Macro chatter: Love ’em or leave ’em edition — Zuck weds, G8 stands by Greece

Need to know:
Yahoo is halfway out of the Alibaba business.

Yahoo has agreed to sell half its stake in the Alibaba Group for $7.1 billion. Yahoo has been working on the deal for about a year, the Los Angeles Times said.

It’s unclear whether Yahoo will use proceeds to pay dividends, make an acquisition or for a share repurchase, the paper said.

Yahoo plans to sell the rest of its stake in the company back to Alibaba in the future.

Want to know:
The day after taking his company public in the biggest ever US tech IPO, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday married his college sweetheart in the backyard of their Palo Alto home.

Naturally, Zuck and Priscilla Chan, who also graduated from med school last week, announced their marriage by updating their life events on Facebook. Chan was listing Zuckerberg’s mother as her mother-in-law as early as Friday.

The pair won’t spill the beans on whether they signed a prenup, Reuters said. 

Regardless, Zuckerberg likely isn’t enjoying a relaxing honeymoon. Facebook shares were sliding Monday after barely closing above their $38 IPO price Friday. 

Dull but important:
The G8 has spoken, but that doesn’t mean the euro zone is going to listen.

The G8 this weekend said it wanted to see Greece stick with the euro, but Germany doesn’t seem to like that approach. Germany has been pushing for austerity, and Greece has been unable to control its budget in line with deals it made to receive government bailouts.

One BNY Mellon analyst told Reuters the G8 was “powerless” to stop a Greek exit from the euro zone.

Just because:
You’ve heard about people pulling their money out of Greece’s banks, but GlobalPost’s Ken Maguire has the story of the Greeks who remain committed to their banks.

“If everybody takes their money, the economy stops,” Nikos Charakaidis and his wife Magda Verouli told Maguire. The couple keeps their $13,000 nest egg a Greek bank as a matter of principle.

Greeks have been drawing down their accounts as the Greek financial crisis has intensified. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported Greece’s account holders withdrew about $900 million on a single day.

Strange but true:
You may soon be able to kiss your mouse goodbye.

The US’ leading tech companies are scurrying to bring consumers devices they can control with gestures instead of touches, swipes and clicks. This could turn hands “and other body parts” into digital controllers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Companies think gestures will make existing computer tasks easier, and give users a way to judge whether clothes fit and browse medical data during surgery without having to touch anything.