Predictions. Always Dangerous.
Sam Zell becomes viewed as a genius. While everyone was valuing Trib as a newspaper. He viewed it correctly as a media conglomerate with stakes in the WB, career builder, chicagosports.com, and network television. Translation buy GCI stock.
Paper Prices go up about 50% as companies try unsuccessfully to pass off pulp inflation. Recycling becomes a key source of fiber as mixed office waste stops being thrown in the garbage and starts being recycled again. Translation short companies that buy market pulp and paper companies in general.
Democrats take the Whitehouse. Ron Paul runs third party gathering a strong 20% of the popular vote. Translation buy Hillary on Intrade.
The default rate of corporate debt tripples or more.
There is a terror event in the United States, about one month before the general election in order to drum up support for Giuliani. The CIA will be running a simulation during the event which will confuse the police that respond to the crisis. It will be run by middle eastern terrorists who will be killed and never heard from again. No one will know who was actually behind the scam and the public will never really care.
Paper Prices go up about 50% as companies try unsuccessfully to pass off pulp inflation. Recycling becomes a key source of fiber as mixed office waste stops being thrown in the garbage and starts being recycled again. Translation short companies that buy market pulp and paper companies in general.
Democrats take the Whitehouse. Ron Paul runs third party gathering a strong 20% of the popular vote. Translation buy Hillary on Intrade.
The default rate of corporate debt tripples or more.
There is a terror event in the United States, about one month before the general election in order to drum up support for Giuliani. The CIA will be running a simulation during the event which will confuse the police that respond to the crisis. It will be run by middle eastern terrorists who will be killed and never heard from again. No one will know who was actually behind the scam and the public will never really care.
posted by MattKelly54 at
10:27 AM
2 Comments:
I think another key aspect of the Zell transaction is, surprise surprise, real estate. He's sitting on some pretty prime areas if you start looking at the Trib building, some tv studio that they own in LA, etc. etc. Monetize that and there's your equity right there.
Zell played the Trib employees (who don't want to lose their jobs and were easy to talk into buying the company) and the I-Banks perfectly... he held the upperhand all along.
I think he definitely overpaid for the media conglomerate part, but he doesn't own any of the risk and there is a real estate lever as well. And I wouldn't characterize the company as well run so he's got that working for him, too.
Brent,
I am taking the other side of your trade. Romney is done ... he will soon realize that his $20m + investment of his own capital (10% of his net worth) will end up in a 0% ROI after he loses South Carolina and his home state of Michigan. McCain is now the establishment's first choice as they have lost faith in Guiliani - his strategy of not really taking the early states seriously is a major mistake. Every president since the primaries began in the 60s won one of the first 3/4 primaries and posted strong numbers when they didn't win (exception being clinton's 4th place finish in Iowa in 1992). Romney will continue to be attacked from all sides in the debates like he was on saturday night and once he loses Michigan - his home state he will likely have to evaluate how much more money he wants to spend on his campaign given that he will continue to fall short of finishing first. McCain is likeable, has lots of experience, is a war veteran, and has the blessing of the establishment.
At first I thought Huckabee was a massive short, but now I am thinking that if he can only run 45 TV spots for $45k in Iowa and 30 spots and $35k in New Hampshire and finish 1st by a large margin and third in front of the worst candidate of all - Guiliani - and my candidate Ron Paul is a very impressive feat in my opinion. I think the alternative media story here is that the establishment is silently backing Huckabee in the media & likely will see major fundraising increases in Q108 as he is a sure fire loser vs. either obama or hillary. Its my opinion that the establishment wants hillary first and obama second b/c the bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2010, which is going to happen regardless of whether a republican or democrat is elected, and so it will be easier to push the tax increases on the people with a democratic president vs. a republican president. That way they can blame the democrat president for the tax hikes and maintain the historical stereotype that democrats are big taxers and republicans and big tax cutters - something I find funny b/c republicans are much larger spenders than democrats looking at the various administrations since 1960 despite popular opinion that is contrary to this view.
Mike Huckabee is a very bad man that has a lot of skeletons in his closet that are not being brought up now in order to save them until later to use as trump cards in the general elections. I think Huckabee is a patsy - very similar to Bob Dole in 1996, who was a candidate that was setup to lose, which he did by a big margin to Mr Clinton in 1996.
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