Wednesday Nov 15, 2006

Plane spotting

Taipan Group's Dynamic Market Alert

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Plane spotting

by J. Christoph Amberger

Traveling in the age of globalism -- especially business travel -- is a lackluster and unattractive affair.

The typical business traveler sees the inside of an airplane, the guts of an airport, and the interior of a taxi before being confined to the immutable confines of a hotel room. For variety, they throw in a conference room located conveniently inside the hotel or at his foreign host’s offices. If he’s lucky, there’s a decent restaurant involved somewhere near the end of day.

It doesn’t matter if you go to Atlanta, Athens or Atlantis. The only variety you encounter is the interior decor of the taxi you’re in. Which in turn reflects the ethnic constellation of a particular country’s second-but-last immigrant wave.

Even the people you encounter on your trip look the same -- especially if you’re headed to northern Europe. There’s no national hallmarks that would indicate where a person may be from.  Almost, that is. The differences are so minute that it takes a while to catch on.

The greatest national giveaway are the shoes.  Americans still are recognizable by their jogging shoes and hiking boots, although on occasion, those differences are blurry. Only girls wearing white sneakers that contain traces of pink can be clearly allocated to the Stars and Stripes.

Germans, by and large, have a penchant for grotesquely shaped health shoes. Icelanders, and especially Icelandic women, prefer retro sneakers in unattractive colors that look like hybrids between sprinter’s spikes and rock climbing shoes… only uglier. But so do other Scandinavians and especially German women.

In cases like that, you have to look for other indicators. German women of a certain age and life situation oblige by supplementing their ugly sneakers with an even uglier short haircut vaguely reminiscent of techno pop artists from the 1980s. They like to dye it red... not auburn, copper, henna, or other pleasant hues nature created for the decoration of female crania, but RED. Like in Wal-Mart plastic cup red.

Icelanders by comparison tend to be grayish. Not as a sign of premature aging. More like a thin, almost translucent layer of ash that the various volcanoes have spread over humanity.

-- When soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced last week that the new and improved Congress would be the most ethical and honest, I had a fit of the giggles. So far, the rogues’ gallery she has lined up reminds me more of Tony Soprano than of St. Anthony.

First there’s Pelosi herself, who is famously pro-union as long as it does not involve her own businesses. Then there’s John Murtha, one of the most prolific lawmakers at doling out “earmarks” -- federal dollars added anonymously to spending legislation -- to pay for lawmakers’ pet projects. Murtha is an unindicted co-conspirator in the FBI’s Abscam bribery sting operation back in 1980, and has recently suspected of using his position as the senior Democrat to channel federal money on the defense appropriations subcommittee to political donors via earmarks.

Murtha took in over $179,000 from defense companies’ political action committees in the 2005-06 election cycle -- more even than the Republican chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee ($109,600) and more than any other member of Congress.

Rep. Alcee L Hastings, who may become the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is an impeached federal judge thrown out of office in 1989 for bribery and perjury.

Of course, being Democrats, the backgrounds of these New Direction leaders are of no interest to the mainstream media who’re still trying to manufacture documents that “prove” President Bush went to the bathroom in elementary school without a hall pass. Putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse, however, is indicative of the actual direction we’ll see the American legislature drift in the next couple of years.

-- What about that inflation? Over the past couple of months, we have argued that inflation was not a problem. Yesterday, the October data indicated that inflation at the wholesale level dropped 1.6%, on par with the post-9/11 drop in prices from October 2001. It followed a 1.3% decline in September led by big declines in the price of gasoline and new cars.

Core inflation excluding energy and food dropped by 0.9%, the biggest one-month drop in 13 years, on lower prices for new cars and sport utility vehicles. 

Energy prices dropped by 5% last month following an 8.4% decline the previous month, September. Gas prices were down 7.9% and natural gas plummeted a record 9.3%.

This means one thing and one thing only: Don’t expect any rate hikes from the Fed anytime soon!

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Earnings Announcements

Autodesk Inc, Aviza Technology, Big Lots Inc, Dell Inc, Gap Inc, Hewlett-Packard, Kulicke & Soffa, Marvell Technology Group, Sears Holding Corporation, Starbucks Corporation, Wet Seal Inc, Williams-Sonoma, Zale Corporation and Zoll Medical are releasing earnings.

Brought to you by http://www.AmericanCapitalist.net

Unlock Dates for November 2006

11/14/06 – Burger King is unlocking 25 million shares.
11/21/06 – Mastercard is unlocking 61.5 million shares.
11/29/06 – Luna Innovations Inc is unlocking 3.5 million shares.

Brought to you by http://www.gressor.com

Upgrades and Downgrades

Jetblue Airways upgraded by Bear Stearns from Peer Perform to Outperform.

U.S. Steel upgraded by Matrix Research from Buy to Strong Buy.

Mylan Labs upgraded by Matrix Research from Sell to Buy.

Altria upgraded by Goldman Sachs from Neutral to Buy.

Home Depot upgraded by JP Morgan from Underweight to Overweight.

Cheesecake Factory upgraded by Friedman Billings from Market Perform to Outperform.

Tween Brands downgraded by Susquehanna Financial from Positive to Neutral.

Cree downgraded by Matrix Research from Sell to Strong Sell.

Dollar Financial downgraded by Ferris Baker Watts from Buy to Neutral.

Spectrum Brands downgraded by Prudential from Overweight to Neutral.

Telik downgraded by Lehman Brothers from Equal Weight to Underweight.

Brought to you by http://www.vixtrader.com

Quote of the Day

“The biggest winners in last week’s election were the enemies of the United States, who see the results as confirmation of one of their doctrines: The U.S. is weak and does not have the commitment to fight a protracted war.”

- Cal Thomas, Nov. 15, 2006

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