Luck Be a Lady

One of the most common aphorisms you hear in a given week is that this or that is "a toss of a coin." Usually, the implication is one of the randomness or vagaries of life. Coin tossing permeates the culture in song, book, and film. Two recent very popular movies ("The Dark Knight" and "No Country for Old Men") feature villains who make life and death choices using a coin - of course, Harvey "Two Face" uses a coin which has two heads, removing any actual chance, but the point is made.

My own academic training is in maths and applied statistics, and it's actually very helpful to reduce almost all questions around probability to variations of the coin toss.

But "randomness" does not imply "luck," and I personally don't believe in luck. A coin will land heads or tails based on a number of physical properties, some subtle (how much air resistance) and some not (when you grab it out of the air), but the process itself is deterministic once the coin is thrown into the air. Similarly, for cards, the shuffle, cut, and deal set in motion a series of events that is not at all based on luck. We think of luck perhaps as whether the gambler chooses heads or tails, takes a hit to 15, etc., and in these perhaps there is an element of luck.

I got to thinking about luck last night as I listened to the Toronto Blue Jays lose yet another late-inning, one-run game. The team has lost more than its share of such games this year (this, plus the lack of budget and hence talent has contributed to yet another dismal finish far out of contention), and I was curious to see just how badly it has done.

The results are remarkable.

In one-run games - games that more often than not are decided by tiny, tiny differences (a ball inches fair or foul here, a single swing of the bat that misses the sweet spot by fractions of an inch there) have an exaggerated effect on the outcome - Toronto is 18-27, the poorest record in the American League. (The California Angels, 27-18, have the best). In extra-inning games, the Blue Jays are 5-12, easily the worst in the Major Leagues.

The question is, is this luck, or something else?

In baseball, Bill James some years ago created what he called the Pythagorean Theorem, which, like the famous eponymous theorem of geometry, estimates a team's winning percentage as the ratio of the square of its runs scored to the sum of its runs scored and runs allowed squared. Put simply, if you score exactly the same number of runs as you allow, over the course of a season, you will win approximately half of the games you play.

What's useful as an exercise here is that teams that win a lot of close games, but lose a majority of the games that are blow outs will post a winning percentage much better than the one estimated by the Pythagorean Theorem. A team that loses a lot of close games, but wins the majority of the blow outs will do relatively poorly.

To convince yourself, consider Team A, which in a series of 10 games, wins 8 games 2-1, and in the other 2 games loses 4-0 in each. This team scores 16 runs, and allows 16. The theorem predicts it should win 5 and lose 5. Given that it won 8, it has won an excess of 3 games.

The idea here is that games that are close tend to be more influenced by random events (the one ball inches foul) than games that are not close. Good teams will win more blow-out games as a percentage than bad teams will. Of course, the good teams will also win a majority of the close games as well, but they tend to win a much higher percentage of the lop-sided ones. If the Yankees were to play the Baltimore Orioles, it's far more likely that the Yankees will win 10-0 than Baltimore. Not in a given game, mind you, but over a long series, the better team will almost always predominate.

This in mind, I looked at how Toronto (and the rest of the AL) had done for the past 5 years, plus this one.

This year, the Jays have scored more runs than they have allowed (a slight difference, but there you have it). They currently are 15 games UNDER .500. The Pythagorean Theorem predicts that they ought to have won 9 more games than they have. That is a serious under-performance.

But is it "luck?"

For the years 2004-2008, Toronto has won fewer games than the theorem predicts IN EVERY SINGLE SEASON. Put another way, they have tossed a coin and gotten five consecutive tails. This year almost certainly will be number six in a row. The "odds" of six straight heads are 1/64, or less than two per cent.

Cumulatively, the team was won 31 fewer games than the runs scored/allowed formula predicts.

Both of these figures are the worst in the American League (the Cleveland Indians are next, having been shorted 26 wins). Oddly enough, the California Angels (this year's best performer in one-run contests) have exceeded predictions in all five years, and this year will certainly make six, unless they lose a couple of games 20-0.

This is not "luck," for a team to be worse, every single year, than it ought to be. The players are different; the opposing rosters are different. Only the GM and management are the same.

I think the evidence is clear, and the prosecution rests. It's time for the management in Toronto to go, from top to bottom.

