Forget telling your children to be lawyers or doctors when they grow up.

Wal-Mart cashier position, who needs that?

No, the big money is actually in becoming a paparazzi. Don’t believe me?

Stalking celebrities is big business.

The Associated Press just wrote an article about who is making money off of Britney Spears and her breakdowns and why. She is a cash cow for them. As long as people are buying the magazines with her on the cover (and they are) then they’ll put her on every single week. From the AP:

“An editor’s dream is to have a real life soap opera unraveling in front of you, and Britney provides that every week,” said Sarah Ivens, OK!’s U.S. editor. The magazine has a 10-person team in Los Angeles devoted to Spears coverage. “We’re on constant Britney alert.”

US Weekly has been just as enamored of the star, putting Spears on nearly two-thirds of its covers last year, including each of the last 14. People has had Spears on the cover 10 times in the past 15 months.

Getting pictures of celebrities is big bucks. That hasn’t really changed over the years- though the number of people trying to get the pictures seems to be increasing. The money is just too good.

Stalking the Kennedys

Ten years ago, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his then girlfriend Carolyn Bessette were so lucrative to photographers that two of them would literally sit outside their apartment every day in their car waiting for John and Carolyn to exit the apartment.

A picture of them simply walking down the street would net the paparrazi about $500. If it was something more “interesting”- such as John picking up after their dog did his duty on the sidewalk- that would net about $1000.

Seems like small potatoes right? But the paps know that every once in a while, the stake-out can pay off big.

And it did in the case of John Jr.

A few months before they were married, the paps filmed the couple fighting in Central Park. This was no lovers quarrel but a shouting and crying fight that the paparazzi caught all on video and digital camera.

They sold the video footage to one of the celebrity tv shows for $100,000.

Jack-pot!

But none of that seems to compare to Britney-mania.

She is at a whole other level- for now.

X17’s Navarre said an exclusive shot of the star would sell for about $10,000 in the U.S. and generate thousands more in residuals. “She’s the most expensive right now,” he said. “For Angelina, for example, you divide by two or even three to get the price.”

X17, which owns the infamous picture of a bald Spears taken in February, has a team of photographers tracking her at all times. “For us, she’s the star No. 1,” Navarre said.

Don’t you want to be the proud parent who says: “My son has grown up to be a celebrity stalker, er, photographer”?

At least you can brag that he’s making a lot of money.

There are some estimates that there are at least 40 paparazzi following Britney on any given day. Add on all the editors, writers and bloggers also making a living off of her and she’s a one woman recession fighter.

Who needs the government stimulus package when there is Britney Spears?

I just wanted to let you all know that in addition to this blog you can now also find me at Zacks Investments.

Zacks.com

Zacks is headquartered in Chicago. From their website:

In 1978 our founder, Len Zacks, made a breakthrough. Armed with his PhD in Mathematics from MIT, Len discovered that:

Earnings estimate revisions are the most powerful force impacting stock prices

From there he developed a quantitative model to harness the power of earnings estimate revisions - the direction, the degree of change, and surprises - along with other important variables to create the Zacks Rank.

This unique and innovative rating system predicted the potential for future stock price increases. In fact, it proved itself as a system that clearly stated when to buy, sell, and hold stocks. And it was very unusual in that it provided an equal number of buys and sells. Unheard of in the days when all Wall Street could say was “Buy”.

Zacks Rank is completely mathematical. It’s cold. It’s objective. The Zacks Rank does not care what the hype on the street says. Or how many times the CEO appeared on TV. Or how this company could some day, maybe, if everything works perfectly, and the stars are aligned become the next Microsoft. The Zack Rank only cares about the math and whether the math predicts that the price will rise.

I am an Analyst and Value Editor and will be writing about Value Stocks (which I know many of you hold dear.)

You can read my articles for free on the Zacks website. Look for the Value stock picks.

You can also hear some excellent audio on various stocks done by me and my talented colleagues at Zacks in the “Zack’s Audio” portion of the website.

I encourage you all to check it out.

And now…on with the show.

Stay tuned for the Fed later this week. Never a dull moment for us investors.

A few days ago I wrote about 10,000 people applying for about 300 jobs in a Wal-Mart in Georgia. The average pay was around $10.65 an hour.

I constantly hear people comment in conversations about the economy: “well, if you don’t have an education, those are the only jobs you can get” or “It’s Wal-Mart or nothing now. All the manufacturing jobs have gone away.”

