You mean Vermont separatists aren’t terrorists? Whatever. All I know is that they have beards and don’t like Toby Keith. Close enough.

The other Presidential candidate has the power to decimate entire industries, just by being. The old journalistic fallback, “Markets sell off due to the continued existence of Democratic politicians” just won’t die, even though the the inverse has been proven. On the other hand, if we dispensed with that particular myth, what would Larry Kudlow have to talk about every day?

Interesting Reading

Felix Salmon tells BusinessWeek what’s what when they try to tackle the question of skylines and good architecture. Do go read his post. The short version? Dissing “Old Europe” and gawking at grounded glass projectiles does not count as cogent urbanist analysis. In BusinessWeek‘s defense, they are writing for an American audience. So perhaps, instead, they should be praised for not writing a paean to the inspired subtlety of our shopping malls and Wal-Marts.

Zero Beta has a great survey of the participants in this new round of Asian Flu.

Fed funds futures are pricing in a 50bp rate hike by October.

VIX and More shows why, right now, Lehman Brothers (LEH) may be a better proxy for fear than the VIX itself. (P.S. Remember those LEH plays we wrote up last week? They’ve gone swimmingly, and we’ll do a followup in the next week or two.)

Newsletter portfolio status update

We entered our first July position today, details here. Our remaining June positions are in fantastic shape.  We’re happy to see some increased volatility back in these markets; it’s too dang hard scalping dimes when you just know a volatility pop is coming.