Comcast, the nation’s largest cable television provider, can grow bigger if it wants to after a federal court decision Friday that tossed out a rule preventing cable companies from controlling more than 30 percent of the U.S. market.

The rule, set by the Federal Communications Commission in 1993, has been in legal challenge nearly since its inception, with cable companies arguing that it was unconstitutional and the FCC and some consumer advocates saying it was necessary to prevent one company from controlling the market and gouging consumers. The FCC imposed the cap after Congress passed the 1992 Cable Act, which said the agency must set ‘reasonable limits’ on the number of customers a cable company can have.

Now just looking in from the outside my guess would be for a movie studio like 20th to get distribution of its product anyway possible – especially as we move our way of getting movies closer and closer to digital (probably totally within a decade to decade and a half I guess). The Redbox kiosks seem like a good way to make some cash while its still there.

The move seems counterintuitive to me from Murdoch, but I guess we’ll see.

Netflix Inc. gained and bullish options trading jumped to the highest in 11 weeks on speculation that Amazon.com Inc. may acquire the largest U.S. mail-order movie service.

‘There’s heavy call buying and the stock is up on renewed takeover talk, with Amazon being mentioned specifically,’ said Fred Ruffy, the senior options strategist at WhatsTrading.com, a New York-based provider of options market analysis. ‘It’s pretty typical of speculative call buying.’

At a recent conference held here by the Indiana Bankers Association, attendees said it over and over: our business is plodding and boring and we would not have it any other way.

“Banking should not be exciting,” said Clay W. Ewing, president of retail financial services at German American Bancorp, a community bank in Jasper. “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.”

It is an ethos squarely at odds with the risk-addicted style of megabanks, like Citigroup and Bank of America, that trafficked in the subprime mortgages and complex financial products that helped drive the country into the grimmest recession in decades.

I was recently watching a documentary on the 1929 crash, and having lived through first-hand the dot-com crash in 2000, its clear that this bubble pattern is part of what we do in America.

I sure remember tv pundits like Larry Kudlow in 1999 talking about how the business paradigm had totally changed, and I even confess as I was personally in the middle of it making more money than my experience dictated, I bought in to some of it. But the problem with this downturn is that its one thing for stupid dotcoms with Hollywood celebs on their board of directors to flame out (ours had Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi!), its a whole other for a giant bank or brokerage to crater.

We can’t allow an industry like banking to get into as many areas as it did. I was in favor of the Clinton-era deregulation of the telecom industry and that just led to consolidation, ditto for the banks being deregulated. We have to balance between too much red tape and the free flow of capital, but the government has to be empowered and willing to be the bartender who cuts off the drinks way before our industries go swaggering out the door, fumbling for the car keys.

NY Times interview with President Obama reveals his secret plan for communism.

Are there tangible ways that Wall Street has made the average person’s life better in the way that Silicon Valley has?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that some of the democratization of finance is actually beneficial if properly regulated. So the fact that large numbers of people could participate in the equity markets in ways that they could not previously — and for much lower costs than they used to be able to participate — I think is important.

Now, the fact that we had such poor regulation means — in some of these markets, particularly around the securitized mortgages — means that the pain has been democratized as well. And that’s a problem. But I think that overall there are ways in which people have been able to participate in our stock markets and our financial markets that are potentially healthy. Again, what you have to have, though, is an updating of the regulatory regimes comparable to what we did in the 1930s, when there were rules that were put in place that gave investors a little more assurance that they knew what they were buying.

A former senior executive of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS), Andrew Bodnar, pleaded guilty for his role in BMS’s dishonest dealings with the federal government relating to a patent deal involving the popular blood-thinning drug Plavix, the Department of Justice announced today. This plea agreement follows BMS’s June 11, 2007, agreement to plead guilty and pay a $1 million criminal fine – the maximum fine permitted by statute – for misleading the government about the Plavix patent deal. The Department said that the illegal actions of BMS and its executive threatened to reduce competition that could have lowered the cost of blood-thinning drugs sold to heart attack, stroke and other patients.

If you believe they will, I have a slightly used bridge you might be interested in.

Business takes a hard look at the potential and when there doesn’t seem to be any, it pulls back. Government, on the other hand, decides it believes something has a future and spends money to try to make their belief a reality.

