By Jamie Dlugosch

Sorry, Tim Geithner. Former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer makes a strong case in the online magazine Slate that you got fleeced in the AIG bailout.

Spitzer says the Treasury secretary's weak negotiating raised the bailout cost to $200 billion.

It wasn't just a failure of Geithner; the reality was that the government was way over its head in dealing with this complex crisis. Wall Street manipulated the markets in creating the crisis and then manipulated the government to extricate itself from the damage.

The Street took advantage of what appears to be a less-informed and ill-equipped government. And in the end, we taxpayers pay for that ineptitude.

What’s worse is that there's no easy way to keep it from happening again. Yes, we can demand more experience in those anointed to protect the taxpayers. But Bush's Treasury chief, Hank Paulson, had deep knowledge of the workings of Wall Street -- and it didn't help us.

So now, how should we on Main Street react then when the Treasury secretary sits idly by as the dollar collapses and commodity prices, especially gold, are going through the roof?

On Nov. 5, molybdenum miner Thompson Creek Metals (TC) reported third-quarter earnings of 14 cents a share, 3 cents a share above the Wall Street consensus, and revenue of $114 million, well above analysts' projections of $90 million.

The upside came from lower costs at just $5.67 per pound of molybdenum and from higher sales volumes -- up 17% from the second quarter, although still down 12% from the third quarter of 2008.

Molybdenum prices remained depressed at $12.75 a pound, down a huge 61% from the third quarter of 2008.

The best news, though, wasn't in the numbers for the third quarter but in the company's guidance for 2009 and 2010. 

By Jim Woods

A Bloomberg.com article, prominently featured on the financial news website's homepage, told the tale of temptress Danielle Chiesi and the role she reportedly played in the sordid insider trading scandal. 

Now, in case you aren't up to speed on this story, last month a number of hedge fund managers and corporate executives -- among them one of the wealthiest men in the world -- were arrested in an insider trading case that government officials claim generated more than $20 million in illegal profits. Raj Rajaratnam was atop the list of those accused of using insider information to trade securities in several publicly-traded companies, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Akamai Technologies (AKAM), Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM) and other technology stocks.

Chiesi is an analyst at New Castle Funds LLC, a New York hedge fund that manages about $1 billion. According to the Bloomberg story, Chiesi did much of her stock research in bars and hotel ballrooms. Apparently, her analytical bag of tricks included short skirts, low-cut tops and the feminine mystique of a former teen beauty queen.

Chiesi would reportedly cozy up to technology company executives, befriend them using her feminine wiles, and then persuade them to give up information on how many microprocessors, or how much software their companies were shipping that quarter.

Well, at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I find myself perplexed at just what Chiesi did wrong.

With a big bull market underway in the credit markets, corporations are easily raising capital. But instead of using the money to fund new projects, executives are increasingly using the funds to reward shareholders and repurchase stock at the expense of bondholders.

According to UBS strategist Thomas Doerflinger, the bank's U.S. clients have started buying equities again after 16 straight weeks of selling thanks to the efforts of corporate clients. The buying is concentrated in the technology and materials. (Hedge funds -- who tend to be very short-term oriented -- continue to sell and sell-short, and are focused on the industrial and financial sectors. )

Analysts at Merrill Lynch note that the cost of debt is now below earnings yield -- which is the inverse of the price/earnings multiple. Historically, when this has happened, he said, executives "become more aggressive and reward shareholders at the expense of bondholders."

That sounds pretty arcane so let me just put it plainly: It's great news. It will result in