Some investment advice is a joke. We collect financial market jokes that do not cost you money.

Going down?

If you had bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00
With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.
With WorldCom you would have less than $50.00 left.
If you had bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser beer – not the stock – one year ago, drank all the beer and then returned the cans for the $0.05 deposit you would have $107.00.
Based on the above information, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

THE CHANGING FACE OF CAPITALISM

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
* You have two cows.
* You sell one and buy a bull.
* Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.

* You sell them and retire on the income.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM (or Enro-capitalism):
* You have two cows.
* You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are  transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy influence with a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You sell one, accept an LAW tax promised credit payable in 4 year's time, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
* You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce 20 times the milk
* You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* Both are mad.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
* You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
* You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You count them and learn you have five cows.
* You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
* You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
* You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
* You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
* You charge others for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* You have 300 people milking them.
* You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION:
* You have two cows.
* That one on the left is kinda cute...

Are your investments in order? Below are some of the latest rumors from Wall Street. In the wake of the AOL/Time Warner deal, here are the latest mergers we can expect to see:

• Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W.R. Grace Company merge to become Hale Mary Fuller Grace.

• Polygram Records, Warner Brothers, and Keebler Crackers merge to becomePolly-Warner-Cracker.
  3M and Goodyear merge to become MMMGood.

• John Deere and Abitibi-Price merge to become Deere Abi.

• Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining merge to become Zip Audi Do Da.
  Honeywell, Imasco, and Home Oil merge to become Honey I'm Home.

• Denison Mines, and Alliance and Metal Mining merge to become Mine AllMine.

• Federal Express and UPS merge to become FED UP.

• Xerox and Wurlitzer will merge and begin manufacturing reproductiveorgans.

• Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell computers will merge and become Fairwell Honeychild.

• 3M, J.C. Penney and the Canadian Opera Company will merge and become 3 Penney Opera.

• Knott's Berry Farm & National Organization of Women will merge and become Knott NOW!

A broker from Kim Eng Securities, Singapore passed on the following analysis of Japanese moves to restructure their banking system.

According to insider contacts the Japanese banking crisis shows no signs of ameliorating. If anything, it's getting worse.

Following last week's news that Origami Bank had folded, we are hearing that Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank's growth has been stunted and now it plans to cut back some of its branches.

Karaoke Bank is up for sale and is going for a song. Meanwhile, shares in Kamikaze Bank have nose-dived and 500 back office staff at Karate Bank got the chop. Analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank and staff there fear they may get a raw deal. Even Miso Bank is in the soup, and an audit of the Tofu Bank is turning up questions about it's REAL assets.

The only ray of light in all this is the arrival of a new bank rising out of the ashes of the others. Its name - Hiroshima Savings - and their slogan - "we've survived worse than this!". Its merger with the Teppanyaki Bank is still hot and on the table.

THE Y ZERO K PROBLEM

Translated from a Latin scroll dated 2BC

Dear Cassius:

Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left.  I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards.
You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort out at this last minute.

I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar.  He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty. We called in Consultus, but he simply said that continuing downwards using minus BC won't work and as usual charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. Surely we will not have to throw out all our hardware and start again?

Macrohard will make yet another fortune out of this I suppose. The money lenders are paranoid of course! They have been told that all usury rates will invert and they will have to pay their clients to take out loans. Its an ill wind ......

As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards. We have heard that there are three wise men in the east who have been working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's all over.

I have heard that there are plans to stable all horses at midnight at the turn of the year as there are fears that they will stop and try to run backwards, causing immense damage to chariots and possible loss of life.

Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway, we are still continuing to work on this blasted Y zero K problem. I will send a parchment to you if anything further develops.

If you have any ideas please let me know,

Plutonius

Run with the bulls. Hunt with the bears.©