In an interview by Fareed Zakaria, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner revealed (or more, admitted?) that he’d never held a “real job”.  Essentially, since grad school he’s spent his entire professional life in some sort of “policy job”.

Initially, this made me really mad, until I realized that a good portion of those making “policy” haven’t held a real job either.  So Geithner is no odd duck.

Realizing that I’ve got better things to do than be enraged about the people that make up our corrupt government, I moved on to determining what criteria candidates need to get my vote in the future.

A real job is now one of those criteria.

From now on, you need experience in a “real job” to get my vote.  That means a real, no kiddin’ 8 to 5 gig making a no-kiddin’ paycheck.  And you need some tenure too.  None of this, “I worked as an intern as a financial analyst while in school” stuff.

If you want a government job determining how my hard earned tax dollars get spent, you need to have some concept of how my tax dollars are earned.

I admit that I’m a Windows guy, mostly because I’m not willing to make the transition to Mac.  Although I do hear it’s becoming easier and easier to cross into the dark side…

I love these commercials from Mac, very witty…

Yesterday I was sitting on the beach drinking coffee in Athens, Greece when upon paying the bill the Greek waiter inquired as to whether my father and I were American.  Never disputing the markedly obvious, I affirmed we were, and the ensuing discussion left me appreciating my country and every opportunity that’s presented to me.

This waiter, in his very broken English, with every word carefully chosen, explained to my father and I that he dreams to go to America to talk with someone about some ideas he has.  He wanted nothing more than to supply someone with money and ability nothing more than four or five entrepreneurial possibilities he’s dreamed up.

Upon further explanation, he revealed that it is common knowledge in Greece that there are ultimately 5 families that control all the money in the country.  They also control businesses, government and ultimately the people of his country.

It is those families that dictate who starts a business, who benefits from the risk of sticking your neck out and who succeeds in financial and entrepreneurial endeavors.

If one were to set out and independently form his own business, the families would step in and by way of taxes bankrupt the company.  Hence, the desire to make his pitch to someone, anyone, in the United States.

To any extent possible he wanted to make his own way, and more apparent, get away from pouring coffee in that beach side cafe in Greece.

I must say, the beaches of Athens are exquisite.  But it is these experiences gained while traveling in foreign lands that make the otherwise desolate plains of the United States look so much more beautiful than any painting the sunset over the mountains of Greece could ever inspire.

Our government here in the United States is as corrupt as ever. Never before has money has such a visible influence in politics, and yesterday on the beach I realized that despite all that, living in the United States is still pretty damned… good.

My group at work is being provided new laptops to replace our old and outdated equipment that can no longer run out processor intensive programs.

It’s a nice perk to be issued a company laptop, and from the looks of it, fairly common place these days.

A subtle ping of my coworkers reveals that the cross-utilize their company issued laptops for personal use at home as well.  And while that can seem like an indirect perk all together, I wonder if the move is all that wise.

The equipment is in fact, company property, and given the economic climate today it’s not out of the question to be relieved of ones duties at a moments notice, with or without cause.

Which should segue into the rhetorical question, is it smart to use your company computer for personal use?

Sure, answering web-based email may seem transparent enough, although you should be aware that even that data technically belongs to your company.

Banking, storing personal documents, family photos, music and contacts of the personal and business sort may leave you wishing you hadn’t when your IT department puts your account on lock down.

Typically when an employee is excused from their job, the first thing that happens is a complete wipe out of their computer. In a sales or marketing based position, emails may be retained for legal reasons, but other than that, the ones are flipped to zeros without any regard to what those bits and bytes really represent. 

It is, after all, the companies data.

A couple suggestions for those who use a company laptop for personal use:

Save everything you don’t want to lose to a flash drive. Memory is cheap these days, and music files, contact lists and photos can easily be backed up onto portable media.

Clip that thumb drive to your key chain so you can’t leave work without it.  You never know, this Friday might be your last.

