Some people are hard to please… Andrew Liveris, the CEO of Dow Chemical, has been busy… He is merging the company with DuPont, and then promptly splitting the company into three pieces, something activist investors have been advocating for years… But instead of being happy, the activists are carping about…

President Trump and the Republican Congress have failed to pass any significant legislation over the past six months… Kate Davidson of the Wall Street Journal asks the next logical question: What if they cannot pass the debt ceiling increase in September: Next Up for GOP Congress: Raising the Debt Ceiling…

There is a growing trend for local electricity utilities to encourage local and residential power… It takes pressure off the grid, and the utility can still earn a reasonable rate of return… Diane Cardwell of the New York Times has an example: Utility Helps Wean Vermonters From the Electric Grid

Spain is starting to grow again, from a very low base… The country is once more competitive in the world economy… It’s a reasonable place to do business again for two reasons: A decade of recession has made skilled labor and rents competitive in price… And the low euro has…

How the mighty have fallen… Anonymous “people involved in talks over the workout” have told the Wall Street Journal that Toshiba may file for bankruptcy: Toshiba Bankruptcy Filing Pushed by Some Involved in Workout… Rumors like this can become self-fulfilling prophecies…

Twitter continues to have the same issues, an inadequate revenue model… Miriam Gottfried of the Wall Street Journal has the story: Investors Don’t Believe in Twitter’s Turnaround…

Reuters’ Lawrence Delevingne has a long, thoughtful piece about the new extremes of the direct lending market.  The business of lending to middle market companies which are too small to issue syndicated loans or high yield bonds has exploded since 2010, with numerous new entrants.  Some of them are too…

Bearish Howard Marks of Oaktree has issued another warning… As per his style, he has lots of excellent examples, including the enormous $100 billion fund raised by SoftBank on the back of one great investment (Alibaba)… And what he calls the “unfounded fad” of bitcoin… Devin Banerjee of Bloomberg has…

Julie Johnsson of Bloomberg has a very thoughtful story today: Boeing’s ‘Monster’ Cash Haul Gives New Boost to Top Stock on Dow… The cThe hidden rompany has been building cash, and using it to buy back shares, which has been very good for the stock price… But there is a…

After Argentina, now Greece returns to the world bond market… Liz Alderman of the New York Times has the story: In Sign of Progress for Greece, Investors Eagerly Snap Up New Bonds…

The Office of Inspector General discloses that HUD sold $18 billion of mortgages without following its own rules… Another example of the dark side of federal involvement in the residential mortgage market… Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times has the story: HUD Ignored Procedures in Selling Distressed Mortgages, Report…

Emerging markets debt is close to its all-time tights, even as defaults are continuing… Ben Bartenstein of Bloomberg has the story: Distressed Debt Disappears and That Makes Greylock Nervous…

The Fed continues to be unable to manufacture inflation… The New York Times’ Fed Watcher Binyamin Appelbaum describes the conundrum: U.S. Inflation Remains Low, and That’s a Problem…

More news from the New York Times Shanghai bureau on the government crackdown on the “gray rhinos”: Anbang, Fosun, HNA and Dalian Wanda… When will one of them fall?… In China, Herd of ‘Gray Rhinos’ Threatens Economy…

Ben Eisen of the Wall Street Journal reports new statistics, showing how lonely it is to be a bear in the current market… Short Sellers Give Up as Stocks Run to New Records…

Jerry Kaplan, a Stanford Business School professor, has an excellent piece about the hype and reality of artificial intelligence… The Wall Street Journal has run the piece: Don’t Fear the Robots…

Reuters reports that the sale of SkyBridge Capital to the Chinese conglomerate HNA is still awaiting CFIUS approval… Scaramucci Awaits U.S. Approval for China Deal…

The U.S. Justice Department New York Southern District’s case regarding JPMorgan and the London Whale has turned into a mess, and had now been dropped… The star witness wrote an unpublished memoir, launched a website, and contradicted the case in a civil deposition… Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times…

Emily Badger of the New York Times’s The Upshot has a great story about the effects of foreign buying on real estate… When the (Empty) Apartment Next Door Is Owned by an Oligarch…

The New York Times has a very specific, detailed story about distortions created by governmental intervention in financial markets and the economy, in this case ECB quantitative easing… Jack Ewing tells the fascinating story: Easy Money Saved This Italian City. Soon, It Will Run Out