Microsoft Closing on Yahoo:

Microsoft's pursuit of Yahoo has taken another step to closing a deal to purchase Yahoo. (See The New York Times story.) Some fear this means a monopolistic strangle hold on computing by the software giant, but another possibility should be taken into consideration. Will this be an all or nothing gamble on the part of the computing company whose operating system name, Windows, has come to be synonymous with personal computing for the majority of computer users?

Yahoo has been a marginal company in recent years as Google has dominated the search and Yahoo's market plan to become a content supplier has been of questionable value.

Microsoft is hoping that Yahoo will increase their potential as a portal for computer users, allowing them to compete with Google in a computing world where the operating system on a computer is of diminishing importance.

Microsoft's most recent operating system release has had questionable sales results. Many users prefer the previous edition of Windows. Apple has seen its share of the market double in recent months, and the Linux world has produced a version of its operating system (Ubuntu) that many users believe is as easy to use and viable as either of those. (Linux already owns a major market share of the server business.)

In addition, Microsoft has been losing market share in the browser wars, where both the Mozilla FireFox browser and the Safari browser have increased market share. Both browsers are rated faster and more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). As more and more computing is done on line, the browser becomes ever more important.

U. S. Loses 20,000 Jobs in April:

While the loss in jobs is a further sign of how badly the American economy is doing, some see the number as a plus sign due to the expectation that job loses would actually be higher. What's missing here is that the number is somewhat misleading due to the fact that it does not take into account that part-time work took less of a hit than expected. In other words, more people are now working part-time, without benefits. The New York Times reports that "employees working part time involuntarily climbed to the highest level since 1995." Additionally, the Times reports that "The average weekly pay for rank-and-file workers — about 80 percent of the American work force — fell $3.55 in April," and that figure is after adjustment for inflation has been considered.

(Note: Did you catch GW screaming at the press yesterday about the collapsing economy? "I know things are tough!" Uh, yeah, for us regular folk. He inherited millions of dollars. And you thought he'd be a good guy to have a beer with. So how many have you had with him?)

Don't you wish you could do this:

The Federal Reserve is moving to allow banks to use debt as collateral for loans. The New York Times attempts to explain the action in today's paper. The focus is on credit card and student loans. What it comes down to is that the Federal Reserve is guaranteeing your debt. The banks loan you money, and then your government, financed by your tax money, promises to cover your debt. The banks, being in the middle, will be in a win-win situation. They will receive your money (or your house or your car or garnish your wages) while collecting interest, and they will not be accepting any risk because your neighbors will be guaranteeing repayment of the loan through their tax dollars. In addition, the banks will have more money to play with as they themselves can borrow money from The Fed based on your indebtedness to the banks, at a low interest rate, thus allowing them to loan more money at interest rates higher than they are paying.

Guess which shell the pea is under.

Chevron Earnings Soar:

Another oil company reports record profits. Chevron reported $5.17 billion in profit for the last quarter, adding to the bulging coffers of the oil giants (as reported in The New York Times in a Reuters story).

Recent stories focused on a call for a "windfall profits tax" on the oil industry, but there seems little chance such a measure would pass. The attempt to create such a tax during the Carter administration turned into a fiasco. An excellent model exists from the World War II period, but any such tax seems highly improbable in light of the fact that the oil lobby owns both the Republican and the Democratic party.

The gasoline tax "time out for summer" proposal seems to have a greater probability to succeed, but workers would not benefit from an 18.4 cent a gallon reduction. Instead the oil companies would simply keep the money, magnifying their own profit margins on the backs of workers and tax payers.

The Rush to Legal Murder:

Folks like to feel they are powerful. The greatest power is over someone else's life. Can I kill you? Well, not legally, but the government can in my name. The Supreme Court said so just three weeks ago, and now states like Texas are rushing to start whacking people in the voters' names. There's nothing like being able to strut into your local bar with the warm realization that you just murdered a defenseless person (who, by the way, may or may NOT have actually committed the crime of which he's been convicted) especially if that person is, uh … err … "of color." About half the people on death row around the country are African American. (See The New York Times story.)

The Crossover Vote:

Traditionally, voters who crossed voter lines to vote in primary elections for candidates of the opposition party did so in order to promote a weak candidate to run against their own party's candidate. This election season is seeing a new kind of voter perhaps not seen since the Reagan candidacy.

In 1980 and 1984 some Democrats turned out for Reagan, helping him swamp the opposition, although most of the defection actually came from Democrats simply not voting at all.

This year, according to The New York Times, as much as 10 percent of the Republican voters are actively supporting one or the other of the Democratic candidates, turning away from Sen. McCain because he seems nothing more than another version of the worst administration in modern history.

The Dude on the good ol' days: "But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it's important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe." George W. Bush, Washington, D. C., May 2001.

China Facts: "Urban Chinese earn more than three times as much as those in rural areas, the highest income gap since the start of reforms in 1978. (Source: ngm.com)

Chinese Learn Stocks Can Fall As Well As Rise:

The Washington Post reports on the hard lessons learned by Chinese investors, especially small investors who bet their life savings on the Chinese stock market. (See the story.) For sixty years, the Chinese have lived under the assumption that their government would back them up. Not so with the stock market.