Sunday Brunch Links

Was at a pal’s home this weekend.  They remarked how they missed brunches in NYC.  Chicago has brunches, but it’s not celebrated here like it is in the Big Apple.

Sarah Palin wowed em in Wisconsin.  She is a polarizing figure for many.  I don’t want her to run for President yet, but I like a lot about her.  My favorite is still this person.  The US House passed a budget for the first time in a couple of years.  What do you call a 6 trillion dollar cut in government spending?  A start.

This week has a lot of religion in it.  Passover is April 19, and Easter is next Sunday-with Holy Week preceeding Easter.  Exchanges will be observing holiday hours on Thursday, Friday and over the week end.  Hey, mazel tov to you if you find the afikomen.

The WSJ over the weekend had an article on insider trading.  If there are financial journalists reading this, more of this please.  The more sunshine we shed on the structure and nuances of Wall Street the better it is for Main Street.  Dodd-Frank was a meaningless bill, except it muddied the waters and will make finance a lot more expensive for everyone in America.

Good thing Goldman ($GS) told all their clients to cover being long commodities.  Did you buy gold?  Betcha Goldman did!

12 million people in the world are sex slaves.  This is something good Hollywood is getting behind.  Hope they give up pushing global warming since it has been disproven.

If you have been invested fully in agriculture, you have done pretty well.  ($MON, $CAT, $ADM, $SYT, $CF, $POT, $JD, $BG, $DOW)

How will proposed corporate tax laws affect small business?

Do you have enough money to retire?

China raises bank reserve requirements.  Central bank action designed to put the brakes on inflation.  There are some macroeconomists that think China is exporting goods to the world, and in return they are receiving our inflation.  Central banks can not only raise short term rates to combat inflation, but they can raise reserve requirements as well.  There are a few other financial machinations they can go for if they want to drain money out of the economy as well, like matched sales in the bill market.

Was talking to a lawyer last night.  He said they did some research that said if you were going to go to law school and take out the typical amount of student loans, you would have to make at least 85k per year to have a chance at paying them off. That doesn’t include your undergrad debt.  The cost of a college education is getting way too expensive.

Read more at Points and Figures