Financial Review

The Parade Passing By

Sinclair Noe — October 26, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

Subscribe: Android | RSS

DOW + 71 = 23,400
SPX + 3 = 2560
NAS – 7 = 6556
RUT + 3 = 1497
10 Y + .01 = 2.45%
OIL + .63 = 52.81
GOLD – 11.00 = 1267.20

Cryptocurrency 

• Number of Currencies: 879
• Total Market Cap: $172,874,344,662
• 24H Volume: $3,346,529,813

Top Cryptocurrencies

	Name	Symbol	Price USD	Market Cap	Vol.	Total Vol. %	Price BTC	Chg. % 1D	Chg. % 7D
	Bitcoin	BTC	5,991.9	$99.63B	$1.94B	57.98%	1	+1.73%	+5.04%
	Ethereum	ETH	298.18	$28.44B	$265.63M	7.94%	0.0500608	+1.04%	-3.22%
	Ripple	XRP	0.20235	$7.88B	$37.75M	1.13%	0.0000341	+0.17%	-5.97%
	Bitcoin Cash	BCH	339.20	$5.69B	$238.21M	7.12%	0.0571329	+0.96%	+2.97%
	Litecoin	LTC	55.840	$3.00B	$79.47M	2.37%	0.00935417	+0.59%	-6.11%
	Dash	DASH	285.57	$2.20B	$49.83M	1.49%	0.0483665	+0.47%	-2.46%
	NEM	XEM	0.20044	$1.80B	$4.71M	0.14%	0.00003352	+0.74%	-10.18%
	BitConnect	BCC	219.37	$1.60B	$15.80M	0.47%	0.0368101	+5.91%	+9.88%
	NEO	NEO	28.500	$1.42B	$35.29M	1.05%	0.00475357	+0.28%	-1.88%
	Monero	XMR	88.80	$1.36B	$22.90M	0.68%	0.0148741	0.00%	-0.39%

Up 100, down 100, up 100 then drifting lower. The Dow and the S&P moved higher today. The Nasdaq closed in the red as biotech took a beating. Welcome to earnings reporting season. After the closing bell, we watched a parade of the biggest tech companies report better than expected earnings. Tomorrow, Apple launches iPhone X.

Also, tomorrow the Commerce Department releases its first look at gross domestic product for the third quarter. The consensus is that the economy likely expanded at a 2.6 percent annualized rate in the three months ended Sept. 30, which is in-line with recent history.

Republicans pushed a $4 trillion budget through the House today by a thin margin. For now, Republicans sidestepped divisions within the party by voting 216-212 to permit them to begin work on a $1.5 trillion tax cut without fear of a filibuster by Democrats.

This is just a first step, GOP tax-writers pick winners and losers among interest groups, business sectors and rank-and-file voters. The goal is a full rewrite of the inefficient, loophole-laden tax code in hopes of lower rates for corporations and other businesses and a burst of economic growth.

But evidence is growing that some of their steps — such as eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes or eliminating 401K retirement plans – will face opposition from both sides of the aisle. For the most part, plans for ending various tax breaks — which are key to helping to offset the deep tax-rate cuts that Trump and congressional leaders want to achieve — have been kept under wraps.

Now that the budget blueprint has been adopted, a hard reality will set in as the business community and others realize how much of the tax bill will involve closing loopholes and changing their credits and deductions. In the absence of details on how to pay for those rate reductions, the fight over the SALT deduction is instructive. Repealing the tax break would generate an estimated $1.3 trillion over 10 years. If it’s not fully repealed, lawmakers will have another revenue hole to fill.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker said today that some of the items in the GOP tax reform discussion are just “buying off” special interests and serve no other purpose. Corker said: “Some of the things we’re doing, I’m sorry, are ridiculous,” though he did not mention any specifics.

Corker, a member on the Senate Budget and Banking committees said those things are “not going to drive 1 ounce of economic growth. But it’s what you have to do to pass a tax bill. It’s buying off of people to pass tax reform. … We could take a lot of this off in the trash can and make it easier and actually do something that grows our economy and increases our wages.”

