Why would the Chinese government, which so tightly controls the press and certainly had a say in “allowing” this picture to be published, put a picture out with the lead guy from the paramilitary having a big tear in the top of his mask? And look at the shape of the holes in the guy’s mask behind him — they look like a kindergarten-er took a pair of scissors to black pillow case or something.

Just askin’.

After running three different blogs, writing thousands of articles for TheStreet.com, building the RevolutioNetwork and its sister sites — I’ve learned a lot over the years about how to control my sites rankings on the major search engines.  There’s no crazy science (or art for that matter) to SEO, or search engine optimization.  Here’s an email back and forth from my friend Jack Rose, who is the son of one Mitch Rose from CAA’s music division.

Hi Cody,
As I think my dad told you, my two friends and I have a small website blog about technology. We are very small, and, since your websites have done well, I was wondering if you could give me a little advice on how to get more hits for my site. For example, how would I get my site, fathomfruit.com, to come up on Google if someone searched something like iPhone 3G review?

Thanks a lot. I would appreciate any help that you might give me,

Jack Rose

=

Don’t you love the poetry of how my printing the email back and forth from Jack accomplishes what I told I’d accomplish in the email back and forth?  Do take a look at their site — amazing what a kid who just had his bar mitzvah can do with a little elbow grease and passion in 2008.   Rock on indeed, Jackola!

Though I’m not much of a sports fan per se these days, I still have stacks of Sports Illustrateds from the 1970s and 80s in my closet.  Many of them don’t even have all the great pictures cut out of them.  I used to love SI’s “This Week’s Sign That the Apocalypse Is Upon Us” series.  I don’t even know if they have them any more — I only read SI when I fly.

At any rate, this week’s sign that the financial apocalypse is upon us:

PRE-PAID DEBIT CARD + SOCIAL NETWORKING = FACECARD
A NEW PREPAID DEBIT AND GIFT CARD AIMED AT MILLENNIALS AND GEN Y PLUS: CHANEL’S “MOBILE ART” EXHIBIT

Facecard , launched by edo Interactive and Mastercard, is a new prepaid debit and gift card aimed at Gen Ys and Millennials. Like other prepaid debit cards it appeals to parents who want to introduce their tweens and teens to spending freedom while also teaching them financial responsibility (with the benefit of protection: there is no possibility to rack up overdraw charges with a prepaid card). However, for this plugged in group, facecard’s unique draw is its online social networking component.

Crucial to connecting with young people today, facecard has a multiplatform approach that merges online, mobile and real world. Accounts can be managed via the website, by mobile phone or at the good ol’ brick and mortar bank. When money is transferred to an account it is available within 15 minutes - that means that kids can call their parents from the mall and have money on their card before they leave the dressing room. Additionally, facecard has uploaded a fun amateur-style informational video on YouTube and they have a flickr page showing pictures of their street team at this year’s Bannaroo music festival. If that’s not cool enough, they’re philanthropic as well! They partnered with the Bannaroo to donate $10,000 to StopGlobalWarming.org.

I got all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that these guys can help Gen Yers whose parents want to “introduce… to spending freedom while also teaching them financial responsibility”.  Yeah, if only my Mom and Pop had gotten me a prepaid credit card that donates money to greenwashed websites — then I’d know financial responsibility.  And here all these years I’d been thinking that it was the saving half of every pay check as I worked from the age of 6 to 15 for my father as a kennel boy (Yeah, that was my real title. And I took pride in it.  Still do, as a matter of fact.  Indeed, I just got the title for this post, didn’t I?).

As I read the tragic Catch-22 Flip Its that surround how best to go after the Sudanese leadership that’s at minimum complacent of the atrocities going on in Darfur – if the international courts accuse him of war crimes then what’s he got to lose by being a war criminal until he gets caught vs. the alternative of doing nothing as hundreds of thousands die - I keep coming back to the only solution I think can help either in the long run or even in the short run: get investment capital into the region.

Yes, I’m serious. How best to get security into the Sudan? Put American dollars at risk. And not government dollars. And we don’t even need any incentives other than the good ol’ profit-seeking investments incentives. There’s oil in them hills. There’s all kinds of natural resources and valuable land and people there that we can invest in. We have a shortage of natural resources – globally, right?

My proposal: why don’t we create a no-red-tape status for investing in the Sudan. Yes, as I’ve said before, we need to Flip the divestment movement that’s keeping capital out of Sudan entirely on its head and PROMOTE INVESTMENT into the Sudanese areas. Isolation begets genocide. Investment begets prosperity.

