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As Peter Cohan wrote this weekend, sadly, some folks were killed over the holiday weekend due to what could be easily argued as Black Friday madness. In the zeal for saving a few dollars on cheaply-made, bargain-basement disposable consumer goods, one man was trampled to death as he opened the doors of a Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) store, while two other people were shot to death outside a Toys R Us store. Joy to the world, the materialism has won.

Although I enjoy covering the Black Friday event every year, the industry-made madness has become such an event that actually dumps respect for human beings into the garbage disposal, so that those crazy souls wanting to save 30% on shoes or a flat-screen television can get their fix.

I mean, is this what the holidays have come down to? The New York Times has a decent perspective on this. But, of course, America has always been about materialism and consumerism. Those are the factors that have made the U.S. the reigning economy worldwide. It's a free country for anyone to do as they wish, from billion-dollar companies to consumers with change in their pockets purchasing power. If we're all trained like Pavlov's dogs come the day after Thanksgiving -- credit cards in hand at 5:00am -- then it's no surprise some folks will die for the self-indulging greed of other human beings. Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Here's a shocker (although not really to those paying attention), if you would have invested in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.B) three years ago instead of the wonder company Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) you would be 30% ahead right now.

'My pal Warren' never ceases to amaze and for all the excitement that Google has brought to the investment world, the stock market in particular, and the internet -- scaring the likes of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), it has not done all that much.

For those that took a ride on the Google band wagon at the beginning you are now poorer than you would have been taking a more traditional investing approach and you did it all the while taking more risk. More risk and less reward is a bad thing.

If you are a stock trader you might have made money using Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) as an instrument of the trade. If you were someone jumping on the band wagon at the wrong time, say GOOG at $750 -- I feel your pain.

But if you are a traditionalist and bought the stock early and simply held on, the interesting thing is you would not have done any better than if you had bought a Standard and Poors 500 index fund.

The chart below illustrates that buying either Google or the S&P three years ago would have resulted in nearly the same loss. Although their paths cross a dozen times, they end in the same place.

Blogging for AOL has been an interesting experience over the last few years. For me it is one of those unplanned surprising things that pop up on life's journey every so often. For the most part it has been a rewarding experience. I have had to become a lot more thick skinned when receiving harsh and even crude comments from readers.

One of the great things has been the 'pen pals' I have made around the world. People that have taken to my stories and regularly add their insights. The dialogue makes it more informative and the immediacy somehow makes it more personal and real.

Just this morning I received a note from Dan, a frequent participant in the BloggingStocks.com dialogue. He had noticed that one of my colleagues Peter Cohan had picked up my infrastructure theme lately and was not able to find my stories about the subject from earlier in the year.

I think this is one of the themes that Peter and I could write about non-stop and it would not be getting enough attention. It is first and foremost about putting people to work doing things that the nation needs done anyway. If we have to run the printing presses let it be for things that last 80 to 100 years not 2 to 3. The following stories will illuminate the subject as to my views in more detail.

Thanks for writing Dan. I hope you and others will continue to comment and try and wake up our elected officials. I started banging this gong in February. Maybe someone in Washington will do something before next February.

• Suburban slums -- city centers being revitalized
• Fund roads & bridges NOT mad money stimulus
• Serious Money: Stimulate productivity not consumption
• Should Feds stimulate or stabilize; is there a difference?
• Re-think new stimulus package? Push infrastructure!

I think that the infrastructure story will continue to be a major theme next year and for many years to come. My stories have discussed roads, bridges, tunnels, highways and the like but future stories will be about water. In using the the picture above contributed by editor and writer Sarah Gilbert, I want to drive home the point that we all have expectations that our simplest needs will be met. That is not going to be so, if we do not plan for the future.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.

Eighteen months ago, banks were throwing money around with very little discretion. Now we find that they made a lot of bad loans, took extreme risk and jeopardized the global economy and the well being of hundreds of millions of people.

All this was supported by a simple minded president, corrupt Congress and an over-confident, short sighted investment community maneuvering in and around a sleeping Securities and Exchange Commission.

Having invested in a broad range of real estate assets (as well as stocks), I am feeling the pain like most everyone else. Reduced values, tighter liquidity, and uncertainty rule the market place.

What has me steamed currently is that I think there is more capital in the marketplace than courage! The lack of courage along with a shortage of leadership and wisdom continues to exacerbate a bad situation. I am probably better off than many people having been able to close two loans in the past month. It was not easy. However, after dealing with many financial institutions that are now doing a better job in the review process, I see that they have swung too far to the conservative side.

A former senior manager at CB Richard Ellis Group (NYSE: CBG) in Southern California, now a partner at a private real estate company where I am an investor said to me this week that the stock market was just "white collar gambling".

This is a relatively common thought from Main Street and when my colleague Ron, made the comment it was hard to argue that it is not.

It certainly looks like gambling when you consider how momentum day traders place their bets, or options traders, or commodities traders -- and the past few years -- CEO's of major corporations.

I certainly was playing this theme up when I posted The great leadership disconnect: I bet the farm and you lose in September.

