Mortality

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” (W.B. Yeats, the Second Coming). Something stalks us, fellow boomers, and it isn't tryng to give us the comeback player of the year award. Popular culture contemporaries are checking out at a frightening clip.

Farrah Fawcett’s high point was as the pin-up girl at her most come-hitherest, despite her best efforts to grow into a serious actress. Michael Jackson’s impressive oeuvre came to be overshadowed by the bizarre personal life. Only Billy Mays’ entertaining sales pitches remain an authentic legacy, in our view. That’s all he did or apparently aspired to do. Here was a guy who could take his work, but not himself, seriously. Aged 62, 50, and 50, respectively.

“What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.” (Ecclesiastes, King James version).

(We are big on quoting better writers than ourselves today, one an Anglo-Irish poet contemplating the post-Great War world, the other some anonymous Israelite who concluded wisely that all is vanity).

We think these thinkers have something to offer the living who are still toiling, or playing, in Kev’s case, in the vineyards of this sporting life. Catastrophe and other minor setbacks lurk at every corner. Miss Market can look like Farrah Fawcett one day and Phyllis Diller the next, can do the moon walk then retreat to Neverland, can promise stain removal from your favorite shirt with OxiClean and you believe her.

We think this immortal is still on the side of the living. Durable goods orders and personal income data point to recovery, though the savings rate has soared compared to consumption. That transition could be wrenching, but is to be expected. Kev’s transition from genius to nitwit in baseball picks is similarly a shock, but not fatal. At least PALM keeps rewarding (forecasts of positive cash flow by year-end). F will survive. Still with NVAX but looking to take profits soon.

In the meantime, life treats us well. A beloved girl is a softball champion. The U.S. soccer team acquitted itself well in a valiant effort against the Brazilian juggernaut (though whoever passed out those plastic horns to the crowd should be brought up on charges)and Albert Pujols continues to amaze fans of the stumbling Redbirds.

It is hard enough to accept love handles as a fact of getting on in years when, in our heads, we remain 25, rich, witty and irresistible to all women, but the prospect of demise unsettles all but the sunniest of men. Saw a funny poster the other day: “My goal is to live forever. So far, so good.”

Here's Johnny

“I hold in my hands the envelopes. My 4 ½ year-old daughter Katherine Mary could tell that these envelopes are hermetically sealed. They’ve been kept in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch since noon today. NO ONE knows the answers inside these envelopes, but you, in your mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers without even knowing heretofore the questions. Isn’t that correct, sir?” (Ed McMahon, courtesy of a CNN video).

“May an incontinent yak spray your poppy fields with ayatollahs.” OK, I made that one up, mixing up all sorts of mysterious visitors from the mysterious East while channeling Johnny Carson.

Mr. McMahon has gone onto his eternal reward, another sign that we baby boomers are limping to the finish line. Seems like yesterday that Leno slid behind the desk, only to yield it to O’Brien. When will St. Peter welcome the rest of us? It is certain he will, hopefully far into the future.

Just as certain is failure on the golf course. Fan-favorite Mickelson, Come-back kid Duval and Ricky Bobby (nee Barnes) had a chance to claim the United States Open Championship at waterlogged Bethpage, only to fall short on a Monday blessed with sunshine now and then. At least they replenished their Vitamin D requirement, in short supply these days in old New York.

Rather than conquest, failure was the motif at the public course in Nassau County, or is it Suffolk? I live in Kings County, on the same sliver of turf jutting into the Atlantic, and, as insular as I am, remain ignorant of political boundaries. Mr. Glover, hitting fairways and making putts, was far more much in touch with the ground beneath him than Kev, whose muddy, horse-barn smelling sneakers are still drying out.

‘Twas a day to remember. Saw Tiger Woods, not that big of a guy really, in all his glory. If he hadn’t teed off early on Thursday, he probably would have won. We shouted Boomer Sooner to fellow son of old OU and British Open champion Todd Hamilton, who responded with the Tuck Fexas gesture that is treasured on Commerce and Elm Streets in Dallas in October while the swells live it up in the Adolphus Hotel and throw TVs out the windows. Saw the ferocious, yet calibrated, swing of Bubba. And from merrye olde England, Mr. Fisher acquitted himself well.