Meanwhile, Democrats united against the plan, arguing its tax cuts will pad the bank accounts of the wealthy and the balance sheets of corporations, while delivering modest relief — or none — to middle-income taxpayers.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said immediately after the vote that he’ll release the tax measure on Nov. 1 and that a panel vote is expected the week of Nov. 6. House and Senate leaders want to pass companion measures before Thanksgiving with a final compromise coming before year’s end. But there are lots of details between now and then.

This afternoon, Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, stopping short of a national emergency declaration he promised months ago that would have freed up more federal money. The declaration will redirect federal resources and loosen regulations to combat opioid abuse, but it does not mean there will be more money to combat the crisis.

Apparently, it is tough to find money for the opioid crisis and cut corporate taxes at the same time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report more than 54,000 deaths last year attributed to opioid abuse.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi managed to avoid roiling markets when he detailed the central bank’s plan to cut its monthly bond purchases in half. In fact, bonds and stocks soared while the euro weakened – a perfect outcome for the ECB. Draghi added a bit of a surprise to the plan to pull back from the markets.

Yes, the ECB will cut in half its monthly bond purchases to 30 billion euros from 60 billion euros starting in January, but the bank’s president also indicated that zero percent interest rates could remain at current levels until “well past” whenever it finally decides to end its quantitative easing measures. Maybe 2019, maybe 2020.

Markets seemed to focus on the idea of “lower for longer”. Bonds across Europe rallied hard, with yields on 10-year German bunds tumbling almost 7 basis points to 0.42 percent. The STOXX Europe 600 Index promptly rose the most since August.

Pending home sales showed a decline to a 2½ year low in September, missing consensus estimates for a rise of 0.4%, as the housing market is buffeted by lean supply and strong demand. Meanwhile, the advanced U.S. trade deficit widened by 1.3% in September.

Amazon reported net income of $256 million, or 52 cents per share, for the three months ending Sept. 30. That easily beat the 2 cents per share analysts had expected. Amazon has long been known for investing the money it makes back into its businesses, such as opening new warehouses to fulfill orders.

Many seemed to expect that again. And Amazon did reinvest in the business. It paid nearly $14 billion this summer for organic grocer Whole Foods; announced a series of new voice-activated Echo devices; and kicked off a public hunt for a place to build its second headquarters.

Revenue rose 34 percent to $43.4 billion, beating the $41.5 billion analysts expected. Amazon reported after the bell and shares were up about 8% in after-hours trade. Rite Aid, Express Scripts Holding and Walgreens Boots Alliance all fell sharply after Amazon secured a wholesale pharmacy license.

UPS reported earnings per share of $1.45 for the third quarter. Revenue increased 7%. International profit was up 8.9%; currency neutral profit was up 20%. And they raised guidance for full year 2017. The upcoming holiday period is shaping up to be another record-breaking shipping season. Earlier in the week we told you that online purchases are expected to pass brick and mortar retail purchases this season.

In fact, United Parcel Service (UPS) forecasts 750 million packages will be delivered between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve, a 5% increase from last year. Despite the expected increase in volume, UPS expects to hire the same number of temporary seasonal workers as last year (95,000). The difference is UPS will be using more technology to streamline operations.

Alphabet beat projections for third-quarter sales and earnings after a surge in Google ad volume helped the web-search giant shrug off concerns about regulatory scrutiny and an expensive foray into hardware. Sales for the quarter rose 24% to $22.2 billion and profit was $9.57 a share, beating estimates of $8.34.

In September, the deadline arrived for Google to meet demands for the European Union antitrust case on shopping ads. Google agreed to tweak its paid search results for products in the continent, although it’s still appealing the charges. These product ads have helped drive sales and profit growth, but Google investors are more concerned about a probe into Google’s Android software on mobile devices, where Google’s ads are growing.

Also in September, Google agreed to pay $1.1 billion for about 2,000 engineers from HTC Corp, in effect an acquisition of skilled hands to expand Google’s line of Pixel smartphones. The new hardware business is a pillar of Google’s fight against Apple. Revenue from a segment labeled Other Revenue, which includes hardware, was up 39%. Alphabet share gained about 3% in after-hours trade.

