Alibaba-Led Group Said to Prepare Yahoo Bid

From Bloomberg: 

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Softbank Corp. (9984) are in advanced talks with Blackstone Group LP (BX) and Bain Capital LLC about making a bid for all of Yahoo! Inc., said three people with knowledge of the matter. 

The First Robo-Signing Related Death?

The notary who signed 25,000+ documents in a massive robo-signing scandal case was found dead in her home on Monday. Tracy Lawrence was due in court in yesterday and failed to show up.  Fly On The Wall had posted:

"Lawrence had earlier admitted to notarizing “tens of thousands of fraudulent documents” as part of a wider foreclosure fraud scheme involving employees of Lender Processing Services (LPS)."

Though the cause of death has not been released, we do not believe the coroner has a box to check for "connection-turned-whistle-blower homicide". 

CFA: Classic Financial Absurdity

Wait CFA! The test is Saturday and I can't find my book on market micro-structure...how am I supposed to be a qualified financial engineer if I can't explain how the exchanges actually work?  Fuck!

AMR Bankrupt

American Airlines files for bankruptcy and crashes

Italian Bond Calendar

The Italian Treasury Auction Calendar for November, December, and January 2012.

ASX Launches High-Frequency Trading Platform

Despite past problems, Australia maintains the fight to enable financial cancer to spread.

From Sydney Morning Herald:

The ASX will have another chance to prove the reliability of its technology today when it launches a new high-frequency trading platform.

The Australian Securities Exchange, which has been beset by trade-halting glitches in recent months, will unveil its ASX PureMatch this morning following approval from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission earlier this month.

Government Bites The Hand That Feeds

This week the Fed's are voting on enabling the US Military to make arrests and retain citizens against their will in lock-up.  Now the police are working to hide their actions over police scanners so that their "investors" (taxpayers) cannot monitor performance in real-time.  All of this is being done under the guise that criminals are using these services to evade the rule of law (*ahem, congressional trading, lobbying departments, political nepotism, DOE and Climate Change E-mails 2.0) therefore the law-abiding citizen must be punished in the name of safety.  Orwell's world is alive and well.  Perhaps our resources would be better allocated regulating government instead of having government regulate us.  This is not a surprise given the recent upheaval worldwide as government squeeze more wealth out of it citizens to cover its stupid decisions.