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The government always wants to tax those big mean gas companies, regulate those credit card companies, and cap salaries for fatcat bankers. The average taxpayer rejoices at the idea! Let’s get rid of all that free market choice corruption! What most people don’t realize is that they end up paying for the same things in another way. USA Today reports that credit card issuers have begun adding new fees to people’s credit cards, including adding annual fees to those that were previously without annual fees.

This is in direct response to the legislation congress passed to try and protect the consumer by creating a “bill of rights” for consumers. Well, the credit card companies don’t want to lose any money. So they add fees and raise interest rates to make up the difference. Who pays these fees and higher interest rates? Taxpayers / credit card owners… those designed to be protected in the first place. Well done, Government! While the fees on my cards haven’t yet changed, I expect that they will soon…

Microsoft has some serious problems. Their business model is being threatened on all fronts. Go here if you want a liveblog of their earnings call. They missed street estimates of revenue by $1B. I know that in reference to the US economy, the “trillion” word is said a lot so that may desensitize us to the word “billion,” but make no mistake… that’s… A LOT.

An analyst on the call asked Microsoft about margins, and the CFO said he’s not making any promises. He better not – their number one piece of business is selling operating systems. When your competitor, Apple, viewed as the maker of premium products, says it is going to sell OS X Snow Leopard for a flat $30, that sure makes Windows 7 pricing look downright stupid.

Their online services revenue was down by 14% too. I have said this once and I’ll say it again: MICROSOFT NEEDS TO SPLIT ITSELF UP. They have no synergy. Imagine how good Office could be if it were free from any sort of corporate mandates from HQ… The XBOX is great. They should focus on making it not sound like a jet engine, not on how to integrate with Zune. Speaking of Zune, can they just put that out of its misery? It just seems like there are so many wheels at Microsoft that aren’t turning together. Either fire Steve Ballmer and find someone who can align the wheels… or take apart the car and let each part run freely. Until they do one of the those two things, I’d be shocked if MSFT turns around any time soon.

Apple released their 3Q09 Quarterly results just now. I’m not going to post any of the boring press release details. You can read that here. However, I’m listening to their conference call right now, and I’ll post any interesting tidbits below. Click to continue reading!

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On July 8, 2009, Google announced that they would be entering the Operating System space with their own product, Chrome OS. This will be designed primarily for netbooks. Unfortunately for Google, this is a fairly crowded space. They have Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Intel Moblin, and a whole bunch of other operating systems to compete with. So they’re jumping into a crowded market. Let’s just say they succeed. Let’s say they grab 50% of all netbook marketshare. Great! Now… they make money off this how?? Am I missing something here? Same with Android! When Android was first released, I thought locally targeted advertising would be forced down the user’s throat. Instead, there’s no locally targeted advertising – just a mediocre UI. We have to imagine that a significant amount of developers are working on both Chrome OS and Android. Both operating systems have a long battle to fight. If either of them prevail, how does Google win? I am VERY surprised Google shareholders aren’t pissed off about this lack of direction. SHOW ME THE MONEY!

I haven’t posted here much about money, finance, or trading, but I’m dabbling with the idea of doing so a bit more often. I’m feeling especially good about this recent trade. Oil was up over 80 for what seemed like no reason. Oil inventories were at record highs and consumption was down due to the weakened economy. Deciding to play oil on the short side as a quick trade, I bought DTO. DTO is an ETF designed to follow DOUBLE the opposite performance of Oil in a single day. So if Oil dropped 1%, this should go up 2%. The trade worked like a charm. I bought my shares at 68.85 and sold them all for 95 flat last week. I still think oil might trend lower, but I think the big run down is over. So here’s the real question… when is it time to turn back around and go long? I’m thinking that if oil hits 50, or especially 45, it might time to pile back in… Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.