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Walking through a grocery store the other day I passed a booth giving out free samples of a new lunch-meat product I'm pretty sure was called baloney-rona. "Booth" is perhaps a generous description of a card table at the end of the soft drink aisle but there stood a young man with an electric fry pan, heating up little hunks of this thing apparently called "baloney-rona." What is baloney-rona? I didn't stop to find out but it won't surprise you to hear baloney-rona appeared to be a greasy meat product with a tooth pick in it.
I never had an allowance when I was a kid so I almost never turn down free food when I'm at the grocery store, especially when it comes in convenient bite sized portions with a handle stuck in it. But when I saw the grease stained napkin the baloney-rona chunks were sitting on I instinctively kept moving so quickly that the free sample guy could barely get out the words, "Try new baloney-rona," without the Doppler effect kicking in.
And then it hit me- the makers of boloney-rona must be the most incredibly optimistic people in the history of food.
First of all, the word "baloney" is not a good foundation to build on. When we say "someone is full of it," we either mean baloney or worse. In either case, being "full of it" is not a compliment or positive condition. And when we think of classic deli sandwiches baloney is rarely in the picture. Adding "rona" doesn't transform "baloney" for me. Though, if they bought the rights to the song "My Sharonna" they could make a great T.V. commercial.
Anyway, the wonderful thing about free enterprise is that we are free to spend a lot of money making a mistake as large as baloney-rona. Because for every baloney-rona some creative genius comes up with coffee-heath-bar-crunch ice cream or extra-lean turkey-pastrami or smoked gouda. The freedom to be so passionate about baloney-rona, to be so sure of it's marketability that you are willing to put your children's college fund and various animal meat bi-products into it's production and then serve it up to strangers in a grocery store is what made America great.
What's my point? The anti-trust suit against Microsoft is a good thing. There needs to be dreamers and schemers creating software applications that are brilliant like smoked gouda or coffee-heath-bar-crunch ice cream without pressure or threat by the big bully on the block. If we have only one software company that faces no competition what they turn out will end up being a greasy, buggy, crashing, digital, high-cholesterol mess. Have you ever tried to use Microsoft's fax program? It's baloney-rona when we could be faxing with extra-lean turkey-pastrami.
In Los Angeles, I'm Tim Bedore for Marketplace.
Stop worrying about the trade deficit
Why does anybody bother to report on the trade deficit anymore? I am not an economist and couldn't balance my check book without a computer accounting program, but I am here to say without a U.S. trade deficit the world would be in a mess. If Americans weren't buying more Japanese stuff than Japanese buy American stuff their economy would stink likeweek old Tamaki. Why let the Japanese economy crash when we can help them out by buying camcorders at low, low prices? The best thing the America government can dofor the Japanese economy is get them to knock a few thousand dollars off the price of a Honda. And since most of those Hondas are made here in America it's a win, win, win situation, with America taking the best of three series.
There was some hue and cry the other day because our trade deficit with Mexico is ballooning. Good! Have you ever been to Mexico? Mexico needs us to buy every velvet painting, VCR, refrigerator and bottle of Tequila they ever made. I was just in Mexico and it seems half the population is trying to sell Chiclets or hammocks to American tourists. I don't know what gave our neighbors to the south the idea Americans can't do without Chiclets but there's a whole lot of the Mexican work force in the retail small-piece-of-gum-in-a-box business. How many Chiclets do they have to sell before they could afford to pay for imported American-made products? If Americans buy foreign stuff because it's cheaper, guess how difficult it is to afford American- made stuff when it's imported?
So of course there's a trade deficit and it's time we quit worrying about it. Other countries make stuff cheaper than we do. And when they do, we should buy it. In fact, importing foreign goods and reselling them at a huge markup is a classic case of buy low, sell high and thanks to lower costs of manufacturing abroad we're on the right side of that equation.
