10 Friday AM Reads

July 24, 2015 7:51am by

My U2 delayed, but still in time for the morning train, Friday reads:

• An open letter to investors who are bullish on gold (Marketwatch) see also Gold Looks Like a ‘Textbook’ Short, even from here (Bloomberg)
• Should you still own bonds? (Fidelity)
• Amazon is now bigger than Walmart by Market Cap (Quartz) see also Amazon’s Cloud Business Rose 81 Percent in Q2, Its Fastest Growing and Most Profitable Business (Re/Code)
• Discovery of ‘Habitable’ Earth-Like Planet Announced (Observer) see also NASA Has Discovered a Planet That Seems a Lot Like Earth (Bloomberg)
• For a Show About Nothing, Seinfeld Changed a Lot Over Its Nine-Year Run (Slate)

Continues here

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. RW commented on Jul 24

    Conservatives have always loved socialism, just make sure it goes to the right sort of people and watch your language.

    Socialism, American-Style

    The great 20th-century conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter thought the left had overlooked a major selling point in pressing the case for public — i.e., government — control over productive capital. “One of the most significant titles to superiority,” he suggested, was that public ownership produced profits, which means not having to depend on taxes to raise money.

    The bulk of the left never took up Schumpeter’s argument. But in an oddly fitting twist, these days the mantra of public control in exchange for lower taxes has been embraced by a surprising quarter of the American political leadership: conservatives. ….

  6. RW commented on Jul 24

    The Return of the Ugly German

    During the long night of negotiations over Greece on July 12-13, something fundamental to the European Union cracked. …What changed that night was the Germany that Europeans have known since the end of World War II.

    …The path that Germany will pursue in the twenty-first century – toward a “European Germany” or a “German Europe” – has been the fundamental, historical question at the heart of German foreign policy for two centuries. And it was answered during that long night in Brussels, with German Europe prevailing over European Germany.

    This was a fateful decision for both Germany and Europe. One wonders whether Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble knew what they were doing. ….

    NB: Merkel seems more interested in personal political power but Schäuble’s policy preferences lead to outcomes quite a bit beyond their publicly stated outlines. How aware he is of this is more debatable.

    “Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.” –Alfred North Whitehead

  7. rd commented on Jul 24

    America’s political incompetence is reaching a crescendo. Maine is now in a bitter legal dispute regarding whether or not the governor can veto bills after the 10-day window allowed in the law. Of course, the easy solution would have been to simply veto the bills before the 10 days are up, but that would have required something other than navel-gazing.

    http://www.pressherald.com/2015/07/23/denied-public-funds-maine-republican-house-leader-says-hell-use-private-money-to-hire-lawyer-in-veto-case/

  8. rd commented on Jul 24

    Sandra Bland was arrested for failing to understand the difference between a request by a policeman and disobeying a lawful order. This was then compounded by her failure to have $500 to post the $5,000 bail, which meant she was still incarcerated 3 days later when she was found dead.

    Both of these issues raise serious questions about the fairness of the US justice system.

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/23/opinions/cevallos-sandra-bland-traffic-stop/index.html

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/07/sandra_bland_is_the_bail_system_that_kept_her_in_prison_unconstitutional.html

    • willid3 commented on Jul 24

      course there was also that jail putting her into a cell by her self, next to another cell where others were kept that were in the same position. but they evidently were in a pretty jovial mood. adding on to that, the jail didnt perform its hourly required healthe check, even though they were told that she had been suicidal in the past (odd that its some what contradictory info, and all of it was recorded by county employees). course having been arrested for such a dire crime she was categorized as a medium to high security risk. not sure why that was.

    • willid3 commented on Jul 24

      i also find it odd that only a few states dont even bother to regulate jails. and we in Texas are one of them. for now. but its not for the lack of trying to kill off the agency that deals with it. but there are only 9 employees for that agency.

  9. RW commented on Jul 24

    The Housing Market Still Isn’t Rational –Robert Shiller

    The housing market …is far less rational than even the often irrational stock market, for a couple of important reasons. First, most investors find it difficult to understand how housing supply responds to changes in demand. Only a small minority of people think carefully about such things. Second, it is very hard for the minority of smart-money investors who do understand such matters to bet against bubble-level prices in real estate markets. In housing, the smart money has relatively little voice. ….

    The bottom line is that there is no reason to assume that the real estate market is even close to efficient. You may want to buy a house if you love it and can afford it. But remember that you cannot safely rely on “comparable sales” to judge that the price is fair.

    • willid3 commented on Jul 24

      yea that would worked out just great. course it helps if one of you coworkers data was hacked at Target or one of the countless others too. having ones own sever tends to cut down on that being a risk, unless your data is hacked too.

Posted Under