[sarcasm] And that friends, is why when business saw the real estate and mortgage market going insane, they pulled back and reconsidered their investments. Surely what they didn’t do was put up billions and billions of their investor’s money in what amounted to be gigantic excrement piles of mortgage-backed securities and the like. That’s why no companies needed to be bailed out by the federal government, and certainly no banks have gone out of business due to the mania that never happened. [/sarcasm]

“This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.

Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?

In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the US Treasury. I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

From today’s appearance by the President at the Business Roundtable”

MR. PALMISANO: On behalf of everyone in the business community, we’re very, very encouraged with your words and your support. You’ve always said that you were committed to the competitiveness of American business. You’ve always said you’re committed to the competitiveness of our country. And we really appreciate it. We are in tough times.

I also want to thank you for all the support in the stimulus package. And when we met, you listened to us and you implemented many of our ideas and your leadership made a difference. So, again, we appreciate it.

And what does the head of IBM know about business, anyhow? It isn’t like they have Business as part of their na–

Nevermind.

>> President Meets with Business Roundtable and Dow Does What?

And as we confront this crisis and work to provide health care to every American, rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, move toward a clean energy economy, and pass the Employee Free Choice Act, I want you to know that you will always have a seat at the table.

>> Here’s Why We Need the Employee Free Choice Act
>> Scary Movie – The Horror of the Employee Free Choice Act

Last night I was watching CNBC and on-air anchor Michelle Caruso Cabrera was trying to make the point (while rudely talking over Ron Insana) that the fortunes of Main Street and Wall Street were one and the same. That just isn’t true.

Main Street is the backbone of America, the small businesses and institutions that keep America running. Wall Street has an important role as well, but unlike Main Street, the business interests of Wall Street see America’s growth as a side feature – not a central goal. The current crisis we face was a combination of madness in the markets of Wall Street combined with a lack of oversight that reached its high point under the previous administration. The problem is, it is Main Street that is suffering the most. There are no golden parachutes in the small business world in the way that absolute failure on Wall Street results in multi-million dollar sums for guys whose business savvy is less than your average Joe making a living at McDonald’s.

It isn’t that President Obama doesn’t want Wall Street to succeed, but he’s clearly not willing to do it at the expense of Main Street, which is the position being advocated by CNBC and yes, the right. Wall follows Main in this presidency, which is the exact opposite of the previous administration’s priorities. President Obama, from today’s press conference:

What I’m looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing. And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day to day, and if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you’re probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.

Wall Street has the megaphones, and they’ve been trying – more so as the stock market loses more value – to get Obama to cater to their needs. It doesn’t look like it, and I hope he continues his dedication to making things right for the rest of us first and foremost – a process by which the titans of finance will eventually profit.

The pilot who safely ditched a jetliner in New York’s Hudson River said Tuesday that pay and benefit cuts are driving experienced pilots from careers in the cockpit.

US Airways pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger told the House aviation subcommittee that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise ‘worth pennies on the dollar’ from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.

‘The bankruptcies were used to by some as a fishing expedition to get what they could not get in normal times,’ Sullenberger said of the airlines. He said the problems began with the deregulation of the industry in the 1970s.

While R. Allen Stanford’s investors were swallowing claims of vast returns on safe investments, some of his employees weren’t so sure.

And though one of them tried as early as 2003 to pass on to regulators his concerns about the bank, nothing came of it until Stanford’s operations were raided and shut down Tuesday.

The Texas billionaire with a reputation for jet-setting and lavish spending faces civil charges for allegedly lying about his investment strategy. But in 2003, when his offshore banking empire was exploding in size, even asking managers one question too many could get you fired, Miami broker Charles Hazlett said.

Hazlett was a top performer at Stanford’s bank, having sold $10 million in certificates of deposit in a single quarter of 2002. The company rewarded him with a new BMW.

But when a client asked Hazlett for details about the investments, no one at the bank would give him even basic information about risk ratings and asset allocation, he said in an interview.

Eventually, Hazlett said, he called a meeting with a top officer of the bank to ask how the investments worked. Instead of answers, he got an ultimatum: Resign or be fired.

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WOOOT.