Let’s not create tax-credits or write-off credits or carbon credits or any of the other nonsense that the corporations typically use their Democrat and Republican cronies when it comes to “promoting investment”. Rather, I propose a true free market for capital that goes to the Sudan. No red tape, no restrictions. Just let us invest there as easily as if it’s, say, Delaware (I’m serious…declare Sudanese a monetary-equivalent of the US’ most tax-friendly statehood)…and we will…and the Sudanese will eventually have some peace and upward mobility as the world will be tapping yet another new source of oil and metals and other commodities to change the current shortage to a full on glut sooner rather than later.

Which would mean more food for everybody, including those hungry souls in the Sudan who need our help, our capital, our technology…virtuous cycles can come out of the vicious that exist.

Long time readers of mine know that I rail against charting as an trading too.  Money management tool, ok, maybe but put simply, I don’t think capitalism is designed to reward people for drawing lines on stock charts over time.  Making money is never that easy.

But that’s not to say that charts don’t have their value.  Let’s run through some energy- and oil-related charts:

Oil Demand from China:

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To the moon, I tell ya.  How about the price of oil:

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And oil stocks, wonder what they’ve been doing in this environment:

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Yup, all those charts are straight up for the last few years.  My question is why do investors and analysts take those charts and extrapolate an endless future of straight up for what has been a very cyclical industry for the full 150 years it’s been around.

Oh,  I hear ya — it’s different this time in the 21st century.  Demand growth from China and India have changed the equation of supply and demand forever.  Or not.

I heard the same arguments about how the demand for broadband and new services had changed things forever in the telecom industry back a decade ago.  When investors and analysts took those straight up charts for anything related to telecom and extrapolated those trends out to forever.  An endless future of straight up…or so they hoped at the time.  Let’s review a few of those charts from telecom’s hey day when people who questioned the endless boom were tarred and feathered as idiots…you know, sorta like those of us who question the endless energy boom of today:

And the Internet’s share of “music channels” (which begs the question if anybody even knows what a “music channel” is today…which begs the question of which carbon scam will be unrecognizable in five years…hopefully all of ‘em and ethanol too!):

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Telecom was gonna boom forever in Canada too:

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And of course, we were all gonna double our Internet usage every few months into eternity:

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And telecom stocks, yeah, they were gonna go higher forever:

Except they didn’t, because even though usage of the Internet continued to grow secularly and steadily, even accelerating again of late as we all consume ever more video over the Internet, there was so much supply that came on from all the capital that flowed into the industry.   The assets and value from the sunk supply that came online as the money in the industry sloshed around and put in new infrastructure, swamped even the steadily growing demand for telecom services.  And the bubble popped and anybody who thought it was different this time lost their shirt.

I’m not saying the same thing is gonna happy in oil…wait, yes I am. I am saying the same thing that happened to the pure commodity of bandwidth will happen to the pure commodity of energy.

All shortages are followed by gluts.  Especially in pure commodities.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr Seuss

I’m just not myself right now. One of the main symptoms of Lyme Disease is lethargy. One of the side effects of daily IV injections of the antibiotic Ceftriaxone is lethargy. But after two full weeks of sitting on the sidelines – basically the first time I’ve ever taken sick days in my career that I can recall – I came into work Monday, with adrenalin flowing. That adrenalin and the psychology surrounding it carried me midway through the week.

But lemme tell ya, it took just about everything I had to get through this week of work. Thursday afternoon I hit a wall and became emotionally and physically exhausted.

The bartenders and crew at Happy Hour teased me Thursday evening about how scared they were to see me on caffeine when I ordered a Coke instead of my usual ginger ale at the Bull & Bear. I usually have a cup of coffee in the morning and half a coke at lunch. But I’m a guy who considers six hours of sleep a full night’s worth, and I typically stay away from caffeine after 4pm. However, the crew needn’t have worried about me bounding over the bar this week or next – at least not until I get this tube out of my left arm’s bicep vein and don’t have to pump these liquids into my system anymore. I’m just not myself right now.

On a related note, I will note how relieved I am that my face is mostly back to working normally again. I’ve now got about 95% control of the right side of my face, up from about 20% just a couple short weeks ago. Everybody who’s had a friend or relative who’s had Bell’s Palsy assured me that it’d be sure to go away after a couple months. But I tell ya’, it’s scary when it’s happening to you and your face just doesn’t work. (How remarkable my Bell’s has faded much more quickly.)

