ponzi scheme is better than any other nation’s Ponzi scheme.

Click here to read my 2012 pop quiz on Marketwatch.

A Colorado company called Executive Recycling had one of the most amazing business plans imaginable. It charged people to take their garbage, and then it sold this garbage to other people.

And it would have worked, too, if it were not for a few of those pesky environmental regulations.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch. And click here to read more details in a government press release.

It’s difficult to tell whether the drugs your doctor prescribes are going to do you any good, especially if your doctor is getting a fat kickback from a pharmaceutical company.

Doctors will tell you this doesn’t happen, but it happens. Just last week Amgen agreed to pay $762 million in penalties to settle allegations that it was essentially paying doctors to prescribe its drugs – lavishing them with everything from dinners and hotels to cold, hard cash. It would be one thing if Amgen was the only company so accused. But just about every major pharmaceutical company has settled similar allegations.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And follow the link below to read the details of the settlement from the New York Attorney General’s office:

www.ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/press-releases/2012/DOC.PDF

Can bosses fire women for being just too smoking hot?

The Supreme Court in Iowa on Friday answered with a resounding yes. Click here to read the dirty details in The New York Post.

An Iowa City dentist fired his assistant for being “irresistably attractive.” The woman sued. The case went all the way to the state supreme court. The panel of all-male  judges completely understood. The dentist’s wife apparently got jealous. The dentist had to appease his wife for the sake of family values.

They’re calling it the bombshell ruling. It is simply unbelievable. From the facts of this case it sounds like the woman should have sued for sexual harrassement, but she claimed gender discrimination instead. The court then ruled hotties are just not a protected class.

If you can be fired for being too beautiful, it stands to reason you can also be fired for being too ugly. These judges have embarassed themselves just by hearing this case.

The dentist’s lawyer called the case a home run for family values in the New York Post story linked above. The dentist decided to fire the woman after consulting with a pastor. Isn’t it funny how someone in a professional environment can take a stand for family values while complaining that his way-too-hot assistant is “like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.”

Click here to watch me sing it on Denver’s 9News.

We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas;
We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas;
We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas and a recession next year.

Higher taxes for you and all your kin;
We wish you a Merry Cliffmas and a pink slip next year.

Oh, bring us some fiscal pudding;
Oh, bring us some fiscal pudding;
And bring us more food stamps so we can buy beer.

We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go without entitlements, so bring them right here

We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas
We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas
We wish you a Merry Cliffsmas and a recession next year.

Click here to read my Cliffsmas column on MarketWatch.

Newsflash: The world isn’t going to end on Friday.

I have an amazing source on this bit of news: The Amazing Kreskin.

Yes, this TV mentalist from the 1970s is right, and the ancient Maya are wrong.

On Saturday, I would like the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the National Geographic channel, and all the other purveyors of apocalyptic porn to issue an apology and a promise to never run bogus predictions of the world’s imminent end, again.

Instead, they’ll likely develop a new line of unreasoning – like here’s where the prophecy went wrong, but by 2020 it really is the end.

See you on Dec. 22.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Follow this circle: Teachers earn a pension. They trust that pension to a professionally managed retirement fund. The fund then invests the money in a private equity firm. The private equity firm then invests the money in a big conglomerate. The conglomerate uses the money to fund gun manufacturers. The gun manufacturers then make amazingly deadly weapons that maniacs can use to shoot teachers and their students.

If there was ever an argument for knowing how your money is invested, this is it.

It’s really no wonder that private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP is now dumping its investment in the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle used in the Newtown, Conn. elementary school masacre. Click here to read the details from Reuters.

What’s amazing is that it was getting public pension fund money to invest in gunmakers in the first place.

Running drugs or running drug money. What’s the difference?

Well, if you’re a big enough bank, and you’re accused of running drug money, no one necessarily has to go to prison.

This week, I compare the justice doled out to British bank HSBC, accused of running drug money, and an architect who commutes between Tijuana and San Diego, who was found with nearly 13 pounds of cocaine in his car battery. Clearly, architects do not fare as well as bankers in the criminal justice system.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

There’s a lot of optimism about global capitalism catapulting more and more people in the world’s middle class.

But middle class people are insatiable consumers.

How many middle-class people can the planet support? We have more than 7 billion people on the planet. Can they all go do Disneyland?

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.