Tuesday Oct 31, 2006

The missing ingredient for sustained global growth

Taipan Group's Dynamic Market Alert

-- The missing ingredient for sustained global growth
-- Clowns & Harlots: The Horror, The Horror
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The missing ingredient for sustained global growth

by J. Christoph Amberger

Looking across the world economies, I have noticed that there is one element that should give us pause from buying into the recent spate of reports that claim economies like Japan’s and Germany’s are on the mend.

It’s household spending and, closely related to it, retail sales. They combine to form a vital element of any economy: domestic demand.

Without strong domestic demand, national economies are heavily weighted toward exports. That means they require one or several foreign countries to be strong and confident enough to throw money around and buy what they produce.

In the last couple of years, with oil prices soaring and Americans living off credit, those buyers have been plentiful. But even China, who built its economic miracle exclusively on exports, is now trying to get its populace to spend the money they make on domestic products. So far, with limited success.

In Germany, September retail sales again dropped, the most in more than two years. Adjusted sales fell 1.7% from August.

In Germany’s case, this doesn’t bode well: Elevated spending throughout the current year has been due mainly to two factors: The soccer World Cup and the boost in prophylactic buying that preceded the increases in the national sales tax, a levy on sales, which will start to bite in January of 2007. This represents a double whammy for next year’s numbers. A hefty chunk of money that would normally have been spent in 2007 has already been spent in 2006 -- and higher prices are unlikely to spur any additional purchases.

In Japan, too, household spending fell a whopping 6% -- the most in almost five years. Wage growth stalled in September, undermining the Bank of Japan’s case for raising the lowest interest rates among major economies this year.

This is bad. But it could be worse: If Americans started to get religion and began to feather their retirement nests rather than keeping German cars, Japanese electronics and Chinese consumer goods, the only viable demand for these products would come from countries flush with petrodollars.
And even they can only buy so many gold-plated Mercedes SUVs.

Clowns & Harlots: The Horror, The Horror

by Christopher Corbett

A few years ago the American Film Institute had the chutzpah to proclaim the 100 most thrilling American films.  In doing this, the AFI managed to largely ignore the most thrilling and important of all American film genres -- the B-movie.  Some of the greatest filmmakers in American history -- Roger Corman, George Romero and Wes Craven -- were either left out completely or damned with faint praise.  So much for the American Film Institute.

My fondest childhood memories of the 1950s and 1960s -- when there were still neighborhood movie theaters -- derive from watching B-movies.  We studied the works of Edgar Allan Poe as told by Roger Corman with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.  We prepared for the Cold War with The Day the Earth Caught Fire.  We knew thrilling.  Sometimes the theaters even had a nurse in the lobby for B-movie showings.  They weren’t fooling around.

True aficionados of the B-movie are demanding and fickle. But who does not like Wes Craven? Completely overlooked by AFI.  Most Americans know his later work: A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream.  But in the 1970s, Craven, a former college professor with a 16mm camera, made two masterpieces.  First he shot Last House on the Left for $90,000.  Film guides rank this “repugnant” and “totally sick.”  Can I say more?  Wes didn’t get to make another film for five years.  And you can’t really say that he learned his lesson, because this next gem was The Hills Have Eyes -- one of my top 10.  Basically the Partridge Family meets the Manson Family, it tells the tale of an all-American family that gets lost in the desert and meets up with cannibalistic mutants.  (You know that can happen pretty easily in California, even now.) 

Two other favorites by Craven are the slapstick The People Under The Stairs and the more traditional Swamp Thing, featuring the washed-up matinee idol Louis Jourdan and the breasts of Adrienne Barbeau.  Yes, I know they issued a remake of The Hills Have Eyes recently but for the purposes of this discussion I reject all remakes.  You cannot remake the classics.  Period.

The AFI ranked George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead at a lowly 93 -- an outrage!  This movie makes The Shining look like Lassie Come Home.  The Texas Chain Saw Massacre didn’t even make the list.  Only a few B-movies did: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) was 47.  The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was 82.  And The Thing From Another World (1951) came in 87th.  Go figure.

Taste and decency are the only way to rate B-movies.  Any taste or decency -- it’s NOT a B-movie.  Graphic violence?  Insist on it.  Nudity and sexual situations?  I hope so.  Size matters, too.  B-movies are short.  I Walked With a Zombie (Jane Eyre in the tropics) is only 69 minutes long.

