In Greece, meanwhile, 7,000 plainclothes police officers will be on duty when German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Athens.

The Securities and Exchange Commission turned to a high-frequency trading firm to help build a system that will help the bank monitor high-frequency trading.

The market for municipal bonds is stuck in the dark ages, writes The Times' Gretchen Morgenstern.

Yoga-practicing, Bruce Springstein lover Barry Rosenstein, the founder of Jana Partners, is the activist investor you can bring home to mama in this profile.

Lehman Brothers' defunct brokerage is getting closer to paying creditors, four years after the firm went under.

Wall Street is anticipating lower corporate profits when companies begin reporting third quarter earnings, but that's not necessarily going to slow the stock market.

HSBC received a court order to bar Occupy protestors from entering its Hong Kong headquarters. The company evicted demonstrators in September after an 11-month occupation.

If only T. Boone Pickens had died ... Bloomberg Businessweek looks at Oklahoma State University's scheme to fund its athletic department by investing in life insurance policies on the program's boosters.

Would you work for Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Female executives are split on the question, according to Bloomberg.

A caddy at East Hamptons Golf Club, where memberships start at $400,000 and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is a member, has self-published a book about looping for the rich.

I alluded to this in today’s Morning Read, but if common sense hasn’t already killed them, maybe we can use this tidbit from the Associated Press to put an end to the absurd John Kerry-for-VP rumors that proliferated last Friday and over the weekend.

Now, if Obama were really about to tap as his running mate a man who still seethes with resentment over the Swift Boat attacks that Pickens bankrolled (and who is still engaged in a very public argument with an unapologetic Pickens about the subject), then why would he be meeting with Pickens and, essentially, shrugging off Kerry’s gripes? There are about 62,000 reasons why Obama will not even consider putting Kerry on the ticket, but the fact that he’s interested in courting T. Boone Pickens – and, by extension, the voters who share Pickens’ interpretation of Kerry’s Swift boat history – by itself disqualifies Kerry, whose presence on the ticket would reopen the divisions of 2004 that Obama is clearly and correctly interested in healing.   

That Kerry’s name has even entered into serious media discussion is by itself a wonder.

As best I can tell, the Kerry chatter took off last Tuesday night when Howard Wolfson, fresh off making his bizarre and utterly baseless claim that Hillary Clinton would have won the Iowa caucuses without John Edwards in the race, said on television that he’d heard rumors about Kerry being considered. A few days later, a Boston newsman reported that “some political insiders” had told him that “it could happen.” Matt Drudge took that scoop, plastered it on his Web site, and a weekend of Kerry buzz ensued – and now Kerry’s VP stock is trading at a ridiculous 9.4 on Intrade.

I doubt old T. Boone would want to go into business with anyone who’d throw money at that proposition.

The move may come in January when Spitzer is sworn in as governor.

That's exactly what the Post editors hoped Spitzer would do.

Spitzer's transition website has gotten 25,000 visitors.

Some of the 300 advisers on Spitzers's transition team were contacted Tuesday and given "sketchy information about their responsibilities," the Sun reports.

Rudy Giuliani is putting together his financial inner circle.

One person in that inner circle is T. Boone Pickens, who gave $3 million to the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth.

John McCain explained the midterm elections to Republicans by saying that they abandoned their principles.

The Times Union describes what happened to the report about the 9/11 call to Rep. John Sweeney's home.

Mayor Bloomberg will sign off on the City Council's 25 percent pay raise, although he disagrees with them getting extra money for serving in leadership positions.

The Daily News is aghast that the Post's parent company published a book by OJ Simpson and how he would have killed his wife.

And Jeanine Pirro will be immortalized by having a Law and Order episode based on her campaign, marriage and assorted mishaps.

-- Azi Paybarah