Today's Headlines

Bloomberg: 

• ECB Battles Germany on Pace of EU Plans to Handle Failing Banks. The European Central Bank clashed with Germany over how the European Union will handle struggling banks and whether to create a common agency and fund to manage failures. ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen called for creating a central agency and an industry-funded common backstop for handling failing banks by “the summer of next year,” when the ECB takes up new supervisory duties. He set out the central bank’s position before EU finance chiefs met in Brussels today. In a public debate during the meeting, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble held to Germany’s view that the EU shouldn’t try to create a single resolution agency without amending current treaties.
• European Stocks Rise as Earnings Offset German Confidence. European stocks advanced as companies from ICAP (IAP) Plc to European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. rallied after reporting earnings, offsetting German investor sentiment that gained less than forecast in May. ICAP Plc surged the most in more than four years after posting full-year profit that exceeded its previous forecast. EADS advanced 3 percent after earnings beat analysts’ projections. Anglo American Plc and Glencore Xstrata Plc each retreated at least 1 percent as JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut its forecast for China’s economic growth. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.4 percent to 305.66 at the close of trading, its highest level since June 2008.
• Oil Shockwaves From U.S. Shale Boom Seen by IEA Ousting OPEC. The U.S. shale boom will send “shockwaves” through the global oil trade over the next five years, benefiting the nation’s refiners and displacing OPEC as the driver of supply growth, the IEA said. North America will provide 40 percent of new supplies to 2018 through the development of light, tight oil and oil sands, while the contribution from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will slip to 30 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA trimmed global fuel demand estimates for the next four years, and predicted that consumption in emerging economies may overtake developed nations this year.
• Commodity Holdings Tumble to Lowest in Four Years, BofA Says. Money managers are the most bearish on commodities in more than four years as a majority expected a weaker Chinese economy for the first time in 14 months, a Bank of America Corp. survey showed. A net 29 percent of the fund managers surveyed were underweight the asset class in May as their positions “collapsed” to the lowest level since December 2008. One in four now consider a “hard landing” in China as the biggest risk to their investments. The bank surveyed professional investors who together oversee $517 billion. “There has been a marked uptick” in concern about China, said John Bilton, an investment strategist at Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit, at a press conference in London today. “A hard landing is not our core scenario, but certainly investors are right to start thinking they should at least hedge some of that tail risk.”

Wall Street Journal:

• Holder Discloses IRS Criminal Probe. Attorney General Says He Recused Himself From AP Case. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe of recently disclosed actions by the Internal Revenue Service. He said he ordered the investigation Friday, after the IRS apologized for what it said was inappropriate scrutiny of tax-exemption requests by conservative groups with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names.
• CBO Sees Deficit Narrowing to $642 Billion.
• Fitch Raises Greece's Credit Rating.
• EU Probes Oil Firms Over Price Fixing.
• Loeb's Sony Plan Is a Test for Abenomics. Activist investors rarely take on Japan's stuffy and clubby corporate culture. But with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promising structural reform of Japan Inc., maybe the time has come to agitate for change. Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb's call for a breakup of Sony will demand a shift in attitude from corporate Japan.

MarketWatch:

• Philly Fed’s Plosser: Slow, then end, bond buys. Central banker says buys should be ended this year.
• Is tumbling Australian dollar canary in coal mine for U.S. stocks?

CNBC: 

• A Warning About Canada's Banks.

Zero Hedge: 

• DOJ's "Nixonian" Phone Spying Scandal Sets Labor Unions Against Obama.
• David Tepper Blesses The Market And Awaits "Manufacturing Renaissance". (video)
• Is Lumber The New Baltic Dry? (graph)
• Households Cut Another $110 Billion In Debt Even With $577 Billion In Q1 Mortgages Originated: Most Since 2007. (graph)
• The Market Isn't Prepared For This.

Business Insider: 

• Germany Is Different From Everywhere Else In Europe, And You Can See Why Nobody Wants Anything To Change. 
• Jon Stewart Destroys Obama Over The IRS Scandal. (video) 
• GOP CHAIR: Obama's Attorney General Should Resign Over The DOJ's AP Phone Scandal.
• Sorry, But Tesla's(TSLA) Only Profitable Because Of Your Tax Dollars.
• Copper Prices Are Tumbling. (graph)
• Apple(AAPL) Is Hiring Up For Its Microsoft Office Killer.

Reuters: 

• Fidelity gets SEC permission to run actively managed ETFs.

Telegraph:

• Rate rise will trigger economic shock, former BoE policymakers warn. Raising interest rates and unwinding quantitative easing will cause an unavoidable economic “shock” even after the recovery is established, two former Bank of England policymakers have warned.