Bits & Pieces (Friday Night Tiger Blood Edition)

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

Winning! I asked yesterday Autotune The News basically rebranded themselves as Songify This. Here’s a much more recent piece: they Autotune Charlie Sheen.

Speaking of news. Epic news fails. Some don’t merit the lead up. Still . . . worth watching once. 
“Dana is off tonight. He was murdered and set on fire while celebrating his birthday!” I’m so glad my job doesn’t involve being on live television.
•••
Some days, I miss Drew Carrey’s take on Whose Line is it, Anyway? 

The Bad Lip Reading people do music videos, too, where they take real music videos, mash ’em up, and write a whole new song. I love this song. I think I’m gonna by the actual song on iTunes. “Morning Dew”.

Have a good evening, my friends. — KW

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Morning Report

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1250.6 -5.1 -0.41%
Eurostoxx Index 2336.5 -11.440 -0.49%
Oil (WTI) 94.22 0.150 0.16%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 76.824 0.094 0.12%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 2.08% 0.01%

Stock Index futures dropped dramatically after the IMF and G20 failed to come to a deal over IMF resources. EURIBOR / OIS (a measure of stress in the European banking system) hit a post-crisis high yesterday, although some of that may have been due to MF Global. LIBOR / OIS (a measure of stress in the US banking system) has been steadily rising since August.

Lots of economic numbers released this morning. The unemployment rate came in at 9.0% vs expectations of 9.1%. October payroll numbers were a touch light, but September numbers were revised higher. Average Hourly earnings and hours in line with expectations. Markets are rallying slightly on the news, as investors focus on the revisions and bet that the disappointing Oct payroll numbers will end up being revised upward in the future.

The MF Global saga is interesting on a number of fronts. At the moment, it appears that $633 million of customer money is missing. Co-mingling customer and firm accounts is a big, basic no-no. In addition, it looks like they moved customer funds around in order to fool the auditors. CEO Jon Corzine has resigned this morning and chosen to forego his severance package. If the Occupy Wall Street really wants a perp walk, here is a golden opportunity. It will be interesting to see if the Obama Administration decides to go after Corzine, a well-respected Democrat. So far, they have exhibited zero interest in going after ex-Clinton Budget Director Franklin Raines who paid himself tens of millions or dollars in salary and bonus based on fraudulent accounting, so I am not optimistic. But hey, you never know.

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