The New York Times reports that more people are turning in criminals to pay their bills. Calls to tip lines are up as much as 44% since the first quarter of 2007. For example, calls are up 30% to the Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers hot line, up 44% to the San Antonio hot line, and up 25% or more to hotlines in Detroit, Omaha, and Beaufort County, N.C. Why? Tipsters tell operators they need the money for rent, light bills or baby formula. It sounds like 1984 to me.

What's the pay for a tip? It depends -- programs in most places pay $50 to $1,000 for tips that bring results. And in some counties there's a "gun bounty" if a weapon is recovered. In Sussex County, N.J., the average payment for a tip that results in an arrest is $400. With the median monthly income after tax of $838, this kind of money can make a big difference -- especially with gasoline prices up to $4 a gallon.

If you want to know where call volume is likely to increase the most, look to regions of the country with the highest foreclosure rates. That's where desperate tippers are eager for fast payment. For example, Lee County, Florida, offers quick payments -- within two weeks of the tip -- and it had the highest rate for home foreclosures in the U.S. in February and March. Its once-plentiful construction jobs have evaporated and people are calling in tips to make up for the lost income.

This week's Barron's [subscription required] reverses itself -- after panning Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A) in December 2007 it has now reversed course -- with a hedge from a short seller. Since panning Berkshire in December -- when it traded for $143,000 a share, the stock has lost 14% so Barron's was right then. Is it right to bet on a rise in Berkshire now? I really don't know because I don't find either the bear or the bull case persuasive.

Why did Barron's pan Berkshire back in December? As I posted, Barron's bear case on Berkshire was simply that it was overvalued on the basis of its book value and earnings growth. Berkshire's ratio of market value to book value was then at 1.8 times its September 30 book value, of $77,800 a share. That was above its average of 1.6 in the past five years.

It was also valued at 23 times estimated 2007 operating profits of $6,300 a share. 2008's profits were then expected to be similar to 2007's. If Berkshire were then valued at 1.7 times book value, a premium to its five-year average, Barron's estimated that stock would trade at $132,000.

USA Today reports that oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is placing a $2 billion bet on wind power. Pickens' Mesa Power plans to build the Pampa Wind Project in the Texas Panhandle. It will eventually cover 400,000 acres and generate enough power for more than 1.3 million homes -- making it the largest wind farm in the world.

And Pickens is helping General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) in the bargain. That's because he's buying GE turbine technology. GE is expected to deliver 667, 1.5-megawatt wind turbines in 2010 and 2011. Jeffrey Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO said, "As America's demand for energy escalates, it is clear that wind can and will play a bigger part in meeting that need. We're excited to partner with an energy visionary like T. Boone Pickens to bring our wind technology to the marketplace."

With oil hitting $127 a barrel, I hope this project is the first of many. It will take many different sources of alternative energy to reduce U.S. demand for black gold. Wind power is certainly a good alternative. And if Pickens and GE get richer in the process, that's fine by me.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns GE shares.

Radio World reported that Harris Corp. (NYSE: HRS) might sell itself. I just spoke with an analyst who said that there's a rumor that the suitor might be military contractor General Dynamics (NYSE: GD).

Harris is based in Melbourne, Fla., and has a market capitalization of $7.3 billion. Perhaps Harris thinks its growth potential in the defense industry is "less attractive" than anytime since Sept. 11, 2001. Harris has 16,000 employees and reported $5.1 billion in revenues and net income of $410 million over the last 12 months, ending March 28, 2008.

General Dynamics may be able to cut costs and increase revenues by combining the two firms. And Harris stock is clearly rising -- it's up 2.8%. Could it be due to this rumor? Please comment if you know more.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Bloomberg News reports that Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) has a whole lot of losing going on. Yesterday, Boeing suffered its fourth straight defeat in three months on a U.S. defense contract. This loss represents $41 billion in lost revenue.

Here are the four contracts:

• Yesterday. Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) the world's largest defense company, beat Boeing for a $1.46 billion U.S. Air Force award to build a new network of navigation satellites for military and civilian use. The Air Force said it reviewed five years of past performance for both contractors. Boeing has yet to launch a single satellite under its most recent GPS contract from April 1996, and in 2006 the company forfeited $21.4 million and replaced the program's managers after delays and cost overruns.
• February 2008. EADS, parent of Airbus and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) won a $35 billion tanker contest for the Air Force. I've spilled much electronic ink on this one -- it looks like the Air Force changed the specifications for the project but only told EADS about the change.

The New York Times reports that S&P held an investment conference yesterday at which leading bankers complained about a rule that requires them to report accurately the value of securities on their books that nobody else wants to own. They complain because this reporting has resulted in $300 billion of losses so far. That cuts into bank earnings and their own bonuses.

