Michael Rainey
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Our pal Zac Bissonnette wrote about a quote that is making the rounds on Wall Street. It claims to be a passage from Karl Marx that predicts our current economic predicament:

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism. (Das Kapital, 1867)

As a number of people pointed out, the quote is a hoax. You can easily search through all of Marx's writings at marxists.org and you'll quickly find that there is no such passage. But the quote raises some interesting questions: Why is this faux quote making the rounds, and why do people find it so interesting?

One reason might be the increasing fear that people are feeling about the stock markets and even capitalism itself. We've been living in a strongly pro-capitalist environment for decades now -- at least since Reagan was elected, and certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union -- and there has been very little by way of a legitimate leftist resistance to the organization of just about everything on a capitalist basis.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

So what do you do for fun when you're worth $600 million? Gambling is one option. Though the thought of sitting in front of a slot machine in Vegas and feeding it quarter after quarter might be less than appealing for some, I suppose it would be different if each pull on the bandit's arm cost $1,000. And even if you don't need another penny in your bank account, it still might be kind of fun when the bells ring and the lights flash as you hit the jackpot.

This is what happened to multi-millionaire Candy Spelling this past year. She was reportedly playing high limit slots at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas when she hit the jackpot. Her payout? A cool $180,000. (Though as TMZ points out, that's the equivalent of about $8 to us ordinary proles.)

Candy is of course the wife of legendary television producer Aaron Spelling, creator of such eternal classics as The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Charlie's Angels, and Beverly Hills 90210, among many others. Together, the Spellings created another classic: their daughter Tori, actress and tabloid all-star. Aaron Spelling died in 2006, leaving an estate worth over half a billion dollars, famously controlled by his wife but not Tori.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Hedge fund managers weren't the only ones making buckets of money during the great boom of the early 21st century. So too were the artists whose work the newly rich love to buy. And no one has made more money selling paintings and sculptures to private equity bigwigs and Russian oligarchs than British artist Damien Hirst.

Until recently, Hirst was famous largely for his conceptual sculptures of dead animals floating inside glass-walled boxes. Much of his work displays an obsession with death, including a human skull encrusted with 8,000 diamonds and a box filled with flies feasting on a rotting cow's head. And his art isn't cheap. The asking price for the skull, titled "For the Love of God," was $100 million.

But like all modern visionaries, Hirst saved his greatest innovations for the marketplace itself. In the summer of 2008, Hirst organized his own art auction, neatly bypassing the dealers whose commissions typically claim a good chunk of the sale price of a piece of art. Sotheby's hosted the sale, waiving its usual fee to do so. Over 20,000 people viewed the show in just two days, and when it was over, Hirst had sold $198 million worth of art, a new record for a single-artist auction.

Hirst's profits may be puny compared to the financiers who buy his work, but $200 million in two days is a pretty good haul by most standards. And it sets the bar higher for the next generation of artists who create the shiny trophies that billionaires so love to collect.

Be sure to check out more Money Winners of 2008.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

The great media circus that so richly illuminates American life is constantly producing new stars to dazzle us, and this year has been no exception. In addition to the usual offerings from television (Tina Fey), sports (Michael Phelps) and books and film (Stephanie Meyer), 2008 saw new stars emerge from the presidential election (Sarah Palin) and the spectacular and ongoing financial crisis (Neel Kashkari). Of course no one knows what 2009 will bring, but we can be sure of one thing: that each of these new stars will likely try to cash in on their new-found celebrity in the new year.

Tina Fey has been fairly well known for several years, first as the head writer and Weekend Update host on Saturday Night Live, then as the creator and star of the critically acclaimed show 30 Rock. However, she ascended to a higher level of celebrity with her dead-on impersonation of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. (It's so good that if you search for the phrase "dead-on impersonation" on both AOL and Google, the first results that come up are clips of Fey doing her Palin shtick.) There was a lot of debate about whether Fey hurt or helped Palin, but it's pretty clear that all of the attention helped Fey enormously, making her one of the most famous female comedians in the U.S. Look for more TV and film deals for her in 2009.

Jonathan Miller, the former chief executive of AOL, is apparently trying to raise money to buy Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO).

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Miller has been talking to the only people who have any money left to invest right now, deep-pocket private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds. Miller would like to purchase the whole Yahoo! enchilada at $20 to $22 per share, for a total value of $28 to $30 billion.

Yahoo! stock is spiking on the report. As of 1:15, Yahoo! is trading at $11.74, up 9% on the day.

Last week, Zac Bissonnette wrote about the fact that Carl Icahn has recently increased his stake in Yahoo! Icahn bought nearly seven million more shares in the company last week, raising his stake in Yahoo! to roughly 5.5%. Is it possible that a buyout led by Miller is part of Icahn's plan?