All of this meant a day away from Miss Market, who refuses to be charmed. Our delicate relationship is, well, delicate. As is Kev’s baseball picking ability. Blew three games last night, one on a walk-off home-run. Oh, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts! We will bounce back, of this Kev is sure.

More importantly, there’s a softball game tonight in Prospect Park. We’ll laugh if we triumph and do the same if we smell the camel breath. Kind of like McMahon.

Into Each Life

I believe the definition of par is the number of strokes an expert golfer requires to complete a hole. The par for a 72-hole tournament’s completion is four days, which may have to succumb to Mother Nature’s par for the skies of New York lo these many days.

Instead of delivering buttery bucketsful of sunshine, she has deemed it necessary to strap kegs of Poland Spring to the gray clouds. Our promising tan is fading, and the makers of sunblock lotion must be laying off thousands.

In the meantime, Mother Nature’s niece, Miss Market, must be obeyed as well. We cannot bend them to our will. Even Tiger Woods, 11 strokes off the lead after 36 holes as we write, must bow every now and then to the vagaries of nature.

Miss Market will increasingly inflict pain or rain riches according to the broad-brush data released every week. That’s because stock prices will more and more respond to news about the general health of the economy than the efforts at political jockeying on legislation. Change in financial sector regulation is a given, as is health care reform, deficit spending and money supply growth. Barking about reforms being too much or too little is quibbling. Too often, we seek the perfect at the expense of the possible. Recovery is baked in the cake.

Last week, the Conference Board reported that its index of leading economic indicators rose 1.2% in May, the second straight monthly increase. And the Philly Fed index rose to negative 2.2 in June from negative 22.6 in May, the best business condition in the Philadelphia region since September. New orders and shipments improved, as employment remained very weak. Those who still have jobs are running faster on the treadmill.

We will have to run a little faster this week to make up for the baseball picks last week. We picked the wrong day to take the Floridian fish over the pinstripers, the same day we foolishly believed the Coors Field tall boys would turn chilly against the plucky Bucs. Earlier, we put our faith again in young Vin Mazzaro of the Elephant patches against the old Brooklynites in southern California.

Mother Nature and Miss Market can be obstinate, but patience will bring them around. Stay long equities and oil, short bonds. The U.S. Open will crown a champion sooner or later. Here’s hoping it’s later, as Kev has a Thursday ticket good for Monday if they can’t finish today. Long shot investment tip of the week: Go long Duval, short Barnes.

Young Girls They Do Get Weary

One lesson Kev thinks he has finally learned as he approaches the turn to the home stretch is that you can’t tell people how to feel. Least of all Miss Market. Our pouting paramour will not succumb to sunny encouragement, snapping her feral fangs at the hand on her shoulder, laughing maniacally at such bromides as: “Hey, it’s not so bad,” or “Remember all the good times,” or “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover.”

You tell her that Pudge Rodriguez has now crouched behind the plate more times than Carlton Fisk and exhort her to do the same. You tell her that even the graceful, intricate – nay, beautiful – pitching motion of Tim Lincecum must lose a game now and then. To no avail. We must let her edge back to us in her own good time. Not helping her in this direction are the latest economic data.

Wholesale inflation was 0.2% in May. Higher energy prices offset a drop in food prices, according to the government. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy prices, fell 0.1%. At the retail level, inflation also rose just 0.1% last month.


Industrial production fell 1.1% in May to the lowest level in 11 years and is down 13.4% in the past year, the largest year-over-year decline since 1946. And capacity utilization fell to a record-low 68.3% last month, down from 69%. The Krugmanites have a point. This indicates much slack to be taken up before inflation becomes a problem, a condition much to be wished for.


Inflation and interest rates must rise to convince her she has pricing power again, but the mills of the gods grind slowly. We can’t tell her or anyone else how to feel.

