Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training; Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training

Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a commencement address last week that graduates, and their parents, won’t soon forget.

WILLIAM H. MCRAVEN

May 23, 2014 6:40 p.m. ET

The following is adapted from the commencement address by Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University of Texas at Austin on May 17.

The University of Texas slogan is “What starts here changes the world.” Read more of this post

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Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

May 23, 2014, 2:51 AM ET

Genworth CFO: Managing Costs and Risks in a Turnaround

EMILY CHASAN

Senior Editor

Marty Klein is the chief financial officer of Richmond, Va.-based insurer Genworth Financial Inc.GNW +0.29% He spoke with CFO Journal about how the company has renewed its focus on metrics like cost of capital and leverage as it works to affect a post-financial crisis turnaround. Read more of this post

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Home-Grown Software Gives Tesla, Facebook a Competitive Edge

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

May 23, 2014, 12:40 PM ET

Home-Grown Software Gives Tesla, Facebook a Competitive Edge

RACHAEL KING

Companies from Tesla Motors Inc.TSLA +1.18% to Facebook Inc.FB +1.37% are writing their own software for employees in key areas that give them competitive advantage. They’re foregoing – at least in part – commercially available software. Read more of this post

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Samsung Plans to Introduce a Stand-Alone Smartwatch; Electronics Maker’s Watch Will Make Calls Without Being Tethered to a Smartphone; Expected in Summer Months

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Samsung Plans to Introduce a Stand-Alone Smartwatch

Electronics Maker’s Watch Will Make Calls Without Being Tethered to a Smartphone; Expected in Summer Months

MIN-JEONG LEE And YUN-HEE KIM

Updated May 23, 2014 12:01 p.m. ET

What’s News: Samsung plans to roll out a smart watch that doesn’t need to be tethered to a phone, Google is developing a new tablet, and Donald Sterling will allow his wife to sell the Clippers. Tanya Rivero reports. Photo: Reuters Read more of this post

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Giving Yourself an Investing Makeover; If you set out deliberately and systematically to remake yourself into a great investor, how would you go about it?

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

May 23, 2014

THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR

Giving Yourself an Investing Makeover

JASON ZWEIG

If you set out deliberately and systematically to remake yourself into a great investor, how would you go about it?

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That is what the money manager Guy Spier has spent much of the past 17 years trying to figure out. He believes that most investors pay attention to the wrong things and allow their minds to get hijacked by bad ideas. Read more of this post

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Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Humans Aren’t The Only Animals Stuck on Status

ROBERT M. SAPOLSKY

May 23, 2014 7:32 p.m. ET

As a species, we crave status, endlessly keeping track of who’s more important. This is challenging, given that we participate in so many realms of comparison simultaneously. Who’s richest, smartest, best-looking? Who’s got the newer car, house or spouse? Who can drink everyone under the table, who’s the most pious at church? Read more of this post

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For New Graduates, Path to a Career Is Bumpy; As Unemployment Remains Elevated, More Take Jobs Not Requiring a Degree

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

For New Graduates, Path to a Career Is Bumpy

As Unemployment Remains Elevated, More Take Jobs Not Requiring a Degree

DOUGLAS BELKIN and MARK PETERS

May 23, 2014 6:57 p.m. ET

ST. LOUIS—Bailey Kinney graduated from the University of Missouri-St. Louis a week ago with a bachelor’s degree and a 3.9 grade-point average. She finished in three years, did unpaid internships over the summers and held part-time jobs throughout her college career. Read more of this post

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Stock Investors Standing on Sidelines in Asia

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Stock Investors Standing on Sidelines in Asia

Trading Volumes in Tokyo, Sydney, Hong Kong on the Decline This Year

MIA LAMAR, BRADFORD FRISCHKORN and DAVID ROGERS

Updated May 23, 2014 4:17 a.m. ET

Stock market investors are known to “sell in May and go away.” In Asia, they booked their tickets early.

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In Tokyo, stock-trading volume has fallen each month this year, while in Sydney turnover remains more than 30% short of its monthly average with a week to go in May. In Hong Kong, turnover is also running below average 2013 levels and set for a monthly drop. The three markets are Asia’s biggest excluding mainland China, which is largely closed to foreign investors. Read more of this post

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A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth; That Crispin Odey built an elaborate chicken coop on the back of Europe’s economic slump has only added to the vitriol for what some feel is an ostentatious display at a time of economic suffering

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

A Hedge Fund Highflier Comes Back to Earth

By DANNY HAKIM

MAY 22, 2014 8:49 PM 16 Comments

Crispin Odey plans for an elaborate chicken coop brought attacks in the news media.

