God Bless the Banks

It's time for your market wrap up from Friday, May 17th, which seems like such a long time ago.

China's Economy is Allegedly Okay
News out of China, washed and sanctioned by whoever's in charge of that confusing country, is that the recent earthquake will not affect China's economy, despite the fact that the quake left five million homeless. Now, either China is full of shit, or they have one kickass economy. I mean, shaking off five million new homeless people like one flicks lint from the lapel of one's overpriced linen suit... shit man, that's an economy.

GE to Sell Appliance Division; Go Into Porn
It has been said that we are a serviced based economy. Which means that most of us are servants in some form or another. And well, this little chunk of news is kind of proof of that. You see, GE is one of those companies that has their paws in so many different fruit jars that well, purchasing stock in their company is kind of like purchasing a mutual fund. But they made their bones making appliances and selling them to the American consumer. And now they're trashing that idea.

What will we do when the internet finally eliminates all the servants, I ask you?

Sorry, I just had to get a little freaked out there. It's cool. China makes stuff cheaper, I get it. I'm calm. It's an international economy. Cool dat. My bad.

Ohio Passes Law; Payday Lenders Move to Kentucky
Payday lenders, those dudes who give you cash pending your next paycheck are pretty much all screwed because the state of Ohio capped their interest rates. So now companies like Cash America are bailing on the state (closing 140 stores) and poor people won't be able to get quick loans. It's win and it's win and all that. Good job, Ohio.

It Will All Be One
The banks all merge, the airlines all merge. United Airlines and Continental Airlines are considering a merger. Here's why: the idea behind heavily regulated industries like the airlines and the banks is to merge over and over again until they only have one organization (with one stated goal) that can deal with the government officials who supervise them. Because said organization will have increasingly less competition, they will be free to do well, pretty much whatever they want once they get approval, which they will because, I mean, who else you gonna go to?

Seriously, this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but through mergers.

Poor Yahoo
Yahoo is like getting sued from all sides now. I can't even keep track. They're in a shitstorm. I've never seen one decision (Yahoo turning down Microsoft's offer) so scrutinized. You'd think Yahoo managed the Red Sox in 2003 or something. Wow.

Oil, The Energy Sector, My Member, All Up
Here's an interesting semi-fact: the S & P 500 broke something called its 200 day moving average today. This is what we in the finance world call, good. And it broke the moving average gimmick on its fourth day up in both price and volume. This is what we in the finance world call, a great sign (it's not a very artistic world, finance). At any rate, this is the first time in a long time that a market is threatening to come out of a bear cave while commodities sit at all time highs. In other words, the market may actually think that we the people can afford what we're paying right now, which means, I guess that we won't be getting that HDTV any time soon. Sigh.

See you tomorrow, money fans.