A funny thing happened on the Illinois statehouse floor – Republican Senator Christine Radgono quoted some Wu-Tang financial advice – specifically, advice from the always trustworthy rapper Raekwon. Here’s the vid:

Some of you may know that last night, Raekwon from the Wu-Tang Clan was in town
And I got some financial advice from him which I would like to share with all of you, because it does seem quite relevant:

“The most precious thing in the world is the financial security and well being of your family
You want to send your little ones to the best school, and in the end, you want to know you left them with peace of mind
nowadays we all know that cash rules everything around us
Cream. Get the money! Dollar dollar bill, y’all!”

This quote is from the hilarious skit from the Dave Chapelle show, where Wu-Tang Financial helps families to “diversify their bonds”, among other things:

In case you were wondering, the Wu-Tang song title C.R.E.A.M. is short for “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”

Remember: Christine Radgono ain’t no-one to f*** wit!

If Republicans are upset that Obama invites rapper Common to the White House, what will they say about a Republican Senator quoting Wu-Tang? Nothing, that’s what.

Remember: C.R.E.A.M.

Arianna Huffington announced the agreement on her website after the end of Super Bowl 45. We think it would have made for better television had they announced the agreement in a commercial during Super Bowl 45, something along the lines of the GoDaddy commercial with Joan Rivers, or maybe even INCLUDING Joan Rivers, with Joan and Arianna having a cougar-off. And once you’ve dropped over 300 mil, really, what’s the big deal about another few bucks for a Super Bowl ad?

She talked about her email from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and their lunch at her Los Angeles home. There, Armstrong made known his desire to buy HuffPo and “put all of AOL’s content under a newly formed Huffington Post Media Group,” with Arianna as president and editor-in-chief. The deal was actually signed at the Super Bowl last evening. And now we’re glad there wasn’t a commercial, especially if it would have included live footage of Huffington feeding Armstrong popcorn at the denouement of the deal, or vice versa.

Armstrong had previously talked about AOL (formerly America Online) having lots of brand awareness and loyalty but no brand identity. That is kind of the opposite of what we think when we think about AOL, which is that it has lots of brand identity that is still centered around those 3.5″ floppy disks we used to get in the mail, and brand loyalty only among those who still haven’t learned to change the pre-set homepage on their computer, but I digress. HuffPo, based on what you see among its commenters, has both loyalty and identity, and the merger will result in the integration of all HuffPo and AOL content. AOL wants to turn itself into THE media company, which will now include Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, Mapquest, Moviefone, PopEater, and more.

Social is dead over there — in December of last year, AOL chat rooms closed down, and it sold its social networking site Bebo last year. No time for that: Armstrong is betting AOL’s future on content creation, video stories, traffic generation, and search engine optimization.

You might get an idea of where Armstrong is coming from if you got a look at AOL’s Master Plan, which was leaked to Business Insider. It’s serious stuff – by March he wants 40,000 pieces of content produced per month and 95% of content SEO’d. Social referrals (Facebook, Twitter) too.

Whether Huffington Post can retain its identity in AOL’s corporate environment remains to be seen.

We’d bet it can. We also like AOL’s plans and think it’s on the right track – and agree 100% with its decision to keep buying brands that are NOT called “AOL” or “Aol.” or any variant of those letters. Far better strategy than slapping your logo on a goldfish:

Biggest news today is the results of the EU-ordered stress tests on 91 banks, which will determine whether Europe is allowed to continue to exist or if it must sink into the ocean.

Those tests may be pretty much worthless for determining actual risk (just like our stress tests!), because only debt on the trading books is being examined, not debt held to maturity. Guess where you’re likely to find most of your sovereign debt?

Oh, hey, a US automaker is doing really really well, and this isn’t 1973. All it took was its two domestic competitors nearly going bankrupt and its biggest foreign competitor producing terrible murdercars.

Hungary prepares to have its rating cut to junk and for its name to be used in a thousand terrible pun headlines about same.

It’s never too early to start your holiday shopping, so why not get Mom a few hundred shares of $C from Treasury’s outlet store?

New conspiracy theory: McDonald’s is behind global warming to sell more frozen drinks. It seems to be working.

Are you a lady? Do you want to snag a banker and appear on some future RHO-some-city show on Bravo? Of course you do, that is what all ladies want. Here Is The City has put together a helpful shopping guide to help you land your man.

This is frightening new territory, indeed: Chrysler may actually survive, thanks to the bailout and its takeover by Fiat. This must be some kind of automotive bizarro-world, where Chrysler is facing solvency, GM has repaid its debts to the US and Canada, Ford is the top US automaker, Toyotas are actively trying to murder their passengers, and shuttered dealerships across the country are re-opening.

At some point I’m going to wake up, and Suzanne Pleshette will not believe the dream I just had.

Haha, so Greece, right? Bad enough that the country might or might not default, or that certain Wall Street banks (who shall remain anonymous) brokered deals to help the country mask how horribly it was doing; now it’s come to light that those same banks helped set up an index whose sole purpose was to bet on whether Western European countries would fail (spoiler alert: they might!).

Last September, the company, the Markit Group of London, introduced the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which is based on such swaps and let traders gamble on Greece shortly before the crisis. Such derivatives have assumed an outsize role in Europe’s debt crisis, as traders focus on their daily gyrations.

A result, some traders say, is a vicious circle. As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again.

I believe this would be known on urbandictionary as “getting it greek-style.”

On trading desks, there is fierce debate over what exactly is behind Greece’s recent troubles. Some traders say swaps have made the problem worse, while others say Greece’s deteriorating finances are to blame.

This is akin to the argument that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. You know, much like the swaps, the gun doesn’t exactly help matters even if it didn’t cause the problem. Actual smart people agree:

“It’s the blind leading the blind,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R&R Consulting in New York. “The iTraxx SovX did not create the situation, but it has exacerbated it.”

So there. Whatever the root cause of Greece’s troubles, it’s pretty safe to say that Windex won’t fix it this time. If this news took you by surprise, or if you can’t guess which banks are involved, you must be new here.

Oh, and the whole country keeps going on strike to protest the crisis as well as proposed measures to fix it, so that’s fun.