Financial Markets and Economy
Oil Falls as Recent Gains Deemed Unsustainable, Disruptions Ease (Bloomberg)
Oil declined for a fourth day on concern recent gains were unsustainable, while shuttered Canadian operations started to reopen.
China’s Coal-Plant Binge Deepens Overcapacity Woes (Wall Street Journal)
In a whir of hammering and welding, construction crews in the industrial town of Shouguang put finishing touches on a new coal power plant that testifies to a building binge by Chinese companies—one that is compounding an oversupply of power.
Every Stock Was a Buy to This Analyst Team, Then Shares Tanked (Bloomberg)
Companies probably love getting attention from analysts at Emperor Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong. Investors who followed their advice for the past year, not so much.
There will be mayhem: Petro-states are going down and taking the world economy with them (Salon)
Pity the poor petro-states. Once so wealthy from oil sales that they could finance wars, mega-projects, and domestic social peace simultaneously, some of them are now beset by internal strife or are on the brink of collapse as oil prices remain at ruinously low levels. Unlike other countries, which largely finance their governments through taxation, petro-states rely on their oil and natural gas revenues.
The world’s retailers are eyeing East Africa’s growing middle class shoppers (Quartz)
As the French giant retailer Carrefour opened its doors in the leafy Karen suburb of Nairobi last week, it seemed like just another multinational finding its footing in a thriving African city.
Oil Change: Affluent Saudi Arabia Goes to Work (Wall Street Journal)
Saudi Arabia’s leadership has taken up the challenge of weaning the kingdom from its dependence on oil. Ahmed Ameen is just trying to keep his mobile-phone store open.
The US is no longer the world's most competitive economy (Business Insider)
Donald Trump just got some new ammunition in his battle to say that the American economy has lost its way.
Double Blow for China Banks as Fed Worry Meets June Cash Crunch (Bloomberg)
Shanghai’s money market is braced for higher borrowing costs as a credit-fueled economic recovery coincides with the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates in June, a month that has historically seen funding crunches in China.
Dell Buyout Deal Shortchanged Shareholders, Court Rules (NY Times)
Three years after Michael S. Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake took Dell Inc. private, a Delaware judge has decided that the $24 billion deal was 21 percent too cheap.
More in Debt Than Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands Rejects Rescue (Bloomberg)
Congress’s plan to throw a lifeline to Puerto Rico is making waves in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Is the Global Reflation Trade Out of Steam? (Financial Sense)
The confluence of a more dovish Fed since mid-February and evidence that China’s policy stimulus is stabilizing growth there has been instrumental in lifting risk assets over the last quarters.
Hong Kong Retail Sales Plunge 7.5% YoY, Fall For 14th Consecutive Month (Zero Hedge)
Hong Kong's retail sales fell for the 14th consecutive month in April, plunging 7.5 percent from a year ago. April was slightly less severe than a revised estimate of a 9.8 percent YoY contraction in March.
Microsoft launches venture fund, eyes investments in cloud startups (Geek Wire)
Microsoft has launched its first formal venture fund, planning to make new investments in companies that align with its own interests in areas including cloud computing, enterprise technologies and machine learning.
Big shareholder Softbank dumping nearly $8 billion in Alibaba stock (CNN)
Japanese telecom Softbank was an early investor in tech firm Alibaba back in 2000 when it was still just a budding startup. It's since grown to become an online retail behemoth with a market cap of more than $200 billion.
Smoking bans around the world are killing the tobacco industry (Business Insider)
Smoking bans have been introduced in numerous countries around the world, following the incontrovertible link that’s been made between smoking and cancer.
The World Health Organisation estimates that over 6m people a year will die from smoking related illnesses each year and thousands more suffer from the effects of secondhand smoke.
Don't count on this oil 'wild card' coming back anytime soon (Business Insider)
Libya has been the big supply "wild card" this year.
The march of the zombies (Economist)
“OVERSUPPLY is a global problem and a global problem requires collaborative efforts by all countries.” Those defiant words were uttered by Gao Hucheng, China’s minister of commerce, at a press conference held on February 23rd in Beijing. Mr Gao was responding to the worldwide backlash against the rising tide of Chinese industrial exports, by suggesting that everyone is to blame.
