This weekend’s Fair Game pulled out the old slide rule and got mathy on us, looking at the proliferation of companies these days reporting results “not based on generally accepted accounting principles” in an effort to “steer investors instead to massaged calculations that produce a better outcome.” How massaged? Try turning losses into profits, often by excluding some of their “costs of doing business” – NYTimes
The SEC’s giving itself and other regulators more time to study the safeguards put in place after the 2010 Flash Crash by extending for one year “the pilot program created to combat drastic stock market fluctuations” (aka, the limit up-limit down plan) – Law360
Some reflections on the state of the renewable energy industry on the inauspicious occasion of the fall of SunEdison, including comparisons to other bubbling fields (think 90’s-era telecomm) that were too good to be true, at least for the “first movers of the revolution” – NYTimes
Even as government-bond yields [finally] creep higher, some investors fear that “the recent bond selloff is just the latest in a series of false starts” (this has happened 3 of the last 4 years, only to rather quickly reverse course) and not a sign of economic growth and inflation – WSJ and Bloomberg
VW’s 2015 results help better define the scope of its anticipated emissions-scandal losses. The German automaker’s set aside a staggering $18 billion to “cover the cost of fines, legal claims, and recalls in the United States and other countries related to diesel emissions cheating” – NYTimes
Airbus is taking an interesting, almost Trojan-horse-like tack in its ongoing battle with Boeing: building a factory in Mobile, Alabama in order to reap some benefits from the recently resurrected Export-Import Bank, long a Boeing favorite – WSJ
Philips has been looking for some time to shed its lighting business, but the more likely plan these days is an IPO – NYTimes
Home Depot has argued that a recent 7th Circuit decision in a PF Chang’s data breach case doesn’t confer jurisdiction on a group of banks who the retailer argues face “no risk of future fraudulent charges that [they] need to insure against” – Law360
You may still be “wasted away” there, but it’s more likely a result of the Margaritaville empire’s design to extract every last flip-flop lovin’ nickel you’ve got on you than it is even your own damn fault – NYTimes
An unidentified fan of the national pastime has dropped a cool $3.26 million for a group of documents authored in 1857 by Daniel “Doc” Adams—the pioneering short stop for the NY Knickerbockers—that established a basic set of rules for the game that survive to this day – NYTimes