More on the Cold-Blooded Murder of English

Read a headline this morning; "Warren Buffet: 'Rich Need to Pay More" sent to me by a somewhat liberal friend.

This little fiction was advance further by various and sundry Democrats (e.g., Claire McCaskill [D-MO]), whose job it is, I suppose to conjure up tortured arguments to separate you from your money. Ms McCaskill said "[Mr Buffet] said rich people are not paying enough taxes."

Now, what in fact Mr Buffet said was that the taxes on dividend (and perhaps, other investment income) should be put in line with the tax rates on ordinary income, as a matter of fairness. He used as an example that he pays only 15 per cent on his income, which is largely from investments in, inter alia, Berkshire Hathaway funds, whilst his employees who are wage earners pay at a 25 per cent rate. Now, setting aside that in fact, few people in the lower income brackets (less than 50,000 per year) actually pay the 25 per cent marginal rate, once deductions and the like are taken, it's startling to see how this little proposition (that investment income ought to be treated the same as wage income) is transmogrified into a "the rich need to pay more" argument.

One can agree or disagree about the fairness of taxing income streams differently, and in this, I am in agreement with Mr Buffet, but it's intellectually dishonest to equate these two points. I expect hand-waving from the kleptocratic Democrats in the government. But for news agencies to be so duplicitous is quite alarming.

If the Democrats and Mr Buffet want to debate setting income tax rates of different income streams to parity, that's fine. If dividend income is to be taxed more steeply, then that is going to be done irrespective of the income level of the payor. But that's rather a different thing from saying, essentially, that we ought to raise the top marginal rates, which is the reductio ad absurdum of the "rich do not pay enough" proposition.

Given the shell game that Mr Obama and the Dems are currently trying, I suggest people pay very, very close attention to what they say, and how their words are reported.

Green Day, the English Language, and US Debate

Among other somewhat eccentricities, I'm a fan of the band Green Day. Sort of clashes with my instinctive, right-wing politics and only-feel-comfortable-in-a-suit-at-work personality, but there you have it.

Some years ago, they had a song called "The Grouch," which has catchy riffs and amusing lyrics. Among them, the singers bemoan "Oh my God, I'm turning outlike my dad."

Truer words never were spoken.

My father, who has been gone now for 15 years, used to be somewhat a curmudgeon with respect to the King's English, and most particularly, its grammatical rules. And by "somewhat," I mean that if you dared confuse, e.g., the subjunctive, you would be met with a pained, dismissive stare.

I was thinking of this whilst looking over what passes for a debate about health care reform: the raucous town-hall meetings. The petulance of Nancy Pelosi. President Obama trying to rescue his top domestic policy with a pretty purple speech last night. In all the sturm und drang, the first casualty has been the English language.

What, pray tell, would Professor Higgins, who would have had Eliza Doolittle "taken out and hung (sic)?"

No one seems to know what words mean anymore.

The NYTimes, who have become little more than a lap-dog to the Obama administration, chastise opponents of the President's plan for calling Mr Obama a 'socialist,' saying that there is little resemblance between his plans and the authoritarian raj of the Soviets. Oh, how the mighty have fallen (William Safire is an alum). Surely, they know that socialism is an economic system, and the totalitarian regime of the old Soviets was a governing system. And that ignores the fact that much of our current health care system - Medicare, for example, IS socialist both de facto and de jure.

We have the spectacle of the failed former VP candidate talking about "death panels" when she speaks of the rather mundane task of deciding how scarce resources will be allocated. Whether you know it or not, your insurer, whether private or public, makes decisions every year about what treatments it will re-imburse and what treatments it will not, using cost effectiveness models. Surely, as a Republican, Mrs. Palin understands that the allocation of finite resources to attempt to cover infinite demand is the very definition of economics.

And finally, we have the President of the US and too many others talking about getting "insurance" to cover "pre-existing conditions." Now, the term "pre-existing conditions" is itself so Orwellian as to conjure up an image of a boot stomping on a human face forever, but that's only half the whopper here.

In point of fact, you cannot buy "insurance" to cover a condition you already have. Insurance is a bet that you make, against yourself, that something is going to happen. You make your wager in the form of a premium, and if, by God by grace, you get sick, THEN you collect. The premium is a fraction of what the cost of treatment will be, and you are able to do this because you are pooling your risk. If 100 people pay the premium, perhaps one will "win" the bet.