Intel beat Wall Street estimates for the quarter and raised its outlook for the year. Intel reported third-quarter net income of $4.5 billion, or 94 cents a share, beating estimates of 80 cents per share. Revenue rose to $16.1 billion from $15.7 billion. Intel was up about 1.6% in after-hours.

Microsoft posted better-than-expected quarterly results. The company reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings rose to $6.5 billion, or 84 cents a share – topping estimates of 71 cents per share. Revenue grew 12% to $24.5 billion, beating estimates. Microsoft up about 4.5% in after-hours, trading at all-time highs.

Ford Motor rose 1.9% after the auto maker beat profit and revenue estimates.

Bristol-Myers Squibb shares fell 4.8% after the company missed on profit and revenue and changed its 2017 guidance.

Nutrisystem  continued to slide, falling 10.5%, despite turning in better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

Celgene plummeted 16.4% after the company reported a third-quarter profit beat and revenue miss and lowered its 2017 profit and revenue outlook. The stock pressured the overall biotech and health-care sectors.

The $9.5 billion iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF tumbled as much as 2.9 percent. The biggest exchange-traded fund tracking the biotech industry is headed toward its longest losing streak since September 2015, falling for seven days in a row. Just a reminder, biotechs led a market selloff about 2 years ago.

Tenet Healthcare shares tanked 9.2% following a Reuters report that the hospital operator has ended its plan to sell itself after its chief executive abruptly left ahead of schedule.

The Wall Street Journal reports CVS Health has made a proposal to buy Aetna for more than $200 per share, a deal that could value the health insurer at upward of $66 billion.

Financial Review

Trump Budget

Sinclair Noe — May 23, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

DOW + 43 = 20,937
SPX + 4 = 2398
NAS + 5 = 6138
RUT + 3 = 1380
10 Y + .03 = 2.28%
OIL + .36 = 51.49
GOLD – 9.70 = 1251.70

In the morning, U.S. economic data showed new single-family home sales in April tumbled from near a nine-and-a-half-year high, while manufacturing activity for May fell to the lowest level since September.

While the President is on an overseas trip, stocks were helped by a lack of major news updates related to the government probe on possible ties between his election campaign and Russia. While today’s economic data was weak, investors were relieved Trump’s first full budget plan was largely as expected, even if it is not expected to be approved in Congress.

The Trump Budget was published today. Its official title is “A New Foundation for American Greatness” and it includes big changes to the role of the federal government. It would cut or eliminate numerous programs that the White House says are a waste of money or create too much dependency.

Some of these programs — including Medicaid and food stamps — provide benefits to up to a fifth of all Americans. The $4.09 trillion budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins in October, is the first detailed blueprint for how Trump wants the government to change.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the plan a “Taxpayer First Budget,” and he said they worked to jettison any spending that they felt they could not defend. In total, this meant roughly $3.6 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years.

The Trump budget team made rosy assumptions about economic growth that many economists — both conservative and liberal — said went too far. Trump has proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, but his budget assumes that corporate tax receipts will increase almost every year.

The budget says the U.S. government will collect $328 billion in estate and gift taxes over the next decade, but it also says Trump will eliminate the estate tax. The budget assumes its policies will kickstart an era of 3% GDP growth by 2021.

The Congressional Budget Office assumes the U.S. can grow at 1.9%, and professional forecasters see, as measured by the Blue-Chip survey, see just 2.1% GDP growth. Per analysis from a Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, there is no plausible path to 4% growth, and 3% growth is “unlikely.”

It would require exceeding the record levels of productivity set between 1959 and 1968 or restoring capital growth, productivity growth, and labor-force participation to the levels achieved in the booming 1990s. The independent Tax Policy Center estimated that Trump’s campaign tax plan would add $7.2 trillion to the deficit.

Whether realistic or not, higher growth estimates allow the Trump administration to project that the government will collect more revenues from taxpayers and spend less on safety-net programs, offsetting the costs of the president’s wish list to hold deficits down.

The budget would provide $574 billion for the Pentagon, a 10 percent increase from the last full-year budget in fiscal 2016 and about 9.5 percent more than the budget Congress approved for the current fiscal year. Trump’s proposal would exceed the military spending caps under the 2011 Budget Control Act by $52 billion.

