Great Moments In Marketing

I must respectfully disagree with the conclusion drawn by my favorite vego-libertarian blogger WC Varones, I think this is a fantastic idea!

W.C. Varones Blog: Bad idea #214

And I'm not just saying that just because I really like tequila.

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Ford, GM, Chrysler All Pulling Together

Best commentary yet on the baillout of the Big Three.

Hat tip to WC Varones.

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Quote Of The Day

W.C. Varones Blog: Debate-watching thoughts

"I'd rather they run McCain's EKG on that ticker..."

-- Charlie McDanger, WC Varones' unindicted co-conspirator

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W.C. Varones Came To Bury Bill Miller, Not To Praise Him

As if being crushed by the vagaries of the market and skewered by the same media that used to fawn over him wasn't enough for Bill Miller and his beleaguered investment fund Legg Mason Value Trust wasn't enough, finance blogger W.C. Varones (who knows a thing or two about portfolio management, by the way) does a terrific hatchet job on Miller's performance.

W.C. Varones Blog: Bill Miller: a monkey and his typewriter

No matter how smart you are, the temptation to attribute personal factors to stochastic processes is almost impossible to resist. It's salutary to remember the story of the Russian aristocrat who played Russian Roulette over and over again, and each time the hammer fell on an empty cylinder. Ending the experiment, he concluded that he led a charmed life, and went for a ride in the woods, only to be killed and eaten by a pack of wolves.

Anyway, just go over to W.C. Varone's blog and chuckle over the abuse he heaps on Mr. Miller.

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Auto Credit is a Gong Show, Media Just Now Catching On

Fantastic post from WC Varones the other day, highlighting just how ridiculous automobile financing has become.

W.C. Varones Blog: W.C. Varones Blog's 2007 Man of the Year: the American Consumer

He's stubborn, stupid, and suicidal as a lemming.It's not just houses. Joe Six-pack has found a way to get into house-sized debt on a car:
When Jennifer and Bobby Post traded in their 2001 Chevy Suburban last year for a shiny new Ford F-350 turbo diesel with an extended cab, it seemed like a great deal. Even though they still owed $9,500 on their SUV after the trade-in value, they didn't have to put a penny down.
The dealership, near the Posts' home in Victorville, made it easy; it just added the old debt to the price of the new truck and gave the couple a seven-year, $44,276 loan.

I live in the middle of Oil Country. We're like the Texas of the Arctic Circle, and that means that this town is full of pickup trucks. Big, gas guzzling, chromed out pickup trucks with HEMIs and other redonkulasly large power plants, and all the aftermarket accessories.

It also means this town is full of dudes earning six figures who even so, are living paycheck to paycheck.

I'm not normally one for negativity, but when I see a $70K truck with two $3K quad ATV's strapped down in the back, my first thought isn't "Wow, he must be really doing well" it's "How much of that is financed?"

As I said on WC Varones' blog, a guy I know got into selling motor homes and RV's a few years ago. His best customers are oilfield workers from Newfoundland. They trade up every year or two to a bigger/better RV. I am not making this up. They're never concerned about the 30-40% thwack of depreciation they take when they trade in a barely used model, all they ever ask is "What will my payments be then, eh?"

You want to talk about "house-sized debt?" How about being upside down $50K on a motor home?

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WC Varones team member writes his congresswoman about inflation

Oh, and he's pissed. So much so that his points, while great, are pretty much unexcerptable.


WC Varones: Inflation - the fighting 10th's view

If this is my representative, and she claims to be Republican, then obviously we need a new party. How about the REAL CONSERVATIVES. Mr. Paul would you be available?

Just read the whole thing!

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WC Varones on Fox Business Channel

Really, there's not much more to add.

WC Varones: CNBC for Morons

If CNBC is too complicated for you, maybe business isn't your thing.

I can't imagine how Fox plans to come up with a business news channel even more dumbed down than CNBC. They must want to make Romper Room look like Louis Rukeyser's Wall $treet Week in comparison.

My best guess is that their strategy will involve even more monosyllabic words, and even more plunging necklines, which explains their strategic poaching of Liz Claman (pictured) from CNBC earlier this year.

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WC Varones on Tsardom

The ever-irascible WC Varones has serious issues with the appointment by the US Government of a Mortgage Czar.

WC Varones: Czar or Tsar? - that's my first question

SO we name all of our important enforcer positions czar. Does that seem a little strange? Why not kaiser, or how about fuhrer or maybe kahn. Why can’t we have a Drug Kahn and Mortgage Kaiser?

Don't forget that Tsar Nicky was a haemopheliac who was in constant danger of bleeding out.

As a financial metaphor I find it apt.

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Quote of the Day

WC Varones will doubtless get a kick out this:

"In a hot market, half the misfits and ne'er do wells you know go get their realtor licence. The other half become mortgage brokers. This time around it included like 2/3 of my wife's divorced women friends. I kept hearing how low my mortgage was and how I was wasting all that equity. Now I'm the one that looks smart." - one of my regular correspondents from California.

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WC Varones hits one out of the park again.

Prominent member of the West Coast Commentariat WC Varones' primary hobby horse in the last several months has been the subprime meltdown and the deepening housing crisis in the USA. His post last Saturday about the pickle that Countrywide Financial, a distressed lender, finds themselves in proves once more that satire is dead.

WC Varones Blog: New REIT

Thanks to the miracle of really stupid lending, Countrywide Financial is rapidly morphing from a mortgage lender to a residential real estate investment trust.

CFC now has $2.1 billion in foreclosed houses for sale. That's getting up there near the nation's largest home builders, whose business is to sell houses. They each carry $5 - $10 billion in inventory.

Will CFC surpass the home builders to become the nation's largest residential real estate owner? Time will tell -- if CFC can stay liquid that long.

Really, you can't make stuff like this up!

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U.N. Does Something Sensible, Follows WC Varones' Lead

More sensible, unfuzzy thinking about North America's misguided careening towards fuel crops from the cranky yet eminently sensible WC Varones.

U.N. plagiarizes W.C. Varones

Two months ago, we wrote that ethanol will destroy the environment

...


Now comes the U.N., never content to let five concise and complete paragraphs stand, to say the same thing in a 60-page paper.

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