Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 05.07.2010

Episode Date: May 7, 2010

On this week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show, we discuss Wall Street volatility, the situation in Greece, and potential problems for Apple. Plus best-selling author Dave Barry talks about the business of humor and our team of analysts shares some stock ideas for Mom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks for being here. I'm your host Chris Hill, and I'm joined by Motley Fool Senior Analyst, Seth, Jason, James Early, and Shannon's area. Guys, good to see you. Good to see you, Chris. On today's show, Mr. Markets' Wild Ride, Playboy's New Look, New Problems for Apple, and stocks for mom. Plus, best-selling author, Dave Barry, talks about the business of humor, and our own Seth Jason talks about what it feels like to make $30 million in five seconds.

But we begin with the wild week on Wall Street. Incredible volatility, concerns over Greece and a crazy day on Thursday that saw the single worst intraday drop in stock market history. Shannon Zimmerman, what was your headline? Definitely the market mayhem. And for me, the subhead is, when I was in high school, you used to look around me and wonder and worry what would become of the world when my contemporaries were in charge of important things. Well, but now we know. It's just great. The interesting thing for this is I think that the market has been prime for correction for a long time. We've been talking about this on the show for quite a while. You know, the market is a discounting mechanism. It's run up fast and furious since the

March 2009 lows. Historically speaking, when you have such a rally, you're going to have a bit of a correction. So everybody's lying and wait for that. And this, you know, along with the Greek debt crisis, which is a serious story, this kind of exacerbated that tendency. anyway. The thing is, you know, I've been waiting for a reason to panic for a long time now. It was over so quickly. I didn't even have just, I was in a meeting and I got back out. Same thing. I was in a meeting and somebody in there, his hair started on fire. I tried to get everyone on task. We don't really know what caused this, except I believe we can say with 100% certainty, it was unintended consequences of computers and high frequency trading of some kind

because it has to be that because most of the volume on the exchanges are, it is. is high frequency trading by our standards and even high frequency trading by the technical standards. But what seems to have happened is that something triggered a sell off. This triggered other computers to sell other things off. There are some stories of the Wall Street Journal that actually people who specialize in the highest, quickest trading, high frequency trading, then said, you know what, we don't want our computers selling off more.

They unplugged, which may have taken away potential demand. So things just tanked before anybody knew what happened. and then they bounced back just as quickly. Yeah, the most interesting theory, and this is, I can't confirm this, but it's alleged that Hal 9,000 has been involved as well. All right, you mentioned this as well, Shannon. Greece's parliament signed off on an austerity plan, and Germany voted for Greece bailout funding.

But James Early, European markets down on Friday. How concerned should investors here in America be that Greece's problems could soon become our problems? You know, I hate to be the unsavory substance in the punch bowl, but I do think this is actually a serious issue. I mean, Greece itself is small. It's a few percent of the EU's GDP, but it can have a big effect. And it's not just Greece.

It's Spain. It's Portugal. It's Italy. These are all seeing higher borrowing costs now. And look at Greece. They're rioting. It's sad, but it's almost like a self-sabotage because, you know, I don't know how long the chaos is going to last, but they need every bit of solidarity they can get to buckle up

and get through this IMF austerity, which they need to do, I believe. but the big question is, what does the EU look like after this? Does the action of the German government attempting to help Greece, does that in some way contain the problem? Not yet. Greece's borrowing cost is still, what, 11%, which is a very junky company territory. Yeah, the Greeks just need to be able to devalue their currency, and of course they can't because their currency is the euro.

Either that or they need to get a lot more productive, but are they going to compete with Germany on productivity? No. So, I mean, they're really between Iraq and a hard place, and I think the end game very well could be that Greece has to withdraw from the Euro. The symbolism of Germany kind of relenting is an interesting piece of this puzzle as well because they were being sticklers. They need to pay more in interest was their insistence.

