As IF Times

link Al Gore stands to gain about $70 million after selling Current TV to al-Jazeera – Washington Post.

I actually applaud Al Gore for making the wise business decision; he sold out.  Hmm, maybe that didn’t come out right.  Apart from his political career, Albert Gore is at heart a businessman and a very good one if you look at the record.  Despite an undistinguished political career, he wound up being invited to the boards of Google and Apple, both gigs that soothed the hurt of not being elected President.  I don’t think we can begrudge somebody who starts humbly and then and builds himself a business empire worth hundreds of millions.  Well that’s not true, Mitt Romney was begrudged.   If you acquire you wealth through fortuitous marriages like John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi, there’s much less stigma attached to your wealth,  there’s more dignity to it.

I’m sure it must have galled Al that he didn’t receive perpetual lifetime royalties  for inventing the Internet.   Despite this setback, he was still able to get into the film business, made an eco fantasy movie and received a Nobel prize for doing so.  Heck, if Michael Moore can make money off fantasy films, so can he.  But Nobel money only goes so far when you have expenses such as private planes, limos and beach houses to upkeep.  You can’t spread the gospel about wasting resources and global calamity in a dogsled living in a two-wide trailer.   A guy starts an enterprise which, from the beginning was predicated on a ridiculous premise, makes no money at it and then sells it off for $500 million dollars?  That’s sheer genius.

In the wake of this recent successful business coup, staffers at the soon to be renamed Current TV are bewildered at what they perceive as the blatant hypocrisy and mercenary actions taken by their fearless leader.  Selling eco sensitive Current TV to Al Jazeera is akin to selling  a veggie restaurant to KFC.  Dennis Miller said it best when he noted that Gore profited greatly from the prophet business.   Staffers should have gotten a clue that something was up when the Christmas bonus included some free gas cards and prayer mats.

Keen business school students should stay tuned for Al’s next great adventure.  We don’t know what calamity will soon befall all earthlings, but you can bet it will be lucrative.

link Markets Start to Anticipate Obama Victory in November – Fast Money – CNBC – CNBC.

This is a classic “as if” scenario.  Despite demonstrable incompetence and ill founded principles offered during the incumbent’s stay in the White House, the narrative is being pushed that the ‘stability’ offered by the Obama reign is somehow benign for the financial markets.  Only those who are still subscribing to the tooth fairy fantasy; those that are on their 3rd hit of the bong or those from California could possibly subscribe to this delusion.

The fact is, markets are anticipators of events, usually 6 to 8 months into the future.  For example, when the stock market suffered the massive swoon in early 2008, it was partly in anticipation of the Democratic victory in the fall of that year.  While the write downs in bank and mortgage valuations did substantiate the big selloff, it was the anticipation of a incoming regime that was expected to be unfriendly to markets that started the cascade.

At the moment, the Republicans are almost finished with their circular firing squad process of vetting their candidate to oppose Obama during this year’s November elections.  It appears that the presumptive victor, Mitt Romney will prevail and consequently, an experienced and capable economic individual will resume control of the Presidency.  It is more likely that this assumption is the scenario causing  the markets to advance.  To subscribe to CNBC’s version of reality is to assume that people have come to accept and embrace out of control spending, skyrocketing deficits and a sure but steady neutering of America’s economic and social system.  In other words, they assume that people have thrown up their hands and accepted that the U.S. will become Greece, Portugal or even worse, California.

While of course people will always adjust to whatever reality is thrust upon them, it’s a stretch for anyone to claim that the financial markets are stabilizing ahead of an Obama victory.  It’s as if someone chose to go back to eat at a particular restaurant after becoming violently ill when they last ate there.  It’s the logic of  ‘the devil you know’.  Sounds like spousal abuse to me.