Ground Floor: The question for me is, having been so pessimistic about the prospects for the US given the terrible employment numbers over the past few months, should I throw caution to the winds and jump aboard the positive bandwagon that has just rolled into town?
It was practically fiesta time in the markets after the jobless numbers were announced last Friday showing levels of growth that surprised commentators as much as ever - although on this occasion by being way stronger rather than abysmally weaker. So the dollar and equities had a soaring day on the basis that 308,000 jobs were added to the economy while bonds were shunned as traders decided that the Fed may now have the signal it wants to tighten rates again.
There are those who would argue that a hike in rates now would risk bursting the one continuingly positive asset class in the US - the home market (and doesn't that sound familiar?). The S&P Homebuilding index fell 4.7 per cent following the release of the numbers. The occupants of the White House probably don't want the Fed jumping too soon, though they're euphoric about the fact that finally the newspapers will have to write something other than rant on about the number of US jobs that have migrated to India.
Meanwhile, analysts are looking to explain the fact that once again their predictions have been turned on their heads by citing the ending of a strike by Californian grocery workers and the arrival of spring-like weather which helped the construction industry as two important elements in the jobs surge.
The service industry added more people too and manufacturing, always the difficult sector, managed to remain unchanged.
Of course there always has to be an element of the numbers which causes traders to scratch their heads and in this case it was that the overall unemployment rate is now actually higher, at 5.7 per cent from 5.6 per cent. The reason for that - lots of people had dropped out of the workforce completely over the last few months by not even looking for jobs in the difficult environment. They weren't counted as being unemployed but now they're back in the fold, hunting for work and adding to the statistics.
While I dust down the fiesta gear, people who had jobs but who have now mutated into professional defendants continue to make headlines. The high-profile mistrial in the Tyco case, accompanied again by news reports showing pictures of former CEO Dennis Kozlowski and his wife allegedly partying the night away at the expense of the company, has caused anyone who has an interest in cleaning up Wall Street to sigh in despair.
But it was good news for shareholders who've stuck with the firm because immediately afterwards the share price came close to its 52-week high.
According to some jurors questioned by the media afterwards, the jury was going to find Kozlowski guilty "of something". But nobody quite knows what. While most people are pinning the blame on one particular juror, the media is also complaining that the prosecution made a complex case unnecessarily difficult by presenting too much information.
Perhaps these days we all have the attention span of an episode of Law & Order. In which case prosecutors had better sharpen up their acts for the rest of the business trials out there since more business seems to be occurring in the courtroom than the boardroom.
John Regis, the one time CEO of Adelphia Communications, is an example. Given the standing in which estate agents are held in this country, people will be happy to know that some of their worst fears can be realised by real estate operators.
Regis apparently owed his company $14 million and raised the cash by selling properties to that value to Adelphia. But he didn't actually hand over all of the deeds and then resold those properties a few years later adding a new twist to maximising your assets.
Meanwhile Martha Stewart is looking for a new trial because one of the jurors in her case had lied about being arrested on assault charges. Not only that but (horror of horrors) he has asked to be paid for media interviews.
At least Martha's trial actually ended with a conviction, even if it's overturned. Though it does seem ironic that, with all the various CEOs of US firms currently under the cosh in some way or other relating to insider dealing or using public companies as private piggy-banks, Martha was done for dealing in shares in a different company completely while it was her own firm that was savaged by investors.
One executive who did get canned for fraud within the company was Dynegy's Jamie Olis whose creative accounting masked a loan as cash flow. He got up to 30 years in prison for hiding the $300 million fraud. So you can understand how pleased Dennis might feel that his jurors didn't get the chance to convict him of "something".
The chairman and CEO of DG Systems, Scott Ginsburg, was found guilty of violating insider trading provisions (more or less the same as Martha Stewart) and has been fined $1 million. The board is delighted that Scottie hasn't been barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company and continues to give him its full support.
The problem with corporate trials is that they take so long and that you never really find out what happened anyway. It's all hidden away in a fudge of claim, counterclaim and misdirection.
I suppose it helps us in Ireland to know that our own laborious, intensive and shockingly expensive tribunals are being mirrored in the Land of the Free. And that ultimately it seems no-one will really find out the truth of what went on there either. Other than the fact that a lot of people seemed to make an extraordinary amount of money without having to do very much.
