Financial Markets and Economy
China Is Turmoiling (Zero Hedge)
For the 2nd time in a month, China's Shanghai Composite entered a correction, plunging 10% from local highs as headlines of delayed IPOs and large-scale steel 'dumping' at a loss combined with global monetary policy fireworks and European event risks. The rest of the more highly sensitive and manic Chinese equity markets are also plunging with CHINEXT and CSI-300 down over 7% in the last month (and 17% from the highs in the case of the former).
China stocks plunge as bubble fears grow (CNN)
This has been one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for the Chinese stock market.
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite index is now in correction territory after falling 13% over the past five trading sessions, as investors grow increasingly wary of what many analysts describe as a bubble.
U.S. stocks may log four-day winning run on dovish Fed (Market Watch)
Wall Street could register a fourth-straight session of gains on Friday, with futures tilting higher as investors continued to cheer a dovish tone set by the Federal Reserve earlier in the week.
However, bubble worries surfaced in Asia, where Chinese stocks tumbled, dropping into correction territory, while Greece jitters stayed in the spotlight in Europe.
One of Twitter's biggest investors says its CEO search is 'a debilitating mess' (TWTR) (Business Insider)
Chris Sacca, the venture capital investor at Lowercase Capital — who is one of Twitter's biggest stockholders — has slammed the company in another brutal blog post. This time, he says, the company's search for a CEO to replace Dick Costolo is a "a debilitating mess."
What Sacca says is influential. Not just because he owns Twitter stock, but because his calls on Twitter's strategy have been right on the money. On June 3, he published a lengthy manifesto about what Twitter needs to do to fix its problems (stagnant user base, alienating user interface). A few days later CEO Dick Costolo announced he would leave the company and founder Jack Dorsey would lead a search for a replacement.
Still Deadlocked With Greece, Europe Sets Emergency Summit Meeting (NY Times)
European leaders will try again in an emergency summit meeting on Monday to break the deadlock between Greece and its international creditors after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers ended on Thursday with no deal on Greece’s bailout.
Without additional aid, Greece faces the prospect of effectively going bankrupt by the end of June, when it owes a payment of 1.6 billion euros, or about $1.8 billion, to the International Monetary Fund, and when the European part of its bailout program ends.
These are the most hated stocks on Wall Street (Market Watch)
It’s that time of year again.
The half-way mark. The moment when Wall Street’s Great and Wise suck their pencils, stroke their chins, and hold forth about What It All Means, What We Should Expect In The Second Half of the Year, and How To Play It.
Isn’t it fascinating? If only they had a clue!
Of course, the wisest people on Wall Street never make predictions. Especially about the future.
Shanghai stocks plunge 6.42% by close (Business Insider)
Chinese shares slumped more than six percent Friday afternoon as tight market liquidity caused by new share issues triggered a large sell-off, dealers said.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dived 6.42 percent, or 307.00 points, to 4,478.36 on turnover of 685.5 billion yuan ($112.2 billion). The index lost 13.32 percent over the week.
The market loss was the worst since May 28, when Shanghai dived 6.50 percent.
Rand Paul's flat tax proposal: What it means for you (CNN)
Would your tax bill shrink under Rand Paul's flat tax proposal?
The short answer is probably yes. But a lot depends on how much money you make — the more you make, the bigger your tax break.
The plan that Paul described in a Wall Street Journal column Thursday would tax everyone – businesses and and individuals – at a flat 14.5% rate. Households wouldn't pay tax on income below $50,000, Paul wrote. And the payroll tax, which employers and workers both pay to fund Social Security, would go away altogether, along with most tax breaks and deductions.
Greek debt crisis: Key dates on the road to a possible Grexit (FT)
The five-month stand-off between Athens and its bailout lenders may be entering its most critical phase. Leaders insist publicly that Thursday’s meeting of eurozone finance ministers is the best chance for an agreement to release €7.2bn in rescue funds Greece needs desperately.
But privately, officials admit their hopes that the gathering in Luxembourg will prove decisive are diminishing. Greece needs the funds to make a €1.5bn repayment to the International Monetary Fund by the end of June.
'Capital controls imminent' as money floods out of Greece's banks and default looms (Business Insider)
After yet another failed summit, the blame and recriminations started as soon as Thursday's Eurogroup meeting broke up. Greece is now just 11 days away from its next major debt repayment, which it almost certainly can't make without a bailout deal.
"Capital controls imminent without breakthrough," is how Barclays analysts headlined their morning email on the subject.
On June 30 Greece owes €1.5 billion ($1.70 billion, £1.08 billion) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the government almost certainly doesn't have.
Trading
The truth about future stock returns? You can’t handle the truth (Market Watch)
Legendary investor Howard Marks likes to quote Albert Einstein: “I never think about the future — it comes soon enough.”
