COURT REPORTER CRISIS?

UPDATE: DOW TANKS: By 1pm Monday the DOW was down 323 points, the NASDAQ down almost a 100 points. All morning long we have been flooded with emails from concerned readers asking us what to do.

Rumpole says: The time to sell has passed. You should have been selling into the strong market this spring and early summer and buying some puts on the Market preparing for the big fall we kept telling you was coming. You want to make money in the stock market? Follow our two simple rules: 1) Buy on weakness; 2) Sell into strength.

In short, do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

In the week after September 11, 2001, when the markets fell on the attack on our country, we asked our self one simple question: Do we believe in the USA? We decided we did and bought big. Large buys of GE, CISCO, and Home Depot. Some options on Halliburton and Schlumberger- long calls that paid off nicely.

Same question today: Do you believe in America? If you do, start buying. Ford is a good buy here, so is Apple and Home Depot. There are excellent mid-cap energy stocks that have no debt, loads of cash, and are making money. Snap those up now! For smaller investors locate a good mutual fund and you will find this an excellent opportunity to pick up a great fund for cheap. Then sit back, and when the market rebounds, and it will, your portfolio will be up big. However, then comes an even more difficult move- sell on strength. As hard as it is to buy when everyone else is panicking and selling, it is even harder to sell when your stocks are soaring every day. Why? Greed, pure and simple. But as we said, the key to making money in life is determining what the crowd is doing and then doing the opposite. Trust us, it works.

Three felony courtrooms in our beloved REGJB have joined all of the County Court courtrooms and "gone digital" meaning your favourite, reliable, friendly court reporter has been replaced by a technician who listens to the courtroom chatter and tries to make sure the in court contraption is working properly.

Q: What does this mean for court reporters?

A: If you are just asking this question now and you are a court reporter then you had better have your mortgage paid off because you are way behind the curve.

The horse has left the barn.

Replacing well trained professional court reporters with a machine and a tech is simply a money saving move. If you look around lately (the debt ceiling fiasco for instance) governments are not spending more money. Using technology to save money in in vogue.

Put another way: Spring for an extra cup of Starbucks for your favourite court reporter because they are being kicked to the curb in a not too gentle manner.

Spare us your arguments. Yes court reporters do it better (no funny comments please).

Yes there have been and will continue to be technical screw ups and testimony will be lost.

But let us tell you what will NOT happen:

What will NOT happen is that when some technician forgets to boot the blasted machine losing a days worth of testimony, the chief judges and court administrators will come crawling back to the court reporters. That will NOT happen.

Why? Because the savings in money is worth more (to the bureaucrats that be) than the problems of any trial being screwed up.

So get used to electronic transcription. And in 50 or 60 years we will be replacing Judges with robots who, having instantaneous access to 500 years of recorded legal history will be making split second decisions that will do away with the need for appellate courts. All in the name of technology saving money.

No more court reporters in court: a bad thing.

No more judges in court: not a bad thing.

See, everything evens out in the end.

See you in court and remember, that microphone hanging over your head is hot.