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Marketplace Scratch Pad

Morning Reading

Scott Jagow Apr 20, 2009

President Obama holds his first formal Cabinet meeting today, and he plans to ask his department heads to find $100 million to cut from the budget. Remember now, Obama’s budget proposal is 3.5 trillion dollars. Other things to read:

Feds To Put Conditions on TARP Repayment (NY Times/FT)
“Strong banks will be allowed to repay federal bailout funds, but only if such a move passes a test to determine whether it is in the national economic interest, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing a senior U.S. administration official.”

Will Americans turn inward? (Forbes)
“Barack Obama is not an entrepreneur. No one close to him is. Not a single aide, adviser, Cabinet member or House committee chair. Obama almost never mentions small businesses in his economic speeches. It is clear that he would like to divert some portion of America’s human creativity away from private economic pursuits and toward community building. That’s just who Obama is, and it can be a noble goal. But Obama won’t achieve it.”

Bank of America Wrecking Merrill’s Europe Banking Franchise (Clusterstock)
“Bank of America’s attempts to impose its centralized structure on the once independent fiefdoms of Merrill Lynch’s European investment banking business is tearing the firm apart at the seams, with senior managers locked in a heated argument over how the business should be run.”

How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write (WSJ)
… I was sitting alone in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I’d bought and downloaded Zadie Smith’s novel “On Beauty.” By the time the check arrived, I’d finished the first chapter.

Restaurants take to Twitter (Reuters)
“There is nothing faster for communicating than Twitter,” said Aaron Allen, chief executive of restaurant consulting firm Quantified Marketing Group. “You have to be a complete moron to ignore it.”

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