FURTHER FURTHER READING
- Should the US steal Australia's superannuation system?
- "Only losers hedge!" Stock-market news from 1981.
- "Tight money does not raise interest rates, at least over the relevant time frame for welfare considerations."
- In which Meredith Whitney does "state arbitrage". (?)
- Why is it a rental and not a loan?, tyres edition.
- Ryan Avent on Fed comms: "it isn't remotely clear why the talk is of tapering."
- The Doom of Princeton, or Krugman on human capital.
ROUND-UP
Flat US stocks. The S&P 500 closed down less than 0.1 per cent to 1,642, the Dow fell 0.1 per cent (Bloomberg)
Private contractors to the intelligence community came under scrutiny in the NSA whistleblower case, after the revelation that Edward Snowden, the 29 year-old source of the leaks, had worked for Booz Allen Hamilton. Shares in the company fell 3.3 per cent on Monday, and the stock of its rivals General Dynamics and SAIC declined as much as 3 per cent (Reuters). Around one quarter of Booz's business comes from US intelligence work, and it warned in its IPO filing in 2010 that it faced risks from security breaches (Financial Times).
Apple revamped its iOS mobile software, including music streaming. The iTunes Radio service took centre stage in what chief executive Tim Cook billed as the most radical redesign for Apple users in years. Free but ad-supported unless users subscribe to a cloud service, the addition to iTunes is an answer to established rivals Pandora and Spotify (Bloomberg). Apple also unveiled a new high-performance desktop computer, its first in years to be made in the US. "Can't innovate any more, my ass!," marketing chief Phil Schiller said (Financial Times).
US prosecutors are closed to a breakthrough in an insider trading case against a former SAC Capital employee after a University of Michigan medical school agreed to give access to certain computer files. Although it is expected to withhold an encryption key, the school is close to a deal allowing the government to run keyword searches on files of Dr Sidney Gilman, who allegedly gave confidential drug trial information to Matthew Martoma (Financial Times).
S&P revised the outlook for its credit rating of the US to stable from negative. The agency cited reduced risks of fiscal interruption from the debt ceiling, almost two years after it removed its Aaa rating for the US (Reuters).
European regulators are likely to approve Delta's joint venture with Virgin Atlantic without conditions. The JV, which includes Delta taking a 49 per cent stake in Virgin, would have about 25 per cent of the market for transatlantic, US-UK flights (Reuters).
