Penny Hardaway (college squad player): They just thought, “Okay, they got these young guys to give us a little warm-up. We’re going to beat them up a little bit, sign a couple autographs, and then everybody go on about their merry way.” They didn’t know how talented we really were.

Your favorite insolvent-but-for-the-grace-of-god-and-the-taxpayer banks are still in the game, player. Don’t you worry about that…

Your morning financial links, expertly curated.

The thing about Italy is that it’s really important to the Euro experiment that things don’t get out of hand there.  It’s huge economically, bigger than Spain and just behind France. The good news is that Italian banks, unlike Spanish ones, are in decent shape – they didn’t have the same construction and real estate…

we both love the Hundred Dolla Roll trade

Video.

Charts.

“Comparing 17 “full-cycle” nontraded real estate investment trusts with two customized benchmarks, the study found that just five such REITs outperformed each of those market indexes. “

Euphoria is manifesting itself in the opening trading for European futures this evening – they’re indicating a plus-2.5% gap-up open for Old World stocks.