Market Talk

- The smart phone market is “a waltz of elephants,” making it hard for standalone players, like Palm, to succeed, Henry Blodget says. “In order to have a chance, Palm’s products had to be so obviously superior to all available alternatives that people would hear about them and seek them out,” he says. “Alas, they aren’t.”

- For AIG, a $9 billion quarterly loss looks almost graceful. “”Depending on your perspective, the results were either a significant improvement compared with the same period a year ago or quite irksome indeed, given the $100m in bonuses paid to 200 AIG staff,” FT’s Alphaville says.

- Twitter’s ad platform may come sooner than you expect, MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka reports.

- Paul Krugman discusses core inflation.

- Jeremy Grantham’s early calls prove to be right, but also costly.’

- Lawmakers question the GMAC rescue. Gee, I wonder why. Three bailouts later, GMAC’s still the only bank where the government now owns a majority stake.

- Former BofA CEO Ken Lewis left with about $83 million in pension and insurance benefits, stock and other compensation, WSJ reports, citing a securities filing.

- “Rather than demonize the CDS market and blame it for Greece’s current woes, let’s place the blame firmly where it belongs — with Greece itself, and its profligate ways.” Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says.

- Madoff whistleblower book: Harry Markopolos claims he uncovered State Street fraud, had thoughts about killing Madoff

- This may be the best show on television.

This guy's getting tired

Many market observers predict tops and bottoms, but few successfully get their timing right. Jeremy Grantham and Barry Ritholtz sit in the latter category, so when they offer their forecasts, investors would be wise to take note.

Grantham, the chief investment strategist at GMO, predicted in March that a stimulus-fueled rally would lift the S&P 500 to 1000-1100. Now that his prediction has been fulfilled, he’s turned sour on the stock market and many facets of the economy.

He blasts the continued employment of people like Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (“like reappointing the Titanic’s captain for facilitating an orderly disembarkation,”) the home-buyer credit (“blatant vote-buying by Congress,”) overpaid executives (“unjust desserts”) and the “well-managed” auto industry.

But he’s not surprised by the market rally.

“The lessons, if any, are that low rates and generous liquidity are, if anything, a little more powerful than we thought,” he says.

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