Earlier in the week Ron had brought up the fact that CBG stock had dropped from over $40 per share to under $4 and it seemed like it was bound to get back sometime in the foreseeable future for a huge gain. The following is the three year chart.

Ron is a smart real estate guy but he is not a stock market aficionado. He believed the risk / reward opportunity seemed like a no brain-er (not that he was going to invest). The first problem is that idea of the foreseeable future. I think the market is not foreseeing much lately. Most things seem quite cloudy indeed.

Actually I could not help but ponder the matter because, coincidentally, I was at a business breakfast the following morning where the speaker was a manager with responsibility for CBG's Asian portfolio investments. When Ron brought up the subject originally I responded that I did not follow the stock, but that it did not have to return to it's previous glory to achieve a great return on investment. Suppose it took two years to go from $4 per share to $6 or $7. Most anyone would be delighted with a 25%+ annualized return.

As it turned out, I saw my associate later that day and he pointed out that CBG had jumped 40% from the day before. WOW, some of the day gamblers, I mean traders, must have made a killing. Of course that is only if they were on the right side of the deal, and sold in time.

CBG closed Friday at $4.84, down 10% and has been volatile lately as the chart and the stocks recent moves indicate. It has a beta of just under 2 which means that it moves at twice the rate of the broader market.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own any shares of CBG. I do not do any day trading.

This is the fourth in a four part series which I hope gives buyers, sellers, shareholders and dare I say management a platform for discussion.

This week I envisioned an eBay (NASADQ: EBAY) without Skype, eBay Motors and Paypal. Everything goes to the highest bidder, excluding handling and delivery of course.

While EBay might benefit from selling Skype and Motors, considering they might be worth more to others like Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and AutoNation Inc. (NYSE:AN), it should not sell PayPal unless it is contemplating a merger, since the acquiring company most likely would want PayPal to be an integral part of any deal.

Ebay is going through some growing pains right now but it is still a primary center of activity on the web. Although there are many disgruntled sellers that have left the site or been forced off because of the constant changes in the rules, it really has only one main rival and that is Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN).

While you might argue that the book's very title is an oxymoron, The Ethical Executive, by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, is instead a fabulous and practical text that may as well have been titled, "How Not to be Kenneth Lay," and its faithful application could have prevented our entire current economical crisis. Having dutifully passed my requirement of Ivy League MBA ethics coursework and been duly unimpressed by its ability to stop unethical behavior (as I learn from this book, even in my own generally honest self), I would recommend that business schools, university political science and marketing programs, and even small business owners and parents adopt this as the primary ethics text.

The problem, as authors describe in the introductory chapters, is that ethics aren't acquired from our education. Discussing a case study in class -- even if it's at Harvard Business School (especially if it is?) -- does not "teach" ethics. No, our parents teach us ethics. And as Hoyk and Hersey write, "what is most lacking in books on ethics is a major emphasis on the root causes of unethical behavior--psychological dynamics." In order for a typical person, with typical familial upbringing and core values, to behave ethically does not call for a strategy for thinking about an ethical problem (the approach taken by traditional ethics textbooks); no, the authors argue, it takes knowledge of the potential "ethical traps" you might encounter. Awareness equals ethical power. Managers (and parents, teachers, whomever) can "use their understanding to objectify what's happening to them."

Hoyk and Hersey lay out 45 ethical traps and give examples of psychological research and real-life ethical foulups, from Enron to Worldcom to Jim Jones. I recognized nearly every one from my life, both in business and in my relationships with my infamously principle-bereft in-laws. What's more, I recognized the traps in the behavior of the key figures in the financial meltdown.

This is the third in a four part series which I hope gives buyers, sellers, shareholders and dare I say management a platform for discussion.

The most valuable asset eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) has is PayPal, the dominant internet financial transaction facilitator. When I started imagining what might happen if eBay started auctioning off its parts I envisioned that PayPal would be worth the highest premium.

I think there would be dozens of interested companies that would find it highly advantageous to acquire PayPal.

The reason eBay bought PalPal in the first place was that they had first hand experience trying to compete with it when it was a separate company, and even with its huge base of customers, eBay could not build much traction. As the old saying goes, "if you can't beat them, join them", or in this case buy them.

For starters, all of the major credit card companies would be very interested with MasterCard Inc'A' (NYSE: MA) and Visa (NYSE: V) leading the bidding and beleaguered American Express (NYSE: AXP) trying to find a way too.

Then there are the few prospering banks still left standing that would have to give this potential acquisition strong consideration. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) which has already bought out Countrywide Financial and will soon add Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) would find this a must have. JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) has added Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) to its group of enterprises and might be best suited to expand the company given its growing resources. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) that recently agreed to acquire Wachovia Corp (NYSE: WB) after staying on the sidelines most of the year might want PayPal, but I do not think it would pay up.

This is the second in a four part series which I hope gives buyers, sellers, shareholders and dare I say, management, a platform for discussion.

Now that I have unloaded Skype from eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) in Tuesday's post (Serious Money: eBay should auction off Skype), it's time to move on to an asset that is not losing money, eBay Motors, but may be of more value to one of its competitors like Carmax (NYSE: KMX) or AutoNation (NYSE: AN).