The president would reduce nearly a third of funding for diplomacy and foreign aid including global health and food aid, peacekeeping and other forms of non-military foreign involvement. Also, spending more than $2.6 billion for border security, including $1.6 billion to begin work on a wall on the border between Mexico and the US, or at least between Naco and Agua Prieta.

While the Pentagon’s budget would see a $6 billion increase, the push for more high-priced weapons — including fulfilling Trump’s pledge to increase the Navy fleet to 350 ships from 275 that can be deployed today — will wait another year.

He’s also proposing cutting funding for the State Department by more than 28 percent. The budget also makes use of several other classic accounting gimmicks. It assumes that the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East will cause future Congresses to allocate $593 billion in extra war funding that won’t be needed and then claims to save that amount by not spending it.

On the campaign trail, Trump said, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”  In his fiscal 2018 budget proposal, Trump asked Congress for $3.6 trillion in spending cuts that would mean steep reductions in Medicaid health insurance payments, Social Security disability benefits, food stamps, low-income housing assistance and block grants that fund meals-on-wheels for the elderly.

Funding for Medicaid, the health-care program for low-income Americans and many people in nursing homes, and CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, would be cut by $880 billion over 10 years.

Funding for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a modern version of food stamps that provided benefits to 44 million people in 2016, would be cut 29 percent. In many cases, a higher burden of paying for anti-poverty programs would be shifted away from the federal government and onto the states.

The budget would cut payments to disabled workers by $72 billion over the next 10 years, or about $7.2 billion a year. That represents 5% of the disability benefits the government doled out in 2016. The disability insurance fund was created in 1956 in a series of amendments to beef up Social Security.

Social Security retirement benefits and Social Security Disability are all part of a single Social Security safety net designed to ensure that American workers can live with dignity when they retire or if they become too disabled to get gainful employment.

Far from a separate program, Social Security Disability Insurance is a protection available to all Americans, and is paid for through the same Social Security payroll taxes that pay for retirement benefits.

The budget also calls for cuts to the National Institute for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and Planned Parenthood.

The Environmental Protection Agency, as expected based on prior budget proposal drafts, is set to lose 31% of its current budget, which amounts to a $2.7 billion cut. That will likely hinder the agency’s ability to enforce environmental laws, impede its tap water safety programs, and eliminate its Climate Protection Program, among other changes.

State and tribal assistance grants would be slashed from $1.08 billion to $597 million, or 45%. Those grants pay for states to carry out several federal directives such as toxic substance compliance, pesticides enforcement and brownfield inspections. Some of those categories have been zeroed out entirely, including beach protection, radon monitoring and lead testing.

The White House plan to trim the national debt includes selling off half of the nation’s emergency oil stockpile and the entire backup gasoline supply; a move that would raise $500 million in fiscal year 2018 — and as much $16.6 billion over the next decade — by drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The budget projects raising $1.8 billion over the next decade by opening the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. The idea of allowing drilling in the refuge for its estimated 12 billion barrels of crude has long been championed by Alaska Republicans. But it’s anathema to environmentalists, who have successfully blocked ANWR drilling plans from advancing.

The plan includes changes to a few popular student loan programs – cutting back on the number of loan repayment options; eliminating the program that allows some workers in public service jobs to have their debts waived; and changes to Pell Grants, federal grant issued based on financial need.

These proposals would apply to loans that were issued on or after July 1, 2018. They would not apply to loans issued after July 1, 2018, if those loans are used to finish the borrowers’ current course of study. In other words, a college junior in seeking a loan on July 1, 2018, to finish her bachelor’s would not be subject to these proposals.

The proposed budget estimates that the federal government could save $35 billion over the next decade by rolling back regulations governing Wall Street. The White House does not detail how those savings would be realized. But the administration said an ongoing review of existing financial rules “will likely result in proposals that will provide significant savings to the federal government.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is currently conducting a comprehensive review of the impact of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. An initial report recommending policy changes is expected to come at the beginning of June.

Fiscally and socially, the Trump proposal is a reverse Robin Hood.

Cuts in domestic programs to fund big military-spending hikes would disproportionately hit the poor. Tax cuts would primarily benefit the affluent. The Library of Congress is filled with budget proposals that presidents sent to Capitol Hill and never saw again in the form of legislation.