Buying "insurance" for an illness you have is about the same thing as walking into a casino, sitting at the roulette table, watching the ball land in red 26, and then asking to be allowed to put a bet down on red 26.

That isn't insurance; that is welfare.

All in all, our "leaders" (hmmm, am I guilty, too?) are betting on the fact that the average man on the street is simply too dim to catch the abuse.

A bet that, to paraphrase Mencken, is a sure thing.

One Definition of "Shared Responsibility"

First, a mea culpa. I voted for the current occupant of the White House. I remain glad that his opponent did not ascend to the throne. But I am getting an increasing feeling of buyer's remorse. Here is, inter alia, one of the reasons.

The Democrats are very, very fond of talking about "shared responsibility," and people paying "their fair share." (nota bene the use of the word "share" in each talking point.) What, exactly, do they mean:

http://tinyurl.com/CreditRedux

Yep; as with the housing melt-down, and the spending of tax money like Frank Sinatra on shore leave, those of us who now are foolish enough to actually use our credit cards responsibly - who apparently have been "getting a free ride" - will further subsidise those who don't. Our fees will go up; our interest rates will rise. All so that those who do NOT use credit properly can be cushioned from their own sloth, cupidity, and downright foolishness.

I ask Mr Obama and Ms Pelosi: At what point are you going to stop telling me how much "responsibility" for others I need to share, and start asking those who are getting us into this mess need to share some responsibility for themselves?

After all, when I was in kindergarten, "sharing" involved more than one person.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Life is made of small sacrifices; one of mine that parent-hood brought on was sufficient time to read, which is now a precious commodity. The book I am currently reading, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, is a journey into the subject of quick decisions and how the human mind parses micro-slices of information.

On page 214 of the book is a discussion of autism and, in layman's terms, describes its impact on the ability to read faces. One of the studies mentioned is by a professor at Cambridge University in England called Simon Baron-Cohen, who is a pre-eminent researcher into autism spectrum disorder.

Now, most people who come across that name would pass over it without a second thought, but if I mentioned another name, Sacha Baron-Cohen, some eyebrows might go up. If I said "Ali-G," a few more would have a glimmer of recognition. But if I said "Borat," virtually everyone in the US between the ages of 18 and 40 would immediately have an a-ha moment.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a world-renowned researcher into autism, is the cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen, an actor and comedian who created the character Borat.

Small world.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Bernie Madoff

Forget the NCAA Tournament and March Madness - for me nothing can beat the Opera Bouffe that following the financials presents. I came across this little nugget today at Yahoo Finance:

http://tinyurl.com/WeepForTheRich

The piece was written by a man called James Stewart, which is itself rather a bit of an inside-joke, given that James Stewart the actor often starred in films that glorified the little guy in his fight against the plutocrat. This incarnation would seem to favour Lionel Barrymore.

Mr Stewart - the writer, not the actor - raises what I am sure he thinks is something of a defence of the so-called rich, and deploys as his foot-soldiers various numerical arguments. The fulcrums (fulcra?) on which this rests are the suppositions that the "rich" are not necessarily so rich, have suffered more than the general population in the current economic downturn, shoulder a larger tax burden, and are largely not criminals.

Now, most people who have more than the intellectual discipline of a housefly understand that the final point is a straw-man. Of course most of the rich are law-abiding, his plaintive comment: "Yet, as hard as it may be to believe, the overwhelming majority of people earning six-figure incomes aren’t criminals or spendthrifts" notwithstanding. Mr Madoff is a criminal, but the guys over at AIG who approved "retention" bonuses are only criminally stupid, which itself is not yet illegal. We are still waiting on the California Supreme Court to rule on that one.

But looking through the rest of Mr Stewart's opus, there are three essential points.

One, those who are high earners (six figures) have suffered greater losses than the typical man on the street.

The Federal Reserve released statistics last week that showed Americans collectively lost $5.1 trillion of their net worth during the last three months of 2008 and $11.2 trillion for the full year. The numbers don’t break that down by income level, but I think it's fair to say that much of the drop came from the steep decline in stock prices, and stocks are owned disproportionately by high-income people. Indeed, stock ownership is so skewed to upper-income households that the percentage declines are probably much steeper for them, more likely in the 30% to 40% range.

