Your morning financial odds and ends.

Between the structured products, the private REITs and the equity-linked annuities that are everywhere you look now, I fear that individual investors are once again marching themselves into a black hole in the name of yield.

Joke.

Infograph.

The “crisis” is really one that is manufactured and meant to determine which ideology is going to control the heart and soul of America going forward.

John Edwards’s “Two Americas” rhetoric would’ve resonated nicely for 2012. Too bad he’s a Chucky doll-esque sociopath.

Your morning finance links, exquisitely curated.

“The debt-ceiling negotiations are coming down to brinksmanship…”