Bob Cramer's Blog

And a good morning to you, my faithful reader(s). 

A quick shout out to myself on this hot and humid morning: the AJC today wrote about former Mayor Shirley Franklin’s amazing blog post supporting the infamous Beverly Hall and said Franklin was “way off target”.  Your earnest blogger had it for you first last Wednesday here .  Nice work, ace.

Speaking of using your head, did anybody besides me see that US Women’s soccer game yesterday?  The ending is exactly why we waste so much time watching sports and you do not turn the TV off until the game is over, period.  Megan Rapinoe is far and away our best player and if my wife says it’s OK, I am going to put her poster up on my wall (actual plaster wall, not Facebook).  See reaction to the goal here.

I was glad to see our government leaders working on the weekend.  If I can blog at 6am on Sunday, they can surely get together for coffee and talks about rewriting the US tax code and saving the nation from impeding bankruptcy.

There seems to be a lot of posturing going on.  First the President spends more than two years really not that interested in our debt.  Then he proposes an even bigger debt reduction plan than Speaker Boehner, who has spent the past few years hyper-focused on the debt ceiling only to change his position on Saturday night asking for a smaller debt reduction package.  I may be slow and now I am totally confused.

Against this backdrop, I don’t know whether to be an investor in the US stock market or stock up my mattress full of cash for the impending crash Treasury Secretary Geithner warns of if no deal is reached.  I might need to retreat to my little cabin at Big Canoe  and take up organic farming and wait this whole thing out.

But enough about Washington and all of that, today is a brand new week (you know what I mean).  Yes, everyone is a little cranky or crazy with heatstroke, wishing they were at the beach, Big Canoe or Bismarck, ND , but we have deals to close and time is a wasting.   So make something good happen, visit one of the literally thousands of yogurt places that have popped up all over town and let’s talk tomorrow.

Saturday morning before 7am has got be one of the quietest times of the week.   Curious to find out who won the rain-delayed Braves-Phillies game, I am up at the crack of dawn, armed with papers and coffee, ready to get into the blogging game.  Put me in coach…

All my early morning positive vibes are thwarted, however, reading of the tragic death at Texas Rangers stadium.  My heart goes out to all involved.  That is such a painful story on all levels it leaves me speechless and depressed.

I was going to shed some lame little insights into the stock market and the news and the like, and I guess I will push ahead, begrudgingly ( but I struggle this morning). But here goes: my favorite image from all the space shuttle pictures is the one of the shuttle being carried on the back of a 747.  Who thought of that crazy idea?  I can hear the conversation now: “hey, boss, why don’t we fly the space shuttle back to Cape Canaveral on the back of a jumbo jet?”  Sure, pal.  Security!!!

Speaking of favorites, my favorite car company is Hyundai.   I have two of them.  I was way in front of that emerging trend.  Honestly, many people think my Genesis is a Bentley and I play right along.  I should be featured in a Hyundai ad and get into car sales if this social media thing just turns into a fad.

Here is a little underreported fact: Taylor Swift has Bronchitis.  Don’t ask me how I know these things, but I just do. 

I keep wanting to buy “cloud ” related stocks.  I have known about the “Cloud” and “Saas” and “CRM” and “OnDemand” for what seems like forever, and all I do is sit and watch the stocks go higher and higher.   It drives me  crazy.  Now I’ll jump right in with Salesforce over $150 and NetSuite over $40 and Netflix over $300.  It never seems like a good time to buy. 

On the subject of goodbyes, my wife wants to move her cell service to Verizon from T-Mobile (note: was with one of my New Jersey nephews last weekend and he said he had never actually met anyone who had T-Mobile as a carrier) and  get an iPhone.  I keep telling her to wait for the new iPhone 5 (I mentioned that was my plan in an earlier blog this week).  She says she needs to move now over the summer so she can get ahead on the learning curve before teaching starts again next month (In Georgia, school start in mid-August so our summer is more than 50% baked).  Should she hold out for the new iPhone or get an old one today?  I want to “crowdsource” an answer so please my loyal reader(s), give me your thoughts.

OK, I am way over my self-imposed five minute blogging limit so I am going to have to shut it down for now and get a life.  I’ve kind of enjoyed this last paragraph shout out thing I started this week and had a perfect person in mind, but now cannot remember who it is.  Age is getting to me.  I will reserve it for a double big shout out sometime in the future.  Now get out there and enjoy your weekend.

Shooting for the sky with the final space shuttle launch and a new budget deal top this morning’s national headlines, but here in my kitchen I have newly painted walls and a lingering smell to sip my coffee with the door open trying to get some air to move but this humid morning refuses to cooperate.   Not sure I totally understood last night’s new Transformer movie.  It didn’t help that I fell asleep for 15 minutes but my legs were tired from a two set singles match and a long session with my lawyers trying to finish off a new contract.  Ah, the lazy days of summer.

A quick scan of the just delivered newspapers (so old fashion I know) reveals little except the end of the Spitzer era on CNN (don’t worry, they are talking to DSK about replacing him). Facebook is now playing catch up with Google+ around video chat which is kind of amazing.   It looks like Google may be getting some Social traction suddenly.   Not sure I understand why the President did a Twitter town hall meeting as none of his answers were close to 140 characters.  I am waiting anxiously for the new iPhone 5 as my current Blackberry is kind of embarrassing, especially for someone who runs a social media company and is so young and hip.  Oh, never mind.   If you never saw the animation of the iPhone 4 vs. the Evo, here is the link.  Very funny stuff.

