Humor (It's the Weekend!)
Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito Suddenly Realize They Will Be Villains In Oscar-Winning Movie One Day (The Onion)
“Oh, God, the major social ramifications, the political intrigue, all the important people involved in the case—I’m going to be played by some sinister character actor in a drama with tons of award buzz, aren’t I?” said Scalia, joining his fellow dissenting justices in realizing they would be antagonists in a film potentially titled Defense Of Marriage and probably written by Tony Kushner. “I’m going to be portrayed as a closed-minded Neanderthal and the very symbol of backward thinking. And at the end of the movie, when my character realizes he’s on the wrong side of history, the audience will feel emotionally fulfilled because the hero attorney, probably played by George fucking Clooney, will have won. Great.”
Scalia Arrested Trying to Burn Down Supreme Court (Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker)
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a shocking end to an illustrious legal career, police arrested Justice Antonin Scalia today as he attempted to set the Supreme Court building ablaze.
Justice Scalia, who had seemed calm and composed during the announcement of two major rulings this morning, was spotted by police minutes later outside the building, carrying a book of matches and a gallon of kerosene. [Match pic via Pixabay.]
Popeular Science (The Daily Show)
Jon Stewart on the Pope and his nearly 200 page report on climate change.
The Pope is weighing in on the side of taking action against climate change. It seems a little odd for the Catholic Church to take an& environmental stance — I thought Buddhism is a religion obsessed with recycling….
[The Church] recognized climate change for a very long time. The Vatican claims it was among the first institutions to believe that global warming is caused by human activity. The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences was the first exclusive scientific academy in the world. Among its first members was Galileo Galilei.
I don't know if you really want to list Galileo as one of your references.
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Financial Markets and Economy
From Deutsche Bank to Siemens: What's Troubling Germany Inc.? (Bloomberg)
All is not well in corporate Germany.
Be it Deutsche Bank AG or Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Siemens AG or RWE AG, the missteps plaguing the country’s flagbearers have helped turn the DAX into Europe’s worst-performing benchmark index this quarter and a laggard compared with U.S. gauges.
Ugly day for China markets: Stocks nosedive (CNN)
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite index shed as much as 5% during morning trading on Friday.
Wishful thinking (Economist)
WALL STREET has been in buoyant mood in recent years. The S&P 500 equity index has reached repeated record highs. One might think that would be great news for America’s public-sector pension plans, which hold more than half their assets in equities.
Emerging Stocks Pare Weekly Gain on Greece as China Shares Sink (Bloomberg)
Emerging-market stocks pared a weekly advance as Chinese shares plunged and concerns deepened over whether a Greek bailout deal will be reached. Russia’s ruble headed for a two-week low.
The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 7.4 percent amid concern China’s longest-ever bull market has peaked. A gauge of Hong Kong-traded mainland shares slid 2.8 percent. PetroChina Co. sank the most in two months in Hong Kong to lead energy companies lower. The ruble weakened 0.3 percent versus the dollar and South Korea’s won slid 0.6 percent.
Michael Sincere's Long-Term Trader: Why Jim Rogers is buying what everyone else is selling (Market Watch)
Jim Rogers, cofounder with George Soros of the Quantum Fund and author of the best-selling “Investment Biker,” which chronicled his investing-focused trek around the world by motorcycle, recently shared his views on global markets in a wide-ranging interview.
Since 2008 (when Rogers warned me that the stock market was going to crash), I have never heard him sound so ominous about U.S. stocks and global markets in general.
The Driving Force Behind The World's Largest E-Commerce Market (Forbes)
Deb Weidenhamer has been running auctions for three years in the French Concession in Shanghai, but still finds herself the center of attention at the end of the shopping spree. Chinese women flock to her side, wanting to understand more, not about the high-end handbags and imported jewelry they’ve just purchased, but about her life.
The Biggest Threat To Chinese Stocks: "Shadow Lending" Crackdown (Zero Hedge)
For a few days last week, Chinese equity investors discovered that stocks can go down as well as up.
That likely came as a surprise to the many millions of newly-minted, semi-literate day traders who have entered the market in droves this year helping to fuel one of the most monumental equity rallies in recent memory. As documented here, and subsequently everywhere else, margin debt has played an outsized role in supercharging Chinese shares.
