Saturday Rock Blog: Over the Hills and Far Away & In My Time of Dying (Led Zeppelin)

Labor Day Rock Blog: No Quarter ('73)

And she's buying a stairway to heaven... (with gold)

What goes up must come down? (3 yr charts)

RIMM

PCU
FSLR
DRYS
DECK
MOS
LED ZEPPELIN

MON
POT
AAPL
GME

Disclosure: I own DRYS, FSLR & RIMM puts. Also, Led Zeppelin calls.

IOTN (USHG) to hide under a new name (AERG)

"TUCSON, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ionatron, Inc., (Nasdaq:IOTN - News), today announced that effective February 20, 2008 it will change its corporate name to Applied Energetics, Inc., and the company's shares will begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol "AERG". The name change reflects the transition of the company from its roots in directed energy weapons research, to its emerging mix of engineering and production programs for military, aerospace, and industrial customers.

Commenting on the name change, Applied Energetics’ Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Dana Marshall stated, “Our company has moved well beyond our foundation in scientific discovery. Our new name is intended to better express this focus on delivering practical capability, and reflect the broadening of our targeted markets and applications. Our customers have embraced our innovative concepts for guided energy, and today we are meeting their needs for well engineered production hardware for their real-world applications. We also hope that this new name will highlight the significant changes we’ve made to our management approach as we have matured this business over the past two years.”

In conjunction with the name change, the company’s new website www.appliedenergetics.com will be online starting February 18, 2008." -source

You can change your name, but we won't forget. It looks like Robert Howard and Thomas Dearmin ditched a while ago, what a sorry story that was:

Nov 11, 2005: "Tucson-based Ionatron Inc. says testing is on track for a device intended to detect and destroy improvised bombs for the U.S. military in Iraq but that details remain top secret.

Ionatron Inc. Chief Executive Thomas Dearmin told analysts the company's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizer has been tested by the military, "and they have determined the units have military utility."

He said the military has asked for pricing proposals for production quantities of 50, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 units.

The devices are supposed to detect improvised bombs, which are responsible for most of the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and destroy them with an electrical pulse.

Dearmin said the company's Stennis, Miss., manufacturing plant is being readied for production, but it is unclear when any contract would be offered or signed.

"They've asked us to ramp up the Stennis facility for production, and we're doing that on our own," he said.

An official of the Defense Department's Joint IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) Defeat Task Force would confirm only that the Ionatron devices remain "under testing.""

It was a real shame that none of these things ever materialized yet Dearmin walked away with almost $10M in stock sales in 2006 and 2007. Furthermore, he still owns over 7M shares even after the insider trading scandal!! I remember owning shares when USHG changed their ticker to IOTN and when they took it to the Nasdaq, it seems like such a long time ago...

Their old site is still up here, anyone have a link to that first presentation with Star Trek and Terminator 2 images? That was classic. I guess they'll have to change the acronym for their new "laser group."

Some Quotes

"Ambac Financial Group Inc. is in discussions to effectively split itself up ... A halving of Ambac would create one unit that insures municipal debt and one that would cover rapidly diminishing securities tied to the mortgages in a structure that effectively creates a so-called "good bank" and "bad bank."" -source

"Regulators' plans to break up bond insurers into "good'' businesses covering municipal debt and "bad'' businesses liable to subprime-related losses may trigger "years of litigation,'' Bank of America Corp. analysts said.

"It is the equivalent of going to a casino and trying to keep only the winning bets,'' said Tim Mercer, chief investment officer at Hong Kong-based hedge fund Musashi Capital Ltd. "This would be a straightforward case of fraudulent conveyance and everyone involved would be liable for damages from deprived creditors.''" -source

"Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. fell to a 2 1/2-year low in Sydney trading after Chief Executive Officer Michael Smith said the "bloodbath'' in debt markets will erase profit growth this year.

"Credit costs are going up, well above underlying earnings growth,'' said Smith, who joined ANZ from HSBC Holdings Plc last year, in a webcast briefing. The Melbourne-based bank, Australia's third largest, will also take a $200 million charge for derivatives linked to U.S. debt insurer ACA Capital Holdings Inc." -source

"Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said the U.K. government will nationalize Northern Rock Plc (Bank) because bids from private companies didn't ensure taxpayer loans to the struggling lender would be repaid quickly enough." -source

This clip is from last September:


"Bank of America Corp. will join the Dow on Feburary 19th... Coincidently, analysts at investment researcher Morningstar Inc. made a bold prediction for the Dow to rise 50% by this time in 2011 -- more than 6,000 points -- just as Dow Jones & Co., publisher of MarketWatch, announced the index changes." -source (lol)

"The housing market continues to fall deeper into recession,'' said Michelle Meyer, economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York. -source

"I don't see a housing market recovery right now,'' said Mason, 43, who predicts Treasury yields will fall as investors continue to buy the debt as a haven from losses in higher risk markets. "People can't get a mortgage'' because "banks are restricting access to credit,'' he said.

Declining property values are also making it harder for a growing number of homeowners to refinance. By year-end as many as 15 million households may owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to an estimate from Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist of New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc."-source

"Guy de Blonay, Philip Gibbs and Kokkie Kooyman, the managers of Europe's three best-performing funds focused on financial companies, say they're buying bank shares after an 11 percent decline in a benchmark index in 2007.

"We never saw the collapse in subprime happening to the extent it did,'' said Kooyman, who's based in Cape Town and whose fund is registered in Dublin. "But we'll always find shares somewhere that we think are cheap.''" -source (lol)

"Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. economy is on the verge of its first recession in six years as falling home values hurt consumer spending. "We are clearly on the edge,'' he said.

"Home prices will continue to weaken,'' the 81-year-old former Fed chief said. "When a bubble breaks, you go to primordial fear.''"-source

Feel free to add quotes xerxes, btb and indigo.

Saturday Rock Blogging: Valentine Rock

The most compelling short ever? or How I learned to stop worrying and LOVE the decline.