Financial Markets and Economy
Wall Street unanimous on U.S. rate hike next week: Reuters poll (Reuters)
Wall Street's top banks were unanimous on the view the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates at its policy meeting next week following a stronger-than-forecast February U.S. payrolls report, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.
Massive oil discovery in Alaska is biggest onshore find in 30 years (CNN)
The massive find of conventional oil on state land could bring relief to budget pains in Alaska brought on by slumping production in the state and the crash in oil prices.
Gary Cohn is on Board the 100-Year Treasury Train, Sort Of (The Wall Street Journal)
The idea of issuing ultra-long Treasury bonds seems to enjoy broad support inside the Trump administration. But perhaps investors shouldn’t expect too many bonds with 50-year and 100-year maturities — if they ever do arrive.
Democrats question Trump 'conflict of interest' with Deutsche Bank investigation (The Guardian)
Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for a congressional investigation into the justice department’s handling of an ongoing inquiry into Deutsche Bank, saying that Donald Trump had conflicts of interest with the German bank, his biggest creditor.
Engineers give US infrastructure a 'D+' — here's a look at how bad things have gotten (Business Insider)
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, which is published every four years, US infrastructure gets a D+ grade. It got the same grade in 2013.
Brazil tumbles deeper into its worst ever depression (CNBC)
Brazil's economy has fallen further into its worst ever recession, contracting by 3.6 percent in 2016 and pressure is mounting on policymakers to stimulate growth.
This is how the rich think (The Washington Post)
The architect of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway thinks too much diversification is nuts. Say what?
That’s actually what I said to myself after first reading that Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner and the vice chairman of Berkshire, isn’t a fan of spreading out your portfolio.
The 1 Medicare Advantage Chart You Absolutely Have to See to Believe (The Motley Fool)
For 57 million Americans, Medicare is just as important a social program as Social Security is for the more than 41 million retired workers currently receiving a monthly check.
Stocks Are Overvalued And Insider Buying Has Dried Up To The Lowest Level In Nearly 30 Years (Jason Hamlin, Seeking Alpha)
Stocks have looked overvalued for quite some time, yet continue to power higher nonetheless. The "Trump Effect" on the stock market has investors giddy, as they are expecting massive infrastructure and military spending, lower taxes, and less regulation to help the economy.
David Stockman: Debt Crisis Countdown Begins (Daily Reckoning)
David Stockman joined Fox News and host Neil Cavuto to sound off on his warning concerning the debt ceiling crisis and why it threatens the U.S economy. In the interview Stockman relays his budget analysis as a Washington insider to offer the concrete numbers on what he views as a debt catastrophe in the making.
Trump’s Economic Labyrinth (Project Syndicate)
Donald Trump’s economic-policy agenda during the 2016 US presidential election campaign was a political Rorschach test: where his supporters saw a bold new design for robust growth and greater prosperity, many others in the United States and around the world saw only a cynical blob of dodgy proposals and crossed lines.
Restaurant Sales And Traffic Tumble (Zero Hedge)
There appeared to be a glimmer of hope for the restaurant industry last month, when BlackBox Intelligence's TDn2K titled its most recent Restaurant Industry Snapshot: “Flat Sales, Welcome Change for Restaurant Industry in January.”
Weekend Reading: All Eyes On The Fed (Real Investment Advice)
This certainty has been building as of late given the rise in inflation pressures from higher commodity, particularly oil prices, and still rising health care costs as well as a strong market, dollar, and employment data.
Dow Suffers Worst Week Of 2017 Amid Credit Carnage, Bond Bloodbath, & Crude Crash (Zero Hedge)
To summarize – this week saw chaos in emerging market stocks, high yield credit, Treasuries, crude, copper, Chinese money markets, and risk-parity funds… and US stocks hung in there.
Tumbling Oil Launches Record Options Trading As "800 Million Barrels" Change Hands (Zero Hedge)
With oil's recent somnolent, low-vol levitation at their back, the number of hedge funds and other speculators who were soothed by the gradual move higher and betting on the success of OPEC reflationary strategy, had recently grown to an all time high, as seen in the chart below showing the number of long net-spec positions in the combined oil futures market.
Companies
Tesco chairman: White men 'endangered species' in UK boardrooms (BBC News)
White men are becoming an "endangered species" in top business jobs as companies take on more women and ethnic minorities, Tesco's chairman has said.
These Are the 50 Most Promising Startups You’ve Never Heard Of (Bloomberg)
There are a few early clues that a startup will be successful, according to market researcher Quid: Have the company’s founders worked together before? Is the business in a hot sector, one where many other new startups are also focusing?
Technology
Uber Gears Up to Block Bid to Form a Union in Seattle (The Wall Street Journal)
Before accepting rides on his Uber app each day, Seattle driver Fasil Teka must first choose whether to listen to company-run podcasts on voting rights, collective bargaining and city council hearings.
SXSW panel opens window into dangers of facial recognition software (The Guardian)
How do you exclude children from biometric surveillance, such as facial recognition software used by police, when you need to scan their faces to identify them as children?
