Morning Journal-New book on Kennedy assassination

Economics

This Week’s Data

February housing starts declined slightly versus expectations of a 1.5% increase; however, building permits rose 5.1% versus estimates of up 2.6%.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/03/housing-starts-decline-slightly-in.html

Other

What the US economy faces on 1/1/2013 (medium):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281233569546496.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop


The Chicago Fed manufacturing survey shows Midwest growing (short):
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2012/03/midwest-manufacturing-is-booming.html

A back of the envelope analysis of the math of bankrupt Europe (medium):
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bail-or-not-bail-simple-question-math-and-why-taxpayers-will-be-hook-until-end

A different take on last week’s Fed stress test (medium):
http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/03/19/simon-johnson-the-fed-just-muppeted-us-all/

Politics

Domestic

I was a junior in college when Kennedy was assassinated. I was taking a government seminar at the time; and when we convened at 2:00pm that that, the professor running the seminar (and who was also head of government studies in arts and sciences school) theorized that it was the mafia who were responsible. I became enthralled with all the conspiracy theories and read quite a bit. The culprits came down to three: the mafia, the CIA and Castro or some combination of the three--they all had major axes to grind with Kennedy. In any case, there is a new book coming out on the potential involvement of Castro. Here is a discussion of that book (medium):
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/17/v-print/2700186/the-kennedy-assassination-did.html#storylink=cpy

The GOP releases its 2013 budget proposal today. Here is an advance look (medium):
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/republican-budget-would-slash-taxes-establish-two-bracket-tax-system-and-scrap-amt

International War Against Radical Islam

Get out of Afghanistan (long):
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293733/worse-powder-keg-andrew-c-mccarthy

Possible new developments in Syria (medium):
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/abc-reports-russian-troops-have-arrived-syria-russia-denies

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.