We're always being told what is safe to eat -- ethically, morally and nutritionally. And it seems with each passing year, the universe of permissible foods shrinks. Morgan Spurlock ("Supersize Me") and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) did a number on McDonald's. Paul Greenberg (Four Fish) has caused us to think twice about the most healthy source of protein. Before you know it, they'll be telling us that eating one of the most popular vegetables can be dangerous. Which is what Barry Estabrook does in his fine book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.

You say tomato, I say not a tomato. AP imagesIn the Northeast, we've just entered what I call the tomato time of year, those few weeks in late July and August when tomatoes explode with flavor -- and into our kitchen. First the New Jersey beefsteak tomatoes arrive at the Union Square Green Market, conveniently located adjacent to Yahoo!'s New York offices. Then we harvest the few cherry and Roma tomatoes that have survived the

The Nutshell: World stocks mostly slumped and U.S. futures are pointing toward losses at the open despite better than expected earnings and improved profit outlooks from Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

*Early losses came after data showed euro zone growth slowed to 0.2%, with German growth, in particular, stalling unexpectedly. And UK consumer price inflation popped 4.4%.

*In the U.S., a fresh round of economic data: The Commerce Department said builders began work on a seasonally adjusted 604,000 homes last month, a 1.5 percent decrease from June and about 4,000 fewer than expected. That's half the 1.2 million homes per year that economists say must be built to sustain a healthy housing market, the AP reports. In other data, real estate website Trulia reported that buying was cheaper than renting in 74% of the country's 50 largest cities in July.

Earnings:

Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Saks, Dell

Economic Data:

8:30 July Housing Starts (604,000 vs. 613,000 in June)

8:30 July Building Permits

Warren Buffett Monday penned an op-ed in the New York Times in which he urged Congress to raise taxes on him and other rich folks. He pointed out that in a time of rampant inequality and fiscal crisis, it is absurd that many wealthy people pay much lower taxes on income earned from investments than middle-class pay on income earned from their wages.

An excellent point. But talk is cheap, especially when the talk is about how you are being undertaxed. If Buffett thinks he should be paying more, critics say, he should just send a check to Washington. And that's a great idea.

A century ago, anarchists used to speak about 'propaganda by deed' — a bold stroke that would capture attention, inspire change, alter public opinion, perhaps even foment a revolution. Of course, back then it meant, say, throwing bombs into the middle of a crowd. These days, a rich person — or corporation — could carry off such a coup by simply writing a check to the government.

Throughout history, businesspeople

On Sunday, the Washington Post ran my review of Nobel laureate Michael Spence's book,  The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World.

A snippet:

Many of our most celebrated econopundits traffic in such oversimplified, sensationalized rhetoric, especially in times of market turmoil and economic uncertainty. But the global economy is too complicated for slogans. Which is one reason why Michael Spence's new book is so refreshing. Spence, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics with Joseph Stiglitz in 2001, has systematically investigated the origins of hypergrowth, the process through which national economies rise from poverty to relative prosperity. In "The Next Convergence," he presents a nuanced, highly readable argument on the symbiotic, fraught relationship between today's booming developing markets and the seemingly stagnant developed ones.

In 2011, the global economy doesn't stand at the dusk of one era, or at the dawn of another. Rather, we're smack in

Morning Reads, courtesy of Yahoo! Finance's Elizabeth Trotta

The Nutshell: World stocks advanced, and U.S. futures are pointing toward a higher open amid fresh M&A, having pared some gains after disappointing manufacturing data.

* Google announced its largest acquisition to date, the purchase of cell phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion in cash. Google says the deal will enable it to "create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem." (AP)

* Billionaire Warren Buffett urged Congress to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help cut the U.S. budget deficit. Buffett said in an op-ed in the New York Times that it wouldn't inhibit investment or job growth. (Bloomberg)

* The risk of a credit crunch in southern Europe is increasing as limited funding is forcing some banks to rein in lending. (Reuters) Meanwhile, leading German ministers continue to oppose issuing jointly guaranteed European government bonds to combat the eurozone's

In market turmoil like we've seen in the past weeks, investors frequently adhere to a simply playbook: sell risky assets and buy investments deemed to be safer. Typically that leads investors to dump stocks and put money into safe havens like cash, gold or government bonds. After all, stocks can fluctuate wildly, and individual stocks can ultimately go to zero. (Lehman Brothers stockholders were wiped out entirely when the crisis hit in the fall of 2008.) Bonds, by contrast, offer regular, fixed interest payments and a guarantee to return the principal. U.S. government bonds had always been the ultimate safe haven, as they come with the backing of the full faith and credit of the world's largest and most powerful economy.

But  Standard & Poors' decision to downgrade America's debt rating last Friday from AAA to AA+ may cause investors to think twice. So it's worth considering what the downgrade and the recent, somewhat counterintuitive action in the bond market mean for investors

The recent stock market crash — and the concurrent collapse of bond yields -- has many people believing the U.S. economy is headed toward a recession. The capital markets seem to be pricing in a dramatic slowdown from the current sluggish pace of growth.

But amid the volatility, it's worth noting two significant points. First, the markets are not the economy, and the economy is not the markets. Second, while things can change quickly, many of the most significant lagging, coincident and leading indicators are not flashing recession.

The stock market, which is an efficient long-term processor of data and opinion, is high-strung and highly irrational in the short term, prone to panics and flash crashes. And so as a pure indicator of future short-term economic gloom, the stock market produces a lot of false positives. Just as the 99.5 percent updraft from March 2009 through this spring didn't signify a huge macro snapback, a 15 percent decline doesn't necessarily signify an imminent macro

Last month we reported that many banks that participated in the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), the central component of TARP in which Treasury bought five-percent-yielding preferred shares from banks, are exiting TARP with the assistance of another Treasury-backed program, the Small Business Lending Fund. The SBLF, created as part of the bi-partisan Small Business Jobs Act, passed last fall, makes cash available to banks with assets of $10 billion or less, and then gives them incentives or rewards for making small-business loans. Unlike TARP, SBLS sets up carrots and sticks that encourage banks to lend and discourage them from hoarding capital. SBLF preferred shares can bear interest rates as low as 1 percent (if banks increase their lending to small business) or as high as 9 percent if banks simply sit on the funds for several years.

 On July 14, eight banks that are participating in SBLF paid back $103.3 million in TARP funds.  In each instance, the reports, accessible here