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Jamie Dimon roundly defeated a move to split his roles of CEO and chairman, despite JPMorgan Chase’s many problems. Some things never change, writes Daniel Gross (who told you so).

The closing music at the JPMorgan Chase annual shareholder meeting in Tampa on Tuesday was a strange but fitting choice: “That’s Just the Way It Is,” the pious Bruce Hornsby lament over an unfair status quo.The song was an anticlimactic ending to a shareholder meeting that had initially promised fireworks. This was to be a showdown, a demonstration of how the new age of post-bailout investor democracy would put entrenched management in its place.

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Joint venture with Manchester City and the Yankees.

New York–area fans already have a bunch of sports franchises to root for, but soon they'll have another professional team to get behind. In 2015 the Big Apple will add a Major League Soccer squad to the roster. The New York City Football Club will be a joint venture between Manchester City, which is fronting about $100 million for the expansion team, and the Yankees, which will own about 25 percent of the squad. The team is still looking for a home and will likely play its first season at Yankee Stadium. Manchester officials are hoping to build an arena in Flushing Meadows in Queens.

Read it at The New York Times

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By Mark Koba Despite the sequester—huge cutbacks in federal spending that were mandated by law in March—some high-level federal executives are scheduled to get millions of dollars in bonuses, unless there's a law to stop them.According to a report released Friday by the Senate Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight, the bonuses must be paid under current congressional regulations, even with some $85 billion in government funding cuts in effect.

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“We don’t depend on tax gimmicks.”

Don’t worry about having to change your tax policies too much, Tim Cook—you’re not a Tea Party group seeking tax exemptions. Apple CEO Tim Cook insisted in his testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee Investigations that his company does not avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes by building tax havens overseas. “We pay all the taxes we owe—every single dollar,” Cook said. “We don’t depend on tax gimmicks.” Cook said he advocates a change to the tax code, and he made sure to note that Apple is the nation’s largest corporate taxpayer. Might want to stay away from that one—the other corporate taxpayers are not exactly what you want to aspire to.

Read it at Reuters

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For $125 a night, I got Wi-Fi, abundant cable channels, and a king-size bed (with four pillows!). Screw the skeptics—this is what makes America great, writes a wide-eyed Daniel Gross.

I wouldn’t recommend the Best Western in Monticello, New York, for a relaxing weekend getaway. But if you want to have your faith in America restored, you might want to check it out.Those of us who work in the media, cover finance and politics, and live in and around New York City are constantly presented with systems and things that don’t work. Over the weekend, the Metro-North train system literally went off the rails. Cellphone services drop calls like they’re hot potatoes.

U.S. Army/AP

Seeking to reduce its carbon footprint and reduce the cost of generating power in the field, the U.S. military has become one of the most aggressive investors in renewable energy.

This gives a new meaning to the term “military power.” The U.S. Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, is becoming more earth-friendly.The Solar Energy Industries Association released a report Friday detailing the military’s recent commitment to power 25 percent of its electricity intake with renewable energy by 2025. So far more than 130 megawatts of solar voltaic systems have been installed in military bases spanning 31 states and D.

Dimon on Capitol Hill on June 19, 2012. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Defeats campaign to split his job between two people.

There’s a reason Jamie Dimon is the nation’s most powerful banker: he’s ruthless. The chairman of JPMorgan Chase and his shareholders successfully killed an investors’ proposal to strip him of his title and split the job between two people, sources said Tuesday. While the final tally of the vote has yet to be released, several shareholders who have seen the total confirmed that Dimon did in fact defeat the campaign. It’s not the first time investor groups have tried to oust the silver-haired chief executive officer. A similar proposal was brought to the table in 2011, but failed to pass, garnering only 40 percent of the vote.

Read it at Dealbook

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Apple has avoided billions in taxes. Congress says it wants to know why. But we know why—and it’s probably not going to change.

Today Apple CEO Tim Cook will testify about Apple's corporate tax practices in front of a congressional committee. Here's what you need to know:It's probably not going to change for two reasons. One is that even if the Senate gets up some bill to "close the loopholes," it woud die a quick yet painful death in the House. And the second is that what Apple is doing isn't really "loopholes." Rather, it's relying on a gap between how corporate income is taxed in the United States and how it's taxed in Ireland.

Using web of offshore entities.

It really was too good to be true. A Senate investigation unveiled Monday showed that between 2009 and 2012, Apple sheltered over $74 billion in profits from U.S. tax collectors by creating subsidiaries in Ireland. The investigation revealed that on $30 billion of that amount, Apple paid no taxes, and on $22 billion it paid a rate of 0.05 percent (compared to U.S. rate of 35 percent). Apple CEO Tim Cook as well as other executives will testify Tuesday morning before the Senate, and argue that Apple is not breaking any tax laws, and that the money saved goes to research and development.

Read it at The Washington Post

As investigations mount.

Billionaire Steve Cohen may be throwing in the towel. After a five year investigation into his firm SAC Capital Advisors over insider-trading charges, Cohen has reportedly considered proposing a deal with prosecutors to shut down his hedge-fund to outside investors and admit wrongdoing, but would not be prosecuted unless SAC broke the law again. The firm would then focus solely on managing Cohen’s personal fortune. Unknown is whether federal prosecutors would be satisfied without a conviction of Cohen himself.

Read it at Bloomberg