Indeed, with my limited ability to pronunciate my F’s clearly (whenever my mom would tell me my face was better during the couple weeks the Bell’s Palsy was in control, I told her to let me know when I could say “I’m a freak” without sounding like a freak…) and the stares that I’d get anytime I would gather up the energy to venture into the public, along with the un-Cody-like utter lack of energy I’ve had, I’ve sort of felt like I’ve been living in someone else’s skin. A lot of folks have noted how much I’ve looked like Two-Face from Batman. They had no idea on how many levels they’ve been right. I’ve just not been myself.

Being myself though, I’m feeling guilty for having fallen behind in answering what’s hundreds of emails from friends and family and viewers and readers who reached out to me during my illness when I simply couldn’t muster the energy to read all my emails, much less answer them. Sorry if I’ve left you hanging. I’ll get caught up when I’m actually done with these treatments and thusly this disease.

That’ll be in another couple weeks, as I’ve got a feeling that since I could barely get out of bed this morning to for a short ride with Lobo, that this week will be much like last week, when I rushed home each night from the show to do my treatments and collapse for the night.

Speaking of which, I think this body that Cody is indeed stuck living inside of right now demands that I do just that – collapse.

Just be who you are, right, Cody?

Oh, you were asking me? Yes, just be yourself. I mean, just be myself and take care of yourself.  Er, myself.  Somebody help.  You can only help yourself.

Collapse for now. But like I said – I’ll be back more than full speed when all this is all said and done.

I’ve long called the iPhone, the iTrojanHorse.  Since Apple’s basically delivered an iMiniMacBookPro for your pocket, and since you can talk on your MacBookPro using VoIP technologies like Skype and Vonage…what’s to stop iPhone users from bypassing the cell networks almost entirely as WiFi becomes ever more ubiquitous?

It’s not as if Apple’s not Trojan Horsed a major partner of theirs before, after all.  Remember when it looked like Steve Jobs was going to start licensing iTunes to other handset makers?  Remember the Motorola ROKR: The Motorola ROKR E1 (pronounced /ˈrɒkɚ/ “rocker“) is the first mobile phone to be integrated with Apple Inc.’s iTunes music player. It was launched on September 7, 2005 during a special media-only event by Apple in San Francisco, California.

How’d that partnership work out for Apple and Motorola subsequent to the rollout of the ROKR before Apple truly Trojan Horsed Motorola and rolled out their own handset (the iPhone!) just a couple years later after getting all that expertise and those lessons from their “partner” Motorola.  AAPL is up 250% since then.   Motorola, down 60% plus.

Ya think there’s anger from Motorola at Apple?  Sour grapes for sour Apples.

And the upshot of this analysis of course, is that you should stick with AAPL the stock, because these guys know how to win.  And that’s what you like when you look for a long-term investment, after all.

Enough with the lies, already. The lies! Aurgh.

I mean, do you really, even for one second, believe that the losses on Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s $5 trillion portfolio that consists mostly of the highest risk mortgages (their very charter is to facilitate flow of such mortgages) — do you really believe that the total losses on that portfolio in the next couple years is going to be $25 billion?

$5 trillion in mortgages. $25 billion in losses. Dude, Citigroup wrote down $18 billion IN ONE QUARTER. $25 billion is what the government, WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION of how they got those numbers except that they spoke to a bunch of people who might or might not have a clue, is what the government says will be the most likely loss that you and I will have to pay for. Yup, the socialist Republicans and Democrats in power and their Illuminati conspiracy have got the mainstream media bothering to report that $25 billion lie of an estimate as if it’s relevant to reality. And boy, has the MSM ever bought into it:

Cost of Loan Bailout, if Needed, Could Be $25 Billion
New York Times, United States - 15 hours ago
Most immediately, the $25 billion cost estimate provides a precise amount that Congress will have to offset with spending cuts or tax increases if lawmakers …
Fannie, Freddie Rescue May Cost $25 Billion, CBO Says (Update3) Bloomberg
Fannie, Freddie Bailout May Cost Up To $25 Billion CBS News
NPR - Bloomberg
all 2,555 news articles » FNM - FRE

Don’t be a sucker. The losses that we taxpayers will be hit with on this bail out are going to be much more than the 0.06% of the value of the $5 trillion we’re talking about that FRE and FNM have on their books. It’s going to cost you hundreds of billions and perhaps trillions.

