Thursday Morning Breakfast Links

Posted by Jeff Carter
on November 10th, 2011

Happy Marine Corps Birthday.

This is absolutely great when it comes to the college tuition/loan issue. Supply and demand factors have driven up the cost of education, but government subsidies have been the primary culprit. In addition, it’s sort of fuzzy math to equate type of major with financial outcome. Andrew Mason of ($GRPN) was a fine arts major. But, at least you can get a statistical guideline. Andrew Mason is also outside the normal standard deviation of earners with Fine Arts degrees.

Joe Pa out at Penn State. In the 60 Minutes interview that is sure to come, we will hopefully learn more facts and not conjecture about a horrible situation. Sad for the kids.

This is my news of the weird story of the day….Packer fans.

Solar power, meet my friend Economics. I am sure the Venture Capitalists in the Obama administration read the tea leaves and saw this happening with Solyndra. In another solar front, are we bailing out the failed Spanish solar industry?

Stocks supposedly are “poised” to bounce back. Feel confident punk? Do ya?

They are beginning to contemplate a new look Eurozone. My thought is they should contemplate a break up of the Eurozone. Without taxing power, or the power to restrain budgets to maintain fiscal discipline it will never work for the long haul. Clear, efficient and very transparent markets with low transaction costs would allow independent Euro currencies to trade. Who knows? A country like Belgium might say, “I don’t want a currency, I will just use French francs”, and outsource their entire financing. As Yogi says, “It’s not over ’till it’s over.”

Greece can’t decide who will lead them down the road to serfdom.

Peter thinks you should be very concerned. I agree. Even if you weren’t an MF Global ($MF) client, I’d check my paperwork on how my trading account was registered. I am not a lawyer, but within laws or regulations there may be different standards of care from customer accounts and accounts that are designated as “introducing broker”. At any rate, I would have a very clear extensive conversation with whomever I was clearing to make sure that their operations were clean. It pays to know who you are clearing. I clear Shepard International, which is an IB to FC Stone ($INTL). I don’t disagree with Peter’s assessment of the CFTC or Gary Gensler over the past few years. He is inept, and clearly does not understand futures markets. Bart Chilton is about the same. Just because people are appointed to a position doesn’t mean they actually know anything. I don’t believe in giving deferential respect in this day and age. Respect is earned. Gensler and Chilton do not deserve respek.

This Zynga ($ZNGA) forced share thing ought to be interesting.

Everyone is looking at Europe, they should be scrutinizing China. However, the next shoe to drop is the budget committee in the US. Politically, Democrats don’t want to do anything so they can blame Republicans for stonewalling. However, Democrats only answer has been cut defense and raise taxes. Republicans came up with a credible plan only to be shooed away. They wanted to cut spending, cut taxes, and close loopholes. Nothing will get done. Election in November 2012.

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