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Marketplace Scratch Pad

Morning Reading

Scott Jagow Jan 7, 2010

Good morning. To start the day, I’ve picked out a few things you might be interested in reading:

In a clash over cable, customers lose (New York Times) This is an issue I’ve brought up a couple of times, and it continues:

About three million cable households in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been affected by a bitter argument between the cable provider and Scripps Networks over how much Cablevision subscribers should pay for the Food Network and HGTV.

Tomorrow’s job report could be a breakthrough (Washington Post):

These results will frame the political discussion in the weeks ahead about the Obama administration’s performance in addressing the economic crisis, offering the most solid evidence yet of whether the nascent recovery is finally translating into gains for workers.

McCain Gets It, Obama Doesn’t (The Nation) On Too Big To Fail and breaking up the banks.

The nation’s debt cannot be ignored (Bloomberg)

Suddenly, the nation’s public debt, which was 37 percent of GDP in 2007, has risen to about 67 percent in 2010 and is projected to continue rising if we don’t change course. The built-in deficits caused by aging and medical spending for seniors are no longer looming far ahead of us. They will affect our crisis-damaged budget within the decade.

Time for the Fed to disprove the Plunge Protection Team theory (Marketwatch) This is the issue I wrote about earlier this week, that in some circles, the gov’t is suspected propping up the stock market:

It’s hard to believe that the Fed could keep such a conspiracy a secret for 20 years or more… Yet Biderman’s accusation of PPT market manipulation is another argument in favor of a complete public audit of the Fed’s books. As any casual reader of this site’s community boards knows, there is a widespread belief that the PPT does manipulate stock prices on a daily basis to enrich its pals and screw individual investors.

It would be useful to prove them wrong. And if they are right, the PPT should be put out of business.

When pay means play. Video game jobs on the rise (NPR) I didn’t see this on the best jobs list, but maybe it should be!

Finding a job in the video game industry is a dream come true for many people who grew up playing games on computers and consoles. And the field is swiftly expanding as people turn to mobile devices like the iPhone and social networking sites like Facebook for entertainment.

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