10 Wednesday AM Reads

The news flow never stops, and neither do we: Our hand curated morning train reads:

• Drinking Through A Diversity Hangover: What if investors don’t want diversity in asset management? (CIO)
• Things People Say During a Bull Market (A Wealth of Common Sensesee also How I learned to stop worrying and love the missing CapEx (Humble Student of the Markets)
• Millennials Are Moving Out of Basements and Into Apartments (Bloombergbut see also Homeownership Rate Is Now the Lowest Since 1989, But There’s a Silver Lining  (Real Time Economics)
• The supervillain’s guide to saving the internet (Fredrik deBoer)
• NFL Gives Up Tax Break to Keep Its Secrets (BVsee also NFL Will End Its Tax-Exempt Status, Goodell Tells Owners (Bloomberg)

What are you reading?

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  1. rd commented on Apr 29

    We may be getting closer to the end game of what started in 2000. The financial sector is beginning to whine big time over their pay. When I started looking hard at the economy in the 2008 financial crisis, it became very obvious that the financial sector was grossly bloated in just about every conceivable way. The major bailouts prevented it from simply exploding like a pricked balloon, so instead it has been slowly deflating back to a state where it can resume a productive role in the economy without sucking the rest of the economy dry. I figured in 2008 that the financial sector would need to shrink by half to two-thirds before the rest of the economy could fully recover. That would include head count, total payroll, market cap, and percent of GDP. It looks like we are slowly getting there.

    The Wall Streeters are whining about how regulation is crimping their style. It appears that they still really don’t understand that responsible parents don’t let 6-year olds play with matches and gasoline because they will start out-of-control fires, like Wall Street did in 2008. The public has seen no evidence that the financial sector is willingly reforming their game. Instead, we see a constant parade of arrogant psychopathic market fixers getting exposed.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/we-thought-our-pay-would-be-higher-wall-streeters-say-in-poll

    • DSS10 commented on Apr 29

      This is a classic example of income ratcheting and the rationalization of rent seeking behavior to support salaries and bonus’ that were out of line to begin with. Responsible parents don’t let their kids play T ball when they turn 8 years old or let them whine that the game has gotten too hard….

  2. Hantra commented on Apr 29

    It’s nice that “economists” agree TPP is good for all of us plebs, but how can they agree when they haven’t seen anything that wasn’t pushed out via Wikileaks? I mean, I understand Americans are “worse than ignorant”, but not even allowing honest debate among our elected representatives on this, and keeping it all a big secret just seems like the opposite of democracy.

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Apr 29

      A simple rule – if they won’t let you read the contract – WALK AWAY!

  3. Concerned Neighbour commented on Apr 29

    U.S. Economy Stalls in First Quarter

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/economy-in-u-s-stalls-on-slump-in-business-spending-exports

    Without a massive inventory build – presumably due to oil – growth would have been negative, and significantly so.

    Naturally I expect “markets” to rally further into record territory on this news as perpetual “temporary, emergency” monetary policy is priced in for the umpteenth time. Orwell would be horrified by the world we’re living in.

    • intlacct commented on Apr 29

      Did you participate at all in the run-up?

    • Concerned Neighbour commented on Apr 30

      Why is that when discussing the overt manipulation and doublespeak associated with today’s capital markets people always ask this question? It’s totally immaterial, as I have said on this blog many times.

      If I participated in the run-up – which is none of your business either way – does that mean I don’t have the right to point out how crooked things are?

    • willid3 commented on Apr 29

      never mind that being a single parent means that all of the parents must be working.

    • rd commented on Apr 29

      Actually, the ones that are working are often the ones most engaged with their children.

