YOUR OWN CLIPPING SERVICE
In the old days, it worked like this. (Really, it did.) Your company – or, if you were an author or
a movie star, your publisher or
Paramount – would pay a monthly retainer to a clipping service
that subscribed to virtually all the newspapers and magazines in the land. Those services employed little old ladies
(one assumes) to read it all and snip any mention of you or your company
or its products. To those snipped out
clippings would be affixed a little label with the name of the newspaper in which it had appeared and the
date . . . and each week a stack of clippings would appear in your mail and the mail of all their other clients. Now, you just click here and get it all free and instantly
as it happens. (If you were on TV, a
company would call you and offer to sell you an audio recording it had
made. Today, you just TiVo it.)
WMT
Douglas
Hutchison: “Shares of Wal-Mart have slid this week. Are you still bullish?”
F If we have an uneventful economy and markets – yes. But never forget that economic and financial
hard times recur periodically, so you should never borrow to invest in the
stock market, nor invest with money you might need in the next few years.
RELATIVE
VALUE
Joe Cherner: “Once again we find Pfizer and
Philip Morris with similar market caps, similar dividends, and similar
P/Es. One kills hundreds of thousands of
people a year and one cures hundreds of thousands of
people a year. Never underestimate the
power of addictive drugs.”
F When I consider how web boggle has taken over my life,
without even altering my body chemistry (so far as I can tell), I can only
begin to imagine what a curse a real addiction is like.
A POSITIVELY
GRAND TIME
Don Rudolph: “Please
read a copy of Class
War in America by Charles M. Kelly.
It should be required reading in every Economics classroom.”
F “The most appalling thing,” writes Amazon reviewer Robynne Williams, “is that the
book was published in 2000, BEFORE the installation of the most rapacious
Administration since the 19th century.” She
calls it a “superb and succinct account of the rise and rise of the
plutocracy.”
Comments another
Amazon reviewer, Jack Lohman: “Even as a life-long
Republican, I find it hard to disagree with many of the arguments in this
obviously Liberal writing. I highly recommend [it].”
Meanwhile . . . while you’re at it . . . consider Nickel
and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By
in America by Barbara Ehrenreich of the New York Times. In a Publisher’s
Weekly nutshell:
Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an
hour, [Ehrenreich] left behind her middle class life
as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop
computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a
time. In 1999 and 2000, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Key
West, Fla., as a cleaning woman and a nursing home aide in Portland,
Maine, and in a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis,
Minn. During the application
process, she faced routine drug tests and spurious "personality
tests"; once on the job, she endured constant surveillance and numbing
harangues over infractions like serving a second roll and butter. Beset by
transportation costs and high rents, she learned the tricks of the trade from
her co-workers, some of whom sleep in their cars, and many of whom work when
they're vexed by arthritis, back pain or worse, yet still manage small gestures
of kindness. Despite the advantages of her race, education, good health and
lack of children, Ehrenreich's income barely covered her month's expenses
in only one instance, when she worked seven days a week at two jobs (one of
which provided free meals) during the off-season in a vacation town. Delivering
a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those
caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times.
SAVE JULY 29
Turn your angst
into action? Click here
to find or host an event.