Breakfast Links

Posted by Jeff Carter
on May 3rd, 2011

Hey Chicago Bulls, when you don’t hustle and don’t play defense, guess what happens? You get your asses kicked. Atlanta Hawks made em look silly.

M+A in consumer products.

M+A in techie social media

Look for even more M+A. Companies are sitting on cash and need to deploy it. The economy isn’t expanding quickly, and there is excess capacity-no need to build new plants. At some point, the M+A will become silly.

In weather news, the lower Mississippi is ready to flood. It’s a 100 year flood. Don’t think they will get the corn crop in the ground until at least May 25 now.

Mortgage demand is falling.

Illinois governor Pat Quinn is holding city budgets hostage.

The Swiss have finally frozen several dictators’ personal funds. Screw sanctions. Every trader knows it’s much more painful to lose your own money than other people’s money.

Support a start up incubator in your town. If you can support with mentorship or money, support them by being a customer or making a phone call and putting them in front of a customer. Our angel organization in Chicago, Hyde Park Angels, supports Excelerate Labs.

School vouchers work.

NASDAQ and ICE take the fight to the investors. This will now get interesting. My experience is that most of the investors in exchanges are a little more sophisticated than the regular joe. If one of the two factions NADQ/ICE or NYX/DB masters social media to target the investors, I bet the one that masters it first wins. This becomes not only a numbers game, but a “kissing babies” political game.

There is a sugar squeeze in the US. Of course, if the US govt. would drop the heavy tariffs they have on Brazilian sugar, we’d have no problems.

Ethanol is a joke. Screws up crop costs, inflates the cost of land, and puts imbalances in the economy. Here is an article that talks about biofuel alternatives.

I don’t want to go to Iceland. Methane to power cars.

I wouldn’t be buying Waygu beef from Japan anytime soon.

If you want to learn more about getting an MBA from the University of Chicago, register here.

Are you a retiree, or retiring soon? Here is a vid to help you determine a sustainable rate of withdrawal from your assets.

Here is a good post on transparency and the public sector. Ironically, governments are less transparent than corporations.

Check out this chart of US Agriculture as a percent of GDP. Explanation is great too.

An interesting take on the bin Laden killing from a minister.

Still happy they got bin Laden. Let Ray sing it. Maybe Obama will have a new appreciation for risk/reward. Obama’s domestic policy hasn’t shown he gets it.

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