What to watch for today
The state of JP Morgan. The bank is expected to report a small bump in its profit. It’s one piece of good news for Jamie Dimon, who is fighting to keep his chairman title. He keeps apologizing for the London Whale trading loss. Wells Fargo also reports earnings today.
EU finance ministers grapple with Cyprus. The messy bailout of Cyprus tops the agenda for the two-day meeting in Dublin. German’s growing reluctance over euro zone banking reform is also up for discussion.
Will North Korea insult John Kerry? The new US Secretary of State’s visit to South Korea is filled with drama because of North Korean saber-rattling and the possibility of a missile test. North Korea has already called the US a “boiled pumpkin.” The US thinks putting a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile is within Pyongyang’s grasp. After the Seoul visit, Kerry meets with Chinese leaders to persuade them to calm Kim Jong-un down.
Hopeful successors to Chávez woo voters. There are only two days of campaigning left in Venezuela before the vote on April 14. Chávez protege and acting President Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver, is pitted against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
While you were sleeping
G8 ministers accomplished nothing. They didn’t resolve their differences on Syria and didn’t come up with a plan on North Korea. Not even a speech by Angelina Jolie put them in a compromising mood.
Good news on US jobs? Initial unemployment claims were down, suggesting the dismal March job figures could reflect just a temporary slowdown.
Former KPMG partner charged. Scott London now faces insider trading allegations. Nobody can work out why he threw away a career and perhaps his liberty for $25,000, a Rolex and some Bruce Springsteen tickets.
Google tried to appease Europe. The search giant offered a package of terms to mollify the EU on antitrust issues. Google, which has an 80% market share in the European search market, is trying to avoid a fine and reach a settlement.
Quartz obsession interlude
Christopher Mims on how cloud-computing firms are about to dunk their servers in vats of mineral oil. “[T]he fact that companies of this scale are seriously evaluating a technology long restricted to only the most demanding applications—places where price hardly matters, like military supercomputing clusters and Wall Street data centers where thousandths of a second can be worth millions of dollars—says a great deal about just how unsustainable current data center infrastructure has become.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
India needs more bureaucrats. They are good for democracy.
Containment for North Korea and Iran is better than regime overthrow.
Taller people are smarter because of good genes. Short people have bad genes.
You should live as if you were immortal. Instead of trying to learn from past mistakes.
Surprising discoveries
Margaret Thatcher may get a street named after her… in Paris.
The Winklevoss twins are Bitcoin fans. They have $11 million worth of the virtual currency—at least, that was its value last time we looked.
A Carnival Carribbean cruise is cheaper than a Motel 6 stay. But you might get stranded at sea.
The New Dragon Bridge in Vietnam breathes fire, literally.
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