And for them to kind of relent on this, and that's a good sign. I think it does speak to James' point about solidarity. I'm not that it is a worst-case scenario, but I'm not that confident that the EU is going to be able to withstand. this. Exit question. Do you think the euro exists as a currency three years from now? Shannon? I'll say, you know, it's a 50-50 proposition, but I'll say no. I say 65% no. I say no because I really miss coming back from trips with all that different money. On Thursday, the Dow had its biggest drop ever, nearly 1,000 points during a trading day,

and there was a 20-minute period in the afternoon where the market actually seemed broken. Get your heads around this. Shares of Accenture fell from $40 a share to one cent. Sotheby's went from $30 a share to $100,000 a share. The NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange are canceling some of the trades made during that period. Seth Jason, you're a Sotheby's shareholder. What did you make of all of this, and how much has your own personal net worth declined from its high on Thursday? You know, it was terrible. I lost $30 million on Thursday. The good news is I gained $30 million on Thursday when Sotheby's shot up there. But, you know, then on Friday, Sotheby's at one point is down more than 8% again. This during actually a good auction season.

It was really crazy. I thought everybody only lost money on paper during all this glitch activity until somebody said, did you look at Sotheby's? And I said, oh man, I have 300 shares of Sotheby's, 100,000 a share? I sent this to my wife and she nearly passed out. Scarrier yet, I had considered earlier in the week putting an order in to sell Sotheby's at $40. not inconceivable that I could have, you know, got that $100,000. Well, Shannon Zimmerman, you were on Rachel Maddow's show earlier this week. She had a stat that Sotheby's market cap, $6.8 trillion that's more than the U.S. and China's economies combined. That's exactly right.

And she was also pointing out that Boston Beer went to zero, and that's a tragedy. Sam Adams. Exactly. All right. So what are the lessons for investors here? I mean, this has certainly gotten a lot of headlines. There's any good ones. How about that confidence in the system, everybody.

How confident. Let's all clap for the system. Way to go. Come on. Is it really that bad? There's no positive takeaway from this? Well, it's funny, and it's a pratfall, but boy, it sure is a worrisome one. I mean, if it's that thin a house of cards, then we're all in trouble.

Yeah. It's nothing but scary. I mean, it's good that the sanity returned, but it's bad that we had to watch that happen for a while. Exit question. As I mentioned, the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange, they're canceling. some of the trades that happened on that volatile Thursday afternoon. So looking back over your own investing career, if you could take a molligan. If there's one trade you could cancel, what would it be?

I once traded Daredevil Number 17 for an Evil Knievel Snake River Canyon toy, and that was a bad trade on my part. That was horrible. James? In the mid-80s, I think I threw away my first pair of Air Jordans, which probably would fetch about $100,000 on eBay. Maybe not that much. Seth?

Oh, boy, so many. So much regret. Are you still pining for that $30 million that you had on paper on Thursday? Brother, can you spare a million? I don't know. A recent one is getting out of my last Apple trade in the $100 range.

Steve Brodano, what about you? I mean, out of anyone, you seem to be the most active trader of the bunch. I don't know about that. I would say my father did throw away my Star Wars toys when I was a child. I don't know if there was a lot of value there except emotional value that was lost.

Get on eBay, man. There's value there. And who knows, maybe they would be your actual toys. Just circulating back around here. It's very possible. If you love something, Steve, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it's real. All right, let's move to Friday's job numbers.

The U.S. economy added 290,000 jobs in April, but the unemployment rate rose to 9.9%. Seth, that seems like a little bit of a disconnect there. Well, it's always a disconnect with the unemployment number. The headlines right now are full of exhortations that we should just ignore the unemployment number because the way it's calculated is on how many people are actually looking for work. And they're saying, well, now that the economy is better, more people are looking for work.

