There’s been so much talk about “haircuts” lately.
Wall Street is good when it comes to descriptive terms that may or may not describe anything. We’ve had quantitative easing (1 and 2), risk on/risk off, kicking the can down the road, dead cat bounce, rip your face off rally and now haircuts.
As best as I can figure, in financial terms, the extent of a “haircut” refers to how much give back is necessary to achieve something resembling financial solvency.
As opposed to the real world of hair cutting where there is no cost differential based on the amount of hair shorn, it appears that the extent of the haircut elicits fevered opinions as the perceived costs are culturally unsettling.
Greeks, apparently are a hairy bunch. Thank goodness Armenia isn’t a member of the EU.
As soon as talk centers on the possibility of Greece perhaps needing to take a bigger haircut than initially thought, there’s more rioting on the streets of Athens.
Retiring at age 27 instead of 25 makes some people very angry. Angry enough to toss Molotov cocktails made from the strange green antiseptic liquid that cleans the instruments of haircutting.
Haircuts do that sort of thing to people.You know how irrational people can be when they get a haircut that doesn’t suit them or that doesn’t satisfy their preconceived notions.
With the remnants of my Jew-Fro, I still aspire to look like Jennifer Ansiton after each haircut, but am serially disappointed.
Speaking of haircuts and serial disappointments, look at poor Jon Corzine, CEO of MF Global.
On Tuesday, MF Global had the fine distinction of losing even more, on a percentage basis, than even Netflix.
Did I mention that Jon Corzine was follicularly challenged?
First he was forced out as CEO of Goldman Sachs, then he leaves after a single term as New Jersey Senator, to use his hands on organizational skills to lead New Jersey during the beginning of the area’s financial meltdown.
Depending on your perspective, Corzine either gets a demerit for bad timing or a slap on the back of the head.
For bad timing.
Did I so neglect to mention that New Jersey was perhaps every bit as much dependent on the health of Wall Street as is Wall Street? The state didn’t fare terribly well during the Corzine administration as Wall Street melted down.
If you want to talk about where Main Street meets Wall Street, look no further than the newly rehabilitated cities of New Jersey.
Of course, there’s always the embarrassing evening when Corzine was at the Islamic Society of Central Jersey and was mistakenly characterized as being Jewish.
That’s not going to help your election chances, at least not among the Central Jersey electorate. It doesn’t matter how often you deny it. His problem was that he didn’t vehemently deny it. He should have had his publicist add an “h” to “Jon”.
That he was voted out in favor of Chris Christie, who is fully maned and obviously not Jewish, is just coincidental. But you don’t find very many Jews that use the name of the Savior as both their first and last names
After trying his hand at politics, it was back to Wall Street for Jon Corzine.
For a guy that doesn’t have much on top, he took another huge haircut on Wednesday, as shares of MF Global, with many financial interests in Europe just got hammered again.
I feel badly for Jon Corzine, although the worst may be yet to come.
That is, if Dick Bove, who is not one of my favorites, is correct in the suggestion that Goldman Sachs is a possible buyer of MF Global.(See: I Never Liked Dick Bove)
In that case, Corzine may request a cut starting at the neck.
In the wake of Netflix and now Amazon, I’ve gotten a haircut well beyond what I had asked for.
You can’t even begin to tell that there’s a Jew Fro in there somewhere.
I hate haircuts of all kinds.
When I first moved to the Maryland area, I had to find a replacement for the Faleri Brothers, the two raging anti-semitic haircutter brothers, with horrid gingivitis and a penchant for overly small Qiana shirts. To their credit, they did an admirable job with my difficult to maintain mane.
One thing that I learned during that period was that when one makes distasteful comments and has a sharp instrument in their hands, disagreeing is really a question of proper timing.
It had taken me years to get used to them, although I’m not certain why that was the case.
After my first haircut in my new home at one of those mall franchise places, I was asked by the “stylist” how I liked the haircut.
I always say that I liked it, despite the fact that I could never see what was looking at without my glasses being placed back on.
Upon telling her that it did, in fact, like the haircut, she then proceeded to ask me if I would be willing to sponsor her brother so that he might emigrate from Hait to the United States.
That seemed like a reasonable reuest, so upon thinking about it for a brief nano-second, instead, I gave her an extra 5% in the tip and never returned.
For the next 15 years I just continued being ill at ease having my hair cut and being handled by people with very sharp instruments near the organ of mine that I treasured the most.
No. I don’t get Brazilians.
I rarely would go, only doing so when Sugar Momma would threaten not to go out with me in public until I made myself presentable.
About 6 months ago, by special request, Sugar Momma gave me a haircut. She had never done so before, but I had it with trying to make small talk, reading totally uninteresting magazines and constantly being peddled all kinds of hair products.
Long story short? Best decision of my life. In return, I vowed to trim my beard on a regular basis.
No conversation. No tipping. All I need to do is sweep up the curls and sleep with the girls.
Now, Sugar Momma refuses to be seen in public with me because of the tee shirts I choose to wear. They’re not even made of Qiana, but they tend to be Malt liquor centric, as hand me downs from my son, whose friend’s father owned a liquor store.She doesn’t think it appropriate that I be seen in public with such attire.
What can I say? It’s all a work in progress.
As the trading week itself was progressing to the mid-point, Iwas adjusting my selt belt for Green Mountain Coffee Roaster’s earnings announcement in anticipation of yet another haircut. Instead, word came that the announcement wouldn’t come today, as planned.
Given the warnings this week from David Einhorn and others, that can’t be good news.
At the very least Netflix showed a bit of a bounce after Whitney Tilson, the oft wrong Netflix short of past, announced that he was now buying Netflix shares. That sent shares up by about 4%.
4 down and 30 to go, but you still can’t even see a 5 o’clock shadow on my skull.
The one thing that was really reinforced for me after these few days of overly speculative play is that I really don’t like getting my hair cut.
I don’t mind a little trim, as long as my new growth exceeds the removal.
Someday, and that day will come, maybe for Jon Corzine, as well, that I’ll be able to look into the mirror and see the perfectly layered shag so wonderfully worn by Jennifer.
But until then, despite Sugar Momma making the whole process a little more tolerable, haircuts will remain well down my list of favorite things, along with Netflix, Amazon, Green Mountain and any Wall Street words du jour.
But unlike Jon Corzine, I know that when I get clipped, literally or figuratively, it’s coming back.
So no matter how bad the cut, I just take the glasses off and it looks great.
Netflix will be just fine and so will Amazon. Once they come back, or I make up the difference between buy and sell price with options premiums, they’ll be gone.
If it doesn’t work out that way for Jon Corzine, I’d like to be among the first to invite him to me in my personal Hair Club for Men, where no one cares what length of hair you have, the length of your beard or what tee shirts you sport.
Things can only get better.