Think about what data you could live without.  Bank statements, phone lists, family photos probably should be secured outside of your companies network.  At least make a copy every couple weeks.

Laptops are cheap and getting cheaper.  Get one.

Is it just me or is there a car dealer on nearly every corner?  Where I live, there are at least three GM and Ford dealerships within 20 minutes of my house, and two Chrysler dealerships within the same distance.

I’ve always wondered how an industry that sells products with a lifespan measured in decades or hundreds of thousands of miles could have such a saturating physical presence.  It’s a bit like having a Walmart every three blocks.   Scratch that, I go to Walmart every couple weeks, so convenience is more of a factor.

Don’t get me wrong, it sucks that so many people will lose their jobs when those 3,000 dealerships close their doors, but did anyone ever question the need for two GM dealers within 10 miles of each other?

It’s been a rough week, and to cap it all off, I’ve been stricken with a cold for the last several days.  No, it’s not the swine flu.

Friday seemed to kick me in the groin like a rough Monday usually would.  Not having any motivation to pack my lunch like I usually do, I made my way to the local Arby’s for a French Dip sandwich.  Unbeknown to me, the server put the “dip” portion of the meal (I think they call it a-jus) in a cardboard container, upside down in the to-go bag.  The fact that the container had a hole in the cover should pretty much finish off the story for me.

A jus all over the carpet of my vehicle, and nothing to “dip” my “French” in for lunch.  Bummer.

Then, I get chewed out by a co-worker for not filling out a form before working on a project.  He’s the team lead of another group in our building, so I don’t work for him, but he decided to “chew my a$$” for not filling out the form because my boss “chewed his a$$” for his guys not filling out the same form.

Rather than stir the pot, I vehemently admitted that I should have filled out the form, despite the fact that I really didn’t need one, and he would have known that if he would have asked a few questions prior to commencing the “chewing”.

This guy is former military, where jumping down someones throat seems to lead to results, but those tactics generally don’t work in the civilian world.  Further, it shines of poor leadership skills to “chew someone’s a$$” just because someone else chewed on yours.

For the trifecta, the weather is beautiful this weekend and I’m stuck inside with Sudafed head and a sore throat.

On the bright side, the market was up this week, and despite some bad employment numbers that were better than expected, things might be off to a good start on Monday.

Wagoner’s out at GM, essentially pushed out by the Obama administration without consult from the rest of the policy makers in Washington (i.e. Congress) as a condition of new government loans.

This serves as nothing more than strengthened evidence of how screwed up our government really is.  At no point in history has a CEO ever been forced to leave through direct consult of the President of the United States.  A company board of directors reigns supreme over the function of the company, and last I checked no one from the Obama administration sits on the GM board of directors.

This is not how capitalism works.  This is not how free markets work.  This is not how a publicly traded company works.

If the Obama administration wanted authoritative power over who holds what position in a company, they should have bought stock and run the CEO and the board of directors straight out of Detroit.  Instead, the government gave the company a loan, which at last check, does not come with any voting rights.

To be sure, Wagoner needed to leave. His leadership was and has been ineffective for the last 5 years with no forward thinking and a complete lack of influence from the corner office.  But to be run out of town by the Government is preposterous.

The punchline to all this came from the joker himself:  “The government does not wish to run an auto company.”

Furthermore, if bankruptcy is an option, as Mr. Obama now states, then why did all that taxpayer money get dumped into the company in the first place?

The next joke will come at the conclusion of the bankruptcy hearings; as repayment of taxpayer money will be forgiven as debt is erased and creditors are shooed away.  All in the name of a stronger and healthier General Motors.

Meanwhile, Ford hasn’t taken a dime.

If you haven’t read Jake DeSantis’ public resignation from AIG, you should.

It bears no surprise to this free market capitalist that businesses have and will suffer greatly from Congresses grand standing and bloviating in Washington these last several weeks.  Why would anyone care to work for a company that has taken taxpayer money if they will be personally lambasted for doing a good job and compensated for doing so.

