Bloodied, Unbowed, and Last Seen...

How life slams us. Dick Diver, the protagonist in Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night," is last seen practicing medicine in upstate New York, having lost his wife and children to another man in Europe. He no longer returns letters or has contact with the world he once knew

"In any case he is almost certainly in that section of the country, in one town or another," the novel ends. I think it more perfect than Fitzgerald's iconic coda in Gatsby.

Trapped on this island jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, the next stop Ireland, I have come to the conclusion that serious matters are best left to those who answer letters and engage in give and take, not Nobelists who complain that if the powers that be would only listen to me all would be better. But, hey, it's a free country. Error is truly a marker of my judgment. In spite of my black eye and tender other parts, the path for economic gain has been clearly laid. Rick Wagoner's dismissal at GM tells us who is in charge, the duly elected representatives of the U.S.A (and I have a soft spot for guys like Wagoner who, like me, didn't realize the rules had changed; I couldn't block in a football game now without my hands held to my chest).

Miss Market is having her way. The only direction is up. Youth must be served. Let the animal spirits of our offspring prevail, as surely they will. Softball season is upon us. Young ladies with leather gloves and hope in their hearts can only inspire.

Stick with F, DXO, AMD and PALM. Your children will love you no matter what town or another you end up in.

Lenin Is Relevant

Of course, many unpredictable things can happen, but straws in the wind suggest that life goes on -- existing and new home sales data, bullish talk from chastened banks, Obama's grace under pressure, inflation rising.

The short sellers and Rush Limbaughs cheering for failure might have to return to shouting about the nation's moral shortcomings and forget the apocalyptic economic rants.

I know, perhaps instead of straws in the wind, I am grasping at straws. After all, I once thought the market bottom was in November! So my imagination may be just that.

However, optimist that I am, I prefer to believe that the next shot is hitting the green from 200 yards out and putting for birdie. I base this on the evidence that stimulus in the pipeline and the economic data point to earnings gains and higher equity prices this year.

Mr. Geithner, the Treasury secretary is wrong, saying today the market cannot handle the crisis. No, the market will solve the problem. What he really means is the market's terrible swift sword would tear such gaping holes in the social fabric that a world lit only by fire would result.

Distasteful as it may be in some quarters, government must intervene aggressively to keep those who would let the market work its "magic" from losing their shirts, not to mention their heads. It's called saving capitalism from itself. Joseph Schumpeter (the economist of "creative destruction" fame) thought it couldn't survive.

Lenin's strategy of accentuating contradictions, i.e., things must get worse before they get better, works for Bolsheviks, but it only leads to dropping those who have the most to lose on the ash heap not only of history but a foreclosed McMansion.

Sticking with PALM, AMD and F, despite the Sooners' demise (OU held the Tar Heels to well below their average point total but still couldn't score themselves!). Oh well, it's just a game and I'm aiming for the green and replicating Woods' miraculous touch with the putter.

Turn, Turn, Turn

I awake in trepidation. Paul Krugman's devastating critique of the Geithner plan to carve away the rot from the uncured ham has had its effect. Here's a pretty smart guy, and a card-carrying nemesis of the Republican nay-sayers, declaring it won't work.

Beacoup bucks were created for my portfolio yesterday by the market's decision that stocks should be valued higher, but I would argue that it had less to do with the Treasury's scheme for cleaning up the oil spill than news that existing home sales surged. By hook or crook, the oil will be skimmed from the shore, though many a seal may perish. But animal spirits are reviving. We mourn the victims but reproduce nonetheless.

Ecclesiastes tells us that to everything there is a season, a time for love, a time for hate. As far as Miss Market is concerned, it is time for the former. It will be a messy affair, replete with break-ups and make-ups, but the time to hate will come soon enough, when inflation soars and the fall in purchasing power inflicts its damage on folks like me in the middle.

Put your unemployment insurance check in the market today. Still bullish on commodities (oil, silver) and tech names (PALM, AMD) and one manufacturing name (F). Caveat: I also pick OU to win in Detroit.

The tulips are sprouting

Is it divine ordinance that the existential philosophers I (a cleric-ridden Roman Catholic) admire so much are Protestants? Take Kierkegaard. The freedom from papist conformity of his religious thought conjoined with the notion that this world will only cut you off at the knees is bracing. Bow to no one, knowing at the same time you must bow when you're knee-capped by the blow sure to come, inspires me more than any statue of the Madonna (as much as I appeal to her daily for help).

No, the Lutherans, monarchists and Swiss bankers have a point. Which is, all is pointless, except for picking a winning bracket in the NCAA basketball tournament.

Romantic that I am, I marked teams that have no chance for great glory in this madness that assaults us in March, just as the northern hemisphere is breaking free of the cold and the damp, tilting its axis toward the life-giving sun. I long for summer, sad at the same time because I know it must die.

Is there any finer sentence in the English language that begins, "I have an old friend who..." ? I have learned few things in my silly journey through this vale of tears, but one of them is that someone else always knows more than I do, be it in the realm of stock picking, tennis strategy, golf swing, love, or basketball picks.