And so the unemployment figure can go up even if you create jobs. But, of course, that's to say that before, when we weren't counting these people, everything was fine as well. You can't really have it both ways. That said, I think this was a pretty good report, non-farm payroll employment, up $290,000. There are a lot of good numbers buried in here. Sure, some of that is government hiring census workers who are, temporary, but manufacturing, 44,000 more jobs, construction employment actually up a bit in April, professional and business services up 80%. Health care, which had been one of the few growth areas,

is not one of the leaders. And there's a lot of temp work and everything there, but there's still some more service and hospitality. So this is good because every little bit helps. And when these people start spending, that will engender more jobs. And the other side, hopefully, I have a hard time being negative on this one. I was going to say, you sound encouraged. Yeah, I would like to be cheerier than I actually am because the underemployment report is horrible, which factors then the amount of people who aren't in the counted labor force because they're not looking, they're not looking for jobs. It's not at 20 percent, but it's hovering near 20 percent. I don't know. I mean, my theory is that these same factors are at work in pretty much every high unemployment

situation, you know, these interplays with the numbers. I mean, to me, the bigger news yesterday was finding out that I'm part in Neanderthal. What was that story anyway? There was some study that came out. Yeah, they found that we have some percentage of Neanderthal genes in us. Some of us more than others. Right, yeah, I was going to say, right now. No name means. Yeah.

All right. Coming up, just in time for Mother's Day, Playboy announces plans for a new website. And William Shatner has 600 million reasons to smile. Monty, Monty. Stick around. You're listening to Motley Full Money. Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in the studio with Seth, Jason, James Early, and Shannon Zerrin.

as we dig into some of the companies making headlines this week. But first, guys, we've got to give a shout out to our newest affiliate, News Radio 840, KXNT in Las Vegas. Yeah. I'm thinking road trip. Yeah, absolutely. All right, back to the actual headlines. A huge funnel is being lowered over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

James Early, they're hoping this thing will be working by Monday, but the Coast Guard reported this week that oil is making it past the protective booms and washing up on land. What do you think when you see this? Well, I mean, look, I'm an eco-environmental guy, so obviously I'm a little bit, well, very heartbroken. It's just a terrible thing, and it certainly will be for the economy. Speaking of the economy, the Wall Street Journal had a great article, and if you think of, it's basically about the minerals management service.

This is the government-run agency responsible for basically overseeing a lot of things among them, the safety and some of the economics of our oil drilling. And if you think back to 2008, the MMS was involved in this scandal, wild parties, lavish gifts, and sex with industry associates. And I don't want to create a rush of job applicants for this place. But send your resume to the Department of the Interior. They're apparently asleep at the wheel again and not properly monitoring the safety. And I think they will going forward, obviously. So I certainly don't see this is a boon for any company operating-wise in the Gulf. I mean, that may sound obvious, but I do think the costs,

daily costs of drilling are going to go up. This week in Apple reports out that Apple might be facing an antitrust probe over some of its developer agreements and its I-Ad platform. And on Friday, Nokia sued Apple again, alleging that the iPad and iPhone infringe five of Nokia's patents. Seth, what did you make of Apple's week? Poor Apple. Much less popular than it used to me, at least among certain players in the market. The Nokia thing we can get out of pretty quickly because that will be taken care of in a courtroom where anything goes. But Nokia says that the patents that are being infringed relate to everything from how speech and data are transmitted to using positioning data to the way that antennas are made smaller, enabling them to make the devices smaller.

The more interesting bit is the FTC and Department of Justice. Again, this is all reports and allegations. Nobody's saying anything about this. But the story seems to be that people are upset that developers are only able to develop for the iPhone and iPad on Apple's own development software, which would force developers to not use tools that will allow them to, say, port their applications to several different operating systems like maybe Android, Windows phone, or Symbion, and that that would be anti-competitive behavior. And I would have to call that's legal, maybe even illegal, but that's up for the course to decide. The ad thing is related, the idea, the complaint being reported being that data transmission rules in Apple's developer agreements

would make it difficult for developers to use any other ad service within an iPhone or an iPad application, again, shutting out competition. So they do run antitrust risk at some point. And right now, this sort of is related to what we were talking about when we discussed the ad platform that they're coming out with, which charges a ridiculous premium. Because they are not the only game in town, but the dominant game in town, they can write the rules until there is a legitimate competitor. And so they can be as much of a pain in the neck to developers as they want until the point comes where developers have an option.