It’s clear that Congress has no desire to hear or even seek out the facts, and makes no bones about acting childishly before the people that are working to unwind troubled companies.

As with any good poker game, with employment you must know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.  And this is a prime example of when it’s just a smart move to walk away from the table.

It seems like there is a mad rush to get tax information put together in time to get it sent to the CPA, or to the point where you can convince yourself that you can whip it out with Turbo Tax.

As I’ve mentioned about a week ago, corporate taxes are due on March 17th this year due to the 15th falling on a Saturday.

But what if I need more time?

There’s always an application for extension if you haven’t received the requisite forms or just flat need more time.  IRS Form 7004 is the Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File Certain Business Income Tax, Information, and Other Returns.

The form will buy you an extra 5 or 6 months, depending on what other forms you are filing.

There’s a catch however.  The form will buy you an extension for filing the forms, but not for paying the taxes themselves.  When you file the form, you’ll need to file it with an estimate of the taxes you owe, and the payment of any taxes you owe.  Anything short of that and Uncle Sam will hit you up with penalties.

So what does it buy me?

Well, time for one.  But again, only on the filing itself, not the tax.  If you have a good estimate on what you’ll end up owing, you can use this return to put off the details for 5 or 6 months.  So if for some reason you’re waiting on that long-lost 1099 form that was supposed to be delivered already but got lost in the mail, you’re not out of luck.  You just need to pay what you think you owe, and follow up with the final filing later.

I’ve been restraining myself for the last several months when I hear the talking heads refer to our economic woes in terms of a crisis.  “It’s so bad right now, and going to get worse.”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad, at least in terms of jobs.  Jobs are lost every day, and no one is safe.  Even those of us here in the Midwest where the peaks aren’t very sharp and the valleys aren’t that deep.

Just ask my buddy MJ who just got laid off for the second time in a matter of months.  What’s really irritating isn’t so much that he lost his job (don’t slight me for it buddy, I feel for you), it’s that the company hired him thinking they needed his technical expertise (he’s an engineer) to perform a specific role in the company, knowing the financial strengths and weaknesses of their balance sheet, and having some short-term idea of where the company was headed.

In short, if times go so bad that they needed to lay people off, why did they hire MJ in the first place just months ago?  To be certain, that’s a reflection of the company, not the employee.

I agree with MJ that things are getting worse, and not better, and there are a lot of good people losing jobs.  Luckily I’m not one of them yet, but MJ didn’t have any warning, either.  So who knows.

But is it a crisis?

The jobs numbers stink and they’re getting worse every day (the day they don’t get worse is when we turn the corner at the bottom, in my opinion).  But is this really a crisis?

The news clips lead you to believe that the sky is falling with unemployment rates on the order of 7-8%.  Personally I look at things from another perspective; 92-93% of the workforce still has a job.  I lean towards the glass-half-full part of the crowd.

Consumer prices have stabilized for the most part, energy prices have moderated and the government hasn’t jacked taxes through the roof (yet).

Consumer spending on the other hand, is way down, and it should be.  We went through a period cheap money, easy credit and euphoria.  The harder they rise, the harder they fall.

The consumer needs to strengthen their own financial situation and shore up their emergency funds before they start buying high-priced luxury items again, and I think this is healthy.

If you look past the jobs reports, things aren’t all that bad for those of us who take care of our own finances, save for those few who are in foreclosure and don’t deserve to be.

Yeah, times are tough, but this isn’t a crisis, and certainly not one the government can step in and fix overnight with the promise of artificially created jobs.  It could get a whole lot worse, even outside the employment numbers.

As for MJ?

He’ll be alright.  He’s a pretty tough guy who’s been knocked down before and picked himself up, all the stronger for it (a trait I’m slightly jealous of).

He’ll find a job (and if you need a good mechanical/manufacturing engineer in the Kansas City area, email me and I’ll patch you through) just like the rest of the recently unemployed will, and life will go on.