Prediction: OU beats Memphis in the national championship game. (Blake Griffin already has 18 points and eight rebounds in the first half against Morgan State).

Good luck to all in this season of hope. Baseball is next.

Gimme Audacity

President Obama instructed Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner today to attempt to extract the bonuses from AIG executives who sank this pivotal firm, requiring the United States of America to prop it up to prevent cataclysmic damage to the financial system of the globe.

This is hardly overreach. Roosevelt, when confronted with a Supreme Court that struck down the National Recovery Administration, proposed to "pack" the court by increasing its membership so that he could gain a majority. He lost, but he didn't stand idly by while the economic royalists tried to skim the cream and leave us all at the mercy of Miss Market.

Isn't this why we have lawyers? You have a dispute? Let's have it out in front of a judge and a jury. Surely a reasonably competent litigator could thwart these credit default swap creators.

Larry Summers was pitiful on the Sunday talk shows. Nation of laws and contracts and all that. OK, take it to court, old sport, and we'll see who's right. Man up.

Couldn't Geithner have seen this coming when he caved to AIG's "contractual obligation" argument? Prediction: Mr. Geithner, as able as he may be, will be gone before the year is out if he doesn't get the dough back.

The Bonus Army

Get ready for the adjective "outrageous" to be uttered far and abroad in the wake of news that AIG will pay $450 million in bonuses to the very group of guys and gals who forced the United States of America to take what amounts to an 80% stake in the house of cards.

But it's not AIG that one should be furious with. By now we should be over it. It's the gutless fellows who should be looking out for the shareholders (us, more or less) that have me in a boil.

How laughable. If Geithner and Summers had any gumption (after all, the taxpayer owns AIG), they would have called CEO Liddy's bluff and said sue us if you think you are contractually obligated to pay for failure, and we'll see what happens. I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me you'd have a pretty good hand in this poker game.

Not to go all biblical, but can we get some guys to chase the money changers out of the temple and quit backing down? This appears to be a case that if you owe the bank (the United States of America) a gazillion dollars, you own the bank.

Man up, fellows, or the Don't Tread on Me flags will be flying in the streets.

Stuck in the middle

I suppose I could take my dirty socks and underwear and beat them on a rock at the Gowanus Canal, but the wash and fold place across the street seems a better alternative for 10 bucks.

We all rely on middle men. The bartender who pours our drink. The waitress who brings us our bacon and eggs. The newspaper boy who tosses our birdcage liner. The lawyer who pleads our case. The immigrant who sells us our roses for our darlings on Valentine’s Day. The layabout blogger who thinks great thoughts for mass consumption while dreaming up a new golf swing.

All deliver a service that we could surely do on our own but don’t have the time or inclination to undertake.

Bernie Madoff, however, is the ultimate middle man. He will sleep the sleep of the righteous in a tax-paid pad and probably live to 100 and be released from some iron-pumping federal penitentiary with a physique we 50-somethings on the outside would envy.

You can’t hang the guy. All he did was steal from the rich to give to the rich. Kind of a bizarro-world Robin Hood. In truth, he didn’t rob everyone. Lots of investors didn’t buy his pitch. But his phenomenal fraud does prove the theory that everything is connected to Kevin Bacon, a Madoff investor.

In the same sense, the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart colloquy on Comedy Central, shows that middle men make for great theater if nothing else. We quench our thirst for truth, knowledge and dough with entertainers like Cramer and Stewart and Madoff because we have more fun things to do (at least I do).

Stewart, who I’m sure is paid handsomely for his self-righteous smirks, was much too glib, as, ahem, some of us are wont to be. Cramer, as much as he rubs a lot of folks the wrong way, made a simple point, though he didn't articulate it clearly enough, which is: it's not a crime to be wrong. If you don't like his opinion, don't take it. Stewart could have made the same argument about the complicity of the media in enabling the influence of the Israeli lobby or spreading the canard about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Each man is the steward of his own wealth. To think that CNBC talking heads were responsible for abetting the meltdown in the financial markets is as silly as the stab-in-the back idea that revanchists favor when they ascribe failure to some sinister cabal, not human imperfection, miscalculation and greed.

Advice is just that, not a gun to your head.

Here on Gilligan's Island

To men of a certain age, the only true enduring philosophical question isn’t whether life is worth living, as Camus asserted. No, Sisyphus can push his rock up the hill all he wants and watch it roll down again as the gods assigned him to do through eternity. For me it’s Ginger vs. Mary Ann.

I have oscillated through the years. Mary Ann is cute as heck, mother of your children and safely in cash, but, gosh, I long for Ginger and the glamour of riches and a bull market. She woos me still, much as I try to resist. Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I’m just a man.

Miss Market, mischievous changeling that she is, has for the time being doffed her leather bodice and spiked hair for one of come-hither Ginger’s mermaid-like cocktail gowns and auburn bangs, not the gingham “at-the-hop” skirt and pig tails favored by perky Mary Ann.

