10 Tuesday AM Reads

April 28, 2015 7:30am by

Its very much a Two -for-Tuesday in our morning train reads:

• The “Misery Index” is at its lowest level since 1959 (Bloomberg)
• This is Tim: Apple’s CEO in his own words (Six Colors) see also Apple’s very strong 2nd-quarter earnings report in charts (Quartz)
• Share buybacks: who really benefits? (FT) see also US share buybacks loot the future (FT)
• Lessons from the “Flash Crash” regulatory fiasco (Mathematical Investor) see also ‘Flash Crash’ Investigators Likely Missed Clues (WSJ)
• Nepal After the Earthquake in Photos (The Atlantic) see also How to help Nepal: 7 vetted charities doing relief work following the earthquake (PRI)

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    • kaleberg commented on Apr 28

      Don’t insult John Wayne. He was known for his on screen portrayals of government workers and contractors. Really, check out IMDB. (Granted, he once played a Communist commune cadre in Red River, but look at the title.)

  3. RW commented on Apr 28

    News Flash!

    Is the universe a hologram?

    Describing the universe requires fewer dimensions than we might think; new calculations show that this may not just be a mathematical trick, but a fundamental feature of space itself.

    • rd commented on Apr 28

      Cool. I always wanted my life to be a movie.

  4. rd commented on Apr 28

    Re: John Angelos

    I agree with his take on the riots. Americans were cheering the Arab Spring protests a couple of years ago. We are observing the Fergusons and Baltimores in this country today which are a similar response to lack of opportunity and police actions. As a middle-aged, upper middle class white guy, I have never had any reason to fear the police but I understand entirely why a percentage of population would.

    Employed, safe, and happy populations don’t riot. Unemployed people fearing the authorities do, usually suddenly out of the blue because it is the result of years of pent-up rage. The US is still generally a very wealthy country where most of the people live comfortably, so it is unlike to be government-toppling dimensions (France 1789, Russia 1917, Arab Spring, etc.) where most of the population was poor and abused. However, ever-expanding inequality could threaten this societal safety. Parts of Europe are already starting to see this.

    We are seeing the price of economic inequality as well as the lingering racial inequalities today. It is ironic that this is occurring simultaneously with a major court hearing on another major civil rights issue.

    • rd commented on Apr 28

      An update….this is an interesting perspective on Bloomberg View. The peasants are starting to understand that this is a poverty thing more than white on black because it turns out that Baltimore has a black mayor, black police commissioner, and many black policemen. However, it turns out that many of the poor are also black, but by no means all. Even Obama gets some of the blame in this piece because inequality increased under his watch. The aristocrats should be getting nervous because it appears that the serfs are getting restless as they start to understand what has been going on economically since the Civil Rights act was supposed to fix everything.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-28/baltimore-smoulders-as-residents-rebuke-looters-and-obama-too

    • willid3 commented on Apr 28

      i suspect part if the problem in Baltimore, is that as we head down the path of only allowing the right people to vote, and continuing to push those who are down and out even further down, they end up having not buy in with the economy or society, so why should they not riot? its the only way they can get their voices heard

  5. VennData commented on Apr 28

    On CNBC’s dismally-rated Squwk Box (VennData single-handedly keeps it alive when switching over from Bloomberg every so often) when talking about the Fed, some joker texted Joe Kernan who, like a good GOP trooper parroted back this Laffer Curve-esque blather, “There is an optimal interest rate for investment any more or less is sub optimal.”

    OK. “Scientist” what does that curve look like? Flat? Bi modal? How are investor expectations feed back into the feedback that that market price provides? Does it hold firm day-after-day? How does that relate to long term investments? Bond sales? ROFL Kernan and his right wing “economists” are clueless.

    This right wingers make up a theory, with no data and that is physics to them.

    What was the market price of stocks telling you in 1999 Dear Right Wingers? How about 2008? Bonds in 1981?

    Laughable people who should hang a sign on themselves saying “I missed the Obama rally.”

    Joe Kernan’s “advice” is non-actionable. Do the opposite of whatever he says and you’re better off.