Thinking The Unthinkable (FA Mag)
It's 2020 and total U.S. government debt is approaching $30 trillion. Moreover, it is probably the strongest major global economy on the planet.
Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes' net worth is now zero, according to Forbes (Business Insider)
Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has a net worth of zero dollars, according to Forbes, the go-to publication for assessing the wealth of the world's billionaires.
Theranos, the troubled blood-testing startup, last month voided two years' worth of blood-test results from its flagship Edison machines. This is just the latest in a series of blows for the company, which began with a high-profile exposé from The Wall Street Journal last year that called the company's underlying technology into question.
Politics
North Korea praises Trump and urges US voters to reject 'dull Hillary (The Guardian)
North Korean state media has praised US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, describing him as a “wise politician” and “far-sighted candidate” who could help unify the Korean peninsula.
An editorial in DPRK Today, an official media outlet, welcomed the Republican presidential candidate’s proposal to hold direct talks with Kim Jong-un, saying he could help bring about Pyongyang’s “Yankee go home” policy.
Trump is wrong on the Paris climate agreement. I know because I negotiated it. (Washington Post)
Donald Trump vows that once in office, he’s “going to cancel the Paris climate agreement,” which, he asserts, “gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use right here in America.”
That’s not especially surprising coming from Trump, who has said he is “not a great believer in man-made climate change.”
In the lead up to the Presidential election we’ve seen pockets of riotous behavior across America. Whether supporting Trump, Sanders, Hillary or Cruz, average Americans appear to be ready to go to war with their government or with each other. This sentiment, coupled with continued economic degradation and a general feeling of a populace that has for decades been marginalized by the political machine in the United States, is showing all the signs of serious civil unrest on the horizon.
Philippines' New President Endorses Murdering Corrupt Journalists (Zero Hedge)
If the US media delights in its every day interactions with Donald Trump, who not only refuses to follow the conventional playbook, but has torn it apart and burned it for good measure, it would have an absolute field day with the Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte.
Technology
Sorry, It’s Time to Start Counting Gigabytes at Home, Too (Wired)
Your home Internet will soon work a lot more like your phone’s data plan, if it doesn’t already.
AT&T, the second-largest broadband Internet provider in the US, is imposing “data allowances” on its customers. U-Verse customers now face limits between 300GB to 1TB depending on the their existing plans, AT&T said. This should be enough for 100 to 400 hours of high-definition video streaming per month, the company estimates.
AMD's next-generation laptop processors are available now (The Verge)
AMD is marking the occasion of Computex Taipei by launching its next-generation laptop processors. The seventh-generation Bristol Ridge A-series APUs — that's AMD parlance for "Accelerated Processing Units" that include a CPU and GPU on the same chip — feature CPU cores based on the new Excavator architecture alongside Radeon graphics. The FX chips are at the high end of the range, while the A12 and A9 are positioned as competitors to Intel's Core i5 and i3 processors respectively.
Health and Life Sciences
13 Things About Social Anxiety Disorder You May Not Have Known (Forbes)
Using mindfulness, you can begin to notice what happens in the body when anxiety is present and develop strategies to empower clients to “signal safety” to their nervous system. Overtime, those that practice mindfulness start to feel empowered to slow down their response to triggers, manage their body’s fear response (fight or flight), and increase their ability to tolerate discomfort. The more these neural pathways are used, the stronger they become.
Well: Yoga May Be Good for the Brain (NY Times)
A weekly routine of yoga and meditation may strengthen thinking skills and help to stave off aging-related mental decline, according to a new study of older adults with early signs of memory problems.
Life on the Home Planet
The Battle Over Public Drinking Water Has Just Begun (Think Progress)
It’s easy to hate Nestle’s bottled water business.
The multinational behemoth recently fought a case at the Maine Supreme Court to continue filling Poland Spring bottles — at the same rate the locals pay for tap water. Environmental groups and locals had challenged whether the water company had the authority to sign a 25-year, 603,000 gallon/day contract for public water. The groups lost.
One Fact About Climate Change That’s Worth Repeating (Think Progress)
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists — over 97 percent — understand that humans are the primary cause of climate change. This is one of the central facts about human-caused climate change that any climate communicator needs to keep repeating, for several reasons.
