Weekend Linkfest

Yes, after a vacation-induced hiatus (the missus insisted), the Linkfest has returned!

I put the L-fest together as the workweek progresses. I read through a lot of data and analysis, including MSMedia items, and each day, I set aside (virtually) four or five of the most interesting items. By Friday, I have a ton-o-stuff.

But I know your fingers are itchin' to get clickin', so let's not delay this any further:

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• Earnings season began rather inauspiciously: Alcoa (AA Quote), 3M (MMM Quote), EMC (EMC Quote), Lucent (LU Quote) and AMD (AMD Quote). The spin has been that these are all company-specific issues, but after 14 quarters of double-digit growth, it smells a lot like earnings are softening.

• Mideast Strife Wounds Stocks: That's been the major headline this week, but it is somewhat overstated. Why? From the June lows till last week, the S&P 500 index rallied 5%. That's 60% annualized, and that's simply unsustainable. Between that and the poor earnings kickoff, we were due for a correction anyway. The strife in the Middle East makes for as good an excuse as any.

• Russell explains What War Means for your Wealth.

• Oil futures did move toward $80, so the situation there is not completely irrelevant. But as Howard Simons pointed out, last we checked, there's no oil in Gaza or Lebanon. With Iran as the likely source behind the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks, an Israel-Iran war becomes a possibility, and that would certainly be a major issue for energy markets and the equities. As this goes on, it's becoming clearer that China and Russia are the real beneficiaries of our incursion into Iraq. The U.S. has very little leverage to deal with abundant global crises. And you know things have gotten really weird when Patrick Buchanan sounds increasingly reasonable on foreign affairs.

• Energy is the fulcrum here, and these few items stood out from the fray:

- Study: Ethanol won't solve energy problems

- IEA Sees Oil Supply Growth Exceeding Demand in '07

- Few US Workers Who Could Telecommute Do So

- A disruption in Iranian oil exports looks unlikely

• OK, enough overseas news. Here at home, options-granting issues refuse to go away. Spring-loaded options were the previous scandal. Today, The Wall Street Journal discusses the newest options mess: post-9/11 options. (If no WSJ, go here.) It's a disheartening tale of greed and un-American behavior from a large group of corporate ass-clowns. Robert J. Samuelson is almost as blunt: He writes about the Delinquency of the CEOs.

• The Fortune Global 500.

• One thing that really stood out this week was the discussion of the budget deficit and savings. It all started with a surprisingly upbeat article in The New York Times on the deficit: Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit.

A few discerning deficit watchers noted the NYT had been punk'd. The White House has pulled a page from Wall Street and is playing the game of beat by a penny. Budget-watcher extraordinaire Ron Elving calls this an annual game in which the White House overstates expected deficits, and then manages to produce an "upside surprise." He details this in Deficit Reduction: Stop Me If You've Heard This One.

The Los Angeles Times is even more succinct. In Deficit's Good News Less Than Meets the Eye, Joel Havemann writes:

"This will be the third year in a row that the administration put forth relatively gloomy deficit forecasts early on, only to announce months later that things had turned out better than expected. To some skeptics, it's beginning to look like an economic version of the old 'expectations' game."

The last word on deficits and tax cuts comes from the WSJ's Washington Wire, in which David Wessel notes that the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves is belied by the administration's own budget.

• The Stock Trader's Almanac laid out the the bull case last week. ...