Ideally, you want a B-movie that was made quickly, with a very low budget.  Roger Corman shot the original The Little Shop of Horrors in 1960 in two days and a night on sets made for another film.  It’s 70 minutes long and Jack Nicholson is in it.  A classic.

Like most of the greats, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was shot for peanuts ($140,000) on 16 mm film.  It’s only 83 minutes long and the last 15 minutes can still clear a theater.  Then there’s The Day the Earth Stood Still at 92 minutes.  Directed by Robert Wise (The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) that Cold War fright film made a pacifist out of me.  The Thing From Another World, at 87 minutes, stars James “Gunsmoke” Arness as The Thing.  And everyone should watch Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To for the title alone.  (And of course we live in a world where folks still really say that.)

Also ignored by AFI is the great William Castle film The Tingler (1959) -- Vincent Price takes LSD!  Those were the days.  LSD was not illegal… yet.  And House on Haunted Hill (1958) -- part of the canon.  I watched it 100 times before my 12th birthday.  I could lip sync this film once upon a time.

My affections for B-films have never flagged.  Every Halloween, friends and I still screen B-movies to celebrate the holiday and revisit the lost cinema of our youth.  Last year’s find was Sorority House Massacre II starring “the lovely and talented” Stacia Zhivago (great name).  This is now my personal B-movie favorite.  With a running time of 77 minutes, it was filmed in a week (I still can’t figure out why it took that long).  There may have been a Sorority House Massacre I but I could never find it.

This film is not -- as one critic opined -- just another film where teenage guys can drool over big-breasted women being stalked by a homicidal maniac, although there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that.  It’s really about how to deal with a difficult neighbor (homicidal maniac), the risks of wearing a tight negligee in a thunderstorm and the accuracy of a Ouija board.  And it ends with a feel-good touch in the credits: “No girls were hurt or mistreated in the making of this film.”

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Earnings Announcements

24/7 Real Media, Adeza Biomedical Corporation, Administaff, Amdocs Limited, Andersons Inc, BCE Inc, Burger King, Cardiac Science, Ceradyne, Deutsche Bank, Dynamic Materials, Evergreen Energy Inc, Famous Dave’s of America, Flamel Technologies, Garmin Ltd, Given Imagine Ltd, Guess, Guitar Center, Harvard Bioscience, InterDigital Communications Corporation, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Magna Entertainment Corporation, MasterCard International Inc, Mylan Laboratories, Nastech Pharmaceutical, Natus Medical Inc, Olympic Steel, OraSure Technologies Inc, Parker Drilling, Rainmaker Systems Inc, Reliv International, Time Warner Inc, Trex Company Inc, ValueClick Inc, and Zebra Technologies are releasing earnings.

Brought to you by http://www.AmericanCapitalist.net

 Unlock Dates for October / November 2006

10/31/06 – Delek US Holdings is unlocking 10 million shares.
11/8/06 – Basin Water is unlocking 6 million shares.
11/13/06 – Restore Medical is unlocking 4 million shares.
11/14/06 – Burger King is unlocking 25 million shares.
11/21/06 – Mastercard is unlocking 61.5 million shares.
11/29/06 – Luna Innovations Inc is unlocking 3.5 million shares.

Brought to you by http://www.gressor.com

Upgrades and Downgrades

Accenture downgraded by Stifel Nicolaus from Buy to Hold.

Blue Nile downgraded by Piper Jaffray from Market Perform to Underperform.

Clear Channel downgraded by Wachovia (Outperform to Market Perform) and by BMO Capital Markets (Outperform to Market Perform).

Dover Downs downgraded by Matrix Research from Buy to Hold.

Evergreen Solar downgraded by Jefferies & Company from Buy to Hold.

Kohl’s downgraded by AG Edwards from Buy to Hold.

Mine Safety downgraded by Matrix Research from Hold to Sell.

Mylan Labs downgraded by Citigroup from Buy to Hold.

Verizon downgraded by UBS from Buy to Neutral.

American Power upgraded by Citigroup from Sell to Hold.

Campbell Soup upgraded by Prudential from Underweight to Neutral.

Kimco Realty upgraded by RBC Capital Markets from Sector Perform to Outperform.

Time Warner upgraded by Cowen & Company from Neutral to Outperform.


Brought to you by http://www.vixtrader.com

TAIPAN TIDINGS

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Quote of the Day:

“Perhaps nothing so captures the superficial, frivolous and irresponsible spirit of our times like the sudden boomlet for Barack Obama as a candidate for President of the United States.”

- Thomas Sowell, Oct. 31, 2006

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