    • VennData commented on Apr 28

      FYI: I’ve tried to Tinder apps for switching sides and find it’s easier to re-register.

    • hue commented on Apr 29

      lol, sorry BR lol there is a tender is the swipe for switch hitting and ac/dc? i laughed until i stopped

  7. hue commented on Apr 28

    love ya BR, but no way kochgress pushes through the gas tax hike. i kinda hope for a GOP prez in 16. let them hit the iceberg and sink this titanic and start over. nah, the majority of us will be at the bottom of the ocean, or clinging onto to liferafts

    Notifications Are The Next Platform (techcrunch http://tcrn.ch/1KpYBZB) “Who you are is what you do between notifications.”

    Why So Many of Us Experience a Midlife Crisis (havid biz review http://bit.ly/1bzU62z) midlife? started early like high school and keep rolling

    YouTube’s birfday: Make a wish (the economist http://econ.st/1bacsqi) it’s really a good place to find old music /// The real side effect of a gluten-free diet: scientific illiteracy (vox http://bit.ly/1P2FyW1) how dicha become a gluten mutant? thank Jenny(a) McCarty

  8. rd commented on Apr 28

    The USGS is now including man-made earthquakes in their seismic hazard maps.
    http://news.yahoo.com/man-made-earthquakes-rising-us-maps-show-110831270.html

    The big blob on the Mississippi at the southern tip of Illinois is the New Madrid fault zone is natural and was the site of three massive quakes in 1811-1812. the blob in South Carolina is the site of the 1886 Charleston earthquake, also a natural event.

    The blobs in Oklahoma and Ohio are largely new to the mapping and represent man-made earthquakes.

    Please note that there are several maps for seismic risk occurring. The maps for the least likelihood of occurring also tend to have the highest peak accelerations and are the ones focused on for civil engineering design. That is when the focus really falls back on the natural quakes because the man-made quakes tend to be frequent but relatively small in scale.

    • willid3 commented on Apr 28

      and Oklahoma leads the nation in quakes, by a large margin. but of course state government doesnt believe that its drilling. course that true here in Texas too. even though we have more quakes in recent years than we have ever had

  9. rd commented on Apr 28

    Interesting piece on why economists feel unloved.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/04/one-reason-economists-dont-get-love-refuse-take-blame-great-crash.html

    Some good quotes from economists in it:

    “But seriously, the delivery of precise time-dated forecasts of events is a mug’s game. If this is your goal, then you probably can’t beat theory-free statistical forecasting techniques. But this is not what economics is about. The goal, instead, is to develop theories that can be used to organize our thinking about various aspects of the way an economy functions.”

    “…the critical macroprudential policy tradeoff is between reducing the risks of very costly financial crises and minimizing the costs of macroprudential policies during normal times.”

    As a civil engineer involved with designing things, I need to remember the gist some of these quotes for future use, such as:

    “It is unfortunate that we didn’t analyze the consequences of having people in the multi-story building during a windstorm. Designing the structure to protect people during a windstorm would have incurred unnecessary costs on normal days. It was much more economically efficient to assume the windstorm would occur on a weekend so the building would be unoccupied when the wind blew, potentially causing it collapse. In addition, designing the roof to hold rain water at the same time as the wind blew was viewed as unnecessary as heavy rain and high winds were viewed as each being low probability events that were highly unlikely to coincide.”

    • VennData commented on Apr 28

      ROFL!

      Let the developers leverage up as high as they want! Damn the height restrictions! That’s just liberals getting in the way of my God-Given rights!

  11. VennData commented on Apr 28

    All the “free markets regulars are blaming government again.

    ” The real villain of this story is Section 8 of the Commodity Exchange Act. If this data had been made available, spoofers would have been outed and charged back in 2010. Make no mistake: It is this law that protects spoofers, and should be blamed for the next flash crash…”

    No…

    … They never want to admit that the traders demanding privacy in the laws is the problem. With complete trading transparency, you don’t have problems. It’s like the same folks blaming student loans for the private college lobbyists that are the true cause of student debt issues.

    Open up trading history. Why is it private?

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