Banks naturally don't like having to mark down assets simply because the markets have frozen up. Bob Traficanti, head of accounting policy and deputy comptroller at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), suggested that some assets could be marked as if they would be held until they matured. But this ignores economic reality. If nobody wants to buy an asset, then it has no price. Therefore, for those free marketeers out on Wall Street, the assets have no value at all.

So, as I posted, banks are left trying to make up a value for the assets using computer models on complex spreadsheets. Not surprisingly, different banks use different spreadsheets to value the same kinds of assets. One of the conference participants suggested that regulators should allow banks to get together and compare spreadsheets so they can become more consistent.

Is investing abroad because the U.S. is going through a rough patch a good idea? If so, why? What foreign markets are attractive? Investing abroad is a good idea -- but not because the U.S. is melting down. Instead, it turns out that emerging markets are outperforming developing ones because they are supplying the commodities that fuel demand for 10% annual growth in emerging markets like China and India.

Emerging markets are up 20% in the last year while developed markets like the U.S. are flat. The reason to invest in these markets is not so much because the U.S. is going through a rough patch but more because these other markets are doing so much better and they are going to continue to do well regardless of what happens in the U.S.

But the U.S.'s rough patch may not be as bad as people had thought. An economist at Wachovia Corp. (NYSE: WB) changed his estimate of the chances of a recession from 90% to 45%. So the U.S. may turn out to be a good place to invest if stocks are priced for a recession that doesn't happen.

A front page story on Edwards backing Obama in today's Financial Times had an interesting unattributed comment near the end. In it, a source suggested that a deal could be in the works to make Hillary Clinton give up her quest for the Holy Grail -- err Democratic nomination.

The final paragraph in the print edition (this paragraph actually didn't make it into the online edition of the story) quotes one of senator Clinton's Wall Street backers as saying that the "'ultimate peace pact' with Obama could involve some sort of support from him to pay off her debts, which are estimated at $20m or more."

I am not sure how Obama would help Clinton pay off her campaign debts. Would he divert money he's raised from his supporters to Clinton? I don't think Obama supporters would be too happy about that. Or would he start a new round of fund raising with the explicit understanding that the money would go to Clinton? It's no surprise really that someone from Wall Street would be suggesting such a deal. I don't know whether this kind of thing has been done before but my hunch is that it has.

Reuters reports that ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) CEO Rex Tillerson went on The Today Show this morning to discuss the price of gasoline. Why? I think it's because he wants to diffuse political pressure to raise taxes on oil companies. Tillerson said that the price of gas is so high that people are using less of it.

But the subtext, in my opinion, was to put a face on the industry in the mind of the public so that it would be harder for politicians to harness public anger into higher taxes. Some big oil companies now have "too much" money coming in, with oil prices as high as they are. One of them has recently been in low-level debates with investors over what to do with all their cash as in "they can't spend it fast enough," an irony when gas prices are so high.

But as I posted yesterday, not all oil companies think that they have too much money coming in. Many such as Exxon and Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO) have reported disappointing earnings in the first quarter because the price of a barrel of oil has doubled while the wholesale price of gasoline has risen only 39%.

The Associated Press reports that CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) is buying CNet Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: CNET) for $1.75 billion. This $11.50 a share deal is a 45% premium over Wednesday's closing price

CNet's Web sites include News.com, TV.com, Mp3.com, MySimon and GameSpot. And CBS expects to use CNet to tap into the Internet advertising market. This deal raises the question of whether any CBS competitors will decide to get into the game of buying Internet content companies.

Here are three possible targets:

• TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM) - This provider of business, investment and ratings content has $65 million in sales and a market cap of $236 million.
• TechTarget (NASDAQ: TTGT) - This provider of online content for buyers and sellers of corporate information technology (IT) products has $95 million in sales and a $531 million market cap.
• WebMD Health Corp (NASDAQ: WBMD) - This provider health information services to consumers, physicians and other healthcare professionals, employers and health plans has $332 million in sales and it's market capitalization is $1.7 billion

I think traditional media companies buying Internet ones could become a trend. It would only take two more such deals to make it one.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

CNNMoney reports that General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) is selling its appliance business. Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) is running the auction for this maker of refrigerators, microwaves and dishwashers and expects to receive between $5 billion and $8 billion for this $7 billion division of GE's $17.7 billion (2007 revenues) Industrial business unit.

I have been advocating that GE shed its ancillary businesses and this is one that makes sense to sell. I have taught several cases on the appliance industry and one of them highlights the many problems that GE's Appliance business suffered from in the 1990s thanks to the growing bargaining power of mass merchandisers, significant competition from Chinese manufacturers, and some internally inflicted wounds.

