Cody's Weekend Vittles: Random Thoughts on Buffett, Eli Manning, A Long-Haired Hippie, Miss America And More

Old man lying by the side of the road with the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load and the building scrape the sky,
Cold wind ripping down the allay at dawn and the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying by the side of the road with the daylight in his eyes.

Dont let it bring you down, its only castles burning,
Find someone whos turning, and you will come around. -- Neil Young

It's time now for another round of Weekend Vittles. Here's what I'll be frying up in my own head this weekend:

* Buffett's the best investor ever. I agree and have been saying that if you've got a five or ten year time horizon then it's a great time to be picking up some cheap stocks. I highlight why I like some big caps with clean balance sheets and tons of cash in this month's TheCodyReport including an update on Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Research In Motion (RIMM) and few others. That said, I'm very cynical about Buffett's moves since he bet $10 billion in hard cash from his Berkshire (BRK.A) monies and now needs us to bail out the very companies he invested in, Goldman (GS) and GE (GE). Something's rotten around here.

* I've been getting some credit from readers for catching some of the near-term moves in the stock market in my commentary. I'm just gonna remind readers again of the theory I developed after I closed my hedge fund last year to take this job: It's much easier to be bullish than long and much easier to be bearish than short. There's no P&L to punditry, whereas when you're actually trading/investing/bleeding in the market, the P&L is the only thing that counts. Let's keep it real, right?

* I read that Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability, Neel Kashkari, said this late last year, "I'm a free-market Republican" at an American Enterprise Institute conference, on September 19, just weeks before being granted control of doling out what's already ballooned to $2.25 trillion dollars of your and my hard-earned money.

Two thoughts - first, isn't the term "free-market Republican" an oxymoron? I don't know any Republicans who fight for the free markets. They might say they do, but then they vote for welfare for prescription drug users, prescription drug companies...oh, and that whole little dismantling of our the somewhat free-market financial rules and the rule of law that you and I had been following in this country for the last 70 years. Republicans who call themselves "Free-marketers" make those of us who actually believe in and fight for free-markets sick.

And second, do you believe that anybody who chooses to embrace either party's principles by even stating that they'd consider themselves one party or the other is actually going to be objective in how they dole out the power and money that they've been chartered with doling out? So we got a kid who's younger than me, a Republican Ivy-Leaguer from Goldman Sachs, in charge of fixing our financial system from scratch. Feeling better about the outlook for economy and the credit crisis now? No, not so much?

* Is Eli Manning going to be able to get Monday night's horrible play out of his head? He looked out of it mentally by the end of that game. And Plaxico Burress is an amazing talent, but what's with his emulating the T.O. 'tude and when he joked with the opposing team at the middle of a very important drive in the fourth quarter, I thought to myself -- no way the Giants gonna make this comeback. Act like a professional.

* It's gonna take some time to get used to, but I sure like my new iGoogle home page. More info at a glance is a good thing. Google's good at getting good info. Nice alliteration, Cody. And yes, Cody knows it's a sign of insanity when he refers to himself in the third person. Speaking of which, that long-haired hippie was on ABC's 20/20 last Friday night. You can see it here on YouTube.

* Why is that competing financial network across the river running an ad featuring their highest-profile personality saying that, in regards to the now $2.25 trillion bailout package, "No wonder it worked." Past tense? I hope this bail out works and I hope I look like an idiot for hating it and saying it's going to hurt our economy and our markets and our society are going to be hurt by taking $2.25 trillion and giving to same guys who created the crisis that we're all being hurt by. Somehow though, I tend to think this bailout package is a political dream come true, but a lay person's worst nightmare.

* For one reason alone, I know that all of us who are fighting against the government interventions and the redistribution of wealth inherent in them are RIGHT and those of you who want the government involved ever more are WRONG-- we are asking for nothing. You are forcing us to do something against our will.

Leaving us alone, not randomly, and to someone else's direct benefit, changing the rules that we've followed our whole lives -- that's all we're asking for. Leave us alone. You who want this government intervention are asking (with a gun from the government to back you up) for trillions of dollars and new rules. That ain't cool. It ain't right. It ain't ethical. It won't be virtuous.

* I'm going to be giving an "Investing 101" lesson to Miss America tonight on Happy Hour, explaining what a P/E multiple is and why it matters. I bet that'll really charm her!

* I have thirty-something Neil Young albums and probably have heard just about every song he's ever done (as he'd say it, they're all one song anyway). But lately I've not been listening to him much. It might be because my band Museum of the Horse is still struggling to recover from our lead singer's literally breaking his back by falling off his house chasing a squirrel a few years ago (he's in his sixties and is doing fine and nearing have a full recovery, believe it or not) and so we're not doing a bunch of NY covers lately. But I was feeling down, tired and mopey most nights this week so I'd turn on some sort of flavor of Neil on my stereos and iPods and sure enough...just like I used to say back in college when I'd first gotten into Neil -- you can't listen to Neil Young and not be in a better mood than you were before.