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9:00 AM EST, Thursday, February 19, 2009. Two thoughts: Things are pretty bad. But they're also pretty good. Which to focus on?

Bad: The statistics are awful. The media focuses on gloom and doom. They're the easy stories to write. Every day we read and see more gloom and doom. (But we don't have to. Keep reading.)

Good: Things are actually improving. We haven't had a "systemic breakdown." The banking system is not healthy, but it hasn't died. Loans are flowing. And now the Administration is moving from saving the banks to saving the economy. It's easy to criticize the government's efforts. Throw enough money and in enough directions. Some of it will stick, and is sticking. After a night with our new local senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, I feel a lot better that the Administration has actually thought some of this through.

The BIG news is the world is brimming with great opportunities. New ideas are exploding. New businesses are forming. I spent nearly two hours on the phone last night with the president of a new bank (in organization). There are some fabulous new ideas in banking that really will work. After the conversation I emailed a bank director:

I'm very impressed with our president.
I'm also depressed.
I think he's thought of everything I would do.
Except he thought of it BEFORE I did.
That's genuinely depressing thought.

I glanced through my email this morning. Typical of newspaper and magazine headlines: Laissez-Faire Capitalism Has Failed, Goodwill turns bad in Asia; Detroit's plan is no airbag. We're moving into a far deeper hole. This stuff is too depressing. Hit the delete key. Stop reading this crap. Turn off BubbleVision (CNBC).

The sun is shining. I'm playing tennis today for the first time in nearly two weeks. My arm is better, I think.

My favorite Madoff story. The kid loses his job at a hedge fund job, because his mother, who ran a feeder fund there, funneled $250 million to Madoff. The kid says "there's an opportunity here." He gets Wilson to private label some golf balls with this wonderful image. He sells them on www.sleazeballs.net.

He gets mentioned on CNBC's Squawk box. He gets orders from all over the country and Europe.

Yesterday he tells me he's sold out of his first batch and is ordering more. Business is booming.

The ball's benefits, according to Sleazeballs, are:

# Maximum deception allowed by the rules of golf
# High powered corporate speak provides
# maximum hypocrisy
# Optimum spin for maximum duplicity
# Two-faced pretension
# Sham cover
# Guaranteed cutthroat action

This column is about my personal search for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address is . You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing the Google ads on this site. Thus I cannot endorse, though some look interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Michael's business school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.