Breakfast Links

Meat inventories are up.  USDA Hogs and Pigs Report is Friday.  That’s like Unemployment for Lean Hog Traders.  Comes out after the close. ($HE_F)

Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat from Michigan is now head of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Commodities are up, foreign markets are up, S&P futures are up, Irish and Portuguese bonds soar.  The Portuguese will probably have to be bailed out.

If you want to lose weight, down load this ap to your smartphone.  Keep track, and you will melt.

Groupon sales are down 13%.  Sooner or later there will be a Groupon Index to chart economic activity.

The Dark Lords knew of the Galleon probe

Money and social start ups.  The hot trends in angel funding are gaming, and finding one off facebook/twitters.  It will be the rare start up that will succeed.  I saw some stats on start up gaming companies, even when it looks like you are wildly successful, you don’t make a lot of money.  Zynga was an exception.  Brad Feld said it best, instead of doing a niche with someone else’s idea, be original and do your own.

43 promising start ups.

10 rules for entrepreneurship, from the LinkedIN founder.

Hate business cards?  Use Bump.

Tiny White Castle may get landmark status.  I have eaten at White Castle.  They are addicting.  We used to call their cheeseburgers, “sliders with breaks”.  Go there instead of using Metamucil.

More on public unions.  Ohio governor John Kasich is succeeding and activists aren’t occupying the capitol.  They were disgraceful in Wisconsin.  2012′s election is shaping up to be one about health care (Republicans are winning this) and public unions (Republicans are slightly ahead here).  Democrat Dennis Kucinich is probably checking out plane schedules from Washington to Iowa, and Ohio to Iowa.

More on the iPad2.  I have resisted buying one.  We have a Kindle, but it’s not the same. They have a cool factor, and are a lot easier to lug around than a laptop.  Wish they were easier to type on, and had more computing power. ($AAPL)

Photos of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.  Remember, there are 50 brave people still working there.  I am sure there will be some amazing stories.

Neat blog post on the spirituality of failure. As traders, we need to understand and cope with failure.  Because it certainly will find us.  Just don’t have to many of the Homer Simpson type “Doh!” failures.  I probably could retire if I had all the money back from trading stupid.  This post talks about failure during Lent, but even if you are not a Christian you will get something out of it.  I made mistake this Lent. Ordered pulled pork from The Commissary in Memphis that were delivered on a Friday.

As the parent of daughters I laughed extremely hard at this tale of a college road trip with a son.  When you get to the end, think of it this way.  It’s the laws of supply and demand at work.  At colleges, it just takes a little while for equilibrium to readjust.

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