Will Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz be the Next to Declare? & Other Must-Reads

 Is Howard Schultz  considering trading his title as Starbucks CEO to president of the United States?

"Howard Schultz brings core decency and critical authenticity to the game. He is a born storyteller who made us believe that drinking Starbucks made us better people. He would do the same as a national leader, I believe."
- Sharon Waxman, CEO of TheWrap,
on reports the Starbucks CEO has been asked to consider running for president

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Here's a look at earnings a go-go:

• Walt Disney is on a roll: in the (very relative) trough of Frozen madness, Avengers: Age of Ultron started a new wave. To be followed by the next Star Wars. And Frozen 2. The stock is up 29% this year. Dreamworks reports earnings too but after a string of box-office belly flops. 
• CVS has made expensive moves, stopping tobacco sales and acquiring Omnicare and Target’s pharmacies, and now seems set up to rebound.
• Aetna will share regulator feedback, if any, on its planned purchase of Humana and how it sees the future of a suddenly concentrated health care industry.
• Charter should also provide merger details on its deal with Time Warner Cable. It is still dwarfed by the new AT&T-DirecTV and Comcast.
• Sprint sure is trying, but it looks like it may lose its spot as #3 US carrier to T-Mobile. How can it speed up growth? 

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Greek banking stocks continue to tumble. Markets were barely open Tuesday that stocks like National Bank of Greece or Piraeus Bank were down nearly 30% again, their daily limit, after already dropping 30% on Monday. Investors haven’t yet found the bottom.

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“The problem is that there is no demand at current levels, especially for Greek banks due to the forthcoming recapitalization needs. For sure banking stocks will fall more.”
- Alexandros Malamas, a trader in Athens, to Bloomberg

Elsewhere in stock market mayhem, Chinese exchanges were appeased as Beijing cracked down on short-selling. 

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Detroit gets a break. US auto sales were up 5% in July, and all but Toyota benefited. Automakers are reaping the rewards from low gas prices; Americans’ new favorite car segment is the crossover, half sedan half SUV.

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The FDA has approved the first 3D-printed drug. Spritam is a treatment for epilepsy, which maker Aprecia says allows it dissolve faster into the body than a more classically manufactured pill. Instead of being swallowed whole and dissolving in the stomach, the pill melts in the patient’s mouth with a sip of liquid. With 3D printers in each pharmacy or doctor’s office, pills could eventually be made-to-order with unique dosages and taking into account a patient’s sensibility to side effects or allergies for the ultimate treatment. (Even pharmacists aren’t protected from the robotization of their work.)

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To stop a loathsome activity, simply remove the incentive. The next person tempted to kill a beloved lion may simply not be able to take the trophy home and mount it above the mantel. Delta and United are the latest airlines to ban Big Five hunting trophies – lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo, the animals most sought by safari hunters – from their cargo holds. Those two matter especially because they’re the only two US airlines flying direct to African cities. Delta yielded to a Change.org petition that gathered nearly 400,000 signatures; United followed suit. Emirates, South African Airways, British Airways and Lufthansa have similar policies.

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Missed the Libor rigging verdict, why everyone's talking about Twitter's stock price or why you keep fighting your colleagues over the A/C temperature? Read our last update. 

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Photo: A rainbow appears over the city on August 3, 2015 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)