Scared yet?

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Here’s what I was reading and thinking about this morning when I wasn’t sleeping off the family reunion we had for the holiday.

Amazon said to be developing smartphone - I predicted this just this week in my Revolution Investing newsletter. Do you know all you need to know about the Amazon-as-a-platform concept and what it means for AMZN?

Yes, Virginia, the real action in the Libor scandal was in the derivatives - We all are being scammed in so many ways by these darn too-big-to-fail banks, and I think this Libor scandal, because it’s so public and everybody now knows what Libor is, has the potential to really spiral down on top of these banks.

One chart that best summarizes the debt problem … and no one at the Fed acknowledges it and debt and economic growth - Must-read, thought-provoking commentary. Two very successful investors with very different styles from one another slugging it out about the pending collapse of Western culture and our markets as we know them.

On that note, there were a lot of economic-based headlines on the business pages this morning, so let’s play a new game called: “Does it matter, yes or no?” I’ll put a “yes” or “no” after each headline and I’ll put a few other comments in there too.

June employment-report preview - No. 80,000 jobs instead of 120,000 jobs in a country of 300 million people? That’s called statistically meaningless in my book.

Economists react - Nope, still meaningless even if all these guys pontificate otherwise.

Jobs report revives fears for recovery - No.

Nonfarm-payrolls report for June 2012 - Still no, although this is the best analysis of today’s jobs event that I’ve read.

Italy approves $5.6 billion in cuts - No. The headline reads fully: “Italy’s government approved €4.5 billion ($5.58 billion) in spending cuts for 2012 aimed at slashing the size of Italy’s bloated public sector and delaying a new tax increase until after the first half of 2013.” Apple’s profits alone for this year? Should be about 10 times that number. Just saying.

Portugal suffers budget blow - No. How many times have you seen this headline in the last two years? Do you even bother to click on this stuff anymore? I can’t believe anybody in the U.S. still believes that they should be panicking about Portugal after two years of PIIGS panic?

Greece pledges to speed up overhaul - No. Come on.

Spain to set deadline for town shake-up - No. Ooooh, scary code word, “shake-up.” Oooh, scary.

Cyprus minister laments Greek impact - No. Cyprus? Isn’t that a tree? I bet the U.S. tree industry is bigger than the Cyprus island nation’s GDP.

Live: Europe’s debt crisis - No. Let it go already. The markets and the economy have sucked since the EU was founded in the late 1990s. The markets and the economy were booming for the 50 years prior to the founding of the EU. Just saying.

U.S. stocks retreat as jobs data trail forecasts - No. Did you sell stocks back in 2002 and in 2008 because the jobs reports were so bad? Did the markets go up a bunch and then the jobs data got better? Do you think maybe you should stop buying and selling because of the macroeconomic headlines?

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Cody Willard

Founder, CEO & Chairman at Wall Street All-Stars, LLC

Cody Willard is the founder of Wall Street All-Stars and the principal of CL Willard Capital. Cody serves as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University and writes TradingWithCody.com. He was an anchor on the Fox Business Network, where he was the co-host of the long-time #1-rated show on the network, Fox Business Happy Hour. He wrote a monthly investment column for The Financial Times as well as columns for TheStreet.com and was a regular guest on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company from 2004 to 2006. Cody’s stock picking ideas and economic outlooks have been featured on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, ABC’s 20/20, CBS Evening News, CNBC’s SquawkBox, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, as well as in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many other outlets.