Risk On Currencies Hit Two Month Lows on Multiple Country Data Points

The Aussie and Kiwi dollars fell in over night trade as economic data from many countries confirm a global slowdown.

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“Japan’s current-account surplus was the smallest for the month of May since at least 1985 and machinery orders fell the most in more than a decade.

The excess in the widest measure of trade shrank 63 percent from a year earlier to 215.1 billion yen ($2.7 billion), the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today. The median estimate of 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a surplus of 493.1 billion yen. Machinery orders, an indicator of capital spending, fell 14.8 percent in May from the previous month, the Cabinet Office said, the biggest drop since 2001.”

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“Hong Kong and Vietnam signaled growth may fall short of government forecasts this year as Asian policy makers stepped up efforts to protect their economies and currency markets from the worsening global outlook.

Hong Kong may revise its 2012 economic forecast next month, Financial Secretary John Tsangsaid on July 7. In Vietnam, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Van Ninh said the country may miss its growth target and the central bank told lenders to cut borrowing costs on existing loans to help businesses. The Philippines unveiled plans to contain currency gains that may hurt exports.”

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World Markets

Currencies

Commodities

USD Libor

Euribor

Yields for Italy, Spain, France,  and Germany …

Sex, drugs, and meeting the President while still drunk. What more could an Olympian ask for?

The female Olympian says her experience at the White House in 2010 was similar.

“It scared the crap out of me,” she says. “I woke up with this guy — I drank so much, I had no recollection of what happened. And I’m going to meet the president, and I’m still drunk. Vice President Biden — I think he was smelling my breath. He was so close, I could’ve licked his nose without moving. I know I reeked of liquor. I was mortified, but they were all smiling.”

All morning, she says, the entire US Olympic team was struggling. “We were texting each other about how much agony we were in,” she says. “It was hilarious.”

Being drunk at the White House, Lodwick says, has been a tradition as long as he’s been competing — and, as with every other event, it’s something that the athletes gear up for.

Don’t believe the hype by the alarmists who want to tax the the very air you exhale.

There have been 372,989 correctly recorded daily high temperature records in the US since 1895.  84% of them were set when CO2 was below 350ppm.

To read the article and see some outstanding charts and graphs, go here.

Take a look at Pethokoukis’s chart:

Weisenthal obviously loves this indicator, and I have to admit it tracks very well with the performance of the S&P 500. I would like to see more than 5 years of history. Read the article here.

According to Lebron, the team will be nothing if not fast. The 12 man roster is out. See who is on it here.

PYONGYANG, North Korea – Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh took the stage in North Korea during a concert for new leader Kim Jong Un, in an unusual performance featuring Disney characters.

Performers dressed as Minnie Mouse, Tigger and others danced and pranced as footage from “Snow White,” ”Dumbo,” ”Beauty and the Beast” and other Disney movies played on a massive backdrop, according to still photos shown on state TV.

The inclusion of characters popular in the West — particularly from the United States, North Korea’s wartime enemy — is a notable change in direction for performances in Pyongyang. Actors and actresses also showed off new wardrobes, including strapless gowns and little black dresses.

In recent years, performances such as the “Arirang” mass games featured performers dressed as panda bears in homage to North Korean ally China.

This appears to be the first time Disney characters have been included in a major performance, though Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse have been popular among children for several years. Backpacks, pencil cases and pajamas imported from China often feature Disney characters, and stories such as “Dumbo” have been translated into Korean for North Korean schoolchildren. However, it is unusual to make such images a central part of a North Korean performance and to publicize it on state TV.

It was unclear whether the Disney characters were officially licensed. U.S. sanctions prohibit the import of North Korean goods to the United States, but do not ban the sales of American consumer products in North Korea unless they involve officials or companies on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions blacklist.

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AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Reuters) – French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici poured cold water on a media report on Sunday that France and Germany could split between them the presidency of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers.

The mandate of the Eurogroup’s current chairman, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, expires at the end of the month, but officials signaled last month that his term could be extended.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande had agreed a compromise for a successor to Juncker as Eurogroup head involving a rotating chairmanship.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble would initially take over as Eurogroup chief, and Moscovici would then take over from him at mid-way point during his term, according to the report.

“I don’t know where this story is coming from. It’s not under consideration,” Moscovici told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Aix-en-Provence, southern France.

Hollande, meanwhile, said there would be a “Franco-German” outcome to Juncker’s succession.

“We will all find a good solution once Mr. Juncker has finished his mandate – a Franco-German solution,” he told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting with Merkel in Reims, eastern France.

Read here:

(Reuters) – Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace (BBD-B.TO) said Sunday a new customer, which has requested to remain unidentified, has placed a conditional order for five CS100 and 10 CS300 jetliners.

Based on the list prices of CS100 and CS300 aircraft, the contract is valued at about U.S. $1.02 billion.

Earlier Sunday, Bombardier said it was in talks with AirAsia (KLS:AIRASIA) about a more densely packed 160-seat version of its CSeries jet in a bid to loosen the stranglehold on Asia’s largest low-cost carrier held by European giant Airbus (EAD.PA).

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Companies are sitting on ever-expanding mountains of data that could potentially help them run their businesses better, David McQueeney, IBM’s head of software research, told CNBC.

Like oil or any other natural resource, companies need to exploit what has come to be called “Big Data,” he said.

“In most big enterprises, whether it’s a private enterprise or a government agency, there is typically a mountain of data, typically unstructured data, that contains potential insights about how to serve their clients better, how to engage with citizens better and make the processes run more efficiently,” McQueeney said.

Because it takes a certain amount of computing power to analyze the data and pull out and use those insights, the IBM (IBM) executive thinks of it “as a natural resource that can be extracted and refined and turned into something powerful.”

Indeed, the results can be powerful. McQueeney highlighted a hospital project where, instead of taking readings every few hours, they continuously recorded data from all the medical instruments in a ward that took care of premature infants.

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Are the latest blackouts a sign of things to come?

Customers chafe at rising utility bills, but the energy industry warns that the alternative is even scarier: Unless $673 billion is invested in the system, it could break down by 2020, according to an American Society of Civil Engineers report released in April.

Read the article here.

SOURCE 

We might not be able to get there yet, but as NASA says, ‘this is the next best thing’.

From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a newly completed view from the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain where the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter.

This scene, recorded from the mast-mounted color camera includes the rover’s own solar arrays and deck in the foreground, provides a sense of sitting on top of the rover and taking in the view.

A winter on Mars: NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain which the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter

A close-up of the left-hand-side of the image: The high-resolution picture is extremely detailed, and can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of the article

Read the rest here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2170196/Mars-Exploration-photo-Spectacular-360-panorama-captured-NASAs-Opportunity-Rover.html#ixzz1zzfnoxBH

I seldom agree with Robert Reich, but I believe he is on target with this piece. Read the article here.

Lobster was once synonymous with living large, but thanks to an abundance of the soft-shell version of the crustaceans in recent months, it’s not just a meal for special occasions anymore.

An excess supply in Maine of smaller soft-shell lobsters has driven prices to under $4 a pound, the Associated Press reported this week, making the luscious sea creature cheaper than the per pound price of deli meat in some cases.

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Capitalism is in crisis across the globe – but what on earth is the alternative? Well, what about the musings of a certain 19th-century German philosopher? Yes, Karl Marx is going mainstream – and goodness knows where it will end…

Read the article here.