In the US Christmas retail sales plummeted. > The holiday shopping season was one of the most dismal in years and even the after-Christmas period, when consumers normally rush to stores to use gift cards and seize on big sales, isn't expected to be enough to save retailers from a terrible year. No...

I wrote a blog entry on how my 2008 predictions fared, and what I think will happen in 2009. Well, wow, I did not expect one of them to happen that quick. My prediction was that in 2009 Japan was going down. It seems Japan is already going down. The headlines read "Japan November industrial output...

I am going to defend the German government. > German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck vilifies Britain’s financial stimulus plan in an interview with American magazine Newsweek, saying that making VAT cuts won't solve the problem, but rather will build a national debt that will take at least a...

The question that is being raised is if Rick Wagoner is the best choice to run GM? My answer, maybe not! Let me tell you why. In the 90's IBM was not doing well. In fact IBM was very much in the same situation that Microsoft is in now, if not worse. IBM was a stodgy company that had too many...

As a Canadian I am totally in awe on how dumb Canadians are acting with respect to the current political crisis. Not ignorant because that would imply you have the capability to learn from your errors. > Marjorie Shaw > I agree with the GG. For the first time in 72 years I have not been proud to...

So I was reading this article on Windows 7. Let me tell you it is not flattering. In fact it is very critical. I for the most part using Windows XP Professional. Though one of my machines is running Vista. I HATE VISTA! What a piece of garbage. I have quite a few points like always wanting to...

My brother lives in the former Soviet Republics, and I talk to him to see how things are going. I asked, "how are things." He replied, "me I am doing actually pretty well, our company [x] is shutting down for about 3 months." He was telling me that his company has a huge number of cancellations and...

I have been watching less and less of CNBC. I can barely watch the FastMoney weenies. I try for 10 minutes and get so disgusted that I can only turn it off. But today I thought I would watch Squawkbox, and Squawk on the Street again. David Faber talked about something that I feel crossed the line....

In March of 2007 I said that Magna buying Chrysler would be a good thing. And I specifically said that private equity would botch this up. > Magna knows the car parts industry through and through. Thus unlike other private equity companies there is a good chance that Chrysler would survive and...

I am developing this platform called HippoTrader. It is an Excel based market environment tool that is the result of working with my traders. One of the things that this tool allows is the scanning of the market as the market moves. So I decided to watch the market for the bear raid algorithm....