Morning Journal - Has Israel already attacked Iran?

Economics
This Week’s Data

The February Chicago purchasing managers index came in at 64.0 versus expectations of 61.0 and January’s reading of 60.2.

Weekly jobless claims were unchanged versus estimates of a 2,000 increase.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/03/weekly-initial-unemployment-claims.html

January personal income rose 0.3% versus forecasts of up 0.4%; personal spending was up 0.2% versus expectations of up 0.5%; the core PCI deflator was in line with estimates.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/03/personal-income-increased-03-in-january.html

Other

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and oil prices (medium):
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/the-strategic-petroleum-reserve-and-oil-prices/

Household deleveraging (short):
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/household-deleveraging-slows-recovery/


Politics

Domestic

International War Against Radical Islam

Taking out dictators (medium):
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/292125/taking-out-dictators-victor-davis-hanson

Israel may have already taken out an Iranian nuclear facility (short):
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/27/wikileaks-emails-indicate-stratfor-discovered-israel-already-destroyed-irans-nuclear-facilities/

Steve Cook received his education in investments from Harvard, where he earned an MBA, New York University, where he did post graduate work in economics and financial analysis and the CFA Institute, where he earned the Chartered Financial Analysts designation in 1973. His 40 years of investment experience includes institutional portfolio management at Scudder, Stevens and Clark and Bear Stearns. Steve's goal at Strategic Stock Investments is to help other investors build wealth and benefit from the investing lessons he learned the hard way.