As for me, I’m polishing up the old resume.  Who knows, I might be next.

My good buddy MJ over at DyslexicResearch wrote a great post on buying American in a time when America needs to be bought.  I couldn’t agree with him more.

However, I’ll add a caveat to that statement.  Buy products made in the USA, but don’t buy crap just because it’s made in the USA.

We live in a global economy, and there is nothing the U.S. can do to change that, short of falling victim to isolationism.  For too long our country has depended on the buy American crowd to keep industries afloat, without concern or regard for global competition.

The American auto companies are a prime example of putting the company first and the product second.  Shoddy manufacturing, a lack of understanding for what the customer actually wants, and lack of oversight on costs result in lack of liquidity, credit, and market share.

Buy American.  Buy good, quality American products.  They exist everywhere, and MJ has a list of excellent Made in America companies.

However, don’t throw pity to those companies who make second rate products and demand that you buy from them for the sake of the country.

Patriotism and capitalism are very powerful traits that our country was built upon, but they are not interdependent.

No good will come from propping up an American company (or any company for that matter) that can not survive on it’s own in a global marketplace.

If my great country can step up to the plate, produce good quality products that compete with foreign counterparts.  There will be no need to ask that our citizens buy American.  They just will.

I’m really trying hard not to get too worked up over politics, as it’s really not good for one’s health.  But after watching both of the last two (lame) debates, and seeing a bunch of television clips on the nightly news, I’ve come to realize two things:

1. There is no way to escape politics unless you turn off the TV.
2. Most people aren’t actually listening to what the two presidential candidates are saying.

John McCain keeps telling everyone that “…American’s are hurting” when addressing the economic problems here in the United States.  Hurting?  Really?

Taking a fastball to the ribs leaves one hurting.  I guess I haven’t been informed of the new definition of the term “hurting”.

Sure, peoples finances aren’t what they used to be 12 months ago, and some are at risk of losing their home if they haven’t already.  But are they really hurting?

I guess I’m tired of being told that I’m hurting.

McCain makes these comments and then gets a roaring ovation for claiming he’s going to “fix” the problems that are hurting the American people.

Barack Obama then claims that he’s tough on terrorism and he “…wants to kill Osama Bin Laden”.  Yet another roaring ovation erupts.   Way to go out on a limb, there, Barack.

Both candidates claim that we need a quick fix to this credit crisis because right now small businesses “…can’t get a loan to make payroll”.

Think about that for just a minute.  We need to fix this problem because a business can’t get a loan to MAKE PAYROLL!

It’s the free-thinking capitalist in me that ponders the thought:  Maybe these small businesses shouldn’t be able to get a loan to make payroll…  because they’re in the position to need a loan to make payroll!

Right now it’s obvious to this kid that these two clowns of our government are trying to say what ever needs to be said to get themselves elected.  It’s the followers that attend these rallies that hoot and holler when their man says something profound like “I want to kill Osama Bin Laden” as though it’s some kind of revelation that’s going to win the hearts and minds of everyone, that I worry about.

A few days ago I read an article on MSNBC that had me scratching my head.  Basically, American Airlines came out and tried to justify their $15 per checked bag fee, and claimed that the new fee would affect fewer than one in four customers this Summer.   They also claim that the fees won’t result in longer lines at the ticket counter.

Right.  I don’t believe them, but that’s really not the point that really got me steaming.

The airline then went on to try and passify its customers by trying to spin the fee as a “bargain”.

The airline defended the fee, saying it was a bargain compared with the cost of shipping a 45-pound bag overnight on a package-delivery company. It said the cost of sending a bag from Dallas to New York would range from $150 to $230 or more. -Source

What an absolute joke!

If they want to use that rationale to try and get me to accept the new checked bag fee, let’s turn that same rationale around and see how much it would cost to ship me, a 180 pound guy, and my checked bag (using their own 45 pound figure) from Dallas to New York via UPS overnight air:

The result: $1,162.58 one way.

