The head of the country’s second-biggest bank, considered by many to be “too big to fail,” said Tuesday that no firm should be immune from failure. “Everyone should be allowed to fail,” said Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase.

First, if I were in the Obama Administration I would be steaming that that no one seems to care that during their first few months in power they managed to steer the world economy away from almost certain catastrophic ruin. That single act alone had more of a positive impact on ordinary lives than anything done in the previous two terms of the Bush Administration. Of course, even at the time, entire schools of economists warned that the stimulus was too small, the recovery would be virtually jobless and that there was the potential for obscene profiteering by the biggest and most culpable players.

businessinsider.com : On November 1st, Philadelphia auction house Freeman’s is holding the first of two sales of nearly 700 pieces from Lehman Brothers’ private art collection. Read the whole story: businessinsider.com

Wall Street is closely monitoring the consumer heartbeat after the Consumer Confidence Index dipped unexpectedly in September and continued to deteriorate in October according to the latest results released today. One of the key demographics on the examination table are the men and women of the Boomer generation whose faith in Wall Street has been deemed essential for economic recovery. As both a member and expert on this largest, wealthiest generation in history, I would suggest that when it comes to Boomers, Wall Street worry less about our level of consumer confidence and more about our degree of consumer denial.


 
 More households are at risk of failing to maintain their standard of living during retirement, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The institute today updated its National Retirement Risk Index, a measurement that evaluates American households’ financial assets, housing and changes in Social Security benefits in order to weigh retirement readiness. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.

I learned from Matthew Yglesias that McDonalds is pulling out of Iceland , victims of that nation’s currency collapse. The BBC has more : McDonald’s is to close its business in Iceland because the country’s financial crisis has made it too expensive to operate its franchise.

footnoted.org : With the news yesterday that some form of the public option for healthcare appears to be moving forward, we can probably expect more companies to start including warnings like Walgreen (WAG) did in the 10-K it filed yesterday: Read the whole story: footnoted.org