Does the Fed Do It's Job?

Milton Friedman was my monetarist hero. I still have his seminal, Nobel winning work, A Monetary History of the United States, somewhere in my book collection. (And, I will admit that I did not read it cover-to-cover but I have skimmed through it.)

The late great Milton would agree with the contention of this commentator that the Federal Reserve does not, in fact, provide financial stability.

By law, the Fed has two goals, financial stability and maximum employment. Yet the long look at history says it has not achieved at least the first of these goals.

The Pros and Cons of ERP Systems

This is one of the best summary accounts I've ever seen on the wisdom and folly of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)system implementations. This one is going in my "keep it" file.

Salesforce Rallies

"Salesforce.com rallied in premarket trading on Friday, a day after the company reported second-quarter earnings that beat expectations. The company also raised its full-year outlook. On Friday, FBR upgraded the company to 'market perform' from 'underperform.' Shares gained 9.4 percent to $50.50 before the bell." CNBC Aug 21, 2009.

And the PE Ratio is now 104.5 - down from 106. Well, at least it's moving closer to Oracle's more realistic PE of 20. Only 84.5 points to go!

(Disclaimer - I use Salesforce's CRM system and it's very good software. I just don't understand the stratospheric PE. It's in Dot Bomb territory.)

Brilliant Theft of an Obama Icon

Recession in 1981-82

I'm starting to sound like a worn-out record (and my kids don't know what that means) but the 81-82 recession was a nasty sucker. If you want to know how nasty, check this out.

Wither Withholding

Since I was old enough to get a paycheck ("Who's this FICA guy and who said he could take my money?") I've been annoyed by the very practice of tax withholding from payroll checks. The very act of it diminishes the visibility of taxes - which is undoubtedly the reason it occurs. I suspect the actual history of the practice is lost in the dark past somewhere. Well, here's a good idea with an even better idea I'm stealing from someone else. Let's double down the thing and move tax collection day from April 15 to the first Monday in November.

'Nuff Said

Unemployment Today and In Years Gone By

This is today's unemployment numbers after a better-than-expected job loss number. I continue to tell people that 1981-82 unemployment was worse than this recession's but I get little respect for my opinion. I was there and it was. However, people always seem to be stuck in the psychological trap of extrapolating today into both the past and the future.

PE Ratio of 106?

My company is implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system from Salesforce.com. Salesforce is the leading hosted solution - maybe in the world - competing against the likes of Oracle and SAP in this space.

I like the system and investors should know what they invest in so I did a touch of research and found Salesforce.com has a PE ratio of 106. That's 1 ... 0 ... 6. Wow!

I'm going to have to do some serious research here. I haven't heard of a PE ratio like that since the early Amazon days. I wonder if it might be a candidate for short selling?

Now, to the correction?

S&P500 over 1,000. Nasdaq over 2,000. The Dow at 9286. If you listen to the financial media, they're convinced we're in the start of a boom. When everyone believes one thing then the other must be true. So, does the correction start now?