Things worth reading: 29th June 2009

Things we're reading today include ...

Today's must read:

PollyTrade Lets You Trade Stocks Via Twitter (Techcrunch)

PollyTrade links "your Twitter account to your E*Trade account (more brokers will be added in the future based on user feedback), and subsequently enable you to do transactions using tweets that start with @pollytrade and include the respective ticker.
For instance, if you’d want to buy 200 shares of Apple, you would tweet ‘@pollytrade buy 200 shares AAPL’ and likewise for selling e.g. 100 shares of General Electric (’@pollytrade sell 200 shares GE).  After communicating with E*Trade, which should only take a few seconds, PollyTrade tweets back your order status along with your brokerage order number. In case something went wrong - because of incorrect formatting or a refusal from your broker - you’ll receive an error message instead so you know the order didn’t go through.
It’s that simple."

UK:

Northern Rock plan to split raises concern in Brussels (Financial Times)
Davies turns down top job at Lloyds (Independent)
Darling thwarts King's bid to take wider powers (Guardian)
Bank reforms considered by Conservatives (BBC)

USA:

U.S. Treasury aims for fast sale of bank warrants (Reuters)
Ben Bernanke: Federal Reserve audit would constitute “takeover” by Congress, threaten the “financial system, dollar and economy” (Ron Paul)
Sex feels the credit squeeze in Nevada (Guardian)

Hedge Funds:

It's a stretch to blame hedge funds for banks' collapse (Financial Times)
Global Hedge Fund Assets Will Reach $2.6 Trillion by 2013 (Bank of New York Mellon)

General:

Confused about the state of the banking crisis? (WBT Radio)
The big bonus is back (Times)

Quote of the Day:
"The glow is coming off Las Vegas as a kind of sexual Disneyland." Melissa Farley, Women's Rights Activist

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