I know buying cheaper foreign products results in lost manufacturing jobs here in America but this economy keeps providing new opportunities for displaced workers willing to take a chance. Who would have thought you could get people to pay $3 for a gallon of spring water when a gallon of gas only costs $1.15? Somebody who lost their job to a foreign worker probably came up with fancy drinking water. Unlike gasoline, water falls nearly everywhere in America for free and then collects itself in large quantities, at little or no cost to the manufacturer. Gas has to be refined in big factories from oil that was deep underneath someplace far from here and then distilled and distributed and carefully stored. Unlike oil, if you spill water, whatever you spilled it on is not polluted... it's just wet. Other than employees who occasionally drown nobody files workman's comp. claims because they got damp on the job. Fancy water is the archetypal future business of America.
The fact of the matter is, a lot of American companies just can't afford to make their products here anymore but as long as we produce and sell products like software programs to inventory stuff other people make and the marketing strategies to move it off the shelves, we'll be O.K. I guess the bottom line is there's more money in retail. In Los Angeles, I'm Tim Bedore for Marketplace.
I am a Chicago Cub fan so I guess I never give up on the nearly impossible and that probably explains why I am still trying to figure out the stock market.
Because of what is happening around the world the Fed reduced a key interest rate by 1/4 of one percent in an effort to keep our economy going strong. As I understand it, because of this interest rate drop consumers will be able to borrow cheaper money and thus spend more. But when the interest rate cut was announced the stock market went down instead of up because the cut wasn't big enough. Well, isn't that selfish?
Let's say you are a child and ask for desert and are given a piece of pie. Do you pout and leave the table if you aren't given the whole pie? Isn't some better than nothing? Isn't better better than not better? If interest rates went down only a little shouldn't the stock market have gone up only a little? Is the amorphous, anonymous "stock market" trying to punish Alan Greenspan for not giving it the whole pie?
And the amorphous, anonymous "experts" they quote in the paper say the market knew Greenspan wasn't going to give a big cut right away, but instead do it in stages. Wisely, Greenspan wants us to digest some spinach and sprouted wheat bread and bean curd before we get the whole pie. We don't want the stock market to crash after a sugar fit and claim the twinkie defense, do we?
It is just my observation that the stock market rises and falls due to the craziest things. Alan Greenspan has Asian flu- Wall Street loses lunch. Monica Lewinsky is going to testify- investors stain pants. Chicago Cubs make the playoffs- Market skyrockets due to unfounded belief anything is possible.
My point is, if all was right with the world Monica Lewisnky would marry Kato Kaelin because... they should. Look at all the things they have in common - they both became famous because of someone else, they both used to live in Brentwood, he knows someone who killed their wife, she knows someone whose wife would like to kill her husband. But if Monica doesn't married Kato, if you don't get the whole pie it doesn't mean things are going to Hell in a handbasket. It just means you can't have your whole pie and eat it too, without having a post sugar-fit crash as well.
I used to love the roller coaster
I saw an ad for one of those Magic-Flags-over-Disney-Six-Knotts-Mountain-Land amusement parks the other day and I thought, "When was the last time I was on a roller coaster?" And then I remembered, I'm in the stock market. I'm on a roller coaster everyday of the week. I never put my arms in the air and scream "Wheeeee" but after careening into the dips of Wall Street I definitely feel a churning sensation in my gut.
And after a day of stock market thrill riding I watch the evening news and their expert analysts proclaim the little guy didn't panic. Small investors stayed put while the big guys got nervous and sold out. What I really think is more true is... I don't know how to sell stocks. I don't know how to get out. I once figured out how to get in but since then I lost the phone numbers or misplaced the paper work... I couldn't sell my stocks in a hurry, even if I wanted to. So, I guess I could panic but what's the point? If I wanted to panic I would just have to get into our filing cabinet, find the paperwork and read through it and find the 800 number for Janus and then they would ask me a bunch of questions and my wife is at work so I don't know what we want to do with the capital gains and that is the real reason why this little guy doesn't panic and get out of the market.
Financially, I am a lot like a psychology major. I only know enough to screw things up. In fact, never ask a psych major for help with a personal problem. They will tell you to be honest with your wife, to tell her you need your feelings validated but when you come home and say that she hits you in the head with her briefcase because she too needs her feelings validated but unlike you doesn't have a close friend with a major in psychology.
