Saturday Morning Breakfast Links

Posted by Jeff Carter
on November 5th, 2011

Hey, is there a football game in Alabama today or what? My southern football crazy won’t be missing the LSU-Alabama game. Who do you like? (I must admit to being conflicted; daughter at Ole Miss, the National World War Two Museum is in New Orleans.

Do start ups create jobs or not?

Corzine steps down at MF Global. Won’t take a severance. Goldman employees say he was sloppy. I think he was a part of a group that committed fraud. Who at MF will do the perp walk for it? Smartest guy in the room looks like Interactive Brokers ($IBKR) to me.

Here is a Senate Projection.

Greece votes to stay in the Euro, for now.

Interesting article on start up capital, and expansion capital available for start ups. Sometimes, angels become the cash flow for start ups. That’s scary, even when you think you have a fantastic business.

This doesn’t sound too good. ” 5,300 of the reported 100,000 accounts have been transferred but $410 million of the $1.449 billion that CME Clearing expected to move in total has gone with those accounts. 5.3% of the accounts had 28% of the available capital attached. Big guys done, middle guys still moving, little guys out of luck? Issue 1: Risk of “homeless” positions being liquidated “at the market”.”

Good day for Groupon($GRPN) yesterday, and Chicago start ups. Congrats to them. They aren’t the only fish in the sea here. Here is how the VCs did. Will they affect shopping trends? The Talented Blonde knows.

You think Wall Street is broken? How about Fannie and Freddie? Executives just gave themselves a 12 million dollar bonus. I have been saying it since early October, Occupy Wall Street ought to be in one city. Washington DC.

There was a rumor, and I repeat rumor that JP Morgan ($JPM) suddenly was 600 million dollars richer. Current info says they might have had it. The plot thickens. I think MF committed fraud, but I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone else. But, if JP had the money and the game was rigged, would it surprise anyone?

CME increases margins. I read this differently than ZeroHedge. I think what CME just told everyone is that they don’t trust anyone’s books. They audited MF, and as soon as the CME audit was over $MF moved money to deceive $CME. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the exchanges($ICE, $NYX) follow suit. What CME did was protect its clearinghouse and everyone that does business in it. The clearinghouses are about the last bastion of honest business out there. If one blows up the financial marketplace will not hold together.

Corzine lawyers up. Friend of mine said it was one of the best white collar defense attorney’s money could buy. Guess he doesn’t want to share a bunk with Bernie Maddof. Even crooked executives have opportunity costs. How much will Corzine spend to stay out of jail? How much will he drain his fortune down before he stops spending money?

How about that NBA lockout? Seems like a Gordian knot. Kevin Murphy has some advice on how to loosen it. It seems like to me that it should be simple. Would hate to see the NBA be like the hockey players and miss a season, or baseball in 1994 when they almost killed the sport. On the other hand, if the NBA dies, does it change economic incentives among mostly African American kids that spend more time in the gym than the library? (This thought coming from the writer who definitely spent a lot more time in the gym, or playground than the library during the years 1975-1982)

Have a great Saturday-lets hope it’s a good game this evening.

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