Do you need any skills to take the most basic job at Wal-Mart? I understand there are different positions from butchers and pharmacists (at the Super Wal-Marts) to cashiers. But for the most part, for the average job, you probably don’t need many specialized skills.

Yet, I recently saw this article in Reuters where Hamill Manufacturing, which makes high end parts for military helicopters and nuclear submarines, located east of Pittsburgh, laments that they have 10 job openings for machinists that they can’t fill. They’ve been in business for decades.

A study from 2005 said that 90% of manufacturers are suffering a shortage of workers. And it’s only going to get worse as the baby boom generation starts retiring.

What’s going on here then? Why aren’t some of the 10,000 workers applying to Wal-Mart applying for these jobs?

The money is excellent.

A typical manufacturing job pays about $60,000 a year, according to manufacturing industry figures, a premium of about 25 percent to the service industries.

At Hamill, a general machinist will start at $9 an hour, rising to $14.50 an hour after training, and going up to the mid to high twenties for senior machinists, who can earn nearly $70,000 a year.

Maybe we’ve gone soft.

I hate to say it. But maybe Americans just won’t take the longer path and take the harder job- even if the pay is ultimately higher.

For many of these jobs, you can’t just waltz in and start working. You have to learn the trade first.

Glenn Skena, who runs Hamill’s apprenticeship programs, said it takes years to train workers. On average, the company will invest about $120,000 per apprentice, and often will send workers to college for training to use the computers that design the parts and direct the machines.

“We have a hard time hiring programmers from the outside so we have to train them from within,” said Skena.

Because these highly trained workers are such a commodity, wages are high. “We’re quickly ratcheting up our wage scale,” said Kelly.

But still there are not enough workers.

“We have spindles sitting idle because we don’t have machinists to run them,” said Dalrymple. A “Help Wanted” sign has been a fixture outside the factory for months.

Maybe the young workers just don’t want to work that hard. Wal-Mart seems easier, right?

Other businesses in Southeast Pennsylvania can’t find skilled workers either.

“I can tell you on my desk right now I have over 300 very high-quality job openings that I cannot fill,” said Michael Smeltzer, executive director of the Manufactures Association of South-Central Pennsylvania, who coordinates job openings for that part of the state.

Hamill is making parts for the Iraq war and other customers overseas but they can’t fulfill all the orders because they can’t find enough workers. There is just something wrong with a contractor, in the time of war, not able to make the parts because they can’t find workers to do it.

300 jobs go unfilled in Pennsylvania and yet Wal-Mart was filling about the same number of jobs at that store in Georgia and 10,000 waited in line for applications to apply.

I don’t get it.

America has lost its backbone.

Recently I’ve found myself walking down the street that includes an entrance into the Chicago Stock Exchange in Chicago’s Loop. There are constantly traders streaming out of the building in their blue trading jackets, looking stressed and flustered. They rush across the street to the quick chinese places to grab lunch before going back to the floor.

Is it any surprise, then, that I have seen several incidents of road rage and pedestrian rage while in front of that building?

The first incident involved a homeless man with his cup extended to passerbys. I didn’t see what transpired, but by the time I got near him on the sidewalk, the homeless man and a trader were shouting at each other using obsenities. It was the kind of shouting that I thought might bring body blows so I literally ran by and didn’t look back.

The second incident was a delivery truck of some kind and also a trader who was standing on the sidewalk nearby. The trader was yelling at the guy to “just move it” (and this wasn’t for security reasons) and again I thought that there might be blows. Horns were blowing and voices were shouting.

I felt my blood pressure shooting up both times and I wasn’t even directly involved in either exchange.

I recently passed by the same entrance for a third time expecting the worse (especially given the recent stock market action.)

Instead, there was a Chicago police officer on the sidewalk in front of the building and next to him was his horse.

I was relieved and thought, “finally, they have brought the police in to maintain some order around here.”

But then the most amazing thing started to happen.

The big brown stallion looked as calm as can be as traders, who were, as usual, coming out of the building to get lunch, stopped and, yes, petted the side of the horse.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!

I then saw two traders, who looked harried, stop to pet the horse on its face and talk sweet words to it. Their demeanors were totally changed.

I swear the horse looked at me with a smile as I walked by.

Lowered voices. Soothing horsey-talk. Smiles, not cursewords.

And I thought, was the horse (and police man) just a coincidence? Or was someone else noticing all the stress and nastiness at that place?

Hm…The Chicago Stock Exchange should join the adopt a pet program. It could do them wonders.