Business

Is the oldest business in your state a mom-and-pop shop, or a famous megabrand?

Today’s infographic from Busy Beaver Button Co. maps the diverse range of companies that claim to be the oldest in their respective states. While many of them exist today as modest family-owned businesses such as pizzerias or taverns, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes that some have also grown into respected brands known around the country, like Jim Beam or Imperial Sugar.

Source: Visual Capitalist

In the week when it was confirmed that Q1 was the weakest economic growth for a rate hike period since 1980...

Bond bears have never puked so much in such a short period of time as the $25 billion plus short-cover in 10Y Treasury bond futures in the last week.

In fact the stunning swing in sentiment in the last 8 weeks (with almost $62 billion in 10Y Treasury shorts dumped) is shocking to see, smashing Speculative Positioning from its shortest ever to its longest in over 9 years...

That Italy has a bank solvency problem will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following events in Europe for the past 7 years.

Just yesterday, Italian daily La Stampa reported that four months after the third government bailout of Italy's third largest bank in as many years, the Italian government may have to inject even more cash than planned into Monte Paschi, the world's oldest and apparently always insolvent bank.

While the Canadian housing bubble - driven by Chinese hot money - continues to grow (although its latest near-death experience courtesy of Home (Lack of) Capital Group may have finally pierced a stake through its heart), housing markets elsewhere are suffering from some serious wobbles. Take Singapore, for example, where recently a 4,069 sq ft at Seascape in Sentosa Cove was sold at a $6.6 million loss. The loss works out to 52% or 10% annualised over a holding period of 6.6 years.

Authored by Anthony Saunders via Confounded Interest blog,

Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward said in 1964 in the Jacobellis v. Ohio case, 

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”