10 Friday AM Reads

Wow, European bond yield spikes, new all time highs on S&P500 — it was a heckuva of a week! Wrap it up with out free-range morning train reads:

• Wall Street is starting to wonder: What if everything’s going to be OK? (Business Insidersee also Epic global bond rout is a QE success story (Telegraph)
• Why Wall Street investors and Chinese firms are buying farmland all over the world (Vox)
• Picasso is not just a valuable abstract: The financial worth of any work of art remains as mysterious and unknowable as Mona Lisa’s smile (FTsee also Christie’s Has Art World’s First $1 Billion Week (NYT)
• Outsmart Your Own Biases (Harvard Business Reviewsee also Behind the Buzz of Behavioral Data (Digitopoly)
• 10 Hot Rooftop Scenes in NYC (Zagat)

Continues here

 

 

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  1. VennData commented on May 15

    Fox News: We don’t call the poor “leeches.” Jon Stewart: Let me Google that for you!

    ​http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8606453/fox-news-leeches

    Keep on wathcing those liars at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox news and read those important, accurate, compelte whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth opinion page screeds he puts in there, sucker.

    Why haven’t you cancelled the pointless, waste-of-time WSJ?

    • ilsm commented on May 15

      Jeb Bush signing PNAC letters in 1998! Nothing in PNAC says to think before inserting US military “influence”. Business development for the military industry complex.

  2. farmera1 commented on May 15

    Drug-resistant ‘superbug’ strain of typhoid spreads worldwide

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/11/us-health-typhoid-idUSKBN0NW1E920150511

    Yes and we continue to feed low levels of antibiotics to live stock in this country. Roughly 75% of the antibiotics used in this country are fed to animals, just tons and tons of the stuff. It is a growth stimulator, makes the animals grow faster. What me worry? No way. When the goal is to maximize profits, who cares what happens to future generations.

  3. farmera1 commented on May 15

    Why Wall Street investors and Chinese firms are buying farmland all over the world

    http://www.vox.com/2014/11/20/7254883/farmland-trade-land-grab

    Usually when I see stories about out side investors buying farm land the party is nearly over. It has happened in the past and I’m guessing it will happen again. Crop prices are down 50-60% from last year. But from my local empirical observations land hasn’t come down at all, even though the cash flow is much worse than it has been in years.

    Longer term, water is a very valuable asset to own. Land with water will be a good investment, as things like aquifers, parts of the Midwest, California and parts of Texas dry up.

    • hue commented on May 15

      why are crop prices down? wonder is Burry is selling

  4. RW commented on May 15

    The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit

    The sad fact that no one has much incentive to break the bad news…. Humans are subject to intense status quo bias. Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay….

    To be the insisting that, no, things are not okay, things are heading toward disaster, is uncomfortable in any social milieu — especially since, in most people’s experience, those wailing about the end of the world are always wrong and frequently crazy.

    Yet here we are. The fact is, on our current trajectory, in the absence of substantial new climate policy, we are heading for up to 4°C and maybe higher by the end of the century. That will be, on any clear reading of the available evidence, catastrophic. ….

    NB: Rather a long time frame for most investors but if you’re young it is none-the-less likely to matter.

  5. Jojo commented on May 15

    Google acknowledges 11 accidents with its self-driving cars
    By JUSTIN PRITCHARD
    May. 11, 2015

    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Google Inc. revealed Monday that its self-driving cars have been in 11 minor traffic accidents since it began experimenting with the technology six years ago.

    The company released the number after The Associated Press reported that Google had notified California of three collisions involving its self-driving cars since September, when reporting all accidents became a legal requirement as part of the permits for the tests on public roads.

    The leader of Google’s self-driving car project wrote in a web post all the accidents have been minor — “light damage, no injuries” —and happened over 1.7 million miles in which either the car or a person required to be behind the wheel was driving.

    “Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” wrote Google’s Chris Urmson.


    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/297ef1bfb75847de95d856fb08dc0687/ap-exclusive-self-driving-cars-getting-dinged-california

    • intlacct commented on May 15

      11 minor accidents in 1.7 mm miles is either par for the course or low. My guess is low.

    • intlacct commented on May 15

      Reading too quickly: ““Not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident,” wrote Google’s Chris Urmson.”

      So 0 that are the responsibility of the SDC. Bravo!

  6. VennData commented on May 15

    BR said “Venn Diagram” on Bloomberg.

    I don’t view this as a shout out solely to VennData but all the comment makers.

    Red is Betty’s color.

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