Market Talk

- SEC investigating a few dozen financial firms regarding repo 105s is a welcome move, but it brings into question whether the agency has enough reach to be effective, Yves Smith says.

- Amazon (AMZN) currently controls nearly all of the e-book market. That will change with the iPad, Nook and others taking share, but maybe they can all thrive together, MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka ponders.

- Current financial reform proposals are “toothless facades of what real regulation should look like,” Barry Ritholtz writes. He offers 10 questions finance reformers need to answer before passing legislation.

- New iPhones potentially on both AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless may possible be Palm’s worst nightmare, Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski says.

- This March has been a great month for stocks. And more gains may be on the way. April’s historically one of the best months of the year for the market, with the Dow averaging a 1.9% gain in April over last 50 years, according to Bespoke.

- “Regulation has to be smarter than something as simple as narrow banking,” Paul Krugman says. “Government backing — the 21st-century version of deposit insurance — plus regulation so that the backed institutions don’t abuse the privilege is still the way to go.”

- Non-profits can’t possibly save print journalism, Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter argues.

- Ireland’s government announced plans to inject billions of euros into the nation’s beleaguered banking system and outlined bigger-than-expected discounts on loans to be transferred by financial institutions to the nation’s “bad bank.”

- Wondering what the next big battle between Wall Street and Washington will be? Capital ratios and liquidity, Andrew Ross Sorkin says.

- This perfectly exemplifies how bad the job market truly has gotten.

- 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.