That means anyone who was a millionaire at the beginning of 2008, and had a million dollars invested in stocks, has lost about $300,000 to $400,000, which is in line with what I’ve been hearing anecdotally. And the losses have only multiplied this year as the market continues its descent.

Now, the first problem with this argument is practical. There are not actual data to show exactly how the losses have skewed; Mr Stewart instead says "it's fair to say" that because the decline is largely driven by stock losses, that stock ownership skews to the wealthy, and therefore, losses are "steeper" for them.

I'd like to see the numbers before I agree what is fair, and more important, what is accurate.

It's true that the average guy is less likely to own stock, but he likely does have a pension and/or 401-k, which is intrinsically linked to stock performance. I know my own 401-k is off by about 35 per cent, and my son's college fund has lost about 40 per cent.

Second, he fails to make the distinction between "a millionaire" and those who have "a million dollars invested in stocks." Americans to a large degree are disgracefully innumerate, and do not understand the differences along a scale of someone whose net worth is $100,000; $1 million, and $10 million. The differences are, to say the least, enormous. And when he conflates someone with an income between $200,000 and $300,000 (which comes later) with the jet-set who have a million dollars worth of stock, he is directly playing on this ignorance.

And this ignores the existential issue that the "losses" in this case are largely paper losses. If your stock portfolio drops 30 per cent, you only "lose" that money IF YOU SELL when it is down. So while it is true that Warren Buffet's net worth has declined, he in actuality has not "lost" anything in this regard. In fact, to use Mr Stewart's own implied argument, "I think it's fair to say" that, given the current low stock prices, many of the super wealthy are quietly acquiring stocks at bargain prices that their other assets allow them to acquire, and when the market turns up, they will have grabbed an even larger share of the wealth pie than they had before. To extend the Stewart/Barrymore metaphor, as George Bailey said of Mr Potter, he's not selling, he's buying. In five years, we'll see the endgame of the current situation.

Second, Mr Stewart raises the issue that the rich are taxed at disproportionately higher rates:

This group also pays a disproportionate share of income taxes, even before Obama's proposed tax increases. The top 1% of earners are expected to pay 25% of all personal income taxes this year, and the top 5% to pay 40%, according to Tax Policy Center's latest figures. It's no wonder that the people I know who earn $200,000 to $300,000 are incredulous to be branded as “rich.” They certainly don’t feel that way.

and

By contrast, let’s take a look at the top 400 earners, who in 2006 (the most recent year for which data are available) earned an average of $263.3 million. Now that’s what I call rich. These 400 people paid on average $45.2 million each, and collectively paid a remarkable 1.77% of all personal income taxes that year, the highest percentage since the IRS has been keeping records. They also paid an average rate of just 17%, the lowest ever, largely because of their massive capital gains, which are taxed at a low rate. Presumably those gains will seem a distant memory by the time the 2008 data are compiled. But imagine if they were paying at the top rate of 35%. That would roughly double their taxes paid in 2006, to $90 million each, or a total of roughly $36 billion. And that’s only 400 people

What a fair distribution of the *income* tax burden ought to be is subjective - I am certainly no communist who thinks that the tax burden ought to be borne exclusively by the wealthy, and think that the Obama plan (like the "fix" passed last month in Sacramento) represents if not socialism galloping at full speed, is at least of the creeping sort.

But let's get real here.

This argument obscures the truth in two ways. First, it focuses exclusively on income tax, ignoring sales, property, and other taxes that all essentially pay. Rich or poor, if you go to purchase a shirt, you pay the same sales tax. And second (and more important), the author focuses on income, not wealth. In this point, the top one per cent of earners are said to pay 25 per cent of all income taxes. Well, what share of the national wealth does this one per cent control?

Third, there is the argument that the wealthy are not, in fact, rich as they are portrayed. Mr Stewart opens with comments about resorts, private jets, and luxury condos, and ends up talking about people earning "six figures" and/or the theoretical target of the Obama "rich guy" tax ladder ($300,000 per annum in income).

The two (three) groups are not the same. A private jet of the sort that Steve Jobs flies around in is tens of millions of dollars. I would suggest that virtually no one earning $250,000 flies frequently in a private jet, or goes to the sort of resort that Jobs or Dick Fuld is able to frequent. To this point, there is a huge problem in homogenising "six figure" incomes - itself an enormous range of 100,000 to 999,9999 - someone earning $300,000, and multi-millionaires.

