Good news, hippies!  ExxonMobil is no longer the largest company in the world, by market value.  That honor now falls to Volkswagen, which uses gas, so Exxon still wins.

Porsche, which has been slowly digesting the company its founder started with Hitler way back in the day, announced two days ago that it would be increasing its share in VW to 42 percent.  Then today Porsche upped that to 75 percent, awesomely screwing traders who had shorted VW – the most-shorted stock in Germany’s chief index.  No, really.  Almost 13 percent of VW’s stock was on loan.  Some traders are even going so far as to beg regulators to investigate, because they are whiny Germans who forgot that shorting is, in fact, an inherently risky behavior.

Naked German shorts sounds kind of sexy, doesn’t it?