The Ticker

It's a little hard to get worked up over the technical glitches plaguing Obamacare's federal-exchange websites. We should still ask, as my colleague Megan McArdle did, why the Department of Health and Human Services wasn't ready to handle the traffic it's getting, and whether it should have been. But we're only three days in, and the government is probably doing everything it can to fix those glitches.

So criticizing President Barack Obama's administration over the bugs in the system seems premature, nitpicky and unrealistic. What's not premature or nitpicky is expecting the government to reveal the most important piece of information about Obamacare so far: How many people are actually signing up?

It requires a rare sort of organizational incompetence to turn an event that’s almost a decade away into a public-relations disaster today, but FIFA has proved itself equal to the task, and then some. Because that’s what FIFA does. No matter how low your opinion of Sepp Blatter and his bloated apparatchiks, they never fail to squeeze under the bar.

How hard can it be, really, to preside over the most popular international tournament in all of sports? A tournament that countries across the globe dream of hosting, that literally half the world watches on TV?

We're not going to see the September nonfarm payrolls report until this whole government-shutdown mess is resolved. I'm following the data on initial unemployment claims, instead. They're a timely indicator -- the latest data are for last week. And they're quite informative, as they're based on a complete count of new applications for unemployment insurance, rather than a noisy survey.

The latest survey suggests good news, with initial claims for the week ending Sept. 28 of 308,000. Thus, over the past four weeks, initial claims have averaged 305,000, a distinct move down from an average of 332,000 over the previous four weeks. Moreover, initial claims are now firmly back to their pre-recession levels, and indeed, their lowest level since May 2007. Unemployment remains elevated not because people are losing their jobs at high rates, but because the unemployed are still finding it difficult to find work.

Hello again, View fans. Here are your morning links.

More trouble for UBS in Puerto Rico

Good morning, everyone. Here's your daily dose of what I'm reading on the U.S. economy.

Mr. Blankfein goes to Washington

Good morning. Here's my take on some of the stories driving the debate in politics, finance and social issues across Asia today:

Rahul to the rescue?

Here's today's look at some of the top stories on markets and politics in Europe:

Italian government survives after Berlusconi surrender

I returned from a run this morning to learn that author Tom Clancy, the signpost of my entry into the U.S. Army, had died.

Everyone has a sight, a sound, a smell that reminds him of a specific time in life: a vision of a first car, a song from high school, a whiff of perfume from college. For me, Clancy signifies the start of my military life. I first began reading him after I was recycled in Ranger School in 1987. Waiting on the next class, there wasn’t much to do besides push-ups and getting yelled at, so we read. To this day, any mention of "The Hunt for Red October" or "Red Storm Rising" brings back memories of sawdust, sweat, hot barracks and noisy fans.

Happy Hump Day, Viewfinders. On to this afternoon's links.

Dan Loeb is back with another fun letter

The eBay of the black market has met its demise. The U.S. Justice Department has shuttered Silk Road and indicted its alleged founder.

An online marketplace founded in 2011, Silk Road facilitated commerce in illegal goods and services, including narcotics, counterfeit currency and hacking services, with payments processed in the digital currency Bitcoin. Perhaps not coincidentally, the price of Bitcoin fell to about $119 at 3 p.m. EDT, down from $145 at the end of September.