The merger between IBM and Sun Microsystems has collapsed, at least for now. My other picks of the morning include: What the President can learn from JetBlue, why the housing crash ruined the economy but the dot-com bust didn’t and is Facebook your daddy?
What the President can learn from JetBlue (The New Republic)
“Unfortunately, many politicians and pundits don’t seem to be getting the same message: We’re not just facing a short-term financial crisis; we are facing a fundamental shift in our economy that has pushed more and more risk onto Americans’ backs.”
HSBC: Banks May Have a Pulse (Daily Finance)
The next test of the optimism about bank stocks is if a large U.S. firm like Bank of America (BAC) has to raise money. Its balance sheet and management are not the envy of the industry. If it can raise private capital, the worst days of the banking industry may actually be over.
Why the Housing Crash Ruined the Financial System but the Dot-com Collapse Did Not (WSJ)
“Key characteristics of housing markets — momentum trading, liquidity, price-tier movements, and high-margin purchases — combine to provide a fairly complete, simple description of the housing bubble collapse, and how it engulfed the financial system and then the wider economy.”
Will Geithner Fire Corporate America? (Robert Reich’s Blog)
“I suppose it’s comforting to know our government stands ready to fire corporate executives and directors whenever taxpayer money is on the line. But I suspect Geithner’s new tough line is mostly designed to reassure a public that’s lost all faith in the wisdom of bailing out Wall Street.”
Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You? (New York Magazine)
“Facebook’s terms of service used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.”
What will you do when the unemployment checks stop coming? (Unemploymentality)
“So here we are – the broke, the downtrodden, the wretched. Scratching and clawing at job boards, networking like rabid dogs and ‘trying to squeeze a dime out of a nickel when we haven’t got a cent.’ At the end of each long week, dozens more resumes have been sent out without as much as a phone interview while you’re one more week closer to the end of your unemployment. So what’s your next move? What’s plan B?”
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