You know what? I'm not going to develop just for your particular platform when I have an open source I can go with. Well, they already have that. And so I think Apple's treading a walk in a fine line right now. I'm not sure they're big enough for people to care quite too much, but I think they're really getting close to the edge. But who is the rival? So is it the droid and then the Google platform? Because right now, there's different ad-serving systems. It could be easy. The other thing is you're shutting off innovation. And so I think that the government, I think, is trying to avoid the Microsoft situation where, and I think they're trying to get out in front of this instead of responding later. Playboy reported a narrower quarterly loss this week.

The company also announced a, quote, safe for work website. The company wouldn't disclose any details, but according to reports, the website will be the smokingjacket.com. James, you're a stylish guy. I was wondering who this question was going to go to. Is the smoking jacket going to save Playboy? I don't think it's going to save Playboy, no. I mean, overall, I think Playboy is just dead. I mean, except for the licensing.

You know, there's so much free online stuff these days, I hear, that, you know, it just doesn't make sense. You know, and come to find out people weren't reading it for the articles. Yeah, well, and this is a ploy to sort of grab fax of market share that it went to Maxim, but Maxim is flailing too. But don't you think that Playboy has, to James's point, it has the global icon. It has the appeal worldwide that Maxup doesn't. But that's mud flaps and air fresheners. I mean, it's not...

There's a lot of money to be had in that, I hear. I don't think that is overrated, too. They're so associated with a very different era that they can't shake it off, which is why they're not calling it Playboy Safe for Work, but the smoking jacket, which is also pretty staid. In other media news, the Washington Post announced this week

that it was selling Newsweek magazine, which the Post has owned for nearly 50 years. The magazine is reportedly losing a half million dollars a week, so don't everybody bid it once. Shannon, what do you think? Well, you know, it's kind of sad. It's the end of an era. Actually, the era ended probably seven years ago, and they're just now getting around to put in the last nail in the coffin. I went to my dentist last week, and I was flipping through a copy of Time magazine.

That's basically a leaflet, and Newsweek had even fewer ad pages than time. So it's kind of sad. It was an institution, but that day is done. And finally, make fun of William Shatner, all you want and he'll just smile back at you when he's not busy counting his money. According to reports, Shatner has made an estimated $600 million from his role as priceline.com's pitchman. When he took the job back in 1997, Shatner agreed to be paid in stock and it's worked out well. Shares of price line fell below $2 a share back in 2000,

but now trade for around $230 a share. Exit question. Buy-seller hold, William Shatner. Shatner is always a buy, and as somebody who grew up watching him on Star Trek. It's fun to see sort of the dismount of his career. And so, you know, this is a lovely parting gift. It's fantastic. This is a hell of a big parting gift. The question is, who is his successor? He's a succession plan, and I think it should be James Spader.

You know, they were together on Boston legal. They have similar whale-like bodies. I think he's the Shatner. James Early. Sel. My dad can't stand William Shatner. I don't really know why, but he's just so adamantly against him. I figure he must have a good reason.

Is the toupee? That's a toupee? No way. See, that's what 600 million buys you. A really sweet toupee. Speaking of which, Seth Jason. I don't have a toupee. I just roll it bald and ugly, man.

Bald and ugly the entire way. Buy seller hold Shatner. I did buy Shatner. I bought Shatner's last album, which is a few years old now, but he really rocks out. And there's some good spoken word stuff on there. He's in on the joke.

Shatner is aware of what he is, and he's in on the joke. So I don't think it's, I think you've got to go with Shatner. Steve Broido, what do you think? Buy seller, hold William Shatner. I'm selling. He is on the joke, but the joke isn't really that funny. So I'm selling the joke and Shatner. All right, drop us an email, Motleyfulmoney at Fool.com.

Are you buying, selling, or holding William Shatner? Did you make millions on Thursday? If so, can we borrow some of it? And tell us if you think it's time to break up Apple. Motley Full Money at Fool.com. The guys will be back later in the show to share some stocks for Mom, but coming up, what the problems in Greece mean for you and your money. Picture yourself on a train and a station.

With glass-seemed porters, with looking-glass ties, suddenly someone is there at the turnstile. A girl with kaleidas. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill, and as the economic crisis in Greece continues to evolve, we'd figure we'd check in again with Tim Hanson. He's a senior analyst and co-advisor of the International Investing Service Motley Fool Global Gains. Tim, welcome back. I am so popular in times of crisis. We talked a little bit about this earlier in the show, but give me your take on what's playing out in Greece and the EU.