  4. hue commented on Apr 29

    Nobody Knows: Which industry will you change forever? (buzzfeed http://bzfd.it/1JAEGtp)

    A solar future isn’t just likely — it’s inevitable (vox http://bit.ly/1DBieb7) Moore’s law for solar, did i read that here? anyhoo 10 years ago people were saying you need to cover entire states in panels to be the equilvalent of …

    Uber Is Quietly Testing A Massive Merchant Delivery Program (techcrunch http://tcrn.ch/1ODSPJv)

    did anyone watch The Wire? baldimer, charm city lol

  5. Jojo commented on Apr 29

    Your name is inscribed on this bullet, truly!
    ————–
    New Homing Bullets Can Hit Moving Targets
    By Carl Engelking | April 28, 2015

    If there’s an overarching theme for weapons research at the U.S. Department of Defense research agency DARPA it’s this: You can run, but you can’t hide.

    DARPA researchers have recently tested homing bullets that maneuver themselves in-flight to hit moving targets from long distance. Researchers first tested the Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) earlier this year, and expert, as well as novice, marksmen consistently hit a target from hundreds of yards away.

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/04/28/homing-bullets-moving-targets/

  6. Jojo commented on Apr 29

    If You Think the Water Crisis Can’t Get Worse, Wait Until the Aquifers Are Drained
    We’re pumping irreplaceable groundwater to counter the drought. When it’s gone, the real crisis begins.

    By Dennis Dimick, National Geographic
    PUBLISHED August 21, 2014

    Aquifers provide us freshwater that makes up for surface water lost from drought-depleted lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. We are drawing down these hidden, mostly nonrenewable groundwater supplies at unsustainable rates in the western United States and in several dry regions globally, threatening our future.

    We are at our best when we can see a threat or challenge ahead. If flood waters are rising, an enemy is rushing at us, or a highway exit appears just ahead of a traffic jam, we see the looming crisis and respond.

    We are not as adept when threats—or threatened resources—are invisible. Some of us have trouble realizing why invisible carbon emissions are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and warming the planet. Because the surface of the sea is all we see, it’s difficult to understand that we already have taken most of the large fish from the ocean, diminishing a major source of food. Neither of these crises are visible—they are largely out of sight, out of mind—so it’s difficult to get excited and respond. Disappearing groundwater is another out-of-sight crisis.

    Groundwater comes from aquifers—spongelike gravel and sand-filled underground reservoirs—and we see this water only when it flows from springs and wells. In the United States we rely on this hidden—and shrinking—water supply to meet half our needs, and as drought shrinks surface water in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, we rely on groundwater from aquifers even more. Some shallow aquifers recharge from surface water, but deeper aquifers contain ancient water locked in the earth by changes in geology thousands or millions of years ago. These aquifers typically cannot recharge, and once this “fossil” water is gone, it is gone forever—potentially changing how and where we can live and grow food, among other things.

    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140819-groundwater-california-drought-aquifers-hidden-crisis/

    • rd commented on Apr 29

      The Oglalla and similar aquifers in the mid-West and the California aquifers were replenished during the last continental glaciation period when the south and southwest had temperate climates similar to today’s northeast US. That water isn’t coming back until the next ice sheet covers Chicago.

    • willid3 commented on Apr 29

      and those aquifers are one of the arguments against the XL pipeline. cause its going through some of them. and if a pipeline were to break (like they tend to do) that will make that water useless. never to return. leading to major loss of farm land, and loss in food.

    • rd commented on Apr 29

      Here’s where the existing oil and refined products pipelines are. The Oglalla Aquifer has lots of them running over it now. Petroleum products are typically lighter than water, fairly viscous, and bio-degrade, so they are not a major hazard to groundwater although the same properties make them disastrous in surface water. Chemical and industrial plants that make and use solvents, especially chlorinated solvents, are generally far more devastating to water supplies.

      http://www.api.org/~/media/files/oil-and-natural-gas/pipeline/us-pipeline-map-api-website3.pdf

  7. kaleberg commented on Apr 29

    It wasn’t that Gates was necessarily building the future, but he was definitely paying attention to the people who were. Hhis predictions date from 1999. The internet had been around for over 25 years. Compuserve had been out forever. Usenet had been running for over ten. People had been talking about and working towards these ideas since the late 1940s. One of the reasons Al Gore pushed to open the internet to commerce and the general public was that he was following the same scene as Gates. Everyone understood the potential.

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