Study reveals whopping 48M Twitter accounts are actually bots (CBS News)
A study released by the University of Southern California reports that roughly nine to 15 percent of Twitter accounts on the microblogging website are so-called bots controlled by software instead of humans.
No Privacy: Chinese Feel They’re ‘Running Naked’ Online (The Wall Street Journal)
After the latest WikiLeaks document dump, people in many countries are asking, “How safe are our devices?”
The 8,761 documents released this week purport to show how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency breaks into computers, smartphones, television sets and other electronics to use them for surveillance.
Judge dismisses lawsuit accusing Oculus of using confidential info (Engadget)
While Oculus is still tied up in legal wrangling (in more than one direction) with Zenimax, a California judge just dismissed a different lawsuit against the company.
‘Smart Mirrors’ Come to the Fitting Room (Bloomberg)
Since e-commerce began threatening stores last decade, retailers have been trying to make their locations operate more like the web. Yet despite splurging on the latest bells and whistles, they’ve mostly failed and fallen further behind their online rivals.
High Risk – High Returns… The Bugatti Yacht (Emerging Growth)
The luxury car maker this week announced the release of its Bugatti Niniette 66 yacht, the first in a series of new Bugatti yachts created in partnership with yacht builder Palmer Johnson.
The End of Wi-Fi? Five Things We Learned This Week (Bloomberg)
We’ve gotten used to connecting our smartphones to Wi-Fi at work, at the mall, at Starbucks, or wherever we can get a signal, to conserve our data allowance.
S.E.C. Rejects Winklevoss Brothers’ Bid to Create Bitcoin E.T.F. (DealBook)
The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it had rejected an application to create an exchange-traded fund tied to the price of Bitcoin.
Politics
President Trump's Voter Fraud Investigation Is Off To a Slow Start (NPR)
You might be asking yourself, whatever happened to Vice President Mike Pence's investigation into President Trump's claim that millions of people voted illegally in November? It's been over a month since the president said he would ask Pence to lead a "major investigation" into those claims and the overall issue of voter fraud.
Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Is Denounced by 134 Foreign Policy Experts (NY Times)
More than 130 members of America’s foreign policy establishment denounced President Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday as just as damaging to the United States’ interests and reputation as his original order that halted refugees and froze travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.
Trump's plan for Medicaid could hurt the opioid abusers he promised to help (CNN)
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly and forcefully promised to expand access to drug treatment, strengthen prevention options and address the scourge of drug addiction after hearing about many Americans' struggle with opiate abuse.
Debate over the effects and future of the NAFTA trade deal have been but one point of contention between Mexico and the US since President Donald Trump took office.
Sean Spicer’s Briefings, Cringe TV for an Audience of One (NY Times)
The White House press secretary has said that whatever your lying eyes told you, President Trump’s swearing-in had “the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period.” He has insisted that the president’s travel ban against majority-Muslim countries, which the president called a “ban,” was not a ban.
Trump security guard shouts down reporter demanding evidence of wiretapping claim (Think Progress)
Two days after Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he’s willing to subpoena the FBI and DOJ to get whatever information they have about President Trump’s accusation that former President Obama wiretapped him, a reporter tried to ask Trump if he has any evidence to support his claim.
‘Our rights are being eroded’: Muhammad Ali Jr. questioned at airport once again (Think Progress)
Muhammad Ali Jr. was stopped and questioned about his identification for nearly a half hour at Reagan National Airport on Friday, less than a day after speaking to Congress about being detained and questioned about his religion at a Florida airport on February 7th.
In Republicans’ views of a border wall, proximity to Mexico matters (Pew Research Center)
Republicans overwhelmingly favor the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. But Republicans who live closer to the border are less likely to support the wall than are those who live farther away.
Now-Fired Bharara Boasts Of 'Absolute Independence' (Associated Press)
A Manhattan federal prosecutor who says "absolute independence" was his touchstone for over seven years as he battled public corruption announced he was fired Saturday after he refused a day earlier to resign.
Trump knows the feds are closing in on him (Foreign Policy)
Immediately before and after his well-received speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, President Trump curtailed his use of Twitter. "For precisely four days, eight hours and five minutes, Trump refrained from tweeting anything inflammatory," the Washington Post noted. "That’s 6,245 consecutive minutes!"
Colbert mocks EPA chief’s climate denial: ‘You really shouldn’t contradict your own website’ (Think Progress)
Since the election, comedian Stephen Colbert has emerged as the king of late night by brilliantly holding a mirror up to team Trump’s own inanity.
Poll finds Americans want Jeff Sessions out (Think Progress)
At a press conference last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to make the case that he had not perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his in January confirmation hearing when he falsely told Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that he had not had any contact with Russia during Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Stronger than Tea: The anti-Trump resistance is much bigger than the Tea Party — and it has to be (Salon)
The anti-Trump resistance is not like the Tea Party, to which it is frequently compared. It’s much more serious, despite repeated denials in the mainstream media.