Even with a House and Senate controlled by fellow Republicans, Trump’s plans could face the same fate. Congress usually starts its drafting process each year with the existing budget and makes additions or subtractions from that.

If it keeps to that practice, it will be starting with a plan that passed with bipartisan support earlier this month, one Democrats believe many Republicans would not mind sticking to for another year. Remember that Congress has a difficult time passing any budget. Today’s White House proposal likely deepens the divide.

Financial Review

Send in the Clowns

Sinclair Noe — May 22, 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:15 — 7.6MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

DOW + 89 = 20,894
SPX + 12 = 2394
NAS + 49 = 6133
RUT + 9 = 1377
10 Y + .01 = 2.25%
OIL + .48 = 50.81
GOLD + 4.80 = 1261.40

First quarter earnings season is wrapping up, and the big-name reports are getting scarce, with this week’s heavy hitters including Best Buy, Dollar Tree, and Costco. Both the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq composite set records early last week before worries about growing political uncertainty in Washington, which could hamper President Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, knocked those indexes back from their highs.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office will release its analysis of the health-care bill that passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. Official Washington will comb through the score, with partisans on each side hoping it suits their talking points. The first CBO score estimated that 24 million more people would be uninsured in 2026, and that number is not expected to change substantially.

Another number could unravel the whole deal.  If the bill isn’t found to save at least $2 billion over 10 years, Republicans won’t be able to use the so-called budget reconciliation process to pass it. Under that process, 51 votes are required to pass legislation in the Senate, versus 60.

Not saving at least $2 billion would mean Republicans would have to start all over again by passing a new budget resolution.

The Trump administration today asked that a major federal court case weighing the fate of the Obamacare cost-sharing subsidies be put on hold again, leaving billions of dollars in payments to insurers up in the air for 2017 and 2018. The subsidies are available to low-income Americans who buy individual health insurance on the ACA exchanges.

In the meanwhile, insurers that are trying to set premium rates for insurance plans to be sold in 2018 are running up against deadlines and have repeatedly asked Congress to fund the subsidies during the transition.

Tomorrow, the White House is scheduled to release Trump’s first full budget. A president’s budget is a wish list, and many of the proposals in it may not become law.

Also Wednesday, the Fed will release the minutes of its May 2-3 meeting. Over the last few week, labor market and inflation data have sent contradicting signals. The labor market supports the hawkish Fed stance. Employment rose 211,000 in April from a wobbly showing in early spring and the unemployment rate dipped to 4.4%, matching the lowest level since May 2007.

On the other hand, core inflation data was soft in both March and April. Today, Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan said he still expected two rate hikes this year. Perhaps more important than the timing of the next rate hike is what the Fed plans to do about its balance sheet. Chair Janet Yellen and other top officials have claimed for some time that they are eager to begin reducing their nearly $4 trillion in US government and mortgage debt.

And while this may be true at the margin, the truth is that though many of them may make noises about reducing the size of the balance sheet, a sizable and probably most of the Fed officials believe the massive balance sheet is here to stay — indeed, most of them schooled in the modern central banking theories believe a rather large balance sheet is now an essential part of monetary policy.

More than one Fed official has indicated that even a “normal” balance sheet as they currently envision it could total about $2 trillion worth of government and/or housing debt.

President Trump visited Saudi Arabia over the weekend and sealed $110 billion in arms deals with the Saudis, with options running as high as $350 billion over 10 years. Shares of defense firms General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin all hit record highs before easing to trade up between 0.6 percent and 1.6 percent. Boeing was up 1.5 percent and the biggest boost on the Dow.

Blackstone and Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to create a $40 billion vehicle to invest in infrastructure projects, mainly in the United States. Blackstone said it expected the vehicle to have $40 billion of equity commitments, with a $20 billion anchor investment from the PIF and the rest of the money obtained from other investors.

Through this equity and debt financing, Blackstone expects to invest in over $100 billion of infrastructure projects. Today, Trump visited Israel. Next up, the Pope.