Mr Stewart again is using the fact that Americans simply do not understand the enormous gulf between 100,000, one million, and ten million as a blunt club.

He turns to a hypothetical individual with an annual income of $200,000, living in Manhattan:

In New York City, for example, $200,000 in income yields roughly $100,000 after all taxes (including the unincorporated business tax, which applies to anyone who’s self-employed). If you're following the prudent rule of thumb that you should spend no more than one-third of your after-tax income on housing, that means $33,000, or less than $3,000 a month, can go toward housing — barely enough for rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. As for buying, the collapse in stock prices has wiped out much of what many people invested toward a down payment. New York may be atypically expensive, but many people who earn $200,000 and up have little choice but to live in a high-tax, high-cost location.

Now, it might be pointed out that the guy at $200,000 is, as of now, NOT going to be affected by the Obama tax rise, but that's somewhat akin to Titanic passengers complaining that their food was too cold.

What truly plagues this example are that, a) it is *not* the case that the person must live in Manhattan, and b) the 1/3 rule for after tax really does not scale up linearly.

For (a), the choice to live in Manhattan in the tiny one bedroom apartment is a choice. There is plenty of housing, along train lines, at much lower cost available in Brooklyn or Queens or Northern New Jersey. There are plenty of people who work at much lower salaries than $200,000 for whom Manhattan is simply not even a choice.

For (b), if one thinks about the application of the 1/3 rule for a second, the fallacy arises pretty quickly. Someone with an income of $75,000 who thus has an after-tax income of about $36,000 would have about $3,000 per month - $1000 for housing. THAT is a crunch, and leaves a total of 24,000 for all other expenses ($2000 per month) The guy in the example would similarly have 33,000 for housing, but $67,000 for other expenses, which is 5500 per month. I don't know about you, but 5 grand per month is a *lot* of money for discretionary spending. What he can buy with the difference in discretionary income over the person with the $75,000 income (more than three thousand dollars PER MONTH) is what makes him relatively "rich."

But more to the point, using this same model, someone who is right in the middle of the "six figure" income, $500,000, would pull down about $250,000 after taxes. If we apply the 1/3 rule to this, that's $83,000 for housing, or $6900 per month, leaving $167,000 for discretionary spend, or more than $13,000 per month. He has more than eleven thousand dollars every single month than the guy making $75k to spend on whatever he wants.

That's an awful lot of downloads from iTunes, isn't it?

To be fair to Mr Stewart, the person making $500,000 per year may not "feel rich," to be sure. But my guess is it's because he is looking from his apartment in Greenwich Village at people in his company who live on the upper East Side, or in Westchester County, and not the bridge and tunnel person who works for him.

So all things considered, the rhetorical question asked by Mr Stewart: "Considering taxes, who wants to be a millionaire," I suggest he look at the famous Pink Floyd song for an answer:

But if you ask for a rise, it's no surprise that they're giving none away.

There Is a Fine Line...

between clever, and stupid.

Anyone of roughly my chronological age and intellectual maturity will immediately recognise the quote of one David Saint Hubbins (of the fictitious, eponymous band Spinal Tap).

I was thinking of Mr Saint Hubbins two evenings ago as I watched the infomercial that was being masqueraded as a press conference by President Obama. Other than the embarrassingly inappropriate question about Alex Rodriguez, and the bumptious interruption about Joe Biden's latest brilliance - what, exactly, is the confidence interval around his 30 per cent point estimate for the probability of failure - the questions were largely not even softballs, which at the least are moving. The questions were rather more like balls teed up for a six year old. I am curious; who decided, for example, that the Huffington Post is part of the press in any real way, or that, aside from the voices in Patrick Leahy's head, who exactly is clamouring for a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission?

I voted for Mr Obama in November, but I have to say, he is off to a rough start. One of the reasons I did vote for him is that unlike his opponent, he at least had a veneer of change and ran on hope rather than fear. But I'll be damned if he did not sound a lot like George W Bush last night, even if only as a different libretto to the same score of fear and anxiety.

