Simone Foxman

In its quarterly earnings report yesterday, Barnes & Noble announced that it would stop manufacturing its line of Nook e-readers in-house.  Instead, it will farm out the production of new tablets to third parties, which it will maintain through branded content deals. In reality, B&N should go further, relinquishing just about any pretense at hardware and focusing on translating what it does best in the print space to the digital space: books.

The heady expectations that fueled the recent bull market are starting to fade. After a sharp run up in financial markets, more bearish analysts and business people are coming back to the idea that we’ve hit a new normal—one that will be fraught with financial turbulence, protectionist policies and sluggish trade for years to come.

Want a government bailout? It’s all about getting taxpayer skin in the game, according to phone conversations between two senior managers at the now defunct Anglo Irish Bank, which were released over the weekend by the Independent.

Two-and-a-half years after it took a bailout and embarked on a plan to turn its economy around, Portugal has made deep economic reforms. Those reforms helped cripple its economic growth—in the first quarter of the year, GDP fell 0.4% from the previous quarter, and was down 4.0% from a year earlier. But Portugal’s government is hoping that the pain endured has laid the foundation for growth, and has even returned to the open markets to issue debt.

Greece, although it’s shown some signs of drawing foreign investment, is still in pretty awful shape. And it’s gotten even worse today; yields on government bonds jumped 80 basis points, after new concerns about the country’s political stability.

Tired of old-fangled investments? Had it up to here with Bernanke-induced market panics? Just want to pile on the risk already? We have a solution: Invest in disaster!

US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shook markets yesterday with a speech that laid down a timeline for the Fed to wind down its quantitative easing (QE) program. But his pronouncements are having a very strange effect.

Short on time and savvy with social media, young professionals have been some of the first to adopt Tinder, a dating app launched in October. The app, available on iPhones and iPads, lets you decide—based on a few details and a couple of pictures—whether a person within a certain radius of you is “dateable.”

Slow global growth and high energy prices have hit demand for Fedex’s most expensive international shipping services, the company said today after reporting quarterly earnings. Though air cargo is now a $98 billion industry, the company is still scrambling to adjust to what it calls a “sea change” in the way goods are moved around the world.

Somalia—once a hotbed of piratical unrest—is quickly losing its title to Nigeria. This year more than three times as many pirate attacks have occurred in the Gulf of Guinea, off West Africa, as in the waters around Somalia on the eastern coast. A new report (pdf) published today by the International Maritime Burea, Oceans Beyond Oceans, and Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Programme shows that piracy is on the rise in waters off the coasts of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire—generally with Nigerian attackers—and the attacks often prove more violent. Of 120 attacks reported so far in 2013, 22 were Nigeria-related incidents while only 7 were Somalia-related incidents.

Is it time to slow down high-frequency trading? A new study says yes (pdf). Despite arguments that it provides liquidity in markets, researchers from the University of Michigan argue that it harms the average investor.

A report (Spanish) that American telecom giant AT&T had been considering the purchase of Spanish carrier Telefónica sent shares of the latter as much as 3% higher today. And even though the news was that the Spanish government had rejected the acquisition—and Telefonica quickly denied the existence of any discussions—the report has raised speculation that non-European firms could take a closer interest in buying up some of the region’s corporate giants at a discount.

Iceland is rethinking its desire to become a member of the European Union, putting talks with the European bloc on hold for the time being. Although it had completed about a third of the accession negotiations, polls indicate the Icelandic people don’t want their country to become part of the EU.

Money may not be everything, but it’s probably more than you think. In fact, the effects of moolah on the mind are so strong that money can make you a bad person without realizing it.

Emerging market economies are scurrying to shield themselves from a sell-off in global markets. With their currencies weakening against the dollar as money floods into safe havens, their central banks are taking action.

Today, Nicaragua’s parliament is expected to approve proposals by a Chinese consortium to build a canal across the country to rival that of Panama. (Update: The plan has been approved.) The $40 billion project could double Nicaragua’s GDP and create 40,000 construction jobs over an 11-year construction period.

In under 24 hours, the Greek government has twice made headlines… about privatization. First, it failed to sell DEPA, the state-owned gas monopoly, in a deal fraught with intrigue. Second, it announced the sudden closure of state broadcaster ERT starting at midnight local time tonight, so that it could fire as many as 2,600 people.

Renewed violence in Istanbul’s Taksim Square today has reignited concern that the situation in Turkey could cause the country lasting economic damage. And for the average Turk, there’s one indicator that symbolizes the strength of the economy and could call into question popular support for prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: the exchange rate between the Turkish lira and the US dollar.

High-speed traders have a distinct advantage in the way Thomson Reuters distributes its University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, a monthly report compiled by Thomson Reuters and the university. In court documents filed last week, the data provider revealed that it distributes data to “‘ultra-low latency’ subscribers” at 9:54:58 AM ET. That’s a full two seconds before most of its subscribers get access to the data at 9:55:00. Non-subscribers are supposed to get access to the data at 10:00:00 AM ET, but the data is widely shared well before then.

Prices are still falling in Greece, but not drastically. Data released today showed that the country’s consumer price index, calculated to compare between eurozone countries, fell by 0.3% in May. In April, the CPI fell by 0.6%. By comparison, inflation in the euro area as a whole is a modest 1.4%.

Although the report from its southern neighbor may have received more hype, Canada’s monthly jobs report was probably more exciting. The North American economy added 95,000 jobs in May on a seasonally adjusted basis. That’s the most jobs it’s added in any single month since August 2002, when the economy grew by 95,100 jobs.

The Washington Post and Guardian report that the US National Security Agency had developed ties with some of the world’s largest technology and social media companies that allowed the NSA to sift through data about users in a program called Prism.

The Japanese yen suddenly strengthened against the dollar and the euro around noon Eastern time today. At 12:05 ET, $1 was worth 98.21 yen. At 12:27 ET, it was 96.01. Over the course of that time, the dollar weakened by more than 3% against the yen.

Update 10:05 AM ET: The European Central Bank (ECB) decided to hold rates steady at 0.5% today, after a 25 basis point cut in May.