If GE Appliances was valued at the same Price/Sales ratio as Whirlpool (NYSE: WHR) -- 0.3 -- it would fetch $3.5 billion. The appliance industry average price/sales ratio is 0.7 -- which would yield GE $4.9 billion. So it looks like GE believes its appliance business is worth well more than the average appliance industry competitor. I applaud the idea of selling GE Appliances but the real gem of GE is its infrastructure business which is capitalizing on the growth of developing countries like China and India.

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is unmanageable. That's my conclusion after trying to understand its latest quarterly report. The concept behind this 100-armed corporate octopus is that people like to buy all their financial services in one place and therefore it makes sense to be able to sell them a full line of products from stocks to bank accounts. But I suspect that customers don't want all their financial eggs in one basket, so the concept is fatally flawed.

Moreover, its financial performance reveals that Citi is a complex mess whose many different businesses do not diversify its earnings streams. According to its quarterly report, Citi lost $5.1 billion. Most of the losses came from its Securities and Banking (-$6.4 billion), Alternative Investments (-$509 million), and U.S. Consumer (-$476 million) units. Two bright spots were $1.3 billion in earnings from International Consumer and $732 million in Transaction Services.

But wait, there's more in its huge, risky portfolio. Citi has $40 trillion in derivatives -- enormous bets on interest rates and currencies. And it has $1.2 trillion worth of off-balance sheet entities (remember Enron?). Nobody really knows what these are worth or how much they'll cost. And that doesn't even get us to the $262 billion in Level 3 assets -- illiquid, difficult-to-value securities -- which are 2.1 times Citi's $128 billion in capital. That's a pretty thin cushion for future write-downs.

The New York Times has turned into a crying rag for oil refiners. It reports that these defenseless creatures are not making as much money as they did last year. Their profit margins have dropped to an average of $12.45 per barrel of oil, down 60%. The reason? Oil prices have doubled in the last year but the refiners have only been able to raise wholesale gasoline prices by 39%.

I've posted about the problems at ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO), here and here. And the Times has done us a service by calculating these industry averages. It even quotes a a sobbing Lynn Westfall, the chief economist at Tesoro Corp. (NYSE: TSO), "We're just not able to pass along the increased cost of crude oil on the gasoline side." Someone hand Lynn a crying rag!

Thanks to declining U.S. demand -- it's down 300,000 barrels a day -- refiners are reacting by trying to reduce their refining capacity. That's right -- even though many people are paying over $4 a gallon for their gasoline, oil refiners are not making enough money so they are going to cut back on their refining capacity. The utilization rate has dropped from 90.4% last year to 81.4% now -- and if they take refineries off line, they can go back up above 90%.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett Packard (NASDAQ: HPQ) will spend $12.8 billion to buy Electronic Data Systems (NYSE: EDS). While this combination would make HP the second largest, behind International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) in computer services, this may not be a good way to spend $12.8 billion.

That's because EDS and HP would under perform in services when it comes to profitability. EDS's bigger business earned a 1% net profit margin in the first quarter. But HP's services business generated a far higher 9% estimated net margin. Unfortunately -- for reasons described below -- the combined company will probably have lower margins.

Meanwhile, IBM's profit lagged HP's slightly -- it made an estimated 7% net margin in the first quarter in its services business. But IBM is and will remain a much bigger player. Combined, EDS and HP's services business will control 5.3% -- lagging IBM. That's because IBM controlled 7.2% of the tech-services market in 2007 while EDS was a distant second at 3% and HP was fifth, with a 2.3% share.

CNNMoney.com reports that gasoline hit a new record of $3.718 a gallon today. That's up 21% from a year ago when it sold for $3.06 (although I remember paying $2.20 a gallon in February 2007 for midgrade). The U.S. government could help out us poor gasoline consumers, but it refuses to do so. Meanwhile, in 2008, global oil supply is expected to grow more than global oil demand. So arguments that speculation has nothing to do with record oil prices fall flat.

Yet, this morning, the New York Times' Paul Krugman offered such an opinion. He concluded that oil is not a bubble. He doesn't really define what he means by a bubble, nor does he offer any numbers to back up his case that the price of oil is rising due to demand growth exceeding that of supply. He also throws in a comment about how if oil were a bubble, people would hoard it and they're not.

But numbers from the Energy Department suggest that global oil production will grow more than demand. Specifically, it expects global production to exceed global consumption by 0.8 million barrels a day (mmbbl/d). How so? The Energy Department forecasts global consumption in 2008 to rise 1.2 mmbbl/d from 85.4 mmbbl/d to 86.6 mmbbl/d. Meanwhile, it expects global oil production to grow 2.0 mmbbl/d from 84.6 mmbbl/d in 2007 to 86.6 mmbbl/d in 2008.