Some of the more interesting and important items for October 31st :

• Time Warner to take $100 million charge on Time cuts – Ouch
• U.S. Bancorp Acquires Nine Banks Seized by Regulators, Accelerating Growth – The small shall die and give birth to a monster
• Union Rejects Ford Deal – Here we go again…
• White House: 650,000 jobs created or saved – Really? Come on, what happened to 4,000,000
• UhOh for MoMo : The Disciplined Investor – What a change over the past few days. Aside from sentiment, stocks have stage a remarkable turn that is showing up in their harsh move below key averages.
• China to pursue trade case against US automakers – In 1928, Hoover ran on a platform of higher tariffs designed to protect farmers from European competition. Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930; Hoover signed the bill although economists protested. It is unlikely that tariffs alone caused the Great Depression, but they fostered global protectionism; world trade declined by 66% from 1929 to 1934.
• Mean Street: GMAC = Insanity – And this time around, it’s going to cost us another $5.6 billion in new preferred equity plus another $7.4 billion in government guaranteed debt. That makes a grand total of $25.5 billion of our money committed to GMAC. So far, that is.

  Now you may be thinking, “Big deal. What’s a few billion more amidst the hundreds of billions in TARP bailouts.”