David and Tom Gardner recently interviewed Yahoo!
TMF: Let's close with our game, "Buy, Sell, or Hold." I will be throwing out not stocks, but things happening in business or culture and ask you if these were stocks, would you be buying, selling, or holding right now and just a sentence as to why. You ready?
Semel: Yes.
TMF: OK, great. It has dominated news, of course, for the past few weeks. Buy, sell, or hold the California recall?
Semel: Sell.
TMF: Why?
Semel: Well, unless I interpreted this wrong, I worry that not about the candidate and not about the governor here, I worry that if recalls become the thing of the day around our country, then it would force all politicians, if this is possible, to think even more short term than perhaps they do today. So they would know every time they make a decision that if it is an unpopular position, you either won't make it or they will have to worry, "Am I still in office tomorrow?" So I worry about the instability that it may cause.
TMF: Buy, sell, or hold -- if it were a stock right now, California real estate?
Semel: I am a buyer.
TMF: Why?
Semel: Because if you look back -- and I have lived in California for a long time now, probably 30 years -- it has always had cycles. We have always had our problem years. Sometimes caused by earthquakes or fires or other things. Sometimes caused by financials. But if whatever you would have bought 30 years ago, whatever you would have bought 20 years ago or 10 years ago, there would have been a moment in time when they proved to be not very good investments, but if you held on to them, you made good value. So I would be a buyer in California real estate and I still am.
TMF: We just have a couple more. We now have a national Do Not Call list. Terry, with that in mind, buy, sell, or hold the possibility of a national Do Not Email list.
Semel: Well, I would hold. I think it depends who is emailing me and if it is someone I have a relationship with or if it is someone whom I trust some of my information to or some of my needs to, then I am happy to get emails from them. If it is coming from the same guy selling Viagra each day, I am not happy to get that. So I would be cautious.
TMF: OK. Last one. You worked with him in a previous life. Buy, sell, or hold the latest brainchild here of Ted Turner, bison burgers?
Semel: Ted is going to hate this. I would sell.
TMF: (Laughter.) Would you like to elaborate?
Semel: Well, I have tasted the food and I think there is a difference. So I am not a big meat eater in general, but when I eat a steak or some roast beef, it does taste different than bison beef. I would be more a fan of the latter. So I would not be a buyer; I would be a seller.
TMF: I am with you. Terry Semel is the CEO of Yahoo!. Terry, thanks for joining us on The Motley Fool Radio Show.
