I will to do ended

Dear Congressman,

I must confess that I am deeply worried about the state of our school systems here in the USA. Not even taking into account the destruction of grammar and spelling that is unleashed by the universe of texting, even everyday correspondences are corrupted by an inability to string together a single sentence or phrase.

For example, the following email from a well meaning but poorly educated citizen showed up in my work email box this weekend.

"Dear Sir.

Since accept order ribbons via e-mail. I express heartfelt to thanks. Because, The original e-mail address XXXXXXXXXnet.net contact To connection and delivery had problems. I will to do ended use that.

We had attached other e-mail address xxx.ribbons@xxx.xxxxx.net and cccccc.xxxx,net and xxxxxxx@so-net.xxx.tw accept order ribbons. Also, Attached my website http://www.xxxxxxxx.xxx.tw visit that please.

I hope so forever to do service for you and attached new order form.

Thank you very much!"

Not wanting to past up a possible new client, I took the time to respond.

Dear xxxxxxx@so-net.xxx.tw,

I received your correspondence dated December 6, 2009. I was pleased for yourself and your prospective business that you had corrected your IT problems and were now able to accept orders going forward. However, I would be amiss if I did not point out a few problems with your email.

1. When composing business transmittals, it is deemed proper not to be drunk when writing it. I can only assume from your inability to form a single intelligible sentence that you were on the tail end of a four day bender that did not involve any sleep.

2. In most cases, ribbons are only worn by decorated veterans or pre-teen school children who have won a track and field event. I have to ask if you have taken any time to perform any analysis to see who your market demographic might be? I thought about this for a good 15 or 20 seconds and could not come up with a target audience for your "ribbons", unless you plan on starting a new fashion trend where anorextic supermodels strut the fashion runways of the world wearing nothing but multicolored ribbons and skimpy underwear.

3. With a "tw" ending to your website, that might explain your apparent drunkenness. I have to assume you have branched out to Taiwan? In that case, may I advise that next time you have one of your English speaking staff compose your business emails, rather than your business partner's son-in-law. I am sure he convinced you that he was fluent in English after your business partner's daughter begged the two of you to hire him, but, to be blunt, his ability to speak English is closer to Donald Duck then Mickey Mouse.

Again, thanks for your business offer. However, as has happened previously, when I attempted to visit your website, my computer (and the FAA computer system in Utah, for that matter) crashed quicker than a bus full of nuns on a wet road. So, see what you can do to fix that, as causing major flight delays all over the United States will not look good on my next job application.

Go bust and die trying....

Dear Congressman,

As an accountant, I occasionally get questions about whether or not it is worthwhile to buy stock of a company that has declared bankruptcy. It appears it is very tempting to individual investors when the shares of a once proud mega-giant of American industry is trading on the stock exchanges for (usually) less than a buck a share.

Which leads to my usual response.

There is a reason that it is trading for less than a buck a share. It is worthless. Zero, nil, null, nada, nothing, zip.....

Let me see if I can explain.

As a stockholder, think of yourself as standing at the edge of a cliff. Directly in front of you are unsecured creditors, with secured creditors (think bondholders and banks here) standing in front of them.

Companies can generally file two types of bankruptcy in the USA. So we have two scenarios to cover.

First is the dreaded Chapter 7, which means the company does not see any chance of recovery and is going to sell it's assets to pay off as much as it owes as possible. In this case, the attorneys for the company basically push everyone off the cliff. The people who land on top of the others will generally be uninjured and walk away with out taking a hit. This would be the bankers and the bondholders. The next layer of people would be injured in some way but still survive to fight another day. You however, the stockholder, are either killed when you hit the ground or crushed to death when everyone falls on you. You get nothing and like it....

Second is a little thing call Chapter 11. In this case, the company decides it can not possibly pay all its bills on time but thinks they can become profitable again, if only they can call time out, ditch some of there past mistakes, and then move forward like nothing happened. For a Chapter 11, the attorneys don't push everyone as hard as they do in a Chapter 7, thus the only ones who fall off the cliff are the stockholders, as their capital in the company is redistributed to everyone else in front of them. Thus, after the shove, some of the unsecured creditors and other debtors are given company stock in lieu of their prior claim, so after the dust has settled there is a whole new set of stockholders standing at the edge of the cliff. Again, lying dead at the bottom of the cliff, you get nothing and again like it....

So why do shares trade for pennies when they are in fact worthless. Guess what folks... it's basically like playing musical chairs, only at the end of the game they remove all the chairs....

When Black Friday Comes....

Dear Congressman,

Needless to say you are probably familiar with the Steely Dan song from the seventies "Black Friday". But in the last decade or two, Black Friday has been hijacked by retailers nationwide as they attempt to create a feeding frenzy of shopping sharks who increase their annual debt load while allowing the aforementioned corporations to remain solvent for another business cycle.

However, Black Friday also has other meaning besides the current one.

Back in 1869, Black Friday referred to a financial scandal that rocked the Grant administration when two wealthy gentlemen, James Fisk and Jay Gould, decided to corner the gold market to further enrich themselves, creating an asset bubble in gold the likes of which have never been seen again... until now....

In England, Black Friday is the last Friday before Christmas, when the entire population goes on a bender for a single night, making it the busiest night of the year for pubs, nightclubs, social clubs, and any other establishment that can legally or illegally supply liquor to a voraciously thirst public. The only sober group are the EMTs, who also log the most runs of any day of the year.

Another Black Friday reference is to January 13, 1939, when fires burned down nearly 2/3's of Victoria, Australia, destroying over 3,700 buildings and killing 71. This was the second largest recorded brush fire in Australian history, burning over 2 million hectares. The largest fire occured in 1851 and burned over 5 million hectares. And what was is it referred to? Yup, the Black Thursday fire... gotta give a "D" to the Auzzies for originality on that one.

Of course, Black Friday is well represented in popular culture, as Steely Dan, Megadeath, and Flogging Molly have all penned and released songs about it.

And my favorite is the 1940 film starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Even though Lugosi is listed second on the playbill and credits, he only had a small part in the film and did not appear in any scenes with Karloff, but there is no stopping those marketing geeks when they get their brain cells fired up....

Anyway, hopefully everyone had a safe and prosperous Black Friday...