Meanwhile (our fallback transition), stay with PALM. Much chatter about a takeover by industry giants looking for an avenue into the smart phone market. F still has value. Wait for GMGMQ to slip. Hoping NVAX catches fire again.

Wish I had taken the underdog Nationals against the pinstripers last night. Long Islander John Lannan outpitched the suspect Chien-Ming Wang, who nevertheless showed some gumption against the new “first in war, first in peace, last in the American (now National) league” team.

Tell Me You're Coming Back to Me

Is Miss Market a changeling, one of those offspring of elves and fairies that the wee folk exchange for human babies? Why, just the other day we danced merrily through a meadow of green shoots with her. But when the sun arose the next, we found a slain rabbit in our pot when we attempted to make our morning oatmeal. And there she was, tangled hair and pointed ears, hissing like Catwoman in a field of burnt straw.

Suspicions that the economic recovery on the horizon was a mirage were roused by the Empire State survey of manufacturing conducted by the New York Fed. The data showed a decline in May after two months of improvement. Oil prices fell, as did interest rates, the most recent fear of the financial press. These are not indicative of green shoots. Kev is of the opinion that rising commodity prices and higher interest rates should be cheered as a sign of acceleration in the real economy, not brakes on the recovery.

But the familiar arc of expansion and recession that has marked the post-war period has turned unfamiliar. That’s because the model has been revealed as a changeling as well. As the United States turns from consumption to saving, incomes decline as jobs vanish, which reinforces contraction and the great hunkering down. So despite all the reserves the Fed has pumped into the system, banks find fewer viable businesses to loan to. The liquidity trap is not a tender one.

Yet policy makers surely know this. The cleansing power of a collapse in economic activity and the erasure of iconic American enterprises some call for would be so great as to cut serious gashes in the cord that binds a society together. So Bernanke, et al., must keep pushing on the string, hoping that the trauma of change from consumption to saving doesn’t entirely dissolve the rope to which we are hanging by a thread. The effort of government spending and Fed largesse is aimed at supplying a parachute to slow the descent so the pilot can live to fly another day.

For the investor, this means rewiring the brain. Look for things “to begin stop worsening” as the Bank of Japan said was happening in its latest dispatch. Being nimble and not too greedy will be prized attributes. Waiting for GMGMQ, DXO (oil) and SLV (silver) to get cheap again, keeping PALM and F in the portfolio. Plaxico Burress and Michael Vick look as if they will get a second chance in the NFL soon. So shall we. Miss Market will comb her hair, don the cocktail dress and take our arm.

As we heard Jean Arthur say to Cary Grant the other night: “I’m hard to get, Jeff. All you have to do is ask.”

I'm a Loser

It was every Little Leaguer’s nightmare – failure most conspicuous. How many men in suits scurrying through the canyons of old New York carry the burden of losing the game as little boys because leather failed to secure the old spheroid? The ignominy must have led them to foist all those toxic assets on the unsuspecting masses.

Is Luis Castillo the new Marv Throneberry? Legend has it that Marv’s New York Metropolitan teammates threw him a birthday party in the clubhouse but didn’t give him a piece of cake because they were afraid he’d drop it. Renouncing his resolution not to go against the pinstripers at home, Kev had victory in his grasp as Mr. Castillo sidled under Mr. Clutch Alex Rodriguez’s pop fly with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. ‘Twas not to be. Two runs scored. Kev’s billfold asked “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

And how about Dwight Howard? He has become the bizzaro world Superman. Mr. Howard only had to make one of two free throws to put the game out of reach for the central Floridians. But no! as Howard Cosell used to interject during the half-time highlights on Monday Night football. One Lala land three-pointer and an overtime later, he of the glistening other-worldly shoulders was shrunk to a mere mortal.

Kev won’t speak for you, but he’s of the mind that we are all little boys. If Kev were Mr. Castillo or Mr. Howard, he would be crying like a 10-year-old who just struck out with the bases loaded or clanged the go-ahead free throw off the rim. But then again we are all odd fish. Failure makes some of us stronger, others of us despondent.