Oil prices moved higher on rising confidence that top exporters will this week agree to extend supply curbs, or even deeper cuts. However, energy companies lagged. Iraq announced this afternoon, that it will back a proposal from Saudi Arabia and Russia to extend output cuts for nine months, removing one of the last remaining obstacles to an agreement at the OPEC meeting in Vienna this week.

Iraq, the second largest producer in OPEC, has the worst record of compliance with its pledged cuts, pumping about 80,000 more barrels of oil a day than permitted during the first quarter.

The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous decision on where patent lawsuits may be filed, a setback to patent trolls, or companies that buy patents not to use them but to demand royalties and sue for damages. Such companies have often sued in remote federal courts that have a reputation for friendliness to plaintiffs.

More than 40 percent of patent lawsuits, for instance, are filed in a federal court in East Texas. In recent years, a single judge based in Marshall, Texas, oversaw about a quarter of all patent cases nationwide, more than the number handled by all federal judges in California, Florida and New York combined. The decision was a victory for big technology companies and other patent holders, which have complained about what they called forum shopping in patent cases.

The case, TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods raised the question of whether companies could sue essentially anywhere their products are sold, or in the jurisdiction where it resides.  Today’s Supreme Court decision won’t eliminate patent trolling but it will probably limit the practice.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court rejected two North Carolina congressional districts, saying Republican lawmakers relied too heavily on race when drawing them. The gerrymandered voting districts were used until the 2014 election. The case produced an unusual split: Justice Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most conservative justice, joined the court’s four liberals in the majority.

Ford Motor replaced its chief executive, Mark Fields, and vowed to catch up in the race to build self-driving cars and define a new era in personal mobility.  Jim Hackett, who had overseen the Ford subsidiary that works on autonomous vehicles, immediately takes over as the new CEO.

Fields came under fire from investors and the company’s board for failing to expand the company’s core auto business and for lagging in developing the high-tech cars of the future. But for a Ford CEO, stock price is Job One; Fields’ biggest transgression during his 3-year tenure as Ford CEO was a 40% drop in Ford’s share price.

Hackett said the board had given him a free hand to transform the nation’s No. 2 automaker, including seeking alliances with Silicon Valley firms, changing its product lineup, and divesting itself of unprofitable global operations.

US-based Huntsman Corp. and Switzerland’s Clariant are combining to create a chemical manufacturer with a market value of more than $14 billion. The deal creates a global specialty chemicals company that is 52% owned by Clariant shareholders and valued at about $20 billion when including debt. Clariant makes aircraft de-icing fluids, pesticide ingredients, and plastic coloring. Huntsman makes chemicals used in paint, clothing, and construction.

In the past 30 days, about 40 percent of the Midwest got twice the amount of normal rainfall, with soils saturated from Arkansas to Ohio. While spring showers usually benefit crops, the precipitation has come fast enough to flood some corn and rice fields and trigger quality concerns about maturing wheat. Bad conditions got worse with rain on Friday. There are lakes in some fields.

Planting was off to a fast start in the second half of April, before 10 inches of May rainfall and lower temperatures erased early optimism. Corn and wheat are headed for monthly gains on the Chicago Board of Trade while rough-rice futures are headed for the biggest such advance in six years. Even with the challenges, farmers have made speedy work of planting.

U.S. sowing of corn, soybeans and spring wheat was ahead or even with the five-year average as of May 14, while corn emergence was behind schedule.

For years, Citigroup employees suspected that millions of dollars that the bank was moving to Mexico might be suspicious. Yet the bank failed to sufficiently alert regulators or step up its monitoring for money laundering. From 2007 to 2012, the banking unit generated about 18,000 alerts of suspicious transactions among the 30 million Mexico remittances it processed, yet the bank conducted fewer than 10 investigations.

Today, Citigroup agreed to pay $97 million to settle an investigation into Banamex USA. In exchange, the Justice Department will not charge the bank criminally for the misdeeds of Banamex USA, based in California.

After 146 years, the Greatest Show on Earth, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus took its final bow. An army of circus performers and technicians end a tradition that first had its roots in 1871 under showman P. T. Barnum. The circus animals, lions, tigers, and bears will be sent to sanctuaries or to work in European circuses.

And if you’re looking for the clowns, well you can find a reasonable facsimile in Washington DC.