10 Monday AM Reads

September 21, 2015 7:30am by

Welcome back to the monkey house! Begin your week right with out hand curated morning train reads:

• Index Funds Are Nothing Special (A Wealth of Common Sense) see also Smart Beta’s Takeover (Chief Investment Officer)
• Dear Apple: I may rob your store (Fortune)
• Death and transfiguration: The golden age of the Western corporation may be coming to an end (The Economist) but see Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful (NYT)
• Take Our Solar Panels, Please! San Antonio’s Brilliant New Business Model for Renewable Energy. (Slate)
• Tesla Should Be Afraid of German Carmakers (Bloomberg View)

Continues here

 

 

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  2. howardoark commented on Sep 21

    David Brin in his near future book Earth predicted, among other things, that micro payments would become huge. If 300,000 people were willing to pay our host $0.05 for his thoughts, that’s $15,000 a day which is a pretty good hourly rate. The technology is there – it’s just a big database you fill up with $10 a week. Forcing me to sit through ads seems antidiluvian when I would be happy to pay $0.05 to avoid them which is probably 10x what my eyeballs are worth.

    • Jojo commented on Sep 22

      The idea is great in theory but the tech graveyard is littered with companies who tried to make micropayments viable. None have yet succeeded.

  3. VennData commented on Sep 21

    No economics lessons at the GOP debate

    “…It’s hard to run against the economy these days…. Despite nearly seven years of stewardship by a supposedly crypto-socialist president, the U.S. economy is looking — dare I say it? — pretty good. For all the alarmist predictions about job-killing Obamacare; job-killing Environmental Protection Agency regulations; job-killing tax hikes; the unaffordable gas prices that would arise from blocking the Keystone XL pipeline; and the runaway hyperinflation crisis that would follow zero interest rates and quantitative easing, the metrics on all these issues are better than almost anyone expected…. The United States looks healthier than just about every other major economy”

    http://equitablegrowth.org/uncategorized/must-read-catherine-rampell-economy-no-show-gop-debate/

    Harly focuses the angry whities on Pretend Planned Parenthoods and the media gives her a “win.”

    Nice work Media.

  4. VennData commented on Sep 21

    More assinine journalists talking about electricty pricing that no nothing about it.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-impossible-just-happened-in-texas-2015-9

    “..As the Lone Star State slumbered, power producers were paying the state’s electricity system to take electricity off their hands. At one point, the negative price was $8.52 per megawatt hour. Impossible, most economists would say. In any market — and especially in a state devoted to the free market, like Texas — makers won’t provide a product or service at a negative cost. Yet this could have happened only in Texas, which (not surprisingly) has carved out a unique approach to electricity…”

    No. Negative rates happen all the time in low-usage night because it’s more expensive to start ​nuke plants and turn them off then to keep them going.

    “… Texas has a unique market structure. It’s complicated, but Ercot has set up the grid in such a way that it acquires a large amount of power through continuous auctions. Every five minutes, power generators in the state electronically bid into Ercot’s real-time market, offering to provide chunks of energy at particular prices…”

    No. FERC has allowed identical DAY AHEAD pricing markets in most Independent System Operators for a decade

    Next you’re going to tell me Planned Parent is doing what? That Harly “won” the debate with her lies.

    Media.you have a responsibility.

  10. davefromcarolina commented on Sep 21

    Volkswagen’s unbelievable emissions fraud scandal is going to put the automaker on the bad boy bench as far as environmentally concerned purchasers of automobiles are concerned. Tesla had plenty to be afraid of until last week. I really don’t see this one blowing over any time soon.

    • willid3 commented on Sep 21

      well is this an example of how badly self regulation turns out? because car companies do all of the testing of their cars, they are basically on their honor to do it right. and its not like other companies havent been caught doing this sort of thing before? we had the Koreans get caught cheating on the mileage testing, and Ford too. and companies exist to make a profit, making good products or following the laws, or not killing their customers, cuts down on profits

  11. DeDude commented on Sep 21

    I think this is a very important point being missed completely in the discussion.

    http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9365611/carly-fiorina-ceo

    The purpose of a business is to maximize quarterly profits. In other words the mission of its leader is to deliver as shitty a product as you can get away with, at the highest price you can get away with, and without much thought for the long-term future of the company.

    That is NOT the kind of talent you can use in the leader of a country.

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