Well, it's a fascinating situation. I mean, Greece and the EU have pretty much done everything that the market would have wanted them to do. I mean, they've come up with a bailout plan. It's been passed by the Greek parliament. They've implemented their austerity plan. The German legislature has passed their contribution. And so, you know, things are proceeding according to plan. And yet there's this enormous confidence gap in the market into how if the plan can actually succeed.

And only time will tell on that front. But people are obviously panicky early in the week. You saw that with the huge decline in the stock market. And Europe is definitely on people's minds. Again, this is a sovereign debt situation. These are supposed to be very low risk securities. And if they start to tumble, you know, watch out. Now, I think for a lot of folks, this story, one of the ways this story is played out is some of the images that are coming back of extreme violence over there.

You were over in Greece a month ago. It wasn't that violent then. What do you make of it now? The situation has certainly changed. When we were there, it was very benign. We went to one protest, and it was just some guys smoking cigarettes and drinking ice coffee. Obviously, that's changed. It's changed for the worst.

People lost their lives this past week, which is very, very sad. But what we continue to hear is that the protests, you know, while bigger and more violent, are not broadly representative of Greek public opinion. I think everyone in Greece is upset about the potential austerity measures, but most of them aren't taking to the streets. The people we've talked to have said these are generally sort of left-wing union-driven protests. That's not to minimize their significance. But again, I think, you know, this is a socialist government. They were elected with mainstream union support, and we've been led to believe that they will have some flexibility to implement this austerity plan,

which is really critical to the success of their financial efforts. Well, and it seems like just when you look at the reporting of what's going on in Greece, there are some systemic problems there. According to Daniel Kaufman at the Brookings Institute, Greece sacrifices up to 8% of its GDP annually to nepotism, cronyism, and bribery. That's got to be a huge figure. Huge figure. I mean, Greece has a lot of problems to solve. On the bright side, it means they have a lot of levers to pull to try to get a solution. You know, just to add to that, Greece gets about half.

in terms of GDP, percent of GDP in terms of tax revenue, then it's European peers, even though it has the same tax rates. And that's because of tax evasion. Funny story coming out of Athens, apparently there's a tax on swimming pools over there. Okay. And about 3204 people filing from this wealthy neighborhood

said, yes, I was swimming pool. I'll pay the tax. Skeptical of this number, Greek, it's a very hot country, Greek investigators pulled up the old Google and checked out the satellite photos. And sure enough, they found 16,974 swimming pools. That's not even close.

I mean, you know, benefit of the doubt, maybe you look in your backyard, you're not sure what constitutes a pool. But I think, you know, if there's a diving board. What, it's like a duck pond? I just made a little duck pond. Well, you know, this is my decorative coy pond. What do you think is the biggest misperception about the situation in Greece? I think the biggest misperception about Greece is that it's a big problem. I mean, Greece is a small problem, but I think the reason the market is so panicky is because it's a canary in the coal mine, so to speak.

You know, if Greece were to default, it'd be an issue. There are some companies that would feel to burn on that National Bank of Greece, some French banks. They're holding these bonds and they're critical to their capital structures. But in the scheme of things, it's not that bad. But the reason people are frightened is because if Greece goes down, it doesn't bode very well for Spain. and Spain actually would be a very big deal. Greece's problems are having an effect on the global bond market, obviously. There have been reports that some investors are buying bonds from countries who are removed from the situation in the EU.

Russia and Egypt were cited as two examples. So let's just close with a geography quiz here. Let's say I want to buy some bonds from a country as far away from Greece as possible. Geographically speaking. Geographically, what country Are you buying? Am I buying? Wow.

Do we have theme music for me to think this over? I would have to guess, based on my flight experiences, I'm going to go with New Zealand? Wow. That is so impressive. I got it? Well, here's the thing. To be perfectly accurate,

You're basically landing in the South Pacific Ocean somewhere between New Zealand and French Polynesia. But you know what? We said beforehand... I'm not sure French Polynesia has bombs to buy. Exactly. So, you know, we said we were making this quiz up. And he gets either one, we're giving him credit. You know, frankly, we would have even given you Australia. But New Zealand. Thank you.