Interesting article about prestigious UNC business school offering an online degree program.  It still costs, get this, $89,000 for a two years, only nine grand less than the traditional one.  Prediction: big things will happen with online education in the next few years, including bringing some pricing reality back to the picture, I hope.   Just last week a private equity firm purchased Blackboard, a leader in educatonal software.  They must see some something there too. 

Well, time is up on this edition as your faithful blogger needs his exercise.    But before I do pushups and squats (ok, how about just the stairmaster), a quick shout out to young John Gabianelli, a good family friend who tees it up today at the Georgia State Amateur held at my little Atlanta club.  Hit them straight, John, stay cool and have fun.  John is only 15 and we are very proud of him for making it this far.

In the news the past few days, two incidents have caught this less than consistent blogger’s attention.   They represent actions that on the surface don’t make sense, for the individual or groups involved, but come back to deeper human qualities that perhaps drive all of us.

Wednesday night, riding an 11 out of 12 game winning streak and getting his team over the .500 mark for the first time in years, the manager of the Washington Nationals Jim Riggleman quit out of the blue.   He felt he wasn’t being respected by the organization as they had consistently refused to extend his contract for another year.   Many people in sports say that this sudden move hurts everybody involved: Riggleman, the players and the team, and that Riggleman will most likely never manage in the big leagues again.   Riggleman, a proud man who has done a remarkable job turning around a perennial loser in less than a year, said he asked repeatedly to “talk” about his contract status, and when that message wasn’t heard, he acted, perhaps in self detrimental ways, but in a way that protected his integrity.  Powerful stuff.

I awake this morning to read about state workers in Connecticut rejecting a deal to produce cost-saving in this budget-strapped state.  In turning down this carefully crafted structure that basically all sides including the union hierarchy expected to pass, the state workers’ action will likely lead to the firing of 7,500 of their brethren and “wreck chances of addressing the states long-term fiscal needs”, say the experts.  Like the Riggleman situation, this action seems to hurt everybody involved: the workers themselves, all Connecticut taxpayers and the state’s budgeting efforts. 

I’m certain there were many reasons why Connecticut workers voted against the deal, but one employee said, “if I lose my job, I won’t lose my integrity”.   In a simplistic sense,  it is not often that you see people standing up for principles that superseeds their self-interest, but these two particular cases offer interesting and striking exceptions.

Ah, what a Masters and official start of spring.  Living up to its hype and at times, over the top self-indulgence, players from around the world put on a show to remember, even as the pressure, heat and pollen became too much for the diminutive, fair-skin 21-year old Rory McElroy, who lead the field in driving length and the tournament for the first three rounds, only to wilt, like others have done for the past 75 years, on Sunday at the Masters. 

Much is made of the “roar in the trees” during play on Augusta’s famed back nine, but young McElroy played the treacherous 10^th hole like you and I would, rattling from tree to tree, on his way to a triple bogey and a sealed fate.  When McElroy’s tee shot ended up near some of the famed little weekend cabins lining the “Camellia” hole, CBS’s Jim Nantz cleverly said that he knew McIlroy wanted to get to Butler Cabin (where the fashion-challenged green jacket is annually presented to the winner) but he still had nine holes to go. 

Earlier that day, the pundits at my little Atlanta golf club failed to see the impending McIlroy collapse (most of them also failed to see Atlanta’s real estate collapse as well), talking about this being his 10^th major, how he was the “next” prodigy, how he had been schooled to be like Tiger, on and on.  (Please note that your blogger thinks McElroy is a great kid with an incredible future sure to include major titles and if I could follow through and turn my shoulders half the way he does, I’d give up this thankless blogging gig in a “New York Minute”.  ((Please read that blog entry as well, bless you.  This is the only commercial interruption the Masters allows me, following their agreement with sponsors, ATT, IBM and Exxon Mobil, providing for only 4 minutes of commercial interruptions an hour for our viewing enjoyment but please change the commercials once in a while.  Thank you))).  Now back to the action.

You had a sense that the trees would play a major role at this year’s Masters, not just because of the echoes they emit, or the sun-drenched shadows they provide or even the unpredictable nature of where they will deflect a golf ball, many times influencing who actually wins.  But even the Masters cannot defy Mother Nature, and just days before the start of the golf proceeding, one of the 61 Magnolia trees lining Magnolia Lane was toppled in a horrific rain storm.   Maybe this was a sign that it is time to let women become members (work with me here), or more likely just bad luck.  Defending champ Phil Mickelson, noting the Masters’ efficiency, joked he was “surprised the tree wasn’t replaced in the first half hour”, but Billy Payne, Augusta chairman (and former Mr. Atlanta Olympics chief, former UGA football star, and a classy guy) said that “150-year old Magnolias are in short supply for transplanting”. 

There is no doubt the club will find a suitable replacement, probably already has.  But falling trees in the former Augusta nursery that is now Augusta National do not happen quietly, just like the young McIlroy’s hard-to-watch, but character-building 80.  Pressure is a hard thing to handle, be it barometric pressure taking down Magnolias, the pressure of the spotlight forcing Butler and Connecticut to shoot brick after brick in the NCAA championship game just days before, or the pressure of sitting on a four shot lead going into Master’s Sunday.  On that day, Charl Schwartzel seemed oblivious to pressure and just about everything else, reeling off four consecutive birdies to win, but young Mr. McIlroy, a rising star with a golf game built to stand the test of time, will be back, stronger and straighter, just like the replacement tree he is sure to drive past in the many years to come.