The Golden Egg

After a nice relaxing weekend, the first thing I see Monday morning is that oil is below the $60 price level and the futures are pointing to a positive opening today. BP said that it would resume shipping Prudhoe Bay oil and it seems Iran is prepared to discuss its nuclear program. The S&P, Dow and Nasdaq futures are all up this morning and ready for action.

The only thing that can reverse today’s upward trend is the housing report due out at 10:00am Eastern time. A larger than expected slowdown in housing sales could be confirmation for the market that the economy is slowing down. Signs of a slowing economy bring about talk of the “R” word. Speculation will run rampant that their may or may not be a recession looming on the horizon. Then, once again, we’ll be left to a bunch of senile old men, removed from reality to keep the economy rolling.

Look out here comes the soft landing. Like they say, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop. But I’m sure all the Feds men will get together and do the right thing. After all they’re appointed and not in any real danger of losing their jobs if they make any bad decisions. Even if they did lose their jobs, they’re never in any real danger of hard times like you or I. Theirs is the world of fat cats. Like their corporate executive friends, they will be taken care of quite nicely.

Speaking of corporate executives, are they getting fat lately or what? Seems like even when they mess up or post lower numbers they still get a high(er) bonus. Yet if my performance falters during the year, my bonus will be in the toilet. Even when these so called execs ultimately fail enough to be dismissed, check out the golden handshake they get on the way out the door. Do some research, you’ll see what I mean. We need to see performance based compensation. I’d love to see one of these execs lay it on the line and say, if I don’t perform I will not collect a penny in salary or bonus. At the very least no bonus will be fantastic. But we’ll never see that happen because they are only interested in themselves. They don’t care about us as shareholders, only themselves and what they get out of it. So next time you buy a company, think about whether the top execs are looking out for the shareholders, or their own pockets.