Pence says Obamacare ‘failed’ Kentucky, where 500,000 gained insurance through the law (Think Progress)
Speaking in Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence called Obamacare a “nightmare,” and said that Kentucky was a “textbook case of Obamacare’s failures.”
This week in Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest: Everything is coming up Trump (Salon)
If there is one thing that must be conceded about President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, it’s that they span the globe. A documentary following his various financial entanglements would have to perform globetrotting on the scale of a James Bond flick.
The complete list of all 117 false things Donald Trump has said as president (The Star.com)
The Star’s running tally of the bald-faced lies, exaggerations and deceptions the president of the United States of America has said, so far.
5 facts about crime in the U.S. (Pew Research Center)
Donald Trump made crime-fighting an important focus of his campaign for president, and he cited it again during his inaugural address in January.
Thousands of Native Americans march on White House to protest pipelines (DW Made For Minds)
Native American groups have rallied in Washington to protest President Donald Trump's support of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. They fear the pipelines will desecrate tribal lands and contaminate the water.
The Republican health care plan finally dropped! Boom. This is the big one. Bigger than Beyoncé.
After years and years and years of whining and complaining about more Americans having health coverage, the GOP finally can slide its finely tuned alternative, the well-polished health care plan of its dreams, into the American legislative system and bada bing bada boom—so long Obama and the Affordable Care Act! Hello, the Affordabler Care Act.
Republicans don’t understand how poor people access health care (Think Progress)
A first-term Republican Congressman answered a journalist’s question about Medicaid expansion by answering that the poor “just don’t want health care.” Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told STAT, a national health news publication, “There is a group of people that just don’t want health care and aren’t going to take care of themselves.”
A Bill So Bad It’s Awesome (NY Times)
It has long been obvious to anyone following health policy that Republicans would never devise a workable replacement for Obamacare. But the bill unveiled this week is worse than even the cynics expected; its awfulness is almost surreal. And the process by which it came to be tells you a lot about the state of the G.O.P.
How psychology makes sense of Trump’s conspiracy theories (Stat News)
In a now-infamous tweet burst on Saturday morning, President Trumpaccused former President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in New York City, where Trump lives and where the Trump Organization is headquartered.
Life on the Home Planet
Root Out Bias from Your Decision-Making Process (Harvard Business Review)
We’ve all experienced the disappointment of an important decision not going our way. The feeling is far worse when you feel that the decision was somehow “rigged” against you — that you never had a chance, that your input wasn’t given its fair due, or that only some of the data was considered.
Alaska’s Big Problem With Warmer Winters (Bloomberg)
The wind that comes off the mountains across Cook Inlet in southern Alaska still feels plenty cold in February. But lately it’s not quite cold enough. From 1932 to 2017, the daily minimum temperature in Homer, a city on the eastern shore of the inlet, averaged 19F in February.
Number of women leaders around the world has grown, but they’re still a small group (Pew Reserach Center)
As nations around the world celebrate International Women’s Day, the number of countries that have had a female leader continues to expand. But the list is still relatively short, and even when women have made it to power, they’ve rarely led for a long time.
Breaking Down the Father on BBC Being Interrupted by His Children (Medium)
I’m sure there are plenty of videos that have gone viral faster, but given that my Twitter feed is a mix of journalists, tech analysts, and NBA folks, there seemed to be a special resonance to this clip of a father in South Korea commenting on the removal of once-President Park Geun-hye, only to be interrupted on live TV by his kids breaking into his home office.
MONSTER volcanic eruption set to unleash ash cloud misery for millions of air passengers (Daily Star Sunday)
Bogoslof volcano in Alaska has exploded more than thirty times since last December.
And the restless peak is on "red alert" as it continues to shoot ash more than 30,000 feet into the air – forcing pilots to dodge the drifting debris as they navigate the treacherous skies.
The New Yorker’s chief fact-checker on how to get things right in the era of ‘post-truth’ (Columbia Journalism Review)
This past year, the Oxford Dictionaries chose “post-truth” as its word of the year in a nod to the idea that objective facts “have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
Plot To Hit German Shopping Centre With Multiple Suicide Bombers Is Foiled (InfoWars)
Police in the German city of Essen have ordered a shopping centre to remain closed on Saturday after a tip by security services of ‘concrete indications about a possible attack’.
“We Need to Eat! We Want Bread!”: Shortage of Subsidized Bread Sparks Protests in Alexandria (Egyptian Streets)
Egypt has witnessed several protests on Tuesday, particularly in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, after the Ministry of Supply decided to limit bread supplies and cut subsidies.
Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades (National Geographic)
In the middle of eastern Washington, in a desert that gets less than eight inches of rain a year, stands what was once the largest waterfall in the world. It is three miles wide and 400 feet high—ten times the size of Niagara Falls—with plunge pools at its base suggesting the erosive power of an immense flow of water.
Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds (The New Yorker)
In 1975, researchers at Stanford invited a group of undergraduates to take part in a study about suicide. They were presented with pairs of suicide notes. In each pair, one note had been composed by a random individual, the other by a person who had subsequently taken his own life.
