- Palm’s headed toward a fork in the road as there’s a growing belief that its future contains only two paths: acquisition or insolvency, Jon Stokes writes at ars technica.
- Bronte Capital blogger John Hempton says BofA engaged in some shady accounting engineering during the boom, similar to Repo 105. But BofA defends its accounting procedures. “Efforts to manage the size of our balance sheet are routine and appropriate, and we believe our actions are consistent with all applicable accounting and legal requirements,” BofA tells ProPublica. It all sounds strikingly similar to what Ernst & Young recently said about Lehman, DealBook notes.
- “With all eyes on financial institutions, sovereign defaults, state bankruptcies and pension shortfalls, I’ll humbly submit reason #11 to be wary of this scary bull – unforeseen systemic risk emanating from quant models gone awry,” Todd Harrison says. “This is the first time in history 10-year interest rate swap spreads turned negative…I would venture to guess it wasn’t ‘modeled’ that way by the quant geeks.”
- GE shares up 24% this year and 80% over last 12 months. That’s noteworthy, especially since GE underperformed the broader market during much of the 2000s, Bespoke notes. “Is GE finally ready to lose the ‘dead money’ label?”
- New home sales hit a record low last month and months of supply rose to 9.2 months. “Obviously this is another extremely weak report,” Calculated Risk says.
- Blogosphere loves Sprint Nextel’s (S) new 4G phone – Evo. Engadget says it’s a “breathtaking” device. “Evo 4G is the best Android phone out there. It may even be the best phone, period,” Gizmodo adds.
- “The administration may be distancing itself from the Volcker Rules, but the same is not true of all Senators,” Simon Johnson says.
- Will Apple’s (AAPL) iPad live up to the hype? Kara Swisher discusses on WSJ’s Digits show.
- Bank of America (BAC) says it will make principal forgiveness a priority for certain subprime mortgages.
- Starbucks (SBUX) to offer its first-ever cash dividend and announced it will boost its stock-buyback plans.