Feckless Gilligan that I am, my heart is torn. Take what pleasures Ginger has showered on me for a day and retreat to the hut with Mary Ann, or stick with Ginger whose siren song promises more nights of greater passion on the beach?

The market’s impressive rally Tuesday has me inhaling great gulps of Ginger’s perfume. But, alas, I had abandoned Ginger on Monday, getting rid of every share of Citigroup at $1.05 only to see it rocket 38% the next day. The mean old Republican senators on the talk shows Sunday spooked me into thinking nationalization and the wipe-out of shareholders was only a matter of time.

Ben Bernanke scotched that idea Tuesday, and Vikram Pandit said Citibank was “profitable” the first two months of the year (albeit with taxpayers’ capital). Hey, if it’s so profitable why couldn’t it fling a few bucks to ESPN (owned by Disney) to get the early rounds of the Big East tournament on the tube, er, flat screen? Guess its sports sponsorship for the year is tied up with the New York Metropolitans baseball club.

Well, as we all acknowledge, life is not fair and every Irishman knows the world will break your heart sooner or later. I just hope Ginger is kind for a while. Otherwise, this Gilligan will revert to Maynard G. Krebs, cringing at the word “WORK!”

Divine Comedy

If Dante were writing today, he would tack a sign up at the intersection of Broad and Wall that says: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

But then, Dante has long gone to paradise to be united with Beatrice and doesn't need a Virgil to lead him around the circles of hell. We have our own Virgils these days -- economic indicators like retail sales data due out this week and all the asleep-at-the-wheel wise men (Greenspan, et al.) who thought that greed and corruption could be held in check by the self interest of the self-interested.

"Over here in this circle," they tell us, "is a long-dead pope and Bernie Madoff. In that one is a master of the universe who pocketed beaucoup dough and is still nodding to Rush Limbaugh's nonsense while the rest of us shop at Wal-Mart. "

Still, fiscal and monetary stimuli in the pipeline insure that animal spirits will revive before inflation kicks in (that's another story). Look to the horizon. The sooner Obama takes up the cudgel, resumes smoking and laughs at Republican obstructionism, the sooner final sales will revive. It will occur in the second half of 2009.

I was convinced the market bottom came in November. Or as the analysts and strategists on the sell side say when they're trying to save their jobs, I was right but my timing was off!

In any event, if Obama can get the the bank thing behind us (easier said than done, given the global repercussions of nationalization and interlocking debt arrangments that have made us all hostage), then the stimulus should do its work. My landlord and I are depending on it. In fact, got to cut a check to the guy now.

Ouch, Babe

Miss Market's bite is not playful.

I feel like the flabbergasted bulldog in Coolidge's poker-playing dogs painting, "Poker Sympathy." The poor son-of-a gun's four aces are spilling off the felt table and he is falling off his chair as some terrier with his front paws placed squarely behind his straight flush roars with derision as the collies, spaniels and labs seated around the men's club den yelp with tongues hanging out.

Citigroup is now a penny stock. Texas Tech soundly beat Kansas, which I thought was the peaking power in the Big 12, for crying out loud.

Is capitulation kaput? A bull since the November low, I bailed on several names last week, thinking this would be a sure sign that the market had bottomed and was poised to rise. But, as my college buddies will remember from a game we used to play when our senses were reeling from excess and much laughter, I have pulled a double-reverse dupe on myself and the rest of the American investing public, for which I apologize.

So I'm buying tomorrow in the hope that it resolves this mess once and for all. But in this bizarro world, look for payroll numbers to be better than expected and further stock market declines -- or maybe the opposite. In other words, I admit I don't have a clue, so I'm confining my bets to college basketball, about which I have nary a clue, as well, it turns out.

Sticking with PALM and AMD, taking the Musketeers of Xavier (love the nickname) at home against Dayton and giving the points.

Bottoms Up

All the financial sages and philosophers tell us that the probability of picking a market bottom, or top for that matter, is so low as to be foolish. But one must try because investing is really all about timing, just as inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.

Isn't buy and hold really market timing? The bet is that over a certain time horizon being invested in stocks will pay off. The problem now is that no one has a clue to what the horizon portends and one must eat and pay college tuition today. Given the bleak horizon and the exigencies of preserving wealth, the bears roar with increasing strength.

Picking the bottom is like a linebacker befuddled by a double-reverse, statue of liberty, hook-and-ladder play. If the ruse succeeds in scoring a touchdown, the linebacker will conclude that all is lost and the rout will continue. If the result is no gain, then confidence swells his steroidal sternum and he struts confidently on, only to be pancaked on the next play, a simple off-tackle burst by the halfback to the end zone.

Until the bears go three and out, this bullish linebacker (moi), trained to rely on fundamentals, is chastened. He thought stocks were cheap, but were they cheap for a reason?

Reason is the operative word. You might as well trust a palm reader than depend on lines on a chart. The only thing technical analysts can offer is that the trend will continue - until it doesn't.