S&P 500 Spending on Buybacks, Dividends Exceeds Operating Profit (Bloomberg)
Companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index have started paying out more money to shareholders than they produce in operating earnings, according to data compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Britain's railways could be heading for crisis because the government wants to balance its books (Business Insider)
The government is freezing parts of a £38.5 billion ($56.4 billion) upgrade plan on the nation's creaking railways as it looks to balance its books and meet spending commitments made during the election.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin announced in Parliament yesterday that work electrifying the Midlands Mainline and the route between Manchester and Leeds will be "paused" while a report is draw up looking at how Network Rail, which runs Britain's railways, can upgrade its network while staying within its budget.
London Markets: London stocks dragged down by Greece worries, but Tesco shines (Market Watch)
U.K. stocks dropped Friday, with investor appetite for risk largely zapped in Europe ahead of a crucial deadline for Greece, but Tesco PLC shares outperformed after a financial update.
The FTSE 100 UKX, -0.96% fell 0.8% to 6,753.79, as only three stocks advanced.
Greek deal talks at weekend will have ‘decisive significance’, says Merkel (Market Watch)
European finance chiefs pushed off talks to seal a Greek bailout deal until the weekend after ending another meeting without agreement, leaving only days to keep Athens from defaulting on a loan payment early next week.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said another round of negotiations among the eurozone’s finance chiefs on Saturday should have a “decisive significance.” She said the currency union’s leaders wouldn’t get involved in the details of the talks, which have dragged on for five months.
Eurozone Leaders Set Weekend Deadline For Greece (Time)
European leaders told finance ministers from the euro countries to conclude a debt financing agreement with Greece over the weekend, just days before Athens has to meet a crucial repayment deadline that carries the risk of bankruptcy and euro-exit.
A deal on a draconian austerity package is vital for creditors to unfreeze 7.2 billion euros (8.1 billion dollars) in bailout money that would get Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras off the hook for the time being.
Dragon v Bear (Economist)
Chinese shares’ manic rally had made them the world’s top performers over the past year, but they fell nearly 15% between June 15th and 19th, their sharpest sell-off since the depths of the global financial crisis. They have since bounced back a little, but it may be only a matter of time before the correction resumes. High-growth companies are still priced at more than 100 times last year’s earnings, redolent of the giddy heights of America’s dotcom bubble in the late 1990s. The only certainty is that more volatility is in store. Shares swung more than 7% within a few hours on June 22nd. Weaker trading volumes suggest that investors are starting to tire of the wild ride.
Oil prices steady, all eyes on Greece (Business Insider)
Oil prices were little changed in thin trade on Friday, with investors focusing on talks aimed at averting a Greek debt default.
Brent crude for August delivery was up 20 cents at $63.40 a barrel by 0200 GMT (1000 EDT), after ending the previous session down 29 cents, or 0.5 percent.
Trading
How hedge-fund geniuses got beaten by monkeys — again? (Market Watch)
The average hedge fund has produced a worse investment performance in the first half of this year than a portfolio consisting of a savings account at your local bank and a random collection of stocks picked by a blindfolded monkey.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
According to the benchmark HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, tracked by Hedge Fund Research Inc., the average hedge fund has earned its investors just 2.4% so far this year net of fees.
How Kroger Is Returning Capital to Investors (24/7 Wall St)
Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) made a few strong moves during Thursday’s trading session, and it has found investors happy with these decisions. The board of directors had sweeping approvals for an increased dividend yield, a two-for-one stock split and a new share repurchase program.
First of all, the board approved a two-for-one stock split. The split will occur on or about July 13 for shareholders of record at the close of July 6. Based on the net number of shares outstanding in late May, the stock split will increase the number of common shares outstanding to 962 million from roughly 481 million. This will be the fifth stock split in the history of the company.
Politics
Jim Obergefell on historic gay marriage ruling (Yahoo News)
Obergefell was lead plaintiff in the historic Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that on Friday legalized same sex marriage in the United States. He spoke to Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric ahead of the decision, and again Friday amid celebrations outside the Supreme Court.
As the ruling was read aloud, “about two sentences in I started to cry and I cried the whole time,” he said.
Putin Unexpectedly Calls Obama: What Did They Talk About? (Zero Hedge)
Nearly a year since the last phone call between Obama and Putin, most of which happened at the request of the US president to provide sound-ops for the US media as part of the US "pacifist" intervention in the Ukraine civil war instigated by the US State Department, earlier today in an unexpected development, it was Putin who made an impromptu phone call to Obama.
