Oil prices plunged — maybe because the speculators were too busy trying to fend off regulation during this week's CFTC hearings to manufacture a spike — and the stock market as a whole got dragged down.

As expected, the blowback from the formal announcement of the MicroHoo offensive against Google generated threats of regulatory scrutiny. And Jason Calcanis rips the deal this way: "Yahoo committed seppuku today."

Speaking of dying, the newspaper industry is not only no threat but is barely relevant to the MicroHoo/Google war. See Ken Doctor's "Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Leaves Newspapers on the Sidelines."

One of the better pieces on the highly entertaining Kosher Nostra sting of pols and rabbis for bribery and other business chicanery — another blow to a Jewish community reeling from momser Bernie Madoff's shanda — comes from Larry Cohler-Esses in the Jewish Daily Forward: "The Syrian-Jewish Community: Solidarity Forever or 'Medieval Minds, Armani Designs'?" Nathaniel Popper weighs in with "Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis Begin To Take Responsibility for Arrests and Scandals." As usual, the Forward tackle angles that the secular press won't touch for fear of being seen as antisemitic.

For example, Popper points out that Chicago Rabbi Asher Lopatin, a sometime critic of the Haredi (i.e., the ultra-Orthodox Jews), optimistically notes that the implications of the scandal that ensnared several of their top dogs may be getting through the thick skullcaps of the insular Haredi. Popper quotes Lopatin as saying, "People are starting to feel that this stuff is not right. In the past, it was all about getting cheap meat and looking out for ourselves. I think it's permeating the Haredi world that it's not right to cheat the government."

Other stuff:

"Ruth Madoff sued for $45 million" (CNN)

"American Express Buys Back Treasury Warrants" (NYT)

"With Microsoft Deal, Will Yahoo Turn into AOL?"

"Beige Book Sees Recession Easing" (WSJ)

"MillerCoors Tests a Draft-Beer Box" (WSJ)

"Yahoo Drops on Disappointment Over Microsoft Accord" (Bloomberg)

"Countrywide Alumni Seek Profits at PennyMac From Mortgage Market Collapse" (Bloomberg)