There are barely disguised smirks emanating from the canyons of Wall Street and the business press over the fact that Jamie Dimon has had to admit a mistake — and a whale of one, for that matter.

Well, sort of. Ron Paul being Ron Paul, his announcement Monday was not your typical campaign suspension. Rather, Paul said he would no longer be spending money on upcoming GOP primaries but still plans to continue seeking delegates at state-level party conventions. As he wrote in a message to supporters, Paul will “continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future.”

The news Sunday that Scott Thompson would be resigning as CEO of Yahoo is unlikely to stun anyone who has followed the “Resumegate” that has embroiled the Internet company in recent days. (The reports in the Wall Street Journal Monday that Thompson received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer, however, is surprising and sad, to say the least.) It was hard to see how he would stay in his job — from the moment activist investor Daniel Loeb revealed, and Yahoo confirmed, that Thompson did not have the computer science degree that previous bios had stated, up until the time executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles issued a stinging response to the reported claim  by Thompson that a junior recruiter had added it to his resume.

We’re trying something new here at On Leadership: We’re keeping our eyes open for interesting data points from newly published research around the Web that are worth sharing with leadership readers.

And these numbers from the Economic Policy Institute definitely caught our attention:

So President Obama has said he is in favor of same-sex marriage. The announcement may be, as the RNC is saying, evidence that the president is playing politics. Or, it may have been a historic moment that simply couldn’t wait. It could also be political suicide.

The chatter surrounding Facebook’s roadshow this week has reached a fever, er, pitch, right down to what CEO Mark Zuckerberg was wearing. Though he was absent on the second day of the company’s pitches to investors in advance of the company’s pending IPO, Zuckerberg was criticized on Tuesday for wearing a hoodie to meet with Wall Street bankers. “He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who issued the first “buy” rating on Facebook, told Bloomberg. “I think that’s a mark of immaturity.”

The defeat of Richard Lugar in Indiana’s primary Tuesday is not just a defeat for moderation in the Republican party. It’s also a loss for that quality we at one time liked in our leaders — hard-earned expertise; and for that skill we all believe we need more of — leadership.

Somewhere, Carol Bartz must think this is rich. Less than a year after she was famously fired over the phone by the struggling Internet company Yahoo, the academic credentials of her successor are now being called into question by an activist investor. Yahoo acknowledged Friday that the CEO it hired in January, Scott Thompson, does not have a computer science degree after all, even though that information was included in an SEC filing and in several public bios about him. And on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the board member in charge of the company’s CEO search would not be standing for re-election.

François Hollande’s win in France — combined with the fractured Greek government following Sunday’s elections — sent jitters through global markets Monday morning as the world came to terms with voters’ anger over austerity measures. In France, the Socialist Hollande has promised to put more of the burden for fixing the country’s economic problems onto the wealthy and to soften planned austerity measures.

It’s not an illusion.

Just weeks after the General Services Administration sparked controversy for hiring mind readers and clowns to take part in a lavish training event in Las Vegas, it turns out that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration posted, and has now cancelled, an ad seeking a magician motivational speaker for a June leadership conference.

Author: Claudio Feser

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2011

ISBN-13: 9781118149928, 202 pages

Even before President Obama boarded Air Force One and landed in Afghanistan under the cover of night for an unannounced visit Tuesday, there was plenty of sniping going on about whether Obama was exploiting the killing of Osama bin Laden for political gain. The president’s campaign had earlier launched a video, narrated by Bill Clinton, spotlighting Obama’s decision to pull the trigger in Afghanistan and criticizing Romney’s past statements about going after the al Qaeda leader. The surprise trip only stepped up the protests.

On Tuesday, News Corp. followed up on its response to a U.K. parliamentary committee report that called Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” In a statement, the company noted that “hard truths have emerged from the Select Committee Report,” but said that it regrets the report’s analysis “was followed by some commentary that we, and indeed several members of the committee, consider unjustified and highly partisan.”