Jim (cont'd):     

We put Bank of America and Citigroup, the two hugely troubled banks in there, along with JP Morgan, which is a healthy bank, to alight his handling of the financial crisis… GM, his ability to fix the autos, right, that matters… Caterpillar, well that was supposed to track the success of the stimulus package… or rather its lack of success… as Obama’s infrastructure plan turned out to have hardly any infra… finally, GE, the quintessential American industrial conglomerate to measure his ability to get the economy back on track more generally.

So how has Obama done… well, let’s go to the tape… the index started at 100 on January 21st… the S&P 500 at that point was at 840... since then the Obama Accountability Index has fallen to 65... 35.4% decline… S&P has fallen 8.4%… that puts him right in line with what is that about 4 times… let’s see what kind of grade that would be… how about between a D- and an F… oh wait a second, there could be great inflation, we could do things on a curve relative to the S&P… alright so he gets a C-… that is probationary at best… and if you grade tough… well I got to tell you, El Presidente is not graduating… I will admit that we didn’t give Obama the easiest time with this index… but we have got major problems… not me, that is always talking about bold solutions… if Obama want to boost his GPA, he should cheat off of a country that has got the right plan… like China… not only is cheating permitted in this game, I will give the guy extra points for copying from the Chinese Communists… who clearly know what they are doing… they are creating jobs… we are paying off unions and repeating the guns and butter mistakes of… I haven’t mentioned this guy ever on this show… Lyndon Johnson… during the Viet Nam war… Lyndon Johnson, holy cow.

While the Obama Accountability Index has been thrashed… we do have another index… this is the Hospitality Index, this one was created by Danny Meyer, who came on the show back on February 2nd with a novel theory that I completed disagreed with… companies that provide exceptional service even if they are more expensive… will somehow outperform those that don’t during this really tough period… because they build up customer good will… not service… but customer good will and brand loyalty… it is called a hospitality quotient that he thinks will cause out performance… he picked 17 stocks, Danny, to test this theory…. Amazon, Ebay, Cosco, Goldman Sachs, Apple, Google, Whole Foods, Southwest Air, Mattel, Build A Bear, Mens Warehouse, Timberland, Norstrom, Bed Bath & Beyond, American Express, Brown Forman, and Chipotle… now, the stocks in the Meyer Hospitality Economic Index lagged the S&P 6 points in the fourth quarter of 2008, but we knew that… because he said, listen I am talking forward… but since Danny came on the show and talked about the index… look at this out performance… the index was at 65 on February 2nd, the S&P 500 was at 825... as of today, the index is still around 65... very close, this is the benchmark and it is right around it… Danny’s index is of just .3%, the S&P is down 6.7%… but get this, in a portfolio… in other words, look at this, this is Danny’s and this is the S&P, this is how much better he has done than the S&P 500.

In a portfolio as well as “Setting the Table”, Danny’s best selling book… that is a huge margin to beat the S&P by… it is one that I would have not predicted in these really hard times… well, he isolated some great stocks that I thought were losers… he told us to buy Whole Foods, well Whole Foods is up 26% on a much better than expected quarter, with a more positive outlook than the street… he told us to buy Chipotle, that is up 15%, also on earnings beat… Chipotle is a great example of what Danny Meyer was talking about with the hospitality quotient… it exemplifies all of the qualities that he likes to see in a company… and at a restaurant especially… and possibly for that reason the company was able to increase menu prices during its quarter by around 6%… despite the fact that we are in the worst deflationary spiral since the Great Depression… people keep coming, they keep eating, and are willing to pay more for Chipotles exception service… it is fun, cheap, fresh, and really fattening… and we know from surveys right now that people are worried about their jobs, not their waistlines.

It looks like Danny is onto something with this hospitality quotient idea.. that doesn’t mean that every company that provides a great company experience will outperform… American Express, for example, is in the Hospitality Index… but it just has too much credit exposure in an environment where credit exposure is totally toxic… which is why this Warren Buffett sponsored and owned entity, is down 24% since the index was created… that is what is keeping it from outperforming… since actually making money since he was here.

Bottom line…