Sunday, August 02, 2015

Today's Headlines

Bloomberg: 
  • Hillary and Bill Clinton Made $139 Million in Eight Years. Hillary and Bill Clinton made $139.1 million over the past eight years, cashing in on their celebrity and connections to put themselves in the ranks of the highest-paid Americans, according to tax returns released Friday by the former secretary of state's presidential campaign. Speaking fees paid to both Clintons. along with former President Bill Clinton's lucrative consulting deals put the couple near the very, very top of the U.S. economic scale. Their 2012 adjusted gross income of $19.7 million placed them in the top 0.01 percent for that year, a level reached by fewer than 14,000 households, and it represents a meteoric rise for a couple that once depended on Hillary Clinton's law firm salary. She was the prime family breadwinner when Bill Clinton was making $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas. Now, they have his-and-hers limited liability companies, and their annual property tax bill is about double the U.S. median income.  
  • Joe Biden Not Ruling Out A Challenge To Hillary Clinton. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is continuing to assess whether to run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, and will probably make a decision next month, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.
  • Puerto Rico Official Says Island Will Default on Agency Debt. Puerto Rico said it won’t make a bond payment due Saturday, putting the commonwealth on a path to default and promising to initiate a clash with creditors as it seeks to renegotiate its $72 billion of debt. The government doesn’t have the money for the $58 million of principal and interest due on Public Finance Corp. bonds, Victor Suarez, the chief of staff for Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said during a press conference Friday in San Juan. “We cannot make the payment tomorrow because we do not have the funds available,” Suarez told reporters. “This payment will be made as we address how to restructure the government’s debt prospectively.”
  • Hedge Funds Boost Bullish Treasury Futures Bets to Two-Year High. Plunge in oil prices lower inflation outlook. As oil prices tanked, hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased bullish bets on Treasury securities to the most in two years, even as the Federal Reserve moves closer to raising interest rates. Speculative positions, or bets prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 65,642 contracts as of July 28, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released Friday. The figure was the most net-long positions since April 2013. Last week, traders were net-long 27,400 contracts, reversing a short position they held since September.
  • Hospital Drug Pump Can Be Hacked Through Network, FDA Warns. A pump used to infuse drugs at a patient’s bedside can be hacked through hospital networks, causing an over- or under-dose, U.S. regulators said. Health-care providers should stop use of the pumps, which were manufactured by Hospira Inc. and called Symbiq, the Food and Drug Administration said in a statement Friday. While Hospira has quit making the devices, they are still in use by hospitals, nursing homes and other health-care facilities to administer drugs intravenously, according to the agency. The FDA “strongly encourages health-care facilities to begin transitioning to alternative infusion systems as soon as possible,” the agency said. The FDA warned about similar vulnerabilities to other Hospira pumps in May.
  • Koch Calls for End to "Corporate Welfare" for Wall Street. Charles Koch, the billionaire leader of a conservative network that has pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars influencing next year's elections, called for an end to what he called "corporate welfare" for the biggest U.S. banks. Big banks, Koch said, "are among the greatest proponents of corporate welfare," having received bailouts during the financial crisis and access to unlimited lending from the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, the burden of financial regulations imposed in the crisis's wake fell hardest on small, community banks, many of which were forced out of business, he added. Big banks' political contributions help preserve their advantages, he said. "The destructive cycle goes on and on," he said. While Koch's remarks are consistent with the small-government mantra he has espoused for decades, they serve as a reminder of the threat the country's biggest banks face from the right as well as the left.
  • Einhorn’s Greenlight Fund Slumps 6.1% in July Amid Gold Rout. Greenlight Capital, the hedge-fund firm led by David Einhorn, fell 6.1 percent in July as the Greek debt crisis, volatile stock markets in China, and plunging prices of gold and oil rocked markets. The decline brought losses in Greenlight’s main fund to 9 percent in 2015, according to an e-mail sent to clients that was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Wall Street Journal:
  • Uber Valued at More Than $50 Billion. Ride-sharing app, which just closed a funding round, reaches mark faster than Facebook. Uber Technologies Inc. has completed a new round of funding that values the five-year-old ride-hailing company at close to $51 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, equaling Facebook Inc.’s record for a private, venture-backed startup.
CNBC: 
  • The "Calamitous Club" has a new member: Brazil. Earlier this week, Deutsche Bank put out an analysis of the most woeful countries. In particular, the write up contained a smart little paragraph on a global powerhouse that used to be a darling of the global economy:
Zero Hedge:
CBS:
  • Homeland Security Said to Warn About Drone Attacks. Unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, could be used in U.S. for criminal, terrorist activities, citing intelligence assessment sent yesterday to police agencies.
BBC:
  • Saudi Arabia Condoles Bin Laden Family on U.K. Plane Crash. Private jet believed to have links to family of Osama Bin Laden crashed in U.K. Friday as it attempted to land. Saudi Embassy in London issued statement offering condolences to Bin Laden family. Saudi ambassador expressed sympathy for family in post on Twitter.
Spiegel:
  • Merkel to Seek Re-Election as German Chancellor. Angela Markel discussed in internal strategy meeting who could be in charge of election campaign in 2017, without saying where it got the information.
ISIS has built near-impregnable base and mass appeal: New book - See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/isis-has-built-near-impregnable-base-and-mass-appeal-new-book-20150205#sthash.TSyXsl7s.dpuf
ISIS has built near-impregnable base and mass appeal: New book - See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/isis-has-built-near-impregnable-base-and-mass-appeal-new-book-20150205#sthash.TSyXsl7s.dpuf
Nikkei:
  • China Suspends Trading at Citadel Unit Brokerage Account. China has suspended trading at 24 brokerage accounts, including that of a subsidiary of Citadel. Suspension of trading part of effort to stabilize stock prices. Stock exchanges of Shanghai, Shenzhen announced the 3-month suspension yesterday. The bourses apparently blame short-term trading by the 24 accounts for wild share price swings.
Securities Times:
  • China's PPI May Continue to Drop Amid Destocking. China's producer prices may continue to drop as destocking hasn't ended yet, citing Pan Jiancheng, vice director at China Economic Monitoring and Analysis Center of the National Bureau of Statistics. Survey showed that entrepreneurs don't see signs of easing in overcapacity and some consider that overcapacity issue will become more severe, Pan said.

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