As for change, is there anyone left who honestly believes that things are going to be done differently by a cabinet with more re-treads that the 1989 Yankees? Looking over the cabinet (Hillary Clinton? Wasn't she born in the Watergate Hotel), I am reminded of the old English sit-com "Are You Being Served," which ran when I was much, much younger. There was an episode in which the Ladies department had to share with Gentleman's Ready-Mades during a renovation. After all the hilarity of Mrs Slocombe's bras atop Mr Grainger's trousers, the curtains were revealed to show.... that nothing had changed.

"It's just the same," Mrs Slocombe exclaimed.

Young Mr Grace responded that everything had been outfitted with new wood.

I would offer that the new administration is a lot like Grace Brothers.

The cabinet is in fact, all new wood.

But aside from that, Mrs Slocombe, green hair and all, would recognise that this administration and what it is sellling is just the same.

Don't Try This at Home

Another day, another incredible story. According to Reuters, the state of California is mulling refusing to release tax refunds to those who overpaid their taxes in 2008.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090202/us_nm/us_usa_economy_california

Now, aside from the fact that this is basically theft, where does State Controller John Chiang get the chutzpah to tell people, whose money this actually is, that they must wait 30 days (or perhaps more) to get their money back?

What do you think the IRS, or in the case of Sacramento, the Franchise Tax Board, would say if, come 15th April, you said: "I know that I owe a few thousand dollars, but I am facing a 'cash shortfall,' and so I am going to hold back my taxes for 30 days?" For some reason, I think interest and penalties at the least would descend on you like the winged monkeys from "The Wizard of Oz."

California's fiscal irresponsibility apparently knows neither bounds nor shame. Some are saying the state is on the edge of a financial abyss. Could all those years of reckless spending finally be coming home to roost? Ah the joys of one-party rule.

Tax Cut Redux

One of today's headlines is discussing just what sort of "stimulus" is going to be coming from Washington; in this Whitman's Sampler of bad ideas lurks what some are calling "tax cuts," a great deal of which are in fact, not tax cuts at all, but tax credits and other goodies to try to coerce people into the behaviours that our Morlock Overseers want to engender in us.

Some months ago, I posted a comment on this blog

http://sjrefugee.blogspot.com/2008/11/brave-new-world-of-taxes.html

a question about what responsibilities one bears as a citizen of a country. I am reminded of the question today, as the folks in Washington debate just how to get us out of the mess we now find ourselves in due largely to our sloth, greed, and frankly, stupidity.

Put simply, what I see is more and more people being removed from the tax rolls, who, freed from the nuisance of having to pay for the "services" that they receive, will vote to expand their goodie bags at the increasing expense of the few of us who actually have to pay for them.

I once heard a quote that pretty aptly describes liberal compassion:

Compassion is A and B voting what they are going to force C to do to "help" D.

As you consider the so-called "stimulus package," ask yourself if you are a C or a D.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

If Christmas is the time of miracles, then surely, early January is the time of lists. This one landed in my mail box this morning:

• http://tinyurl.com/BestPlacestoWork

It's basically a back-of-the-envelope accounting of where the 50 "Best Places in America" to work are. Now, obviously this sample based on self-reported "satisfaction," carries with it all of the psychometric freight of that word as well as the inherent sampling bias. But setting that aside, a quick review of the list renders the following, most interesting top-line.

1. Eight of the 50 firms are in management consulting (e.g., McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting). That's almost 20 per cent of the field. Now, given that in the industry I work in, consultants are the modern day equivalent of the biblical publicans - not sure if Jesus Christ himself would sit and have a meal with them - this is strange. And if Scott Adams is to be believed, the view goes beyond just my immediate neighbourhood. I guess these 25 year olds are just good enough, smart enough, and dog gone it, people PAY them.
2. 10 of the 50 (20%) firms are new-styled tech (apps, software, services) companies - companies like Google, salesforce-dot-com, Citrix. I guess that there must be something to be said for loving what you do, since these guys are spending the lion's share of there time at the office working and playing ping-pong with their colleagues rather than at home with their families.
3. There are several banks (Goldman Sachs is 26th). If this report were adjusted using linearly-weighted moving averages or some other tool for adjusting for the time component and hence implosion of Wall St, what would the outcome be?
4. General Mills tops the list. No wonder Jerry Seinfeld always has a box or bowl of cereal in view in every episode of his show. After all, maybe they really are magically delicious.

Enjoy 2009!