We want to castigate Mr. Castillo for his miscue that cost us greens fees this week, but can’t summon the nerve. He must feel bad enough.

Our cure for the “Mets”? Quit calling themselves the Mets. It smacks of the Cro-Magnon lumbering to extinction. They are the Metropolitans, lords of the universe, boulevardiers, bon vivants et raconteurs. Swagger, ye losers. After all, the pinstripers were pounding Mr. Rodriguez as if he had swatted it out of the park. Talk about a clutch “hit.” Some guys have all the luck.

Sentimental Journey

Our radio crackled nostalgically the other morning with the interference of electrical stuff in the ether on a showery morning in old New York. It reminded Kev that we inhabit an imperfect world. As much as we labor to bend the elements to our will, Zeus will hurl his lightning bolts while we wait out the storm in a west Texas college professor’s office, listening to KLBK dj’s spin “Sukiyaki” and “Hello Stranger” in between reports of tornado sightings.

Wait! Wake up, Kev, it’s not the spring of 1963. No need to cower in the civil defense-approved shelter. The storm is passing, but an eye toward the horizon is only prudent. All decisions, though based on the best information our senses and cerebellums decipher, can fall prey to the reptilian brain that sometimes overwhelms and incites us to do foolish things. This is the reason God made lawyers, bookies, bail bondsmen and fore caddies.

The latest dispatches from the data gatherers tell us that initial jobless claims declined in the latest week and retail sales and consumer sentiment rose last month. These latest green shoots are heartening if not concrete proof that things are on the mend. Who knows if some beetle or blight will devour the hopeful young?

This sporting life is a messy affair, but as long as the supply of chewing gum and duct tape holds out, we’ll muddle through. In other words, the recovery effort is a pastiche led by “experts” (Bernanke, Geithner, et al.) who purport to know something we don’t. Yet they and we serfs, as St. Paul said, are looking “through a glass darkly.”

But look we must, however clouded our view. Kev finally triumphed by going with the bloody ankles against the pinstripers, whose manager continues to refuse to think outside the box. Why not put Rivera on the mound in the 8th inning? The Bucs also put bucks in the pocket with a win over the well-fed Cox-led tomahawks.

How can you go against Halladay tonight in Toronto? Because interleague play is a different proposition. The Marlins get to use a DH and the 10-1 pitcher has to lose at some point. And how about taking the Athletics vs. the Giants, even though Lincecum is on the hill for the McCoveyites? Because young Vin Mazzaro (a green shoot?) has yet to give up a run in his two career starts. Jump on this kid.

However, long shots must be cashed in when they prevail. Got out of General Motors (GMGMQ) at $1.15 after buying at $0.88. We’ll look to get back in at a lower price.

Sticking with PALM (the Pre phone is a beauty, according to a friend who’s seen one), F and NVAX (The World Health Organization says there’s nowhere to hide from the swine flu).

Also considering a new business – opening a Zen putting school. See the ball, be the ball. No blindfolds, though.

Our Little Black Book

Every dog has its day. Hooted at as a malingerer by vengeful packs of yapping pinstriper fans, Carl Pavano pitched nine innings of shut-out ball to lead the Tribe over the Pale Hose last week and enrich Kev. And long spurned by her bitter once-burned suitors, Miss Market continues to tame the bears. Methinks they doth protest too much and will soon be checking their cell phone contacts for her number.

Yet we remain wary, knowing that the coquette has the capacity to lead us on and then pout when she doesn’t get her way. What could cause her to spurn us? Three things: geopolitical/terrorist catastrophe, economic indicators that refuse to validate what Bernanke and others perceive as the incipient recovery and the related discovery that stock prices are ahead of what the economy is promising. Well, I guess that’s two things really.

