$$$Yellen overwhelming favorite to replace Bernanke at Fed [Reuters]

$$$Steve Cohen's Media Relations Firm Hires Bharara's Spokeswoman [BusinessWeek / Sheelah Kolhatkar]

$$$ Daniel Loeb, founder of Third Point LLC, is escalating a battle between hedge-fund managers and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten over public-worker pensions. Loeb, who manages $13.6 billion, had fellow hedge-fund chiefs Paul Tudor Jones, David Tepper and Paul Singer applauding in the ballroom of Manhattan’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel last month as he donated an extra $1 million to a group of charter schools to show his opposition to the head of the second-biggest U.S. teachers union. In April, the union included the four billionaires on its “watch list” of money managers that support groups the labor organization said are hostile to traditional public pensions. The groups included StudentsFirst, an organization that backs eliminating tenure and funding charter schools at the same level as public ones. [Bloomberg]

$$$Blackstone's Byron Wien Expects ‘Trouble Ahead’ [CNBC]

$$$John Thain: 2008-style crisis can absolutely still happen [Bloomberg TV]

$$$ "I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means," Kanye West told the Times. "I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z." [NYT]

$$$Euro Zone Remains At Risk [WSJ]

$$$Nasdaq Names New U.S. Stock-Market Chief [WSJ]

$$$Goldman Sachs has provided “liquidity” to a former executive by accepting some 15,000 bottles of fine wines as collateral for a loan, according to a regulatory filing. [NYP]

$$$Two Canadian women got busted stuffing their bras with nearly $60,000 in a failed attempt to smuggle $73,000 across the border into the U.S. on Sunday, according to a criminal complaint. [NYDN]