News Links: Apple Is Now Worth More Than Google And Microsoft Combined

Apple’s stock is hitting new highs during today’s trading. It’s currently at $494. That makes its market cap ($460 billion) greater than Google ($198 billion) and Microsoft ($257 billion) combined.

The credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of almost all of Italy’s major banks.

So lange die Griechen im Euro bleiben, werden die Finanzmärkte an einer stabilen Euro-Zone zweifeln. Und andere EU-Problemfälle könnten sich ein Beispiel nehmen.

Outspoken SocGen strategist Albert Edwards notes that there are plenty of folks who earned their knighthoods for their financial accomplishments who subsequently led countries and institutions right into the financial crisis.

Die Hellenen mussten schon etliche Sparrunden verkraften. Auch das neue Programm verlangt ihnen viel ab. Hier ein Blick, wie und wo sich die Einsparungen auswirken.

The creditor nations may feel like they have the moral authority to shove around Greece, but they are wrong. They have neither the moral authority nor the actual, operational authority. Greece can hurt them as much as they can hurt Greece. It will be tough going for Greece after a default. But not necessarily much worse than the situation Greece is already facing.

"We can get by without being under the German jackboot," Karatzaferis said in a press conference following the announcement. "Like all Greeks, I am very irritated …. by this humiliation. They have stolen our pride. I cannot tolerate this. I cannot allow it, even if I have to starve." ("Greek coalition party to oppose austerity measures", AP)

Dr Bissoon says that when he first started offering testosterone therapy, he thought most of his clients would be gym rats hoping to build Arnold Schwarzenegger-style physiques. "I was surprised that 90 per cent of my patients have some involvement in the finance industry," he says. "They are upper-level management and most of them are in their 30s and 40s."

The entire ECB swap operation sounds like magical monetary theory. But nothing really gets swapped except digits in databases.

According to Capital Economics, both the Czech Republic and Hungary have real reason to worry – with the Czech Republic likely to be the first country in the region to fall back into recession.

On Wednesday, FT Alphaville met Yves Smith, proprietor of the blog Naked Capitalism. Ms Smith is the author of the book ECONned: How unenlightened self interest undermined democracy and corrupted capitalism. Nabbing the quietest table we could find at Candle 79, we asked her a few questions about Naked Capitalism, the blogosphere, bankers, and bonuses… as well as what she does for fun.

there are 7 million people under some kind of correctional supervision in the United States

We Americans think of our rural American heartland as a lovely pastoral backdrop, but these days some marginally employed white families in places like Yamhill seem to be replicating the pathologies that have devastated many African-American families over the last generation or two. One scourge has been drug abuse. In rural America, it’s not heroin but methamphetamine; it has shattered lives in Yamhill and left many with criminal records that make it harder to find good jobs. With parents in jail, kids are raised on the fly.

marriage numbers for prime-age adults in the white working class have deteriorated to the point of indistinguishability from the numbers for all working class Americans regardless of race and ethnicity. Ditto for the numbers for children living at home with both parents, ditto for labor force participation by prime-age men, ditto for full-time work by prime-age adults. While the white working class remains somewhat less likely to be arrested for violent crimes than the working class generally, that gap is closing fast.

Underemployment rates were lowest — below 12% — in North and South Dakota in 2011. A group of five states, including two of the most populous, California and Florida, had the highest underemployment rates in the country — 21% or higher.

By 59% to 38%, more Americans continue to disapprove than approve of President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. However, his approval rating on the economy is up from 30% in November after descending to a term-low 26% in August.

A record-low 10% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, down from 13% in January and the previous low of 11%, recorded in December 2011. Eighty-six percent disapprove of Congress, tying the record high for disapproval set in December.

Here is a deeply silly video of NBC late-night show host Jimmy Fallon and First Lady Michelle Obama competing in a potato-sack race. You read that right. Also a push-up battle, a hula-hoop hip-off and a tug-of-war in the White House, all part of Obama’s "Let’s Move" exercise initiatives aimed at improving children’s health. It’s got a goofy charm and the kids will love it (mine did):

Do I believe in stocks?  Yes, if they are my stocks – the value premium of buying beaten-down companies is dependable.  It doesn’t work every year, but it works most years. My main point is this: stocks are great, but they are not a panacea.  Gold and things like it are needed for inflation.  Bonds are needed for deflation.  Cash offers flexibility.  These are all useful to investors at the right times.

The real winner in this controversy is the distinguished sociologist William Julius Wilson. Back in 1996, the same year Ms. Himmelfarb was lamenting our moral collapse, Mr. Wilson published "When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor," in which he argued that much of the social disruption among African-Americans popularly attributed to collapsing values was actually caused by a lack of blue-collar jobs in urban areas. If he was right, you would expect something similar to happen if another social group – say, working-class whites – experienced a comparable loss of economic opportunity. And so it has. So we should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren’t as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe – and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America’s working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.