I have to believe, to one degree or another, most little guys in the stocks market are like me- we'd like to panic... we just don't know how. But, if that's true, don't pass it around. It will only make the big guys panic all the more. And my stomach doesn't need anymore of that. Besides, it's better for the stock market when us little guys just don't know how to throw up and get off the Wall Street thrill ride.
If you think Disney is evil...
Last week the Texas Board of Education decided they could not, in good conscience, continue to own stock in Disney because they are certain Disney is an instrument of the Devil. Perhaps I exaggerate the Devil part but they said Disney has and will again put out filth and vulgar material and allows homosexuals to cavort at their theme parks. Once again, I am not sure filth, vulgar material and cavort are the exact words used but the point is they sold their 45 million dollars worth of Disney stock because they didn't like that scene in the basement from Pulp Fiction. Alright, I lied. I am not sure it was the scene in the basement, although I am sure if they saw that scene in the basement from Pulp Fiction they would have burned their stock in Disney at the stake. To tell you the truth I got creeped out by that scene in the basement from Pulp Fiction.
But the only thing that would make me sell my stock in Disney is a 1000% rise in the price of Disney stock. Other than that, if you're in the stock market to make money, hang on to your Disney stock. Certainly, you can make moral stock decisions. If there was a start up offering for a company that produced re-prints of Hitler's artwork called "Visions of our beloved Fuehurer(sic)," I could see passing on that IPO. Even if you love Hitler's way with a landscape you know the people selling it are‘a certain type' and might not want to put money in their pocket.
But Disney?!!! How many smiling faces do you have to see getting off Mr. Toad's Wild Ride before you know Disney is not an Evil Empire? Yes, Disney owns Miramax and Miramax distributed Pulp Fiction, a movie the Apostles might walk out on but every company does something that you won't agree with. Whichever record company allows that Celine Dion to come down here and make a mockery of our American Awards programs should be ashamed of themselves in my mind but I wouldn't sell their stock if it was performing well. The record company would have to have evil intent and not just be stupid, for me to want to sell.
Yet, I guess if the Texas Board of Education is morally outraged by what Disney has done, and for religious reasons wants to sell their stock, then I say go ahead. In fact, I suggest all good Christians sell their Disney stock. If you all sell at the same time Disney's stock will plummet, at which point, I will take a loan from the Vatican bank and buy every share of Disney I can at low, low prices. And investors all over the world will say "God Bless you Texas Board of Education."
Grandpa put up his own tollbooth
The person who told me this story swears that it’s true. He said the French government built a new highway through his grandfather Antoine’s property on the outskirts of Paris after World War Two. But Antoine didn’t feel the government had compensated him adequately, so the night before the highway opened, Antoine went out with the blue prints for an official French toll booth and then built and operated his own toll booth for 18 years, before the government even figured out, it wasn’t supposed to be there.
While the authorities were deciding what to do, Antoine tore his toll booth down and retired a millionaire. One of the few millionaires to pay for everything with change perhaps but none-the-less, a millionaire. Antoine proved you can fool all the people all the time and charge them for the privilege.
What’s my point? The investigations into whatever happened with Whitewater and campaign finance is a bust, it’s a phony tool booth. Oh, the Senators and Congresspersons look proper and official as go through the motions but the truth is these investigations are more about their career advancement and political advantage and less about whether Clinton is fit to be President or real campaign finance. Clinton will have served his full two terms before they finish with Whitewater anyway.
Bob Dylan once said "Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters." I don’t know what that means exactly. Did we ever really know what Dylan was saying? How many miles must a White Duck fly before it gets to sleep in the sand? I don’t think there’s an answer. How can an answer be blowing in the wind? Anyway, I know this--if politicians only got paid when they fixed something, made something work better or made something cost less than it did before, they’d spend a lot less time playing ne-ner ne-ner.
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copyright 1998 Tim Bedore --- all rights reserved