Markets were in rally mode yesterday, recovering almost all of the downside from Friday’s bloodletting. Futures look like they might make that happen today. Oh, and morning train reads:
• The Bull Market in Stocks Is Alive and Well (Barron’s)
• The Mystery of China’s Gold Stash May Soon Be Solved (Bloomberg)
• This is what legalized pot looks like in New York (Crains)
• This Is Your Brain on Money: How Investors Trip Themselves Up (WSJ) but see Mom-and-Pop Traders Went on a Buying Binge During Friday’s Market Plunge (Bloomberg)
• Is T.J. Maxx the best retail store in the land? (Fortune)
Everyone’s talking about inequality. Here’s how to tell if they’re lip syncing or really singing.
…to state the obvious, there’s a difference between rhetoric and true intent. Too often, what we’re hearing is the same old policy agenda with a new set of words attached to it. Instead of “To liberate the job creators and boost growth and productivity, we must cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate, shutter the IRS, EPA, etc.,” we hear, “To create a path of upward mobility for the middle class and the poor, we must cut taxes, deregulate, etc.”
….
The candidates and the punditry are finally playing some important chin music. But some are singing while others are just lip syncing, and it’s essential that we can tell the difference.
No More Cheating: Restoring the Rule of Law in Financial Markets
The political debate about finance in the US is often cast as markets versus regulation, as if “more regulation” means the efficiency of private sector decisions will necessarily be impeded or distorted. But this is the wrong way to think about the real policy choices that – like it or not – are now being made. The question is actually what kind of markets do you want: fair and well-functioning, with widely shared benefits; or deceptive, dangerous, and favoring just a relatively few powerful people?
….
If you figure that 15%-20% of the US population lives in poverty and most people in their 20s will have barely thought of saving for retirement, 28% of workers not having retirement savings isn’t too bad. Of course, the obvious solution to this problem is a full on frontal assault on Social Security and Medicare entitlements that they have been paying FICA and Medicare taxes for.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/21/no-retirement-savings/26070017/
Kochs defeated in Montana: 6 lessons the country can learn from this rural Western state
Eric Stern:
“The passage of Medicaid expansion in Montana this weekend was an unlikely defeat for the Koch brothers, who came in as heavy favorites and spent a fortune trying to kill the measure. Sadly for the Kochs, poor people in Montana will now get medical care.
Montana is the only state where the Kochs got beaten down like this. What is to be learned from this episode?”
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/kochs_defeated_in_montana_6_lessons_the_country_can_learn_from_this_rural_western_state/?source=newsletter
WTF: Russian Man Will Become Subject Of First Human Head Transplant Ever Performed
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/head-transplant-volunteer-might-face-fate-more-terrifying-death
88,000 Applicants and Counting for 55 Units (nytimes http://nyti.ms/1Fc5I7E ) knock knock knock on the Poor Door
How we got duped into believing milk is necessary for healthy bones (vox http://bit.ly/1yMcS1h ) bad to to the bone (save our bones http://bit.ly/ZXu1Og )
Washington-area population increase slowing down, census figures indicate (WaPo http://wapo.st/1Qfayp8 ) remember the sequester?
Apparently the US Marshall Service missed that discussion about the First Amendment thingie in civics class. Please note that the constitutional right to photograph something on a public street is a separate issue from the stupidity of standing in a t-shirt feet away from bullet-proof vested people with lots of big guns that are trying to do a bust on a bunch of other people who also may be carrying big guns. However, putting up some police tape to keep uninvolved bystanders at a safe distance is a different, more constitutional approach than smashing somebodies camera.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Law-Enforcement-Officers-Takes-Device-From-Onlookers-Hands-300751141.html
Great post on the vastness of space! It is so hard to grasp the size of the everything in our universe.
Just look up at the sun and think that it is 93 million miles away. But even at that great distance, it still provides all the heat we need to live comfortably.
@rd, you forgot that you can solve the retirement savings problem for some of those people in their 20’s by eliminating the estate tax!
price fixing the ultimate anti market?
http://angrybearblog.com/2015/04/darwin-wept-pyramid-schemes-collusion-and-price-fixing-the-modern-american-way.html
seems to be very pervasive in developing countries where a small group of families own groups of companies. while not as pervasive in Anglo-saxon countries, its just is done by a different group