Now, lets look up the lowest fare on American Airlines that I can buy today such that I get to New York by tomorrow.

The result:  $433 fare, including the $15 per checked bag fee, because let’s face it, if you take a tube of toothpaste, you’re going to check a bag.

So American Airlines is trying to tell me I’m getting a heck of a deal by paying $15 to check a bag as compared to shipping it via UPS, yet I have to listen to them complain about rising fuel costs when their fares are 35% of what it would cost a shipping company to ship human beings in the belly of an airliner.

Does that make any sense to anyone?

The first rule of business.

It has become increasingly apparent to me that the airline industry is the most poorly run industry in the United States (with a few exceptions).

The first rule of any business is that it must make money on every single product it sells.  In an airlines case, that product is its seats (there’s the cargo side of things as well).  Fundamentally speaking, the airline must lump together all of the costs of doing business plus a fudge factor for not being able to account for all business expenses and unsold tickets, and divide that by the number of seats it offers.  That’s the absolute minimum ticket price to be offered, and not a penny less.

But we’ll lose market share!

The airline executives are instilling upon employees that market share is everything.  In fact, this way of thinking has filtered down to those a bit lower in the food chain.

About six months ago I was engaged in a discussion with an airline manager friend of mine regarding increasing costs of jet fuel.  He proceeded to blame the oil companies for price gouging, blamed the government for not stepping in, and blamed the speculators for driving up oil prices.

I then asked him why, when his companies cost of doing business increases, they don’t simply increase the price of a ticket?

His answer?  We can’t increase ticket prices, we’d lose market share!

The airlines have forgotten about the first rule of business.

Piss-poor management in the airline industry will be the root cause of an airlines demise.  Not fuel costs.

For the sake of a free market, and capitalism, I believe all airlines that have displaced the first rule of business for market share should be allowed to fail.  They’ll run out of money long before they run out of market share.

I’m starting to realize that there must be a tipping point to advertisement.  There must be a point where ads are so visible and omnipresent that they actually take away from the medium in which they’re delivered.

American Idol for instance.  I don’t watch a lot of television, and I’ve never really been a huge fan of American Idol, but since David Cook is a local guy, I started to take interest in the last couple weeks of the show.  During the few episodes I did watch, I started to notice the gratuitous placement of advertisements.

From the shows host rambling on about how great the iPhone is, to the three super-tall Coca-Cola glasses sitting on the judges table, to the fact that Ford gave both finalists a Ford Escape of their very own, to the Risky-Business-esque rock and roll ads featuring the two contestants to the fact that every word spoken on the show was brought to you by AT&T… It almost seemed like an hour of advertisements filled in with a little music every once in a while.

Top it all off with the five minute build up to announce the winner… after these messages from our sponsor.

There has to be a point where the viewer is so bombarded with advertisements that he just turns off the television to go do something else.  I think I’m at that point.

I watch television (on seldom occasions) to be entertained.  Not to be peppered with advertisements for crap I don’t need.

Does anyone else feel this way?

I’m happy to say that I’m not addicted to e-mail. Or at least I don’t think I am.

However, I’ve come to realize that communicating through email is preferred to picking up the telephone by a fairly large margin. In fact, I actually prefer it as it lets me keep a written record of communication, not necessarily for legal purposes, but for organizational purposes.

During a typical day, I get so focused on the job at hand that if you want me to do something, you better send me an email. Why? Because in the process of verbally adding a task to my list, you’ve probably interrupted the process of closing another one out. Chances are, I didn’t stop long enough to divert my brain from what it’s focused on to what you’re requesting of it. Consequently, the response is: “Sure thing, could you send that to me in an email?”

Since most of my work occurs away from my desk, my laptop is dedicated to receiving task requests and discriminately prioritizing the requests in chronological order. It’s a beautiful system I have set up, and it works rather well. Unless of course you’re the one that has so rudely interrupted me and asked me to add one more thing to my list, thereby doing an end run on my system!