In any event, what matters in the short run for those with dough at stake is the news flow. Job growth should take a while, but stock prices expect that. Key this week will be Thursday’s release of retail sales data and Friday’s University of Michigan report on consumer sentiment for May. Expectations are that both will point to tentative revival. Also to be monitored is the blitz of U.S. Treasury auctions of notes. The yields necessary to sell them will affect the equity markets as much as the bond markets.

The great deflation-inflation debate is for another day. We’ll get to it eventually, but for now we’re concerned about profits to pay greens fees and Mr. Landlord.

Our darling, PALM, has taken a beating recently, though we’re still significantly in the black. Those wishing to take money off the table would be entirely justified. The Pre phone has been released and the battle with Apple and Research in Motion is joined. News is that Apple is cutting the price of the original iPhone to $99. Let’s get physical.

Brave souls who ventured with Kev into Novavax (NVAX) and GM (ticker is now GMGMQ), have been rewarded. If you bet the ranch on these two you would be considerably better off than if you left Summer Bird out of your trifecta box at Belmont. Both are up more than 30% since purchase May 1 and June 1, respectively. Ford is still a keeper.

But Kev picks losers as well. Sonnanstine pitches a superb game for the Rays tonight at the Yankee Stadium launching pad (NASA should consider blasting space probes to Pluto from home plate), but the homers, like the DJs used to say about the hits on AM radio, just keep on comin.’ I’m swearing off going against the pinstripers at home unless Harmon Killebrew, Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner and Jimmie Foxx are in the opposing line-up.

We Wax Poetic

Is the world too much with us? Wordsworth’s wonderful line resonates far beyond what the simple Anglo-Saxon words represent. They suggest a certain weariness, a sigh at the realization of the incessant to’ing and fro’ing that life demands. Yet, to and fro we must if we are to find profitable enterprises that will keep us to’ing and fro’ing for yet another day.

The nation’s employers continued to shed jobs at frightening levels, according to the Automatic Data Processing survey, suggesting Friday’s employment data from the United States Department of Labor will yield a number close to the consensus estimate of another 550,000 jobs lost in May. Expect renewed sightings of green shoots if the number comes in lower. A good sign – initial jobless claims were lower in the latest week.

Meanwhile, technicians espy hope in the S&P 500 moving above its 200-day moving average this week, a sign, so they say, that the path of least resistance is higher equity values. Speaking of which, Novavax (NVAX) soared 74% today on news that a study of its flu vaccine had begun under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health. If only Kev had bet the ranch! This could be a big winner or big loser and is not for the faint of heart. PALM continued its climb in anticipation of the Pre smart phone to go on sale Saturday.

But enough of serving mammon.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;…” (William Wordsworth)

Respite was found in the soggy turf of Dyker Beach, where carts were forbidden this morning and Kev and his companions walked 18 invigorating holes. A frisky squirrel investigated our ball on the fairway, and for several seconds Kev was sure the furry rascal would carry it away in expectation of a full day’s meal. Thankfully, he realized it was not edible and scampered as we approached with hybrid club in hand. And though the youthful two of our foursome were natural athletes who inspired heroic efforts on the part of the aging, the latter failed to break 100.

But the putting stroke has improved tremendously. Must have had four lip out after perfect reads today. Offsetting, though, was a nine on the fifteenth hole after reaching the rough just off the fringe in three and expecting to chip on and putt for par. Needless to say, disaster resulted. Can someone have the yips with a wedge?

Summertime

Put away the long pants, sweaters, windbreakers, hunched shoulders and sneering cynicism. Forget the calendar. Summer is here. Time to gorge on golf, bask in baseball, tone the tan, pick the ponies, tweak the tennis serve, pen poetry, marvel at Miss Market and indulge in any other alliterative activity that makes the heart soar and shoves the blues to another season. Fly me to the moon.

Scolds who wish the profligacy of the United States in recent decades will visit yet more plagues on the citizenry have seen their best days. They will be left behind, scowling and snorting about “kids these days” while the car stereos blare obnoxious “music” and the car companies, insolvent or not, jockey for position to provide a carapace for one man’s insistence to share his entertainment with the rest of the world walking by.