The many unintended consequences of Obama’s new overtime rules (Market Watch)
This week or next, the Department of Labor will release new proposed rules on overtime pay. Those rules will fulfill President Obama’s 2014 promise to raise the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime.
In an interview with the Huffington Post in March, the president said: “What we’ve seen is, increasingly, companies skirting basic overtime laws, calling somebody a manager when they’re stocking groceries and getting paid $30,000 a year. Those folks are being cheated.”
China issues report attacking US human rights record (The Guardian)
China accused the United States on Friday of being “haunted by spreading guns” and racial discrimination, in its annual tit-for-tat rebuttal to US criticism of China’s human rights record.
In a lengthy report carried by the official Xinhua news agency, China’s State Council Information Office said the United States “violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more ‘red cards’ in the international human rights field”.
Technology
Ready for your Jetpack? You can buy one next year (Popular Science)
Jetpacks are about to go on sale, so curmudgeons of the world can at last retire their canard that we are not living in the promised future. The New Zealand-made Martin Jetpack first flew in public in 2008, and earlier this past winter opened for public trading for the first time. Now, rich daredevils and the rescue crews tasked with finding them can both expect to buy the jetpacks when they go on sale in the second half of 2016.
There’s one hitch: the Martin Jetpack isn’t precisely a jetpack. Instead, it belongs to the “ducted fan” family of vehicles, which include some modern and past experimental hoverbikes, as well as some drones.
Parrot’s New MiniDrones Conquer Air, Land…and Sea (Wall Street Journal)
Parrot’s AR and Bebop Drones are great for vacation photos but not everyone wants—or can afford—a big quadcopter. That’s where Parrot’s smartphone-controlled MiniDrone toys come in. Parrot introduced five new ones on Tuesday, including one that flies in the air and skims across the water.
The five new MiniDrones are all based on the two models introduced last year, which have already sold 600,000 units combined: the palm-sized Rolling Spider quadcopter and the two-wheeled Jumping Sumo. And all five of the new bots are set to go on sale in the U.S. and France this September, with other countries to follow in the weeks after.
Health and Life Sciences
What Does It Mean to Be Healthy, Anyway? (The Atlantic)
Even if a perfect working knowledge of the human body and brain were bestowed on us tomorrow, there would still be unknowns in the realm of health. Outbreaks and evolving bacteria. How to get people the care they need. What new health threats will be brought on by the changing climate. These are some of the topics being discussed at the Aspen Ideas Festival’s Spotlight Health session, Thursday through Sunday. And plenty of questions about the mind and body too, since our knowledge, though much improved from the days of bloodletting and accusing every woman of hysteria, is hardly complete.
Life on the Home Planet
Find the fossils of London with this interactive map (Popular Science)
Rocks and fossils from all over the world make up sculptures, buildings, and even sidewalks, their long journey completely unnoticed by millions of people who walk by them every day.
But now in London the rocks are getting some recognition. A new website called London Pavement Geology has a list of over 700 different places in the middle of London where people can see geology without having to venture into the wilderness. An interactive map shows points of interest all over the city, from benches made of stone from China to fossils of ancient creaturesvisible on a bank building, to the bone of a marine reptile embedded in a church.
Here’s why California’s drought will hurt you (Market Watch)
As California enters its fourth year of severe drought and the state’s snowpack is at record lows, California Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered a statewide 25% mandatory water usage reduction for residents and businesses. Significant cuts in use have been imposed on cemeteries, golf courses and facilities with large landscapes. But the bulk of California’s water goes to its $21 billion agriculture industry, and in May, state officials accepted an offer from farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to give up 25% of their water this growing season.
Dominican Deportations Are Causing ‘Humanitarian Crisis,’ Haiti’s Prime Minister Says (Time)
Haiti’s prime minister warned Thursday that the Dominican Republic is creating a humanitarian crisis with its crackdown on migrants, noting that 14,000 people have crossed the border into Haiti in less than a week.
“That is massive,” Prime Minister Evans Paul said during a meeting with reporters to talk about the issue. He said the number included both people being deported and those leaving voluntarily. He said many of them should be considered Dominican citizens.
