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Curtains
Another year draws to a close and those that are not yet caught up in the turmoil of the subprime mortgage scandal or related corporate governance issues are probably focused on revenues and earnings objectives for the coming quarter. It never ceases to amaze me how many managers plead innocence publicly prior to knowing the facts and especially before claiming ignorance as they beg for forgiveness when the shit hits the fan because a few investors actually bothered to read between the lines as they picked up on sub-par decisions embedded for eternity on the balance sheet that the CEO signed off just weeks earlier. Am I referring to any company in particular? Perhaps… Do I have some sort of conflict with certain management teams that believe that they are above the law. Nay, nay for their day is nigh.
Yes, the shortfall in forecasted ROI has struck me too… How can the large, multi-national organizations that claim to spend so much effort getting things right make such ridiculous miscalculations with our money? We investors need to be vigilant and show our support for those doing the right thing. We investors need to reduce the pompousness at the board level and dig into the virtues of the truly great managers in order to pull out some sanity and coach our teams to do the right thing. Come clean say you?
Do the right thing and you are clean say I.
OK, you got me… perhaps that diatribe was a bit o’er the top but this is my official end of the year cautionary note – you ain’t seen nothing yet folks… the subprime beast shall rear its ugly head in the coming months (errr years) and we will all get a taste of how badly this calamity has affected the companies we invested in when the Q4 numbers are released. I have already looked into the crystal ball my friends… it ain’t pretty.
Anyone care to set up a pool and take bets on which giants of industry will be the next to tumble? How about a bank… If there were a pool, I’d place my money on UBS, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch not necessarily in that order.