Better Than Spam!

This week's theme has become "eating our way to economic survival."

Chris Burritt at Bloomburg reports today that Campbell's soup (NYSE: CPB) has joined Hormel's spam as a port of refuge from the economic storms sweeping the globe.

The recession will make 2009 ``the year of condensed soup, driven by the backdrop of severe economic pressure on the consumer,'' Mitchell Pinheiro, a Philadelphia-based analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, wrote in a note yesterday.

The appeal of a cheap meal is turning the world's largest soupmaker, which says it sells to 85 percent of U.S. households, into an outperformer in hard times. The shares led the 12- company Standard & Poor's Packaged Foods Index over the past three months, and their 0.87 percent loss this year beat the S&P 500 by almost 48 percentage points.

Camden, New Jersey-based Campbell is ``acknowledged as a way to weather a recession,'' said Edgar Roesch, a Soleil Securities Corp. analyst in New York who rates the shares ``buy.''

Way back in the 1970's at McCann-Erickson, I worked with a guy whose father wrote Campbell's signature line, "Mmm good!" Later, the slogan morphed into the very boring, but mysteriously effective, "Soup is good food." Today I find "Nourishing people's lives everywhere, every day" on the Campbell's web site. Really boring.

For 2009, how about updating the Campbell's Soup slogan to the very timely, "Better than Spam!"

Mmm good.

Detroit Bail Out Plan -- Introducing the SPV

The Detroit News is reporting the outline of a bailout deal for the Detroit automakers. Funds allocated to Detroit in September covering "retooling" to make greener automobiles would be diverted to bail out the automakers.

"Sen. Carl Levin , D-Detroit, has been negotiating with Republican Sens. Kit Bond of Missouri and George Voinovich of Ohio on a plan, favored by Republicans and the White House that would draw the money from the $25 billion retooling program, which was approved in September."

Seems to us that this is a terrific opportunity to make the car that America really needs now--the Spam Powered Vehicle or SPV. Since all we'll be able to afford to eat soon will be Spam, why not get double duty from the pink lunch meat powerhouse? Insurance will still be provided by AIG, of course.

Chinese unemployment up, car sales down. Buy more Spam.

From BBC online:

"Companies in two Chinese provinces, Shandong and Hubei, have been told they must seek official consent if they want to lay off more than 40 people.

The order highlights the Chinese authorities' concern over mounting job losses.

As China's main external markets plunge into recession and export orders shrink, layoffs have multiplied in the country's big manufacturing regions.

In Shandong alone, nearly 700,000 people have lost their jobs this year.

In southern Guangdong, tens of thousands of firms have closed, sparking off reverse migration to the countryside by redundant workers."

Further evidence of the Chinese slowdown by the NY Times which reports exports of used paper from the US to China have plunged,

"Not far away, metal, cardboard, paper and plastic are piling up in the lot of Corridor Recycling. The company takes in refuse from around the country, then bales it for shipment to China. The cardboard is used to make new boxes while used shrink wrap is turned into shoe soles and insulation for sleeping bags and coats.

For much of this year, the company shipped about 25 containers a day, each filled with 23 tons of refuse to be recycled. But after the Olympics, demand slowed for recycled metal. In October, demand for everything else took a sharp downturn, and for the last two weeks the company has not shipped a single container.

“It just came to a complete stop. Absolutely a stop,” said Gilbert Dodson, the recycling company’s co-owner. “I’ve seen it slow over the last 25 years, but this is the worst,” he said of the current downturn."

On top of everything else, China's automakers have been inspired by Detroit's antics to ask for a bail out of their own, also from the NY Times.

"China’s car industry is quietly pressing Beijing for government help as it copes with a jarring slowdown, top Chinese auto executives said in interviews here on Tuesday.

This autumn, after six years of 20 percent or more annual growth, vehicle sales were flat or slightly negative"

Wonder if imports of Spam are up?

Gobble

From the Boston Globe: "The economy is in tatters and, for millions of people, the future is uncertain. But for some employees at the Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) plant here, times have never been better. They are working at a furious pace and piling up on overtime.

The workers make Spam, perhaps the iconic hard-times food in the American pantry."

Hey, Happy Thanksgiving. Spam and Giblets, anyone?

CondoMobiles Solve GM and Real Estate Crisis At One Stroke

Imaginative minds can find solutions to even the most vexing problems. The federal government is just about to socialize General Motors with a bail out. And it has already socialized the real estate market via the takeover of FannieMae and FreddieMac.

Now comes the imagination.

The Feds are soon going to be responsible for moving all that GM iron. We've learned that paltry $1000 rebates don't seem to do the trick any more.

So how about a FannieMotors or a GeneralFreddie tie up? The deal is obvious. Offer a free condo with every purchase of a qualifying GM vehicle. Buy a Chevy Malibu and get a California Condo (yeah, that's pretty obvious!).

Naturally, buyers will be offered a great discount on their homeowner/auto insurance from the national insurance company, AIG.

The same deal could work with all those banks we've just nationalized also. "CondoChecking" needs no explanation.

US Oil Exports UP! What Sort Of Crisis Is This?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Look folks, the bottom line is that the oil companies sell to whoever will pay the most. Right now, the demand for selected distillates is so high globally, that it's more profitable to EXPORT some of the fuels distilled here in the USA from American crude to Europe and Asia. Guess what will happen to all that oil from Alaska and offshore from New Jersey and Miami? Yep, it'll enter the global market, not be confined to US needs.

So while Larry Kudlow cheers "Drill Drill Drill!" on CNBC, remember his only real patriotism is to the land of the Corporations, having nothing to do with the welfare of the American people.