Sunday Reads

December 6, 2015 8:30am by

My easy like Sunday morning brunch reads:

• Shiller: Don’t Assume a Fed Action Will Move the Market (The Upshot)
• What investor assumptions are common and flawed? (FT) see also Why Critical Thinking Is in Short Supply (ThinkAdvisor)
• Will there ever be another Charlie Munger? (25iq)
• Why Wall Street’s campaign to enrich shareholders could be bad for everyone else (Vox)
• The fall and rise of technology juggernauts (FT)
• They Can’t Hear America Booming (Bloomberg View)
• Detecting BS (NeuroLogica)
• Before Giving, Check Out Charities and Their Policies on Privacy (NYT)
• New York Daily News Slams ‘Terrorist’ NRA Boss Wayne LaPierre (Huffington Post)
• Why Is “Survivor” Still on Television? (Nautilus)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Roger Lowenstein, author of When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management. His latest book is America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.

 

Your Life as a Single Line as Depicted by a British Bank

Source: Slate

 

 

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  1. DeDude commented on Dec 6

    This was worth the read:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2015/12/01/a-grim-bargain/

    Apparently a Chinese company decided to manufacture in US to avoid tariffs. In order to get the plant located there, the local government “reimbursed” those tariff payments. What if all these giveaways to companies instead had been used to fix the education deficits?

    Is it time to institute a heavy federal tax on corporate tax rebates and other handouts?

  2. RW commented on Dec 6

    Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty
    Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute claim to have hatched a bipartisan consensus plan for reducing poverty. As exciting as that sounds, the details of the plan, unfortunately, won’t be available until David Brooks unveils them at an event on December 3rd. Nonetheless, it’s clear from the materials they have released that the consensus plan will focus on three things: education, marriage, and work.

    In the next few posts, I will attack all three focuses as misguided. Today’s focus will be on education, easily the most misguided of the three. ….

    NB: Partnering with AEI these days is a pretty good way of guaranteeing your results will be skewed and very possibly bullshit. It may increase the odds that conservatives will back one or two findings (or at least pay lip service) but if realistic policy recommendations was a goal then Brookings could have done much better.

    • RW commented on Dec 6

      This is a more comprehensive link

      Comments on the AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity Report
      I have read through the report.

      My first reaction is that Brookings (and Russell Sage, NYU, Georgetown, Columbia, and MRDC) would have done much, much better from an intellectual-technocratic point of view to partner for their working group not with AEI but with something like Demos or Roosevelt.

      I really don’t see what any of the AEI/Manhattan people brought to the table that was useful–i.e., both true and relevant to policy. But the Report would, I think have been much strengthened by stronger and more thoughtful engagement with things like:

      Matt Bruenig: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty
      Matt Bruenig: The Problem With Work-Focused Poverty Initiatives
      Matt Bruenig: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty
      ….

  3. Jojo commented on Dec 6

    I love Survivor! Have watch every show since season 1.

    Survivor is a true reality soap opera, a mirror of human interaction played out on tropical beaches with barely clothed participants. The fluid friendships, constant scheming, back-stabbing, alliances that form and fall apart, the petty complaints, the whining and the strategy to get a leg up are little different from daily life in many companies. Unfortunately.

    Bottom line is that Survivor allows one to look on all the machinations without having to suffer through them, which may well be cathartic psychologically.

  5. Jojo commented on Dec 6

    Not the Man I Used to Be
    By Tim Kreider Sep 2015
    Rage against the natural testosterone decline, or accept the new, tamer you?

    Maybe it’s less a chemical problem than an existential one. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe you can get what you thought you wanted only so many times before it loses its allure.

    ….

    http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/not-the-man-i-used-to-be-20150804

  6. Jojo commented on Dec 6

    Future computing: The Internet of Things
    By Doug Spindler on December 3, 2015

    Some thirty years ago, the personal computer revolution began — and no other technology has evolved more quickly.

    Now there a new revolution, often referred to as the Internet of Things. Here’s what you need to know about it.

    The term Internet of Things (IoT) made little sense to me when I first heard it. I thought: “Oh no! Not another meaningless tech-industry marketing term — like Web 2.0.” But then I visited my pool-supply store and the sales person asked me whether I wanted to connect my pool pump to the Internet.

    As you might expect, my first reaction was: “Why?” I left the store a bit bewildered and spent the next several months looking into the topic of new Internet-connected devices. What I’ve discovered took me by surprise — and I teach computer technology.

    ….

    http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/future-computing-the-internet-of-things/

    • kaleberg commented on Dec 6

      The Internet of Things sounds like a great idea especially if you are in marketing. Just about every IoT companies want you to use their system and give them all of your information. They go out of their way to avoid interoperability so that you are locked in to their insecure platform. You supposedly get all sorts of benefits, and they get all sorts of data about you that they can sell to desperate, clueless advertisers.

      I don’t mind using the cloud, and I don’t mind using other people’s servers to store my data, but I tend to buy the services I want and need. I buy services from a number of providers and figure that they all have a lot of revenue to lose if they get a bad privacy reputation. The rule is that if you aren’t the customer, then you are the product being sold.

      This need to maximize customer data means that simple opportunities are rejected or ignored. For example, when I buy something in a store, the register could send me a digital receipt that would enable home inventory management applications. This would be simple. It could even use NFC at the time of purchase. Unfortunately, it entails giving away data, so it is unlikely to be proposed, let alone developed.

  8. RW commented on Dec 6

    Central Bankers Do Not Have as Many Tools as They Think

    Central bankers bravely assert that they can always use unconventional tools. But there may be less in the cupboard than they suppose. The efficacy of further quantitative easing … is highly questionable. There are severe limits on how negative rates can become. A central bank forced back to the zero lower bound is not likely to have great credibility if it engages in forward guidance.

    The Fed will in all likelihood raise rates this month. … But the unresolved question that will hang over the economy is how policy can delay and ultimately contain the next recession. It demands urgent attention from fiscal as well as monetary policymakers.

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