But as Marks writes in his recent memo to clients of Oaktree Capital Management: “We can’t take that approach as investors, however. We have to think about the future. We just shouldn’t accord too much significance to our opinions.”
Yet the pressure to venture an opinion about the markets and securities prices is so great in the media nowadays that there’s sadly no room for an honest “I don’t know.”
Politics
With The New House Bill, Even Obama Might Not Want The Obama Trade Agreement (Think Progress)
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted to give President Obama authority to negotiate trade agreements, passing the so-called fast-track bill with the assistance of just 28 House Democrats on Thursday.
The Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill, which was decoupled from a labor program, will now go back to the Senate for approval. If Obama signs the bill, then the final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal can go to Congress for a straight up-and-down vote, and Congress will not be allowed to make line-item changes to the deal. However, Obama has indicated that without the companion bill establishing the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, he will not move ahead with the trade agreement.
Read President Obama’s Speech on the Charleston Church Shooting (Time)
Good afternoon, everybody. This morning, I spoke with, and Vice President Biden spoke with, Mayor Joe Riley and other leaders of Charleston to express our deep sorrow over the senseless murders that took place last night.
Michelle and I know several members of Emanuel AME Church. We knew their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight others, gathered in prayer and fellowship and was murdered last night. And to say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and their community doesn’t say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel.
Hillary Clinton Slams Trump for Saying 'Some Very Inflammatory Things About Mexicans' (Bloomberg)
Hillary Clinton took some swings at Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who derided Mexican immigrants as he launched his campaign earlier this week.
A recent entrant into the presidential race said some "very inflammatory things about Mexicans," Clinton said Thursday in an interview with KNPB's Jon Ralston in Las Vegas.
Technology
Toward nanorobots that swim through blood to deliver drugs (Science Daily)
Someday, treating patients with nanorobots could become standard practice to deliver medicine specifically to parts of the body affected by disease. But merely injecting drug-loaded nanoparticles might not always be enough to get them where they need to go. Now scientists are reporting in the ACS journal Nano Letters the development of new nanoswimmers that can move easily through body fluids to their targets.
Tiny robots could have many benefits for patients. For example, they could be programmed to specifically wipe out cancer cells, which would lower the risk of complications, reduce the need for invasive surgery and lead to faster recoveries. It's a burgeoning field of study with early-stage models currently in development in laboratories.
Nest Cam Embodies Stale Innovation In “Connected Home” Space (Tech Crunch)
After years of hype and unfulfilled promises, the concept of the smart home looks to be losing the attention of consumers. This is due in no small part to the lackluster innovation emerging from major device makers like Nest, which has prioritized the safe and repetitive over the revolutionary.
A report released Wednesday by Argus Insights detailed that consumer interest in “connected home” devices fell 15 percent in the past year.
Health and Life Sciences
Viral commuters: How influenza viruses use transportation systems in the US (Science Daily)
In increasingly mobile modern societies, long-distance transmission can rapidly spread pathogens. A study published on June 18th in PLOS Pathogenssuggests that both airline and commuter road travel influence flu virus distribution in the continental U.S.
When viruses invade naïve host populations and are propagated predominantly by local transmission, we expect to observe wave-like spread across geographic space.
More Breast Cancer Patients Opting for Lumpectomy: Study (Medicine Net)
The percentage of women with early stage breast cancer who choose to have the breast-conserving surgery known as lumpectomy has risen slowly in recent years, new research shows.
In 1998, slightly more than 54 percent of eligible women chose the surgery. But, the number had passed the 60 percent mark by 2011, according to study author Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, an associate professor of surgical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Protein 'comet tails' propel cell recycling process (Science Daily)
Several well-known neurodegenerative diseases, such as Lou Gehrig's (ALS), Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's disease, all result in part from a defect in autophagy — one way a cell removes and recycles misfolded proteins and pathogens. In a paper published this week in Current Biology, postdoctoral fellow David Kast, PhD, and professor Roberto Dominguez, PhD, and three other colleagues from the Department of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, show for the first time that the formation of ephemeral compartments key in this process require actin polymerization by the Arp2/3 complex, a composite of seven proteins.
Life on the Home Planet
DNA reignites Kennewick Man debate (BBC)
A long-running debate over an ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man has been reignited.
The 9,000-year-old was claimed as an ancestor by Native Americans, who called for his remains to be reburied.
However, a group of anthropologists said the specimen's features were not similar to people from local tribes and won a legal bid to study the bones.
India toxic liquor kills 33 in Mumbai (Business Insider)
Thirty-three people have died in Mumbai and nine are fighting for their lives after drinking toxic home-made liquor, police said Friday, in the latest incident of alcohol poisoning in India.
Dhananjay Kulkarni, Mumbai police deputy commissioner, said the victims had started to fall ill on Wednesday morning after consuming the illicit moonshine.