Seriously, don’t be a sucker. They are lying to you.

PS. Did you know that there is not a single definition for the word “gullible” anywhere on the Internet. Go ahead and Google it. Check.

Fate comes a-knockin
Doors start lockin
Your old time connection
Change your direction
You aint gonna change it
Cant rearrange it
Cant stand the pain
When its all the same to you, my friend,

It’s the same old story, same old song and dance, my friend. — Aerosmith

I know, I know, I know — oil’s going to $1000 and will never see $30 again. This time it’s different. Really. 150 years of oil cycling up and then down, but this time it’s going to be different. We’re running out. China and India have growing demand, didn’t you hear!

Really, it’s not a bubble. It’s a no-brainer to invest in oil and energy in 2008, as this spam email that got through my gmail spam filter suggests:

Or then again…

as I told Altucher over the weekend, I can’t fathom a scenario in which people who are investing in oil and energy in 2008 are going to make big money in the next few years. They missed the move from $20 to $150. And now they’ll catch the move from $150 to $30. Blame the speculators on the way up. And then you all will forget about them when they lose all their money and capitulate on the way down. Don’t be an oil speculator — not because it’s bad for the economy or causing inflation (it’s not and it doesn’t), but because you’ll likely lose your ass.

Seriously, same old song and dance indeed. Don’t get burned by being aggressive in energy investments in 2008.

“The universe unfortunately has a way of course-correcting. You don’t do it because you choose to, you do it because you’re supposed to.” - Ms Hawking, Lost Episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes”

Yeah, I watched a lot of Lost during my forced rest and lethargic days the last couple weeks. I do believe it’s the best television in the history of the medium. And I don’t say that lightly, as I love me a lot of TV shows.

At any rate, let’s get on point here. I’ve been asked a variant of this email’s topic a lot over the last few years while I’ve been honored enough to write for the Financial Times and TheStreet.com while I was running money:

Mr Willard:

My name is Preston and I am 23 years old. I am interested in

getting into [the business of] the market/stocks. What is the first step I need to take?

Thank you for your time,

Preston

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It’s similar to the advice I always give anyone who asks me what they should do at a career crossroads - the success you’ll have is wholly contingent upon the day to day performance, the long term vision, and the execution thereupon. Go forward.

You want to come to Wall Street? Move here and get started. You want to trade stocks? The great part of this business is that they will pay you a lot of money very quickly to apprentice you if you’ll prove that doing so helps make them a lot of money. You wanna get into an Internet company? Oil company? Writer? Go forward and then you’ll have to deliver each and every day.

Anyone who’s succeeded in business will tell you about how many thousands of times they’ve done a certain task — personally, I’ve cleaned thousands of cages, shot thousands of free throws, run thousands of lines, steamed thousands of lattes, traded thousands of stocks, written thousands of articles…you get the point.

You’ll have to pay dues like sleeping under your desk, which I’ve done more than a few times in EVERY SINGLE JOB I’ve had since I moved to NYC. (Well, except now that I have to care if I look all rested as part of my job which is weird in a vain way or vain in a weird way. But that’s off point.) You’ll have to overcome setbacks. Like the one I’m overcoming right now with having found half my face frozen in place one day (basically mid-show on national TV, btw, which is brutal in an existential way or existential in a brutal way).

And this ain’t nothing to overcome, really, you know? It could have been so much worse. Which is part of the point of this post, as you do know if you’re paying attention.

As Andrew Lanyi, my first boss on Wall Street, whom I only met after faxing his office my resume and calling once a week for five weeks straight, used to say, “What business are we in? We’re in the results business.”

The universe is as self-correcting as your day to day actions make it.

And on that note, as you might have seen if you happened to catch Happy Hour tonight…I’m back. Moving forward, full speed even at about 90% health, which not coincidentally is reflective of the 90% right side facial muscle control I have. The good Dr. Seigel says my recovery has been shocking and I’m so thankful to him and his team for the quick response and treatment they’ve got me on.

I should be back 100% within another couple weeks, which means my new full speed is going to be even faster than what I used to call full speed (”These go to 11″, and since I just recently had a literal spinal tap, I’d be remiss not to use that one, huh?). I told you I couldn’t be stopped. Going forward is key. And executing again tomorrow.