It might also find a home with Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), its closest competitor in non-automotive categories. There is also the possibility that any number of auto-parts companies like AutoZone Inc (NYSE: AZO) or even the online car referral site Autobytel Inc. (NASDAQ: ABTL) would find eBay Motors a very compelling addition.

The Big Three American automakers might want to compete for this great asset. Since General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford Motors (NYSE: F) and Chrysler are having difficulty selling new cars, expanding used car sales would be enticing. The problem is they are basically broke and holding on to a thread for dear life. That is not the case for Honda (NYSE: HMC) and Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM). Perhaps eBay Motors might find a place in their long term plans.

This is the first in a four part series which I hope gives buyers, sellers, shareholders and dare I say management a platform for discussion.

Over the years I have written numerous stories about eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), which I think has evolved from a must own stock of the new economy to just another company struggling to adapt to the rapidly shifting sand under its feet.

Having made money (bought after bubble burst) and lost money, owning a few remaining shares (sold most at $34), I have been pondering what I would do if I ran the company. My conclusion is that I might break up eBay; at a minimum, I would refocus it.

eBay has had spectacular growth in the past, though less now. It has made highly profitable acquisitions like Pay-Pal and terrible buys like money-losing Skype.

Here are some tidbits for all to cogitate on. In my view, Skype belongs in the hands of a communications company, not an online store. It has millions of users but eBay has not been able to monetize its growth. I think it's time to sell it. The telephone and wireless companies could make much better use of this asset by integrating it into complimentary service bundles.

This morning, investors were stunned to learn that Deutsche Bank analysts put out a note arguing that shares of General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) may be worthless in a year. Though the shares of the automaker are tumbling, this call shows once again that most analysts are a day late and a dollar short. Unfortunately, that's pretty typical.

Seriously, the troubles of GM and the rest of auto industry are well-known to anyone with a pulse. Auto sales are horrid. Democrats are pushing for a government bailout, which GM does not deserve. Retirees are getting squeezed. Yet to many analysts, this is a stock worth holding. According to Thomson/First Call, five rate GM's stock a Hold and one a Buy. There are four Underperforms and two Sells. That's shocking. If these analysts had any guts, they would all rate GM a Sell before it runs out of money.

The case at Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is similar. Only two analysts rate the struggling automaker a Sell. Seven rate it a Buy and one an Underperform. Maybe these geniuses don't read a newspaper or a website. Perhaps they are betting on a massive government bailout to help Detroit. Either way, they show that investors certainly aren't being helped by Wall Street's wisemen.

For some reason this morning several high profile stories I have been ranting about in recent months have floated to the top of the headline heap again.

I just read that Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang is ready to return to the bargaining table with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) stating: "To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said Wednesday evening at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has to be one of the biggest jokes in the investment world -- unless you are a Yahoo! shareholder. It was only last week I posted Yahoo rejects $30 to buy itself for $12?

Microsoft could now offer a 20% premium to today's stock price and still buy Yahoo for half what it offered last January. What do they say -- "good things come to those who wait". This is certainly a screaming example.

I would love to be in the conference room or on the call when Microsoft offers up a few crumbs to bail them out of a sticky situation. I was against MSFT doing the deal for a bloated price before, but it might make sense now. It could buy the company, and with Wall Street titan and M&A guy Carl Icahn on board, slice and dice this thing so that it cost them next to nothing to get the search advertising part of the company they coveted.

Yang looks like a child playing with grown-ups and his biography is taking one hit after another. Good thing he does not need food money and will never have to work again no matter what happens. By contrast, if Yahoo! took the $44 billion it would have been the deal of the year and Yang would look brilliant again. If I was a shareholder I would be really, really steamed!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of MSFT or YHOO.

CNBC is reporting a Second Stimulus May Arrive by Christmas - I hope it looks different than the last one.

It is being reported that

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday urged passage of at least $61 billion in new economic stimulus funding this month, but said the future of the legislation requires the cooperation of Republicans in the Senate and President Bush.

I am having deja vu all over again! At least $61 billion but discussions are ranging up to several hundred billion dollars. I hate this idea and stated so numerous times last March, including one of my most important stories of the year (I think) Fund roads & bridges NOT mad money stimulus.

It was not so long ago that Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) was setting new 52-week records all the way up to a high of $97.43. All the while I was bewildered as to how the market could overvalue something so much, and many were rationalizing to me why I just didn't get it. I still don't get it, even at today's 50% lower stock price.

AMZN closed yesterday at $51.98 and it is down a few bucks in early trading to around $49.00. A year ago I posted Amazon is not worth a penny over $60 - and I think even less! for all the same reasons I would not look at it until it hits $30.00 now. You just can't pay a forward P/E or 33 into a lousy market for a retailer when the Wal-Marts (NYSE: WMT) of the world trade at a P/E of 15, and often less than that!

I think if anything in these troubled times Wal-Mart might be worth the higher premium just because it is far more predictable and looks increasingly more competitive. Hard to believe that is possible, but that is how the last few earnings reports came out.