Hedge funds create jobs?

Um – hmmm…

These are just my first thoughts after a quick read~~

The title of the piece is written in a condescending way.  ” Just STFU and do your movies.”   Insulting.

The author brings up the two flops that Loeb complained about–and as George had stated, Loeb picks two flops and ignores the profitable movies. You can’t possibly think that you’re going to have hit after hit? Seriously? If one never takes a chance and puts stuff out there that may or may not do well at the box office, according to the public’s whim, then we’ll have what happened to the music industry. With the exception of Adele and the former Amy Winehouse, I can’t think of any new music that is being played on the radio that is worth a crap.

From the article:

But to be clear, and with job-creating growth in mind, if hedge funds didn’t exist we’d have to invent them

Um.. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think hedge funds invested in the movie industry when it was created. Folks used this thing called “cash” to form the studios and then they had this great idea to make some films and then ask people to pay to see them. Hedge fund investors don’t invest until there is a business going already. And Hedge funds have been known to fail themselves.

I found a history of hedge funds in investopedia.

More from the article:

It’s not broadly understood this way, but hedge fund billionaire John Paulson not only saved jobs, but the billions he earned surely created new ones.

Seriously? Where are those jobs, because there are an awful lot of people out of work for all the jobs created by Hedge Funds. /snark

For taking these risks, hedge funds are not only masterful job creators, they’re also paradoxically masterful job savers for their intrepid style telling others where and where not to go with their capital.

I think I’m going to be sick.

Let me get this straight–they create jobs by telling investors not to invest in a company that might create 100 jobs because….Company A looks better than Company B because Company A is willing to go without a union shop and pay people minimum wage….am I correct…?

Or…how about this–if you follow the “short selling” link, you see this:

Selling short is the opposite of going long. That is, short sellers make money if the stock goes down in price.

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Read that again–short sellers make money if the stock goes down.  Now I’m wondering if Loeb is short selling….or if someone he knows is short selling Sony stock?  An associate?  A relative?  Since Loeb actually owns the stock, it doesn’t appear that he is short selling, since the broker technically owns the stock in a short sale.  Gah.  The whole thing sounds like a scam.

I used to invest in stock back in the day.  I took an investment class in college, and I did quite well investing in emerging telecommunications technology.    But this was at the beginning of the metamorphosis I was going through, and I began to question the whole scheme because of stuff like the above.  I knew that I could not invest in companies that did not use Fair Trade practices or those that ran sweat shops,  or companies like Monsanto, etc.  The decision came to stop investing after losing $4,000 in Lucent Technologies, which had “facts” and “figures” that made it appear to be a good investment.  Turns out that it was not. 

Telling Sony to spin off the entertainment portion of its business is not creating jobs. Sorry, try another line of defense of the doubletalk.

PR Watch

…has a few links up:

ALEC anniversary being celebrated in Chicago.  A few folks thought they’d drop by….

MOVIE SCREENING: On Wednesday, August 7, at 6 p.m. Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, and others will host a screening of the Bill Moyers documentary the “United States of ALEC” followed by a panel discussion. The screening will be held at the University Center, 525 South State Street in Chicago.

RALLY: At noon on Thursday, August 8, a coalition of groups, spearheaded by the Chicago Federation of Labor, is calling on people to gather outside the ALEC conference at the Palmer House Hotel, located at 17 East Monroe Street for a march and rally. You can tell them you are coming here.

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ALEC, Big Oil, and Big Ag…

 

ALEC and low wages…

 

Public Television pulls funding for documentary on the Kochs…because the Kochs are million dollar contributors.   Selling their soul doesn’t come cheap, you know…

 

 

Teaching, for real…

I think that everyone who proclaims to know how to teach and more importantly, knows what we need to *cough* fix education should be required to teach for an entire school year.  Absolutely.

…but then, the poor  kids they would be in charge of would lose an entire school year of education…and they’d be worse off than before.

Art Speaks

Faith Ringgold has used art to express her feelings during the 60s Civil Rights protests/riots.  I love the storytelling aspect of quilts and especially the artsy ones, such as Ringgold’s.

Quilts were ingeniously used in the underground railroad to help slaves escape. …or so I thought…now historians are disputing that.  Here is a blog on the controversy.    It is kind of weird talking about yourself in the third person in this way–why not just explain who you are and why you wrote this book?  Anyway, he does have good points about the stories behind quilts.  A commenter said that crazy quilts–quilts that are put together using cloth scraps–were not around when the underground railroad was in force.  But I question that because slaves would have had to use scraps to put together quilts–they would not have had the funds to purchase new cloth to sew with, so it makes sense to me that crazy quilts would have been in use.

More here on the controversy.  A really good page on the history….and if anyone had any doubts that history is subjective, this page will remove that doubt.

These times were steeped in storytelling, so it would not surprise me to learn that quilters wove stories into their quilts.  And then some may not–artistic expression is highly individualistic–different mediums for different folks.

Anyway, I learned something today.  Hope you did, too.

On the Edumucation Front…

Well, folks, the Bush family just keeps on giving and giving….

…what exactly they’re giving (perhaps the word is *taking*)  is open to debate…

Diane Ravitch has a blog up on the Jeb Bush Miracle .  *cough*

Florida school grades released today are “worse than useless measures of educational quality,” according to a local expert on assessment. Bob Schaeffer, Pubic Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), explained, “Based largely on scores from the low quality FCAT exam, state officials change the grading formula each year to serve their political agendas.”

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National Center for Fair and Open Testing

Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
cell (239) 699-0468

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And more here on those Lazy Teachers.  Really?  And how many hours have you spent in a classroom?  Or with your own children reading to them or playing with them or asking them about the lessons they learned in school that day….?  Methinks thou art a phony…

The garden

The garden gate swings open, beckoning me to walk the smooth stone path that is laid out.

I take off my shoes before entering the garden…a nudge to show respect from the gentle wind.

The stones feel cool under my feet with moss rebels poking up between them.

The sun is just coming up over the horizon.  It’s alighting on plant leaves that welcome the warmth.

Trumpet vines cling to trees, beckoning hummingbirds to a feast.  Ferns’ fingers lift up from the Earth, hiding their companions of nature.

A cardinal sings its song before becoming aware of the intruder…

I sit in quiet.

 

 

 

 

A Hard Day’s Night

(PERSONAL BLOG)

I usually like to listen to smooth classical music on Sunday morning as a quiet and meditative state.  So…I turned on the boom box radio to pop in the Bach CD I have, and the radio was playing “A Hard Day’s Night”….

Well, now, who am I to resist rocking that?  :p

It turns out they were having a Beatles Sunday at the station, so, naturally, I was obligated to listen to a few more tunes and one of my favorites, “Let It Be” came on.  I read somewhere that Paul McCartney wrote that song after his mother, who had passed, came to him in a dream.  He was struggling with an issue, and her words were “Let it be…”  Wonderful.