Westchester

Penguin held its Halloween party at its Soho headquarters the Friday before Sandy in an atmosphere of foreboding. Weather reports were forecasting a destructive path for the hurricane, but the employees were preoccupied by another impending storm. Dressed in their ghoulish costumes, they whispered about a takeover by rivals at Random House.

Within publishing, rumors that the companies might join forces felt like news of a merger between the Yankees and Red Sox.

CNBC commentators dressed up their Amazon(AMZN) guesses in legitimacy this morning, misleading traders in the process. Here's what went down: CNBC had its technology correspondent on to make some wild guesses about what Amazon might do next. He said that in 2012, Amazon would come out with a smaller, phone style Kindle Fire--and a larger tablet. How does he know? He doesn't. As the correspondent said, "it just makes sense." It's easy enough to scare up sources, but CNBC's correspondent apparently could not be bothered. Maybe he's a slow riser on Mondays. Ironically, that