Everyone has an opinion
My inbox has been inundated this week with news releases from sources both familiar and unknown seeking to share their two cents on the current financial situation with The Oklahoman’s readers. Here’s a sampling of subject lines from the past 24 hours (none of the typos have been fixed; the names have been eliminated to protect the guilty):
- – XXX POLL: 6 IN 10 AMERICANS BELIEVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD STEP IN TO HELP WITH FINANCIAL CRISIS
- – Financial education programs guide employees in turbulent markets, says XXX
- – XXX comment on the bank failures, bail-outs
- – “100 Point Commentary on the markets”
- – Personal Finance Expert/Survey Results Available
- – Research and **ACADEMIC EXPERTS** on Learning from Short Sellers
- – Government “Bailouts” and the Flip Side
- – XXX: Wall Street Bailout Proposal Grants too Much Unchecked Authority to Executive Branch
- – Financial advise for the current situation from XXX
- – Insurance is Still Strong — XXX Launches $300mm Global Campaign This Week
- – Market fumble: Cheaper dollar is a slippery slope
- – Unprecendented Government Bailout, Financial Expert Available To Comment
- – MEDIA ALERT: XXX Weekly Street Sentiment (Do You Believe?)
- – Banks Need to Raise Capital Now to Take Advantage of Recent Rally
Some of this stuff is useful; most of it is not. In fact, much of it comes from people, places and things I’ve never heard of before and don’t expect to hear from again. Just felt like sharing.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Looking on the bright side of financial mess
Michael Lewis, author of “Liar’s Poker” and “Moneyball,” finds five positive things about the current financial mess.
Thanks to the current panic many Americans have learned that the experts who advise them what to do with their savings are, at best, fools. Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and all the rest persuaded their most valuable customers to buy auction-rate bonds, telling them the securities were as good as cash. Those customers will now think twice before they listen to their brokers ever again.
Lewis has written some of these with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. For instance:
Huge numbers of Wall Street executives will have the time to raise their children. For years now Wall Street has been far too lucrative for a certain kind of energetic and ambitious person to justify anything but the most perfunctory personal life. Now that the market for his services has collapsed, he has time to go home and figure out which of the children roaming around the mansion are actually his.
Although high-finance types someday will discover another tulip bulb or dot-com or credit swap to exploit, at least some of the ridiculousness has been washed out of the marketplace.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Investing a gamble
After seeing highly trained business people engineer a financial market meltdown, skepticism is a natural reaction to an investment group’s plan to bankroll poker players. MBAs Chris Smith and John Conroy have created BadBeat, a platform for backing online gamblers.
Smith and Conroy were pretty sure a talented poker player with a disciplined attitude would win more if bankrolled properly. That player would also make money for the people doing the bankrolling. BadBeat’s basic model is that it puts up all the cash for its poker traders to play, splits the winnings 50/50 and takes the losses. The players are self-employed and most work from home to avoid the opportunity or suggestion of collusion.
I suspect this won’t end well.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Accountability in the age of financial insanity
My friend Dan admits he’s no financial expert.
But even a high-finance novice could smell something rotten in the advertising come-ons the last few years that urged homeowners to refinance their mortgages for up to 120 percent of their equity. After all, what’s the financial logic behind an invitation to refinance my mortgage beyond its original value?
Then when the homeowner defaults on the mortgage the fallout cascades down the line. Dan wants to know: who’s going to be held accountable for this?
Read Dan’s incisive analysis of the whole sorry situation that has brought down some of the nation’s biggest banks and required a government bailout of almost a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of zeroes.
Jim Stafford
Business Writer
New Data Center: Backup for your Backup
The highlight of my week has been touring the new Perimeter Technology Center data center facility that was just completed. The 23,000-square-foot building has everything to keep a business up-and-running during a disaster and access to its critical data.
A virtual whose who of Oklahoma City’s business community showed up Thursday for the open house that Perimeter held to celebrate its opening. The photo below shows part of the crowd and a pair of tents just outside the doors from which food and drink were served.
In the video above, Chief Operating Officer Stan Chase talks about the building and what it offers.
Jim Stafford
Business Reporter 
Boone Pickens on stock market mess
T. Boone Pickens has a unique take on the current economic woes and the pain they are causing investors (including Pickens). He thinks high oil prices are the root problem. Pickens also predicts that oil prices, currently less than $100 a barrel, will return to $125 by year’s end and jump to a record $150 within a year.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Oklahoma stocks you can’t short
The SEC today put out a list (link to pdf file) of financial stocks that cannot be short-sold, effective immediately. A quick glance at the list of stocks shows all four Oklahoma-based publicly traded bank companies are included. That’s BancFirst Corp. (BANF); BOK Financial Corp., parent of Bank of Oklahoma (BOKF); Southwest Bancorp., parent of Stillwater National Bank (OKSB); and Osage BancShares (OSBK).
This list, prepared on a best efforts basis, includes banks, insurance companies, and securities firms identified by SICs 6000, 6011, 6020-22, 6025, 6030, 6035-36, 6111, 6140, 6144, 6200, 6210-11, 6231, 6282, 6305, 6310-11, 6320-21, 6324, 6330-31, 6350-51, 6360-61, 6712, and 6719.
Shorting a stock is a way of profiting when the shares lose value. The short seller borrows shares, selling them immediately and then replacing the shares by buying them in the open market when the price drops. Of course, if the price doesn’t drop, the short seller loses money.
Some market observers think short sellers have helped drive down the price of financial stocks, prompting regulators to temporarily ban the practice.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Google says: Searrrrrch here!
Pirate talk searches on Google
This be the day f’r talking like a pirate, lad. The Google, she has offerrrrrred up a new mannerrrr of searrrrrrch. If you be wantin’ to make the change perrrrrmanent, click herrrrrrre.
Don Mecoy
Business Writerrrrrrrrrrr!
Stupid criminal tricks
If you’re going to float a forged check, you really ought to avoid counterfeiting drafts from a bank that collapsed in the biggest, most public failure of 2008. The FDIC reports that IndyMac Federal Bank, F.S.B., of Pasadena, Calif., has reported that counterfeit official checks bearing the institution’s name are in circulation.
The counterfeit items display the routing number 122037171, which is assigned to an Integrated Payment Systems account held at Wells Fargo Bank, Ltd., Los Angeles, California. Currently, IndyMac Federal Bank issues official checks through this account. The items are similar to authentic official checks; however, the counterfeit items display a security feature statement along the bottom border between two padlocks.
But you can probably ignore the description. I’d just avoid any check drawn on IndyMac.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Today’s tune: “You’re No One If You’re Not On Twitter”
The Twitter Song
We validate each other’s insecurities
And brag about the gadgets that we’ve bought
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
And try to self-promote without being caught
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
