The Apprentice

* The Apprentice kicks off last night with the "Street Smarts" vs. "Book Smarts" edition. The Street Smart high school grads chose the name Net Worth for their corporation, as Trump indicated that they tend to have a higher net worth than the college grads. The Book Smarts college grads chose the name Magna for their corp. The first task? Run Burger King for a day, and market a new burger.

* Stock market... I ran stock scans on the SP500 stocks last night, and got quite a few buy signals using my timing model. I think we're near a bottom. Good numbers from GE today. (I own it - disclosure).

* Amidst the rash of downgrades of EBAY yesterday, came a lone risk taker with an upgrade. Legg Mason! Well, it's a battle of technicians who are selling vs value players, who are buying. Is EBAY a value stock at these levels???

* The Magna (book smarts) team lost, because they just didn't have enough folks working at the cash registers. The project manager was horrific. He delegated everything, took ownership of nothing, and failed to recognize the important objectives of the task. He got fired.

* The plans to reform Social Security sure seem to be running out of gas. Absent of reform, taxes will have to go up to support it. Or benefits reduced. Because all it is, is a transfer payment system. There are no investments in the system today. Money is taken from the working class, and checks are sent to retired folks. The problem is, the ratio of people working to those retired has gone from 40-1, to 15-1, to 6-1, and soon, 2-1. So those working will just have to pay more.

* Oatmeal for breakfast. Bleh. Sometimes it hits the spot. Other times? Yeah. Bleh.

* The cable company is finaly rolling out HDTV in my hood. Geez! It'll be so cool watching The Donald say "You're fired!" in HDTV.

* Danny (the guitar player), survived the boardroom, but he's gotta go. Maybe he can find a government job somewhere. I doubt he could survive in the private industry.