Tim Hanson's... Global Gaines. Senior analyst and co-advisor of Motley Fool Global Gaines. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Chris. For more than 20 years, Dave Barry wrote a... weekly humor column for the Miami Herald, and in the process, won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He's the author of more than 30 books, including his latest. I'll mature when I'm dead, Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood. He joins me from his home in Coral Gables, Florida.

Dave, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Now, as you know, the newspaper industry is in trouble. Papers are losing subscribers. That includes our local paper here, the Washington Post. but it seems like you have a solution because one of your chapters is entitled A Practical Workable Plan for Saving the Newspaper Business. How are you going to save the Post and other papers? Apparently you didn't read the subtitle of that chapter, which is, I sure don't have one. I was talking in that chapter about what happened to the newspaper business. Let's just give you a little timeline here.

I stopped writing a column. The newspaper history went down the toilet. Coincidence? I don't think so. That sounds like cause and effect to me. To me, yeah, too. But I think the big problem is that the Internet, have you heard about it? I've heard a little something about it. It's a series of tubes, isn't it?

I think it is, and if I were advising investors, I would tell them they should buy stock in the Internet because I think it's going to be huge. But anyway, it turned out that, and I don't want to get too technical, but a lot of people turn out they would prefer to get their news for free as opposed to paying for it. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, I'll slow down.

Yeah. Hold on with the numbers, Copernicus. Run this by me again? This really was the people running the newspaper business, who unfortunately were our English majors. That's probably the biggest lesson we learned from this all. They never let English majors run anything. And when they were basically a monopoly, which was the situation for most of my journalism career, even English majors were able to make money in the newspaper business when they were a monopoly. But as soon as they were faced with any kind of a complicated challenge, like, huh, there's this,

there's this competition coming along. Should we give our content away for free or not? Yeah, let's see if that works. And they started giving away for free, and then, of course, nobody wanted to pay for it anymore. You're listening to Motley Full Money. We're talking with Dave. Wait, I am?

Oh, you're talking to them. Okay. Exactly. This is for the listeners. Not for you, Dave. Now, let's go. Am I allowed to talk to the listeners or only to you? Only to me.

Okay. What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when they are writing for humor or attempting to write for humor? Well, a lot of the time, this is going to sound awfully self-evident, but it's not. Maybe it's self-evident as it sounds. It's a lot of times when people write humor, it's not funny. You're right.

That did sound self-evident. But what I mean by that is I get a lot of, I mean, I've always said this, if you know, the only way you can tell something's funny is to give it to somebody else not your mom. And if that person thinks it's funny, then you can argue it's funny. What you cannot do, but which people try to do, is say, this is funny. I know it is. You know, if you don't laugh, it's because you don't, you know, you're not a good enough reader or whatever. And you can get away with that a little bit.

I mean, some people think some things are funny and something. But you can't sort of generally state that something's funny if people aren't laughing at it. So I tell people if they want to become humor writers that they need to, they need to ask people who are reasonably objective, you know, if they think it's funny and, you know, get an honest answer and not ignore the answer, which I think a lot of people do. other things that people do that makes humor not work so well, they tend to take one joke and beat it completely to death. The rule should be make a joke and get out. You know, go on to the next joke or stop.

Don't keep, you know, over-restating, restating the same basic humor premise, which even good humorists do sometimes. I was just going to say this is interesting advice from someone who seems wed to the word booger, the way you've been over your corner. Well, I'm not saying I follow any of this advice. I'm just giving it out here. And besides, I think people overstate the extent to which I use the word Booger. It's probably only one or two times per page. There you go. And it's only come up a couple of times in this interview.

