Financial Markets and Economy
The U.S. and world economies are slowing down (Market Watch)
The world economy is on track to grow less this year than last year, according to the latest forecast from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD gave the global economy a "barely passing grade of B-." That's hardly the mark that workers and politicians want to see.
In March, the OECD was projecting 4% global economic growth for 2015. On Wednesday, it slashed that to 3.1% — which would be less than the 3.3% growth the world saw last year.
Most mutual funds still can't beat their benchmark (Business Insider)
Goldman Sachs analysts reviewed the performance of 248 large cap equity mutual funds with a combined $730 billion under management. These are the funds that invest in companies you might find in the S&P 500.
Indeed, many of the fund managers in this category try to track the S&P 500 closely, but actively make tweaks in their investments in their efforts to beat the S&P 500. This is where they attempt to earn the fees that they're paid.
Move Over, Whole Foods: Costco Is the New King of Organic Groceries (Yahoo)
Costco is leading the pack for organic grocery sales (Photo: TakePart.com)
Organic produce and $1.50 hot dogs: That’s what Costco does.
According to an analysis released Wednesday by financial firm BMO Capital Markets, the free-sample-slinging grocery chain is projected to sell just over $4 billion in organic products this year, edging out $3.6 billion by Whole Foods to take the national lead. To be fair, Costco is the second biggest retailer in America overall—Walmart is the perennial champion there—so its percentage of organic to nonorganic foods is likely much lower than Whole Foods’.
Japan's Maverick Billionaire Bets Big Abroad (Bloomberg)
Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and CEO of SoftBank, Japan's telecom and Internet giant, is one of his country's few mavericks. When his company placed a $20 million bet 15 years ago on Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, plenty of peers considered it too risky a venture. Since then, Son's investment has paid out more than $70 billion, strengthening SoftBank and making him Japan's second richest man.
OPEC moots $80 as new 'fair' oil price – but will it stick? (Business Insider)
Nearly a year after oil markets entered a deep downward spiral, unmoored from the $100-a-barrel mark that had anchored them for years, some OPEC members are publicly talking for the first time about a new "fair" price for their crude.
Oil ministers from Iraq, Venezuela and Angola said in Vienna this week that a price of $75 or $80 a barrel – barely $10 above the going rate – could be just fine. Iraq's Adel Abdel Mahdi said it would be "equitable".
The Bond Market Doesn’t Buy This Junk Car Dealer’s Recovery Plan (Bloomberg)
After bondholders spurned Automotores Gildemeister SA’s debt-relief proposal in April, Chief Financial Officer Eduardo Moyano said the car dealership was “sound” and poised to benefit from a recovery.
On Monday, the Santiago-based company said leverage rose to a record, sales plunged and that it had less than $55 million in cash. And while that’s enough to cover its $10.1 million interest payment next month, traders remain pessimistic about the outlook for Gildemeister. Its $400 million of notes due 2021 sell for less than 46 cents on the dollar.
Sheila Bair: 'The time has come' to raise interest rates (Yahoo)
Sheila Bair has a new job, but still has some of the same concerns. The former outspoken head of the FDIC during the financial crisis, will this August become the president of Washington College, a small liberal arts institution on the eastern shore of Maryland. Oh, and she has a new book out explaining the financial crisis to young people.
India's version of Starbucks is set for explosive growth (Business Insider)
Cafe Coffee Day has more locations than Starbucks in India — and it plans to grow even larger.
Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd., which owns Cafe Coffee Day, is rumored to be filing for an IPO worth $1 billion, according to Forbes.
Starbucks holds a market cap of $70.9 billion, according to Forbes, but Starbucks' presence in India is virtually nonexistent in comparison to CCD.
Millennials will be increasingly critical to the US auto industry (Business Insider)
A huge jump in May US auto sales has both carmakers and investors feeling upbeat.
Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli says that the biggest reason for the surge is younger drivers getting their first cars. And he believes US automakers can capitalize on this trend.
Michaeli's analysis is based off Citigroup's density survey. Basically, density is the measure of how many cars one household owns. Michaeli focuses on survey data that asks people if they are likely to increase their density (from buying a new car) in the next two years. Over the past five years, the only age group consistently saying they are planning to increase density is 18-34 year olds. In addition, the other substantial gain in predicted density is among 45-55 year old parents of children under 18, parents buying cars for new drivers in the house.
Fed's Beige Book: Economic Activity Expanded, Respondents "generally optimistic" (Calculated Risk)
Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggest overall economic activity expanded during the reporting period from early April to late May. Activity in the Richmond, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco Districts was characterized as growing at a moderate pace, while the New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis Districts cited modest growth. Contacts in the Boston District reported mixed conditions, and the Cleveland and Kansas City Districts indicated a slight pace of expansion.
Stocks and Trading
Robert Shiller: This would make me worried about a stock market bubble (Business Insider)
Robert Shiller isn't ready to call the stock market a bubble.
In an interview with Goldman Sachs published over the weekend, the Yale professor and Nobel Laureate said there is a "bubble element" to the behavior we're seeing in the stock market.
Politics
It’s Time to Let Edward Snowden Come Home (New Yorker)
Now that Congress has passed, and President Obama has signed, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which places some limits on the domestic-surveillance powers of the National Security Agency, there’s still unfinished business to deal with.
The new legislation, while it is commendable as far as it goes, contains some obvious shortcomings. Barring the N.S.A. from collecting and holding the phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans was a necessary step, but it won’t make much difference if the result is that the phone companies hold on to the data and secret courts enable the N.S.A. to access it virtually at will. The legislation leaves on the books a law from 1986 that allows the government to read any e-mail that is more than six months old, and it doesn’t change Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which the N.S.A. has used to justify collecting not just metadata, such as phone records, but the actual contents of communications, such as e-mails and online chats.
