The "War On Cash" Migrates To Switzerland (Acting-Man)
Banks Increasingly Refuse Cash Withdrawals – Switzerland Joins the Fun
The war on cash is proliferating globally. It appears that the private members of the world’s banking cartels are increasingly joining the fun, even if it means trampling on the rights of their customers.
Yesterday we came across an article at Zerohedge, in which Dr. Salerno of the Mises Institute notes that JP Morgan Chase has apparently joined the “war on cash”, by “restricting the use of cash in selected markets, restricting borrowers from making cash payments on credit cards, mortgages, equity lines and auto loans, as well as prohibiting storage of cash in safe deposit boxes”.
Look how similar red-hot Chinese startup Xiaomi's products are to Apple's designs (BusinessInsider)
Xiaomi is one of the hottest smartphone companies out there. Just five years old, it has rapidly grown to become the world's most valuable tech startup, worth about $46 billion (£30.9 billion), which is more than Uber, Snapchat, or SpaceX.
Xiaomi, founded by CEO Lei Jun, is often referred to as the "Apple of China," not least because of the famed devotion of its fans. The company holds worldwide flash sales for its customers and throws them parties in expensive nightclubs — and they love the company for it.
Overseas Investors Have "Little Appetite" For Chasing Chinese Mania: JPM (ZeroHedge)
To be sure, we’ve had our share of laughs at the expense of China’s margin-fueled equity mania. First there was the realization that more than 4 million new stock trading accounts were created in China last month alone — the country is now adding nearly that many each week. Then we discovered that if statistics are to be trusted, around one in three of those millions of new accounts likely belongs to someone with an elementary school education or less. Finally, we learned that the rally has minted an army of day trading housewives, security guards, and most recently, banana salesmen who last Monday traded so much that they literally overwhelmed the Shanghai Exchange’s volume-tracking software.
Hours after Comcast walked away, Time Warner Cable may already have a new bidder (Business Insider)
Charter Communications may want to buy Time Warner Cable.
A Bloomberg report said that, less than 24 hours after Comcast walked away from a $45 billion deal, Charter Communications advisors are readying a potential bid for the cable company.
Experts Say the Apple Watch Is Doomed to Fail (Esquire)
When Pharrell Williams posted an Instagram video of his Apple Watch, the Internet loved it. But when Apple's head of retail, Angela Ahrendts, confirmed the watch, which went on sale today, will not be sold in Apple's own stores before June, the celebrity focus felt tone-deaf.
Dover Street Market in Tokyo and London, Colette in Paris, Maxfield in Los Angeles, and the Corner in Berlin are among the high-end "official" stockists of the watch. Not Topshop, Banana Republic, Nordstrom's, or any other store where you might shop. Which is surprising, given the Cupertino company's focus on making "technology approachable and relevant and personal," as Jony Ive himself put it this week in Florence, Italy, during a rare public appearance.
Billionaires versus big oil (Forbes)
A growing number of the world’s wealthiest people, From both ends of the political spectrum, are banding together to bet on new technologies that could displace fossil fuels. The one thing they have in common? They believe it will make them a lot of money.
Ward McNally never intended to become a booster for clean tech. The great-great-great-grandson of the founder of the 159-year-old Rand McNally map company, he helped sell the family business in 1997. McNally, 43, is now the co-founder and managing partner of McNally Capital, aChicago firm that advises wealthy families on their private equity investments. His focus is making money, not being green.
There is a growing disconnect in the stock market (BusinessInsider)
There's a huge disconnect in the US stock market right now.
A new Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey published Friday finds that US investors have pulled $79B out of equities year to date — including net outflows in 9 of the past 10 weeks — despite stock prices continuing to break new record highs.
On Thursday, the Nasdaq closed at its highest since March 2000.
Time is running out for Greece, says Eurogroup chief (TheGuardian)
Mounting tensions between Greece and other euro members have flared up at an acrimonious meeting in Riga, with finance ministers blasting the country’s leftwing leaders for failing to make more progress towards a bailout deal.
Airlines saved $3.4 billion. You saved 66 cents (CNN)
Low fuel costs has been a windfall for the nation's airlines. But their passengers got virtually none of the savings.
The four major carriers saved a combined $3.4 billion on fuel in the first three months of the year according to their financial reports. That allowed all of them to post record first quarter profits.
Apple analysts scramble to raise their iPhone estimates (Fortune)
As they were dusting off their Apple spreadsheets in advance of Monday’s earnings report, it dawned on some analysts that they might have underestimated last quarter’s iPhone sales.
Amazon's true brilliance shone this week in a tale of three clouds (Business Insider)
That's when Amazon broke out detailed financial results from Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing business, for the first time.
That's when the world discovered that Amazon is making about $1 billion a year on more than $6 billion in revenue from its enterprise computing business — a business that not only did not exist 10 years ago, but that nobody in their right mind would have predicted 10 years ago.
