Greece Blinks, Zuckerberg Thinks & Other Must-Reads

After the Fall: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is now offering to accept “most” of the final bailout terms offered over the weekend. Tsipras outlined the government’s position in a letter obtained by media sent to the heads of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank before the midnight deadline on that pesky $1.7 billion IMF loan the country was unable to pay. Sadly, this does not appear to be the breakthrough in efforts to stabilize the country. Tsipras's least impressed pen pal was perhaps Germany’s Wolfgang Sch?uble, who said it was “no basis” for serious talks. Meanwhile, in another change of heart, Greek banks re-opened — but just for retirees (who don't use ATMs), and only 1,000 branches, and only for three days.

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Nixing Ex-Im: Also expiring at midnight — the charter for the Export-Import bank. Congress failed to extend the charter before it left for the July 4 recess. There might be a retroactive resuscitation. But conservative legislators want the bank dissolved anyway for enabling what they call  “corporate welfare.” Susan Davis at USA Today explains: “Ex-Im ... helps finance the foreign purchases of U.S. goods for private businesses and disproportionately supports major U.S. companies Boeing, Caterpillar and General Electric.”

#Quote

“One day, I believe we'll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You'll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you'd like.”

— Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

 Costolo, Out: In a sort of exit interview, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told The Guardian's Jemima Kiss that going public changed the company’s focus to short-term thinking. “When we took the company public, I had an expectation that the market would evaluate us based on our financial metrics first and foremost,” he said. “I probably would frame the way we were thinking about the future of the company differently, understanding how we were in retrospect evaluated.” It’s not a particularly original observation about innocence lost when one chooses the IPO path, but one can only imagine a slight nostalgia for the road abandoned. Jack Dorsey officially takes the helm as interim CEO today.

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Where were we? The United States and Cuba are expected to announce the resumption of formal diplomatic relations after 50 years. The United States is expected to convert its “interests section” on the Havana waterfront back into an embassy. The move would be the final step in a thaw initiated by President Obama last December, in part with the diplomatic help of Pope Francis.

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One day you’re in, and the next day … Donna Karan has stepped down from the helm of her eponymous fashion house, “a brand that defined the way American working women dressed for decades,” write Vanessa Friedman And Jacob Bernstein in The New York Times. She remains as an advisor but intends to focus on her Urban Zen line. LVMH Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which bought the house in 2001, has no plans to replace her as a designer.

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Food Fight: Financial advisers tell us, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. Same is true for food: It’s not what you buy, it’s what you don’t throw away. That’s why, according to a new study, it’s a “myth” that buying in bulk saves money. “People almost entirely neglect the cost of the food they’re throwing away from their kitchen,” Victoria Ligon of the University of Arizona, who led the new study, tells Slate. "We end up spending more on the food than we realize because we buy too much and throw too much away." But the article’s author, Eric Holthaus, takes it a step further: He argues that the business model for big box stores from WalMart to Costco is precisely “to trick us into buying more than we need.”     

#Stat

$162 billion = The value of food Americans throw away each year.

Cover Art: The manager of a national Bank branch delivers priority numbers as Greece reopened banks for pensioners (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images)

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