Time for a little econ history lesson, guys. Niall Ferguson gave this great Ted talk in July explaining how and why the West holds all the power in the world despite being a fairly meager portion of the global population. He breaks it down into six "apps": Competition, the Scientific Revolution, Property Rights, Modern Medicine, the Consumer Society, and the Work Ethic. It's pretty interesting to see the divergence in average global incomes from 1500 to today. This might be a little too theoretical for some of you, but he makes some solid points. Now the question is: How do we stay on top when everyone has access to the same formula?

In a contentious 3-2 vote yesterday, the CFTC approved new position limits on 28 core commodities contracts. The measure is intended to curb speculation in the trading of grains, metals, and energies. In reality, it's going to change the way major banks and producers/users do business.

Okay, bear with me guys, because here's where it gets complicated. Please correct me if I get any of this wrong, because the CFTC release was pretty cryptic. But to the best of my understanding, the new limits are as follows:

For spot month contracts, no single company (trader) or the sum total of its subsidiaries may hold contracts for more than 25% of the estimated deliverable supply of the underlying commodity. Outside of the spot month, companies (traders) are limited to 10% of the underlying commodity's first 25,000 in open interest, and 2.5% thereafter.

That's right, guys. The iconic Burger King mascot is no more; he was unceremoniously dethroned in a PE boardroom in August. New York-based 3G Capital took over the burger chain in 2010 and ran off the old board of directors, and the new sheriff in town sent The King packing.

While I wasn't surprised to see Burger King behind McDonald's in sales, I was surprised to learn that Burger King trails Wendy's too. I'd sooner take a kick in the nuts than eat Wendy's (mad props to Dave Thomas from a business perspective and everything he did over the years for adopted kids, though).

It's an interesting marketing decision on the part of the new Burger King board. They signed an exclusive deal with Pepsi in Latin America (owned by the same parent company), and they plan to expand their Brazilian footprint from 100 stores to over 1,000.

We're always talking about how important networking is to break into Wall Street. Well you don't get an opportunity like this one very often. Gawker just published Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit's cell phone number:

http://gawker.com/5849826/

Why bother hounding analysts and associates when you can go right to the top? If you're looking for a job on the Street, give Vik a ring and introduce yourself. And let me know how it goes.

1) TARP After Three Years: It Made Things Worse, Not Better (Forbes) - Bank bailouts have been in the news a lot lately thanks to the #OccupyWallStreet crowd. But it's not only lefty hipsters who think TARP was a sham. Here are the reasons why we're worse off in the long term for having bailed out the banks.

2) Goldman May Drop Bank Status, Hilder Says (The Daily Caller) - Speaking of marriages of convenience, now that the Vampire Squid has sucked any and all possible utility out of their status as a bank holding company, they're considering going back to plain old investment bank status to avoid the expenses real banks have to shoulder under the new Volcker Rule. To be fair, Morgan Stanley is considering the same move.

3) Gorman's Brokerage Headache (American Chronicle) - Since you brought up Morgan Stanley, we might as well talk about the 17,500 retail brokerage elephants in the room. Turns out Smith Barney wasn't quite the crown jewel James Gorman hoped it was. Note to James: Dude, there's this new thing called the Internet where people can trade stocks wicked cheap. Just sayin'.

We had a robust debate here on WSO about the death penalty recently, especially as it pertained to the September execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. At the center of the issue was the perceived lack of evidence against Davis (an issue also hotly debated) and the concern that a possibly innocent man was being put to death.

Dewey Bozella was never on death row, but his case is both inspirational and gives you a lot of food for thought. You see, Dewey is making his professional boxing debut at age 52 on Saturday night in Los Angeles after spending 26 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. I can't imagine what it's like to spend half your life in Sing Sing for a murder you didn't commit, but I damn sure wouldn't want to be his opponent on Saturday night.

Bozella is the recipient of the 2011 Arthur Ashe Courage Award, presented to him at the Espy's in July. His story is pretty incredible. He was convicted in 1983 of murdering a 92-year old Poughkeepsie woman in 1977. He got 20 years to life in Sing Sing. He took up boxing in prison to keep the other inmates from harassing him, and he eventually became the Sing Sing prison boxing champion.

Okay, this is some funny stuff. The staff of FunnyOrDie went out to interview the #OccupyWallStreet crowd and this is what they came up with. It's like a Tea Party rally in reverse:

We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the infamous Playboy cover story and I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at the year that has passed and see if we got anything right. For some reason, the article has been taken off the Playboy site, otherwise I'd link to it for you. It's probably for the best though, as most of your IT departments would have an internal shit hemorrhage if you tried to access Playboy.com from a work computer.

**EDIT** Thanks to WSO user Macro Arbitrage, here is a link to the actual article, and it shouldn't even upset your IT department (because it's Web Archive):
http://web.archive.org/web/20101104050226/http://w...

I look at the whole #OccupyWallStreet thing and I see it as a sort of devolution from Tank-A-Bank. Where Tank-A-Bank was a fairly elegant solution to a national problem, #OccupyWallStreet is a less organized, more mob rule type of approach. Tank-A-Bank was a surgeon's scalpel compared to #OccupyWallStreet's chainsaw, if you will.

But I wonder if we here on WSO had anything to do with the emergence of #OccupyWallStreet. Let's face it: there was sufficient controversy here on WSO to attract national attention to Tank-A-Bank. Even with the changes Playboy made to the original plan (yes, the plan published in the magazine was a good deal different - and in my opinion, blunted - than the original plan) it got people thinking and talking about what could be done to rein in the Too Big To Fail banks. On balance, I think that's a good thing.

1) How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (FourHourWorkWeek.com) - In honor of Steve Jobs passing this week, I thought I'd start the Bonus Bananas with a inspiring article about becoming an entrepreneur in your spare time and creating the life you want to live. I think Steve would approve.

2) Quotes from late Apple founder Steve Jobs (Reuters) - These are some great quotes from the man himself about life, business, and the value of hard work. My favorite?

[quote Steve Jobs]"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."[/quote]

3) Top 10 Cities for Young Entrepreneurs 2011 (Under 30 CEO) - I thought I'd round out the top 3 with a Top 10 list. I was pleasantly surprised to find my home town of New Orleans ranked #1 on the list. It's true: if you've got the least little bit of ambition, NOLA is the place to be. The bar for achievement there is set so low you can clear it in street shoes. I started a yacht services company from scratch there, and it was the 3rd largest by sales volume in the state (out of more than 50) in less than two years.