Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

Barron's, the cheerleading tabloid business flack sheet starring Alan Abelson's faux-iconoclasm, decided it had to conduct a popularity contest with investors to see which big bad company they liked the best. The winner (surprise) was GE BANCORP, most likely due to all those hacks saying "LEGENDARY" -- this despite the fact its stock has hardly budged since Little Jeffy took over. Natch the PR types who write the rag had to say how wonderful it was so many big bad companies are so well liked. It didn't hurt the rag goosed the survey with four categories of liking: "Well-Respected," "Respected," "Fairly Respected" and "Not Respected," or whatever they were, something even Alan could not have improved on. Grading on this curve, however, and using a scale of 0 to 5, 72 of the 100 big bad companies got a 2.5 or less, and half got less than 2.0. Maybe this isn't a failing grade by Alan's adjectives, but it is by mine. One bright spot: the investors held BIG BAD MEDIA COMPANIES in especially low regard, so maybe even their most rabid defenders are getting tired of their act.