From this morning’s newstrawling: an article and a column worth reading.

The first comes from Salon. Essentially, if the FCC goes unchecked, we may be seeing a lot less competition in the broadband arena. Much less. I have yet to parse the entire article, but the leading paragraph scares me enough:

In March, the FCC ruled that cable companies do not have to open their networks to competing Internet service providers, or ISPs. A FCC proposal to extend the same exemption to DSL service is pending. If approved, the proposal will allow local phone companies, now down to four “Baby Bells,” to deny other DSL providers access to local phone networks. Currently, all DSL providers are guaranteed access to phone networks under the FCC’s interpretation of federal telecommunications law.

In the worst possible case, Earthlink — my DSL provider — can be told by BellSouth to get lost. Where does that leave me and thousands of others?

The other thing was Arianna Huffington’s latest column, in which she takes Wall Street to task. It’s about time someone called for reform in the all-too-cosy relationships between companies and their “analysts”.

Over the last decade, an unsettling number of Wall Street analysts morphed from highly professional researchers offering investors independent and objective advice into highly paid marketing machines, stopping at next to nothing to help generate huge investment banking fees for their firms. Trying to sign a client and need a positive research report to close the deal? No problem. Need a “buy” recommendation to keep a company’s share price from dipping? You got it. And since the shares of these companies go through the roof after you appear on television telling people to buy them, why not line one’s own pockets by buying and selling shares of the companies you tout? Who’s it going to hurt? I mean, other than ordinary shareholders not in the loop, in other words, the public.