Whatever the backroom maneuverings, there is a lot of skepticism about any kind of Yahoo! deal, no matter who leads it. Financing such a big deal would be mighty difficult in this market, and Yahoo!'s valuation remains in flux. So you should probably take the news as reported: people are talking about a deal for Yahoo! but no deal is in place.

As Peter Cohan noted earlier this week, the size of the corporate bailout in the U.S. is far larger than most reports would lead you to believe. While $700 billion is thrown around as shorthand for the bailout, the real figure is in the trillions. Peter cited a figure of $7.4 trillion, and today's New York Times goes even further with a total bailout cost estimated at $7.8 trillion.

The Times published a graphic today that helps explain the figure. It's well worth looking at for a few minutes. It takes a while for numbers this big -- and a problem so complex -- to sink in.

It's important to make a distinction between money spent and dollars committed to the bailout. So far, about $1.4 trillion has been spent -- already twice the level usually cited. But the dollars committed to the bailout are far larger, nearing $8 trillion, or five times the amount already spent and over 11 times the $700 billion figure.

To understand the bailout, you have to look at the various roles the federal government is playing. It is acting as an insurer, an investor and a lender, and in each of these roles it is making multi-trillion dollar commitments. Here's a quick summary:

This is part of a weekly series about the auto industry. Record-high oil prices and a global slowdown have contributed to a crisis in the sector, and this column will highlight some of the interesting stories that emerge as that crisis plays out.

The American car manufacturers have have grabbed most of the miserable headlines lately, but the ongoing crisis in the auto sector has hurt all producers. Case in point: Toyota (NYSE: TM) has announced that it will cut 3,000 job in Japan as the global slowdown hits home. Last week, Isuzu and Mazda made similar announcements.

And that's not the only bad news for what some consider to be the world's leading vehicle manufacturer. In the past few weeks, Toyota has announced:

• a projected 68% drop in net income for 2008
• a two-day closure of North American plants to help reduce ballooning inventory
  
• a reduction of output and the firing workers at a plant in Thailand
• the possible postponement of production at a major new factory in Mississippi.

This goes to show how bad the global recession is. Auto and truck sales are off everywhere, from Detroit to Da Nang.

Even so, not all companies are suffering equally. The news may be bad for Toyota, but it still has something the American producers do not: profits. Though Toyota's P/E is 7.7, it still has some E to talk about. General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford Motor (NYSE: F) and Chrysler would love to have such a low P/E. It would mean they will probably still be around in a year or two.

This post is part of a feature in which he wonder whatever happened to some notorious financial felons. See all 17.

Unlike many of our leading financial felons, Jack Abramoff was not a trader or financier. Instead, he was primarily a political operative who managed to turn access and influence in Washington D.C. into a very profitable business. Actually, "criminal enterprise" is probably a better term, as Abramoff is currently serving a five-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Maryland.

Abramoff was a very busy guy and summarizing his misdeeds isn't easy. Highlights of his activities include bribing public officials, stealing from Native American tribes, tax evasion, wire and mail fraud, interfering with the court system in Guam, and defrauding the owners of a Florida cruise line. And then there's the allegation that he had a man killed in Florida.

Abramoff's main business was selling access to the Bush administration. His crimes reveal a lot about the legal and regulatory environment created during the Bush years, an environment that made Abramoff and so many other high-performing felons possible. His career serves as a kind of summary of all that is wrong with the Republican right -- what Bill Moyers calls the "reptilian right" that seeks power though ideological purity but only for the purpose of self-enrichment. Abramoff's power and riches were inseparable from his ties to the Republican Party, which he began serving as the chairman of the College Republican National Committee, joining a long line of operatives including the illustrious Karl Rove.

This post is part of a feature in which he wonder whatever happened to some notorious financial felons. See all 17.

I thought we'd have heard more about Charles Keating over the last few weeks of the 2008 presidential election, but much to my surprise the Obama campaign refrained from mentioning him. Keating was once the chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, the infamous bank at the center of the S&L scandal of the 1980s; that scandal featured none other than John McCain, one of the "Keating Five" group of disgraced senators and more recently the Republican Party's nominee for president. But McCain's connection to Keating didn't seem to play a role in the 2008 election, and McCain lost the race for reasons other than being connected to one of the great financial crooks in recent memory.

To be fair, Keating was not a big fan of John McCain. He reportedly called him a "wimp" behind his back, accusing him of lacking the courage to fight the regulators who sought to reign in Keating's bank. McCain, along with John Glenn, were cleared by the Senate Ethics Committee of impropriety in their relationship with Keating, though they were publicly criticized for exercising "poor judgment." McCain later said that trying to help Keating was "the worst mistake of my life," though he didn't seem too upset about riding around the Caribbean on Keating's private jet.