So far, I think you brought it up. You're listening to Motley Full Money. We're talking with Dave Barry. Dave Booger Barry. Dave Booger Barry. His new book, I'll mature when I'm dead. Dave Barry's amazing tales of adulthood. All right, Dave, time to delve into our buy-seller hold game.

spot you up with a person, place, a thing. You tell me, if it was a stock, would you be buying, selling, or holding? And let's start with, he just left the Republican Party and will run for Senate as an independent, buy-seller hold, Charlie Christ. I would sell him. I think, you know, I've watched Charlie for a while down here, and he's a chameleon-ish. I'm not sure he's a human being. Have you ever looked at the color of his skin? He has the same color skin as traffic cone. So I think he may end up just like, you know, eventually he'll decide to go back to whatever planet he'll, on and maybe run for office there. Buy seller hold, Facebook.

I don't know. See, I don't like Facebook very much. I was on it for a while, and all that happened was people I knew in junior high school wrote me letters asking me if I would send them a free book. So I'm going to say sell Facebook. Besides, something else will come along and replace it. All right, keeping Mother's Day and Father's Day in mind, buy seller hold, breakfast in bed. Buy.

Mother's, you know, mothers like to have breakfast in bed. sure why because usually you end up like with egg in your crotch or something, you know. But moms think that's great. I'm not saying necessarily eggs in their crotch. Let's get, let's keep this. But I'm saying they do love it when the kids stumble in there and spill all over the, and then of course mom ends up usually having to clean it up and wash the sheets and everything. But that's, you know, for some reason they love it. So I would go with that, buy that. Just don't give mom anything for Mother's Day. And usually it's the dad, let's be on it, who ends up buying the Mother's Day give. Nothing with a plug and nothing, nothing.

thing that has a starter cord or anything like that. It's something useless, like a candle that gives off virtually no illumination and smells like, you know, a house of prostitution. That, they love that, you know, that kind of thing. The less useful, the better the gift, as far as mom's concerned. Don't give her like a Coleman lantern and say, well, look at this. If the power ever goes out, you know, don't give her that. Nothing practical. And finally, you've been somewhat critical of his music, buy-seller hold, Neil Diamond. Well, I'm not going to say anything better. I almost got killed by Neil Diamond fans once,

because I made fun of the song. I Am, I said, when Neil sings, like, with a great intensity and sincerity, I am, I said to no one there, and no one heard it all, not even the chair. You know, and my feeling is like, well, no kidding, Neil, you know, like, I'll imagine it. The table didn't pick up on it either, you know, because, like, these are items of furniture. So I wrote a column saying that, you know, somewhat critical of Neil Diamond. And, man, you think Salman Rushdie got in trouble. I got the most hateful hate mail I think I've ever got, you know, in the anger.

And things like, how dare you criticize this man, Mr. Barry? Neil Diamond is the greatest artist. He's the greatest singer. I listen to Heartlight 14 times and it cured my goiter, Mr. Barry. So now I realize that was wrong and I love Neil, and if any Neil Diamond fans are listening, please, I love him. Leave me alone. Best-selling author, PJ O'Rourke calls it, quote,

Dave Barry's best book so far, which is saying a lot. The book is, I'll Mature When I'm Dead, Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood. Dave Barry, thanks so much for joining us on Motley Full Money. Thanks, thanks for having me on. I hope that nobody takes any kind of financial advice ever from me. That's my main advice, including that. Coming up next, our exclusive interview with Neil Diamond. Stay tuned.

You're listening to Motley Full Money. I'm a big fan. Coming up, in honor of Mother's Day, we'll share a few stocks for mom. You're listening to Motley Full Money. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about. Don't buy ourselves stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Chris Hill and back in the studio with me, our trio of senior analysts, Seth Jason, James Early, and Shannon Zerman.

Guys, good to see you again. Good to see, Chris. It's that time. We've done this the last few weeks. Let's keep it going. Little Harper's Index time with our man, Steve Broido. Steve, what do you got for us? Number one, amount paid in January 2006 for one of William Shatner's kidney stones.

Oh, wow, I'd pay anything for that. But how much was paid? That's the question. I'm going to say $75,000. $40,000. $17,000. The correct answer is $25,000. Yes, I'm putting for dollars or whatever it is.

All right, Steve, what else we got? Story number two, number of years the mother in the family circus cartoon, have the same hairstyle before changing it in 1996. Wow. 43. 40. 35. And the correct answer is 36. Oh, set. Set chasing on fire.

