Financial Markets and Economy
In One OPEC Nation, the Rig Count Is Soaring Before Vienna Talks (Bloomberg)
All across the Americas, drilling rigs are being idled as oil prices hover near six-year lows. In Colombia, more than 57 percent have been pulled; in Mexico, 42 percent.
Mercedes-Benz U.S. November sales down 12 percent (Business Insider)
Mercedes-Benz sales in the United States dropped 11.7 percent in November, due to popular model lines running out and a limited availability of top-selling SUVs, the luxury division's parent company Daimler <DAIGn.DE> said on Wednesday.
Janet Yellen’s Confidence in the U.S. Economy (The Atlantic)
It’s two weeks before the Federal Reserve’s December meeting, at which interest rates have a good chance of being raised for the first time in nearly a decade. And that means that investors and Fed watchers the world over are paying close attention to any statement from Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who has two public appearances this week, the first of which was a speech on Wednesday at the Economic Club of Washington.
Railroad stocks drop after companies give downbeat outlooks (Market Watch)
Railroad stocks dropped sharply Wednesday, after both Kansas City Southern and CSX Corp. provided downbeat outlooks for the current quarter at an analyst conference.
Goldman's One-Day Euro Forecast Is for 3% Fall on Dovish Draghi (Bloomberg)
Just as investors are taking their bets on a weaker euro off the table before Thursdays European Central Bank meeting, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says its time to wager on.
U.S. consumers stretch out auto loans to afford higher-priced cars (Business Insider)
Automakers are sustaining record transaction prices for new vehicles by stretching out loan payments for less credit-worthy customers, according to a new report Wednesday from credit monitoring company Experian.
Credit Suisse mulls social network for the silk-stocking set as U.S. ops wind down (Market Watch)
Credit Suisse is winding down its U.S. private-banking operations, but it could still have a presence in the U.S. as a form of social network.
US crude oil fell below $40 a barrel for just the second time since the recession (Quartz)
It’s that time of the week when the Energy Information Administration releases its weekly peek (pdf) at US oil production. For the past year or so it’s been a dizzying climb as stockpiles climbed to record highs. Though supplies had begun to fall earlier in the year as shale producers finally pumped the brakes on their pumping, the latest figures show that commercial supplies are fewer than 2 million barrels shy of a fresh record high.
Zero Yields Won't Cut It for Japan Brokers Favoring Longer Bonds (Bloomberg)
The message to Japans government from brokerages is clear: go easy on the zero-percent debt.
The 'Made in China' story is falling apart (Business Insider)
Here's something you hear thrown around a lot: "China is taking all of our jobs."
Yahoo used to be bigger than Apple, Google, and Amazon. Now it might sell itself for scrap (Quartz)
After a nice bump in trading Wednesday (Dec. 2), Yahoo has a market cap of nearly $34 billion, including the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan stakes. In late 2004, Yahoo alone was worth nearly $52 billion. That was a bigger market cap at the time than Amazon ($16 billion), Apple ($25 billion), and a freshly IPO’d Google ($49 billion). While far from the heights of the dot-com bubble—when the market valued Yahoo at north of $100 billion—the company was a tech industry giant.
Yellen Ties Rate-Rise Pace to Actual Progress on Inflation (Bloomberg)
Federal Reserve policy makers may need to have more than just confidence that inflation will pick up to raise interest rates again after liftoff.
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – QE Bunga Bunga with Draghi and the ECB – 325:1 (Jesse's Cafe Americain)
Gold was slammed lower with the London PM fix and the opening of trading in New York this morning, down to test the 1050 level on the spot price.
OPEC is meeting on Friday, and rumors about what they'll do are already flying (Business Insider)
Most members of the 12-member oil cartel OPEC are reportedly willing to agree to cut their output to prevent oil prices from tumbling much lower.
BTG Bonds Slump to New Lows as Downgrades Follow Esteves Arrest (Bloomberg)
BTG Pactual’s bonds fell to new lows and yields soared after Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the lender to junk, the latest setback for the investment bank that found itself in the middle of Brazil’s largest corruption scandal when founder Andre Esteves was jailed last week.
Stocks are lower (Business Insider)
Stocks are lower in afternoon trading, after Fed chair Janet Yellen essentially confirmed that she supports raising rates in two weeks.
Microsoft Should Disclose Cloud Revenue, Margins, Ballmer Says (Bloomberg)
Microsoft Corp. should disclose profit margins and sales for its cloud and hardware businesses, former Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmersaid.
Freshly minted Square shares become target for short sellers (Business Insider)
Short sellers did not wait long to bet against mobile payments company Square Inc <SQ.N>, whose steeply discounted initial public offering last month increased concerns about sky-high valuations for Silicon Valley's biggest startups.
Politics
Chavez's Supporters Face Rare Defeat in Venezuelan Elections (Bloomberg)
Plagued by rampant crime, unbridled corruption and unprecedented economic contraction, Venezuela elects a new legislature on Sunday, with the opposition on the verge of a decisive victory for the first time in 16 years. But rather than propel the country onto a stabler path, the vote seems just as likely to bog it down into further dysfunction.
NATO Expands. Russia Yawns. (Bloomberg View)
Why would the North Atlantic Treaty Organization want a new member state with a military of 2,000, a population slightly larger than Luxembourg's and about 8 percent of the economic output?
Technology
Octoblu Brings the Internet of Things to Your Car (Popular Science)
The internet of things, or IoT, is becoming more a part of our lives already, with thermostats that learn our preferences and habits and home security systems we can control from a hotel room while we’re on vacation. But cars are things just as much as HVAC systems and deadbolt locks, and Octoblu wants you to connect, as developer and company cofounder Chris Matthieu says, “anything to everything.”
Health and Life Sciences
Sports medicine solves mystery of childbirth injuries (Futurity)
Childbirth is arguably the most traumatic event the human body can undergo—and new imaging techniques show that up to 15 percent of women sustain pelvic injuries that don’t heal.
The researchers reasoned that using MRI to diagnose childbirth injuries—a technique usually reserved for sports medicine—makes sense because childbirth is as traumatic as many endurance sports.
How Radioactivity Can Benefit Your Health (Scientific American)
Radiation is notoriously harmful to the human body. And yet in certain applications it can be a lifesaver. When do the benefits of radiation outweigh the harm? Paul Schaffer, associate laboratory director of the life sciences division of Canada’s particle physics laboratory TRIUMF (TRI-University Meson Facility), which uses particle accelerators to create radioactive materials for medicine, explains in a public lecture that will be broadcast live here on this webpage Wednesday, December 2 at 7 P.M. Eastern time.
Life on the Home Planet
Millions of Climate Refugees Have Already Lost Their Homes (Gizmodo)
When your town is continually threatened by floods or your village’s fields become too dry to grow crops, there are two options: move on, or stick around and at try to make things work. At the Paris climate talks, there’s a swell of opinion to encourage the latter.