This post is part of a feature in which we wonder whatever happened to some notorious financial felons. See all 17.

Ah, for the simple days of the 1980s. Way back then, the crimes of greedy traders were obvious and unambiguous, and the crooks had the decency to look the part. Few played the role of the greedy financier as well as Ivan Boesky, who went all the way from immigrant's son to millionaire investor to disgraced jailbird. I only wish our current financial crooks played their parts as well.

Ivan Frederick Boesky rose to fame and fortune taking huge positions in companies that were soon to be taken over. He was quite successful during the merger mania that drove the 1980s boom market, and by 1986 he was worth over $200 million, which was real money back before hedge funds took over the world. The only problem was that he was trading on inside information, which while enormously profitable has the distinct disadvantage of being completely illegal.

Boesky was not subtle in his approach, often buying tens of thousands of shares in a company at a premium just days before the company announced a takeover. The share price would jump and Boesky would quickly cash out. The typically somnambulant SEC eventually took notice, and Boesky was caught red-handed in 1986 and charged with stock manipulation and insider trading. He paid a fine of $100 million and spent nearly two years in the (minimum security) slammer. He also sang like a bird to the SEC, providing enough information about crooked dealings on Wall Street to almost single-handedly bring the 1980s boom to an end.

This is part of a weekly series about the auto industry. Record-high oil prices and a global slowdown have contributed to a crisis in the sector, and this column will highlight some of the interesting stories that emerge as that crisis plays out.

The bad news keeps coming for General Motors (NYSE: GM). Yesterday, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) announced that it will no longer cover the company.

A Goldman analyst said that there is no way to value GM or set a price target given the uncertainty surrounding the company. GM needs $22 billion in new capital, but no one knows where that money will come from, if it will come at all. Even the remarkably generous U.S. federal government is now cooling to the idea of a bailout of the automakers. And at this point, it's pretty much the federal government or no one.

It's interesting to note that at GM's current share price of $3, the company has a market cap of less than $2 billion. Providing more than ten times that number in aid is not exactly an attractive proposition.

And there was yet more bad news this morning as three major insurers announced that they would no longer provide credit insurance for suppliers of GM and Ford Motor (NYSE: F). The three insurers -- Euler Hermes, Atradius and Coface -- are little known in the U.S. but they play a crucial role in providing insurance against companies failing to pay their bills. Together, the three control 80% of the global market for credit insurance.

The withdrawal of this insurance will be felt most powerfully in Europe, where Ford and GM have substantial operations. U.S. suppliers typically operate without such insurance, but in Europe it's the norm. While the loss of this coverage may not be catastrophic, it looks like another moment in the downward slide of the American automotive industry.

Rather, Ford could benefit simply because politically, Obama can't afford to preside over the complete collapse of the American automotive industry. And that collapse is looking more and more like a very real possibility.

The Center for Automotive Research issued a report today analyzing the potential effects of serious cutbacks at the Big Three. If Ford, General Motors (NYSE: GM) and Chrysler were to cut production collectively by half, the result would be a loss of two and a half million jobs. If all three gave up the ghost entirely, over three million jobs would disappear in the first year alone. These are staggering figures. The impact on personal income and tax receipts would be enormous.

Unfortunately, these numbers have to be taken seriously given the state of the industry. As David Cole, the head of the Center for Automotive Research, said, "The likelihood of one or two of the Detroit Three manufacturers ending operations is very real."

This is part of a weekly series about the auto industry. Record-high oil prices and a global slowdown have contributed to a crisis in the sector, and this column will highlight some of the interesting stories that emerge as that crisis plays out.

Monthly sales figures for the auto industry are enough to make a grown man cry -- especially if that man works for an American car company.

General Motors (NYSE: GM) saw sales fall a whopping 45% in October compared to October 2007. Potential GM partner Chrysler fell 35%, while Ford (NYSE: F) dropped 30%.

There are a number of interesting details in this month's report. For one thing, it looks like GM is in even worse shape than previously thought. Analysts have frequently stated that GM is burning about $1 billion a month, giving it less than a year until it faces a cash crunch crisis. But the astounding drop in sales at GM suggest that the cash crunch might hit sooner than that -- GM may have just a few months before bankruptcy becomes a very real possibility.

Another interesting detail: the SUV love affair is officially dead. Sales of Chevy Suburbans are down 70% year-over year, Tahoes down 77% and Yukons down 76%. And this despite the fact that gas prices fell dramatically during October.