I'm kicking all y'all's asses at this today. All right, Steve. Give us one more. Winner of the UK's Most Respected Mother in a poll conducted by the Mother's Union in 2004. Most respected mother in the UK, Shannon Zimmerman? Is it required that the mother be a UK resident? I don't believe it is. I'm going to say Mother Teresa.

James Early? Supernanny. Although she's not a mother. She's a respected mother. Seth, see if you can run the table here. Angela Lansberry. Oh, good one. Steve?

The correct answer is Marge Simpson. Oh. That's pretty close. That's great. That's great. Didn't she beat out like the first lady over there? I believe she beat out the first lady Sheree Blair and Victoria Beckham. Victoria Beckham.

Wow. Victoria Beckham. Wow. That's a competition. competition. It's hard to believe Victoria Beckham was, I don't know, even in the running for something like that. Was she Old Spice? Posh Spice.

She was posh spice, right? Wow, James, quick with the Spice Girls trivia. All right, guys. Now is the time when we usually do stocks on our radar. But in honor of Mother's Day, why don't we make it one stock for mom? Shannon Zimmerman, kick it off. All right, so this is probably a stock for your wicked stepmother, but it's a Goldman Sachs, ticker symbol, G.S.

perhaps you've heard of it. The reason it's on my radar this week and should be on yours is Buffett has come out to defend in pretty clear, straightforward, and compelling terms. His investment in Goldman Sachs? There's no doubt that there's self-interest, but come on, it's more on Buffett, and the cases of Goodwin's. Like, look, you know, if you weren't lazy analysts, the referenced mortgages were there for all to see, and so don't blame your losses on the fact that you didn't do your homework. Doesn't matter who was on the other side. It doesn't matter if they were actively betting against it as they were putting the package together.

It's on you to look into the mortgages. So that is one reason why it's on my radar. The other reason is Bruce Berkowitz, the manager of the Fairholme Fund, which I think we all own in this room and have talked about in the past, has been a purchaser of Goldman Sachs recently. So he's adding to his pile of crap. He's a city group, AIG, and now Goldman is well. So it's right for mom. So you're recommending it? But you said it's for your wicked stepmother, so you really like your wicked stepmother.

Well, these are some stocks that I wouldn't own personally. I guess I don't mind owning them in the context of a Bruce Berkowitz-run mutual fund. Shannon could work at Goldman Sachs. All right, James Early. One stock for Mom. Chris, we're all optimists here, but if mom has Crohn's disease or psoriasis, she might like Abbott Labs, which is a pharmaceutical company that has been seeing fantastic sales growth, about 10% up this quarter. It has minimal patent loss risk, a 3.5% yield that got by attention, just raised a dividend by 10%. The ticker is ABT.

Do they have a product for corns as well? Well, they probably do, you know. We're just taking all the warmth and wonderfulness of Mother's Day and just squeezing the life out of it today. We're nice guys in real life. I'm going to continue the theme. BP is currently yielding almost 7%. I own BP, so I'm just talking my own book like Buffett over there.

But really, it's down 16% or so on the news of all the problems down in the golf because of this platform that went. It's a $160 billion company. I think that's overdone, and let's be honest, things aren't going to change for BP. It's going to continue to bring up oil. And as Americans who are kind of dependent on oil, we may feign outrage right now what's going on,

but we still want our $2.50 gas in our tanks. And so in the end, nothing's going to change except that BP stock price will probably, I think, readjust to reflect that reality. Double down on cynicism? Is that what you said? Unfortunately, yes. You've got to go long on cynicism.

This is America. All right, Seth Jason, James Early, Shannon's Eric. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks to our special guest this week, Dave Barry. His new book is, I'll Mature When I'm Dead. Dave Barry's amazing tales of adulthood. Also, a special thanks to Tim Hanson, senior analyst here at the Motley Fool. If you missed any part of the show, you can find it at our website, motleyfoolmoney.com.

You can also get a copy of our free report, the Motley Fool's top stock for 2010. All that and more at Motleyfulmoney. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our producer is Matt Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.