published Jun 14th 2016, 8:00 am, by Matt Levine (Bloomberg View) — LinkedSoft. The most terrifying slide in the investor presentation for Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn features this bubble: The archetypal joke about the deal is an image of the old Microsoft Clippy saying “I’d Like to Add you

published Jun 14th 2016, 5:43 pm, by Alison Vekshin (Bloomberg) — California has overtaken France as the world’s sixth-largest economy, fueled by strong growth and the U.S. dollar’s gains against foreign currencies, state data released Tuesday show. The most-populous U.S. state, with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion, has

published Jun 13th 2016, 4:58 pm, by Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg) — Peabody Energy Corp. is set to pay President Barack Obama’s Harvard Law School mentor $435,000 this year to help the bankrupt coal producer challenge the administration’s signature environmental law. The payments to Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert

published Jun 13th 2016, 5:22 pm, by Joel Rosenblatt (Bloomberg) — FedEx Corp. took advantage of its “legitimate” corporate identity, size and sophistication to engage in criminal behavior by delivering illegal prescriptions from Internet drug stores, federal prosecutors said at a trial. The government will rely on “dozens and dozens”

published Jun 13th 2016, 5:09 pm, by Inyoung Hwang and Joseph Ciolli (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks and oil slumped, benefiting haven assets such as gold and the yen, as investors grew increasingly cautious ahead of key central-bank meetings this week and Britain’s vote on its membership of the European Union,

published Jun 9th 2016, 12:32 pm, by Suzanne Woolley (Bloomberg) — For the past two years, a commission made up of 19 high-profile people from the academic, political, business, and investment worlds has been busy devising a bipartisan plan to strengthen the retirement security and personal savings of Americans. The

published Jun 12th 2016, 5:52 pm, by Stephen Stapczynski (Bloomberg) — Crude fell a third day after the number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. rose for a second week. Futures fell as much as 1 percent in New York after dropping 4.2 percent in the previous two

published Jun 12th 2016, 4:45 pm, by Alan Levin and Tamara Thueringer (Bloomberg) — The killing spree at a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, that left at least 50 dead in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history was “an attack on all of us,” President Barack Obama said on

published Jun 9th 2016, 4:10 pm, by Elizabeth Campbell (Bloomberg) — Illinois had its bond ratings dropped to levels not seen for a U.S. state in over a decade because of a protracted political deadlock that’s left it veering toward its second straight year without a budget. Moody’s Investors Service

published Jun 9th 2016, 6:17 pm, by Alex Webb (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. plans to sell excess electricity generated by solar panels on the roof of its new headquarters in Cupertino, California, joining Google parent Alphabet Inc. in efforts to trade on the energy market. A subsidiary named Apple Energy