Authored by Scott Galloway op-ed via The Wall Street Journal,
Four tech giants - Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - have added $2 trillion to their combined market capitalization since the 2007-09 recession, a sum that approaches the GDP of India. The concentrated wealth and power of these companies has alarmed many observers, who see their growth as a threat not just to consumers and other businesses but to American society itself.
Submitted by Shant Movsesian and Rajan Dhall MSTA at FXDaily.co.uk
Following the confiscation of millions of ballots in recent days, and the Spanish governments' pressure on local mayors to deter the October 1st independence referendum, AP reports that the grassroots groups driving Catalonia’s separatist movement defied Spanish authorities on Sunday by distributing one million ballots for the vote that Madrid has called illegal and vowed to halt.
Jordi Cuixart, president of the separatist group Omnium Cultural, announced the ballots were being distributed during a rally in Barcelona.
The first sellside comments on today's German elections - which as a reminder was a disaster for the German establishment, following the worst showing for the CDU/CSU since 1949 and the worst result for the SPD since 1945 with support for both parties tumbling since the 2013 elections...
... have started to trickle, in and according to SEB, the result is ‘less market-friendly’ than expected.
The German polls have officially closed, and the first exit polls numbers come in, confirming the expected fourth victory for Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, however getting a unexpectedly low 32.5% of the vote, which according to Europe Elects was the worst result for Merkel's CDU/CSU (EPP) since 1949. Merkel's main challenger, the SPD, got 20%, also its worst result since Nazi era 1945; furthermore, the SPD has said it plans to enter the opposition, collapsing the current CDU/CSU-SPD "grand coalition."