The Definitive H&H Lincoln Chafee Scouting Report (Bloomberg)
Local, state, and federal governing experience as a former Rhode Island mayor, governor, and U.S. senator; party loyalties that have run the gamut from Republican to independent to Democrat; despite those shifting affiliations, a consistently liberal record on domestic and foreign policy; a patrician pedigree and demeanor, an idiosyncratic biography (after schooling at Andover and Brown, he moved to Montana to learn horseshoeing and spent years working at racetracks as a farrier), and a dry, wry Yankee wit.
Technology
The Kisai Link Is A Bluetooth Wearable That Hides The Geekiness (Tech Crunch)
As a slave to fashion, I have to look great all the time. But how can I do that when I have to wear so many amazing wearables? You can’t have fashion and electronics. Luckily, Tokyoflash has just the thing. Called the Kisai Link, this is basically a little Bluetooth dongle that you wear on your wrist. It notifies you of phone calls and messages via various blinking LEDs as well as different vibrational patterns. It has no screen so it can last five days on a charge and it comes in multiple fashionistic styles.
Apple to Unveil Tool Kit for Watch App Developers (NY Times)
When Apple began selling the Apple Watch in April, Phillip Ryu did not rush to create an app for the gadget. Because apps on the device have limited animation and the software takes several seconds to load, Mr. Ryu, a founder of Impending, which makes mobile games, said he was constrained in terms of what programs he could create for the watch.
Now, he is rethinking that decision. On Monday, Apple will begin its annual developer conference, where the company is set to release new tools for software developers to create smarter apps that will gain deep access to the watch’s heart-rate and motion sensors, among other components.
Could AMD Still Rise 50%?? (24/7 Wall St)
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) has been a very challenged company for years. The company has made some progress in video and graphics processors, but the effort so far in personal computers (PCs) has been slow enough that you might wonder if Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) has been slowing down its own PC processor lead just to avoid being accused of being a true monopoly.
Health and Life Sciences
Brain's reaction to certain words could replace passwords (Science Daily)
Researchers recorded the brain's reaction to each group of letters in a few study words, focusing on the part of the brain associated with reading and recognizing words. They found that participants' brains reacted differently to each acronym, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer with 94 percent accuracy. The results suggest that brainwaves could be used by security systems to verify a person's identity.
You might not need to remember those complicated e-mail and bank account passwords for much longer. According to a new study, the way your brain responds to certain words could be used to replace passwords.
Humor
Bush Sorry Patriot Act Repealed Before He Got Chance to Read It (New Yorker)
Just hours after the United States Senate voted to reverse key provisions of the Patriot Act, former President George W. Bush said that he regretted that the law had been partially repealed before he ever got a chance to read it.
“At the time when it was being passed and whatnot, people around the White House were saying it was a really good law,” Bush said at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. “I remember saying to myself, ‘I really need to read that.’ ”
Bush said that right after he signed the Patriot Act into law, “I wrote on a little Post-It note, ‘READ PATRIOT ACT.’ So it was definitely something I was meaning to do. But I guess it was one of those things I never did get around to.”
Life on the Home Planet
Brave New Girl (The Daily Show)
The media's overwhelmingly positive response to Caitlyn Jenner's appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair is quickly undercut by hackneyed sexism.
How a curmudgeonly old reporter exposed the FIFA scandal that toppled Sepp Blatter (Wasthington Post)
It was just after dawn on May 27 when Andrew Jennings’s phone began ringing. Swiss police had just launched a startling raid on a luxury hotel in Zurich, arresting seven top FIFA officials and charging them and others with running a $150 million racket. The world was stunned.
The waking world, that is. If Jennings had bothered to climb out of bed, he wouldn’t have been surprised at the news. After all, he was the man who set the investigation in motion, with a book in 2006, “FOUL! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals,” followed by an exposé aired on the BBC’s “Panorama” program that same year, and then another book in 2014, called “Omerta: Sepp Blatter’s FIFA Organised Crime Family.”
Andrew Jennings attends a public hearing in Brasilia in October 2011 to talk about allegations involving FIFA. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
Climate Change Could Cause Changes In The Ocean That Haven’t Been Seen In 3 Million Years (Think Progress)
Marine species could make drastic shifts in their historic ranges as the earth warms, changes in the ocean that haven’t been seen in 3 million years, according to a new study.
That reorganization of marine biodiversity won’t be as drastic if the world limits warming to 2°C, according to the study, which was published this week in Nature Climate Change. But scenarios with higher than 2°C warming, especially those that see the earth warming an average of 2.2°C to 3.7°C by 2100, pose a large threat to marine species, causing many of them to migrate from their historic ranges in search of cooler waters.
Island of wild children: Would they learn to be human? (New Scientist)
THE island is a strange place. Overgrown, unpredictable, war-torn. For hours during the day, the sun climbs into the sky and it is quiet and peaceful. But later, as the shadows gather in the trees, a volley of hoots erupts from the forest canopy and echoes around the island. Moments later, an answering call bursts from a thickly wooded valley on the other side of the island. A call, and then a response. And then silence.
Godzilla Is Now an ‘Official’ Citizen of Japan (Time)
A special residency certificate for Godzilla has been trending on Facebook after the fictional movie monster was recognized as a citizen of the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, Japan, in April. Copies of the papers were reportedly handed out to fans in the city late last month.
According to Rocket News 24, a blog that reports Japanese news in English, the special residency credentials note the character’s birth date as April 9, 1954, the year the first Godzilla movie came out…