Lucky for me, my company has not found it necessary to issue my a BlackBerry. I consider myself lucky because I see the crack-berry effect on those who do have a PDA strapped to their hip. They just never turn it off!

Weekend Work

I’ve made it a practice not to check work email on the weekend, and at least if I do, not to respond to any.

It seems that management at some companies are seeing the evil ways of the email, and are striving to add clarity to the line between work and personal life. In fact, employees at PricewaterhouseCoopers caught logging in to their email system on weekends are met with a popup window indicating that it is, in fact, the weekend, and not to overload yourself with email.

I think it’s a good policy. After all, if you can’t get it done between Monday and Friday, what’s another couple days?

What say you? Are you addicted to email? Any organization tips?

We’re starting to see the consolidation in the airline industry that we’ve need so badly for the last 5 years or more. ATA Airlines, Aloha Airlines and Skybus (which I wrote about almost a year ago) all quit flying this past week.

I gave Skybus a 3 in 10 chance of surviving, and it looks as if I was right. Rising jet fuel costs and a slowing economic environment got the best of them after only one year. Of course, when you offer tickets for $10 per seat, it doesn’t take a financial analyst to figure out that you might not be in business for long.

That begs the question: if I could figure that out, why couldn’t the execs at Skybus?

Actually, it appears the CEO saw the writing on the wall. Less than two weeks ago, CEO Bill Diffenderffer resigned to pursue a book-writing career. A BOOK WRITING CAREER! Retired sports stars resign to go write books or become sports analysts. Movie stars and politicians resign to go write books. A no-name CEO dumps his company that he spoke so highly of less than a year ago to go write books!? Give me a break! This guy wasn’t even in it to begin with.

I digress.

From a personal standpoint, you never like to see companies go out of business. ATA had to lay off 2,000 employees, which only creates more downside pressure on the economy, and it’s never good when people get laid off. That is, unless you’re going to resign to go write books…

While it’s a personal tragedy to see this happen, consolidation is a key ingredient in a free market. You absolutely have to let the failures fail, and let the successes continue to let their chips ride.

For one, I’ve become tired of hearing airlines complain about rising fuel costs yet refuse to raise ticket prices over fear of dwindling market share. If my companies costs go up, you can bet that part of those costs are passed on to the customer. That’s how a good business works. You’re going to face a reduction in sales when prices go up, but you’re going to face a reduction in revenue if they don’t.

It’s too bad these airlines are going out of business. Now, as long as the government sits on it’s hands and lets the free market play out, the airline business will be healthier for it.

If you’ve never read an annual report from Berkshire Hathaway, it’s rather interesting. As compared to many other company reports, it’s a little more succinct and easy to read. Mr. Buffett pulls no punches and doesn’t really sugar coat much.

Read the 2007 Annual Report Here

A week ago, I attended a land auction to see if I could pick up some additional oil production. I’m not sure what land is going for in your neck of the woods, but around here it’s gone crazy!

Tracts 1 through 3 and 5 were primarily farm land, with acreage ranging from 30 acres to 300 acres. One of the tracts had some oil royalties attached to it that only amounted to about 200 barrels per year.

The farm land alone went for nearly $2,000 per acre. Unreal.

Tract 4 was what I was interested in. 630 acres (a full section) with all the mineral rights associated with the land included, with existing production, and the ability to drill out the section. I went in mainly to observe, knowing that I’d be way out of my league in no time at all. I figured the land would bring at most $1,000 per acre since it was such a large tract.

I’ve been wrong before.

The bidding started at $800 per acre, and the auctioneer quickly had the bid above a cool thousand an acre. Here’s where it gets interesting. About 5 minutes into the bidding, a gentleman walked in through the back door and immediately started bidding. This guy was so far out of his element it was funny. His hair was slicked back, a Bluetooth gizmo hanging from his ear, a pair of dockers accented by Nike tennis shoes, and to top it all off, a dark pair of sunglasses and brown leather satchel.

