August 2008

Hey gang, You KNEW it was coming: the tell-all book about the disastrous fall of Bear Stearns.  Well, IT'S HERE.  This morning I reported on Fox Business (see clip below) that we are the first to have gotten a copy of the unpublished manuscript.   It's got some blockbuster revelations and beliefts in it because it was written by a Bear Stearns high-level INSIDER who watched the whole ... read more

It's a question I asked Humana (HUM) CEO Mike McCallister on "Countdown to the Closing Bell" just after his company had issued a quarterly report that showed net income fell due to rising costs.  (the stock soared though, because it beat estimates, plus the company guided higher for the year.) I want you to see his response.  I want you to know that when we put company leaders on the air, ... read more

For the second time in as many weeks, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has fired shots aimed right at Wall Street.  First he filed suit against the big three ratings agencies, Fitch, S&P, and Moody's, alleging the three gave artifically low credit ratings to states and municipalities, hence forcing public operations like school districts to purchase unnecessary bond insurance.  ... read more

Aircell is getting a lot of attention from the Blackberry-obsessed to the Frequent Flyer:  that's because Aircell is the only company that's been authorized by the FCC and the FAA to use cellular frequencies for in-flight communications.  They've just struck deals with Delta and American Airlines to outfit jets with wi-fi.  Yes, that means you will be able to send and receive emails, surf the ... read more

Hey gang, Coming to you from Los Angeles where tomorrow I'll be live in Hawthorne, California. I'll be introducing you to a real-live Rocket-Man, Elon Musk. He's the co-founder of PayPal, and his company SpaceX is trying to become the WalMart of rockets ships.. making them cheaper and reusable for the future. More on that in a minute. But first, Mario Gabelli, Chairman and CEO of Gabelli ... read more

Hey gang, Coming to you from Los Angeles where I just had to interrupt my vacation because I couldn't miss the opportunity to bring you Elon Musk's story.  Let me back up and give you the first few chapters in a nutshell: -Born in South Africa -Split for the U.S. on his own as a teenager and headed to college at U.Penn -Got accepted to Stanford graduate school to study Physics, but ... read more

Henry Cisneros, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Bill Clinton, flat-out tells our viewers the taxpayer should not-- and will not-- be on the hook for propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants with major government connections. He talked to me and our viewers at great length yesterday on Countdown to the Closing Bell about the biggest story of ... read more

 Billionaire-buddies Warren Buffett and Bill Gates went on an 'Excellent Adventure' Monday.  Buffett tells me he and Gates, his good pal and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) boardmember, hopped a plane to head north to an oilsands development in Alberta, Canada near Fort McMurray.  Buffett told me he took the trip to "just look around and learn a little" about the process by which oil is extracted ... read more

   Am I the only one completely frustrated right now?  All this talk about the 'inevitable' government bailout of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) is making this red-head crazy.  The bailout is so far unfounded but the smart money says it'll likely come to pass.  You can't let these mortgage behemoths fail because they're pretty much the only ones writing mortgages out there during this ... read more

That's how columnist George Will described Senator Barack Obama's Senior Economic Advisor Austan Goolsbee.  Today we got Goolsbee in front of our viewers on Countdown to the Closing Bell to find out just exactly what Obama's plans are for the U.S. economy if he were to be elected president. Let me pull out some important points the campaign is putting forth regarding Senator Obama's ... read more