Auto sales last month were better than expected, even for GM. They were down year-on-year, but up significantly from April. Pending sales of existing homes ratcheted up for the third month in a row in April, according to the National Association of Realtors. Oil rebounded late to close a couple of pennies lower, but it’s fast closing in on $70 a barrel. China keeps growing. To feed itself it must.

Green shoots are showing buds if not flowering, though skies remain menacing. To come tomorrow is the ADP data on layoffs, and on Friday the May nonfarm payroll numbers from the United States Department of Labor will help clarify things.

The arguments for and against recovery are as contentious as the never-ending contretemps among pinstriper fans over whether Joba Chamberlain should start or be the setup man for Mariano. Will a collapsing dollar and rising interest rates sink the USA, or will fiscal and monetary stimuli restore American vigor? Both outcomes are plausible, but for now summer seduces me. Staying in equities and commodities, those things we use to build things, seems the more summery outlook. And we are nothing but summery now after seeing the promised land by breaking the sound barrier of 100 on the golf course.

In the meantime, got a tee time at Dyker Beach on Thursday. Anyone who would care to join me will see a new putting stroke perfected on the living room rug that insures birdies – that’s right, birdies, not par. It’s summer and the fish are jumpin’. Catch ‘em if you can.

See the USA in a Chevrolet

You can draw a direct line from the Declaration of Independence to Dinah Shore, who touted GM's most visible nameplate.

Walk through Prospect Park and trod the same ground George Washington skedaddled through in August of 1776 fleeing the British and Hessians who had routed the Continentals in the Battle of Long Island. Kev saw no red coats with muskets there this weekend, just red-shirted young ladies, fearless as only the young can be, playing a game with ball and bat that began in the young republic as something called rounders.

Little has changed in the game since the Knickerbockers played all comers at Elysian Fields in Hoboken. Well, ok, the mound has been lowered, the pitch count has become a much-watched statistic, gloves have become lengthier, and players’ bodies have swollen and shrunk with the ebb and flow of, ahem, B-12 injections. But it is still a kids’ game invested with the American dream of pastoral sublimity – a pastime without a clock, as the seven-hour, 25-inning collegiate affair between Texas and Boston College attested to.

In the meantime, though, the clock ticks in the world of striving and getting. Before you know it, the ground shifts under your feet and all the striving doesn’t result in any getting. The latest tremor is the reorganization of General Motors under the aegis of the taxpayer, but it is not a quake. Largely foreseen, the UAW and bondholders inevitably had to bow to the less-worse than the catastrophic. Proof of the inevitability is the blythe reaction of the stock market. Although four shares of GM will now secure a Big Mac (no fries or Coke), Miss Market cares not a whit and goes merrily on her way, gathering her rosebuds while she may. Just hope my dream of owning a new Corvette does not go aglimmering and I can live my own Tod and Buz Route 66 adventures.

As capricious a mistress as she is, she cannot help but respond to the soft summer cooing of newborn whippoorwills. It brings out the nurturing side of her. The latest song of hope comes from the purchasing managers survey (now the Institute for Supply Management). Its diffusion index rose to 42.8% in May from 40.1%. That still indicates contraction in the manufacturing sector, but not as steep as prognosticators thought. More importantly, the new orders sub-index, an indicator of future activity, rose above 50% for the first time in a year and a half.

Miss Market is also a Yankees’ fan, apparently. She giveth and taketh away. The Tribe let Kev down tonight, issuing too many walks to the pinstripers, giving its latter-day muderers’ row too many chances to rattle run-scoring doubles off the wall. Still have the Dodgers tonight, but Kuroda looks like he wants to issue free passes as well. Already 40-some odd pitches into the second inning, what looms?

Well, Washington escaped to Manhattan and lived to fight another day and father a country that lets us take all the time we need on grass and dirt with bat and ball and leather. The clock is clicking elsewhere. Stay invested in equities and commodities, shun government bonds, and enjoy the open road.