Not terribly out of place for, say, New York, but this was central Kansas where overalls, work boots and a cowboy hat was considered all gussied up. Out of about a hundred people, all of which knew each other, not a soul knew who this foreigner was, but he was sure cranking up the price on this land!

The bidding ended at $1,350 per acre, with the final bid being held by Mr. Big City. All in all, taxes and fees included, the guy probably ended up shelling out $1 million for a single section of land.

Too rich for my blood!

The spring will bring new opportunities, as many folks try to off load acreage during the rush. I’ll keep an eye out for a steal of a deal in the future.

Sprint (S: chart, web, Y!) has been down in the dumps lately. Actually for the last several years (or more accurately since they merged with Nextel). They just wrote down $29 billion, or the equivalent of that same Nextel merger.

Sprint is a poorly run company, not just at the executive level, but all across the board (although new CEO Dan Hesse is making a valiant effort to turn that around). Their marketing department never really sold the Nextel technology, and little money went into preserving the customer base Nextel generated. On top of that, Sprint didn’t spend enough time, effort and money keeping their own customers.

Sprint took a massive nose dive on the write down news, and closing last Friday at a measly $7.11 per share. So the question becomes, are they really worth $7.11 or was the dive on negative news an over reaction further fueled by negative overall market sentiment?

Additionally, the low share price could put enough lip stick on this rode rough, put away wet, stock that it looks attractive as a takeover bid by a competitor like Verizon (VZ: chart, web, Y!) or AT&T (T: chart, web, Y!).

If an acquisition were to be in the works, the take over bid would have to account for about $20 billion in debt, which would only serve to increase the cost per customer. On top of that, the differences in Sprints networks as compared to the competition would require some infrastructure modification which would be capital intensive. On the other hand, Sprint does hold the WiMax initiative, which could be attractive to a company like Verizon, or even Comcast (CMCSA: chart, web, Y!).

Right now, it takes little effort on Verizon or AT&T’s part to harvest subscribers from a downtrodden Sprint, which is effectively a free trip past “GO” to collect $200. So why would anyone want to buy Sprint when they can just take customers free of charge? Well while the infrastructure would need modification to provide commonality, the company could be bought well below the net asset value, and integrated just like Cingular was integrated into AT&T.

For now, I’ll sit back and see what happens.

Sprint is hardly a good buy right now, especially with so many other companies out there with stronger fundamentals at a great discount weighed down by flailing market sentiment.

I’m starting to shift my resources back to expanding my oil and gas business. Not that it has been on autopilot completely, it just hasn’t required much attention lately, which can be attributed to having good people run the day-to-day production.

It’s time for more though, and I’m looking to increase production through additional acquisition or drilling.

This weekend I’ll attend a land auction with five different tracts for sale. Tract four is the one I’m interested in, as it has existing production on a full section, which equals about 640 acres. According to state records, there are five producing wells on the section, and between the five wells, the lease produces 150 barrels of oil per month, and has done so for the last several years. They are shallow wells drilled to about 1,700 feet, so consequently there is little to no reservoir pressure to push oil into the well bore.

The land, including the mineral rights are up for auction, and the existing lease would have to be upheld. However, that’s not to say that a new land owner could come in and force the existing producer to drill a certain number of wells per year to hold the rest of the acreage.

The timing of this is not all that great. Crude oil ($wtic: chart) just closed above $100 per barrel, so picking up any acreage for cheap will be nearly impossible, and there are a lot of big players in the game right now that are willing to risk more capital than I am.

The nice part about buying land with existing production is that the drilling risk is fairly low, especially in widely developed fields with long production history (production in this area dates back 80 years or so).

I suspect I’ll be a little out of my league on this, but it will be interesting to see what 640 acres brings in terms of $/acre. If it goes for anything less than $1,000 per acre it will be a steal. I’ve been doing quite a bit of digging on the state geological surveys website, and I’ve determined that there is a lot of potential in the area, all it takes is money.

I’ll let you know how it goes.