My Two-fer-Tuesday morning train reads:
• Yanis Varoufakis: Angela Merkel has a red and a yellow button. One ends the crisis. Which does she push? (Guardian) see also How Greece leaving the euro would actually work (Vox)
• Forget Bitcoin — What Is the Blockchain and Why Should You Care? (Re/Code) but see Bitcoin being forked? (FT Alphaville)
• Luxury Brands Have a Big Problem—Their Own Outlet Stores (BI)
• A solar future isn’t just likely — it’s inevitable (Vox)
• Wall Street is this medical-marijuana bidder’s secret weapon (Crain’s New York) but see FDA Cloud Hangs Over Vape Shops (WSJ)
I think Megan McArdle plagiarized a London Times article from July 1776.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-06/greece-hits-the-self-destruct-button
A new virulent strain is threatening the earth.
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans
Interesting article on front running index funds. The irony here is that Vanguard Target Date and LifeStrategy funds use Total US Stock Market Index so many small investors are essentially front-running-proof. The biggest users of things like the S&P 500 index funds are the most sophisticated investors, the institutions.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/the-hugely-profitable-wholly-legal-way-to-game-the-stock-market
Re: Inveitable solar future
Once the Representatives and Senators from the oil producing states realize that the US military is a major leader in alternative energy development, they will shut those programs down and demand that they lug barrels of diesel fuel into combat zones to ensure that the oil-based economy continues.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Military-Renewable-Investment-Could-See-Huge-Growth-In-Coming-Years.html
Fact-Checking the Smithsonian’s Koch-Funded Climate Change Exhibition
http://hyperallergic.com/219544/fact-checking-the-smithsonians-koch-funded-climate-change-exhibition/
and, the ultimate social engineering cautionary tale:
Hoax Phone Call Costs Hedge Fund $1.2 Million and CFO’s Job
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-07/friday-afternoon-scam-cost-hedge-fund-1-2-million-and-cfo-s-job
Interesting article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the current Greek situation following the No vote.
Europe went stark raving mad twice in the 20th century. Are they about to start the same cycle this century?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11724924/Europe-is-blowing-itself-apart-over-Greece-and-nobody-can-stop-it.html
A few months back I read a NYT opinion column by a young German, the political editor of Die Zeit, that not only discounted history but maligned one of the greatest German writers of the past century while so doing.
The next cycle of European (un)sanity appears to be establishing itself and finding its apologists: delayed a trifle by the Euro project perhaps but still more or less on schedule.
BRs’ Bloomberg column on Lemon Socialism appears to have found some wider resonance, at least if one can judge anecdotally by its reprint in a (relatively conservative) smallish newspaper; e.g., Albany/Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette-Times