Breakfast Links

This is pretty huge news that won’t be covered much in the financial press yet. More bank manipulation of LIBOR.  Will be interested to see how this comes out.  Round up the usual suspects. ($CME, $C, $BAC, $JPM, $RBS)

2012 Campaign is in overdrive.  Obama talking about immigration.  Up next, human rights and social justice.  His popularity keeps slipping.  But no challenger is worthy of the ring yet.

Out of a job?  Farms need you.  With a nation at 15% unemployment, you’d think unskilled labor would head to the farm.  But, because the transfer payments from the government are so generous, they figure out ways to prolong those instead of find an actual job.

Grain stocks hit fifteen year low.  As stocks get lower, hoarding will only accelerate.  ($ZC_F, $ZW_F, $MON, $SYG, $POT, $ADM, $BG)

When you get to a certain age, you need glasses.  Here is an innovation in spectacles.

In the “duh” department, CEO pay is more than employees.  A great CEO can mean the difference between life or death for a company.  They bear a lot of risk, and are responsible for billion dollar firms.  If you want to read a good scholarly piece on it, this is from Steve Kaplan.

Syria on the brink.  Will we be taking a similar stance with Syria that we did with Libya?  The Libyan policy is incoherent. We can do better. VP Biden woke up to say something.  I don’t consider Biden a foreign policy savant.  He was wrong about Iraq.   At least no Americans have lost their lives.  But, we went through a fair amount of expensive armament.  Shooting cruise missiles doesn’t overthrow governments.

Here are today’s earnings reports.  $NDAQ reports today.  Q+A on the deal with $NYX and $ICE will be anti-climactic. I maintain that the $ICE/$NDAQ will have more immediate, and greater cost savings than a tie up with DB.  Strategically for the long run, the tie up with DB might be better.  Only because of the Euribor/Bund being on one platform with cross margining.  But, if the Euro breaks up, then the NASDAQ/ICE is a better partner.

The productive class is no longer a milk cow.

This is a really cool website for women’s clothing.  My daughters love it.

Public union unrest in Michigan (video).  The new civility.

Check out this new kind of rapid fire publishing.  Jon Krakauer’s book.  I like his writing style.

New book, Our Fragile Liberties.  Published in the traditional style.  Sounds pretty good. You should pick this book up too. Leo Thorsness wrote it. I have met Mr. Thorsness a couple of times.  He’s a great guy.  Didn’t know there was a Wild Weasels squadron at USAFA.  If you don’t know who he is read this.

Hitler was born today.  Say a kaddish for the 6 million, and a prayer for the 57 million that died in World War Two.

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