Well for one thing, Wall Street is being occupied by kids and hoodlums and professors and average joes AND the founder of AdBusters (where I used to volunteer — don’t tase me bro!).  The cause?  Putting people at the centre of politics and policy instead of corporate interests.  Psssst – you won’t hear much about this on mainstream media, but you can get live-action coverage here and here:

Keith Olbermann Covers Occupy Wall Street Protests Media Blackout from Blind Mice News on Vimeo.

Meg Whitman, as in Made E-Bay What It Is Was Meg Whitman, yes that one, is now head of HP No offence gentleman but big WOOHOOOOO for a woman being at the top of a tech company.

Netflix pissed off its customer base (as in, 1,000,000 cancelled their subscriptions level of pissed off) more by their apology than their original offence. Funny side story – their new spinoff company, christened Qwikster, failed to account for the pot-smokin’, foul-mouthed, wanna-get-laid dude who has the Qwikster twitter handle. Poor guy woke up to find he had 12,000 followers instead of 69.

oh. and our stocks have gone to hell.

1. It was a really bad day for our investments.
Well you probably don’t need ME to tell you this, but today was a really, really, really, really lousy day for your investments. And mine. Worst day since December 2008, in fact. And GUESS WHOSE FUNDS ARE TIED UP RIGHT NOW so she can’t buy? Although as one guy commiserated, “don’t worry. We haven’t hit bottom yet”. Steve Jobs and I are hurting together: our Apple stock dropped from $391 on Tuesday to $377 today.

2. GM’s profits increased by – are you sitting down?? — a freakishly incredible 89% last quarter compared to the same time last year. Did I mention MY FUNDS ARE TIED UP RIGHT NOW?

3. The Japanese Yen, like our Cdn. Dollar, has been increasing in value compared to the US Dollar (as it weakens) so today they deliberately intervened to weaken it (basically by flooding the market with yen). They did this because they want other countries to keep buying Japanese goods, without it becoming cost prohibitive – the tsunami wasn’t that long ago (seems like it though, eh?) and they need to keep getting their economy back on track.

4. And -quick! - take a look at your diamond. Was it extracted fairly? Or, god forbid, a blood diamond? I just heard about this company which uses only fair trade gems. That’s of particular interest to me as a northerner. Diamonds are mined up here and if you can get one of ours, you can be assured of the conditions under which it was extracted from the earth. I hope the business owner sources from the NWT!

1. Ford is investing $1B in a car-factory in India.

I find that interesting in two ways:  Ford’s brand has been sooooo “Made in the USA”.  I wonder how this will affect that?   and secondly, the fact that India’s market for cars has grown by 30% is an on-the-street (ha ha) indictor of how quickly their economy is growing.

2. Music Industry game-changer (again?  yes, again) Spotify has come to the USA. One more example of the colossal paradigm shift of pretty much the entire world (ie. we’re moving to the cloud, folks).

3. Canada received a top, top credit rating partly attributable to the Conservative Gov’ts stimulus package.   What does that mean to you?   It means two important things based on this:   Canada can borrow money cheaply because it’s such a safe risk.

a. Less of our taxes go to paying interest on the debt and more of our taxes are thus left over to pay for programs such as health care

b. Banks can borrow money more cheaply which means they, in turn, lend it more cheaply to us (with the outrageous exception of credit cards).  Lines of Credit, Mortgage rates = less expensive.   Don’t own a home?  Well, as a landlord, since my mortgage payments stay low, I pass on those savings to my tenants (if I don’t, my neighbour would, so I do.)

4.  Even The Economist is sounding fed-up over the USA’s dilly-dallying about the debt-ceiling.

(short story – it’s like the USA is living off its Line of Credit, and has hit its limit.  The limit can only be raised if Congress gives the OK, which has been done in the past many, many times, albeit not when things were so dire.  If they don’t, then on Tuesday, the gov’t can’t pay its own bills – think, public service payroll?  old age security?  medicare?  paying back other countries who lent them the money?  Democrats want to cut programs and raise taxes.   Republicans say flat-out No, or are concocting last-minute schemes of all kinds)

News Corp (as in, phone-hacking, police-bribing, bully parliamentarians News Corp) stock rises. Yes, rises. Clue: Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Euro-Zone lightens up the repayment terms for Greece’s debt, in part because the private sector (aka BANKS) also had to help out (Germany insisted). If you don’t get the whole Greece-In-Big-Trouble thing, my story will help.

Microsoft’s net income increased by 30% compared to last year’s Q2. It ain’t dead yet (although the article was rather gloomy) — have you *tried* Kinect??

We’re all still biting our nails about the US debt ceiling and potential default.

And in Canada? Well, < yawns > the Bank of Canada held their lending rate at 1%.

And in other news NORDSTROM’S ANNUAL ANNIVERSARY SALE IS ON NOW!

Rupert Murdoch (Fox news, News of the World, now x-nayed for the phone hacking scandal, and other tabloids) continues his fall from, well, not grace really, and Conrad Black excoriates him too, as only Conrad can do.  (personal comment:  I have no sympathy.  none.)

Australia is going to start taxing the worst 500 polluters ($25 per metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted)

Kinder-eggs maker Ferrero (yes, as in those chocolates) may be on shaky ground. (And what the heck?  America forbids the importing of Kinder-eggs?  ai-yi-yi!)

Canadians are slowing their use of credit (money coach breaths a sigh of relief.  And reminds readers that if you’d like to slow your own use of credit, I have a program that will help!)

And Canajun Finance did a nice piece connecting the dots between your personal “credit ceiling” and the situation in the USA.