ENGLISH BICKNOR, England — The chickens of the one percent could roost comfortably here. Read more of this post

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Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Economic History and Economic Development: New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect

Peter Temin 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
May 2014
NBER Working Paper No. w20107

Abstract: 
I argue in this paper for more interaction between economic history and economic development. Both subfields study economic development; the difference is that economic history focuses on high-wage countries while economic development focuses on low-wage economies. My argument is based on recent research by Robert Allen, Joachim Voth and their colleagues. Voth demonstrated that Western Europe became a high-wage economy in the 14th century, using the European Marriage Pattern stimulated by the effects of the Black Death. This created economic conditions that led eventually to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Allen found that the Industrial Revolution resulted from high wages and low power costs. He showed that the technology of industrialization was adapted to these factor prices and is not profitable in low-wage economies. The cross-over to economic development suggests that demography affects destiny now as in the past, and that lessons from economic history can inform current policy decisions. This argument is framed by a description of the origins of the New Economic History, also known as Cliometrics, and a non-random survey of recent research emphasizing the emerging methodology of the New Economic History.

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Shopping till you drop doesn’t really work for merger targets. The “go shop” strategy of seeking higher bids after signing up a buyer is designed to ensure top dollar is paid. More often, it leads to final prices that are lower

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Go Shop? Go Fish.

By REYNOLDS HOLDING

MAY 23, 2014 1:30 PM Comment

Shopping till you drop doesn’t really work for merger targets. The so-called “go shop” strategy of seeking higher bids after signing up a buyer is designed to ensure top dollar is paid. More often, it leads to final prices that are lower than they otherwise would be, new research suggests. Tweaks to deals like Media General’s buyout of Lin Media may mean sellers are wising up, though, portending better value for shareholders. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

The Transformative Power of Transparency

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

The Transformative Power of Transparency

By DOV SEIDMAN

MAY 23, 2014 10:42 AM Comment

Doctors don’t traditionally apologize for medical errors; in fact, they usually don’t even disclose them. That is why I have long been interested in how the University of Michigan Health Systems has bucked tradition with its Michigan Model, a collaborative and transparent approach to patient safety and medical mistakes. Read more of this post

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Sea of tranquillity: Volatility has disappeared from the economy and markets. That could be a problem

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Sea of tranquillity: Volatility has disappeared from the economy and markets. That could be a problem

May 24th 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC | From the print edition

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A DECADE ago, the business cycle was an endangered species. Recessions in the rich world had become rare, shallow and short; inflation was predictably low and boring. Economists dubbed this the “Great Moderation” and gave credit for it to deft macroeconomic management by central banks. Such talk, naturally, ended abruptly with the financial crisis. Read more of this post

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Fiscal blackmail: Lessons from behavioural economics can boost tax compliance

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Fiscal blackmail: Lessons from behavioural economics can boost tax compliance

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

PEOPLE go to great lengths to avoid paying tax. One popular trick in the Middle Ages was to become a monk; these days, shell companies in the Caribbean are a more common retreat. The gap between what is owed and what is paid is nearly $400 billion a year in America, and about £40 billion ($70 billion) in Britain. To keep the shortfall in check, governments design taxes to be tough to weasel out of. The value-added tax, for instance, allows firms to deduct tax paid on inputs from their sales-tax bill, in effect encouraging them to police their suppliers. Then there are the sticks: audits and penalties. Promising new research in behavioural economics could give governments another tool for boosting payment: the psychological nudge. Read more of this post

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Germans concede that in humour they need professional help

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Germans concede that in humour they need professional help

May 24th 2014 | BERLIN | From the print edition

EVA ULLMANN took her master’s degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subject. In 2005 she founded the German Institute for Humour in Leipzig. It is dedicated to “the combination of seriousness and humour”. She offers lectures, seminars and personal coaching to managers, from small firms to such corporate giants as Deutsche Bank and Telekom. Her latest project is to help train medical students and doctors. Read more of this post

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The globish-speaking union: Language, truth and European politics

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

The globish-speaking union: Language, truth and European politics

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

WHAT language does Europe speak? France has lost its battle for French. Europeans now overwhelmingly opt for English. The Eurovision song contest, won this month by an Austrian cross-dresser, is mostly English-speaking, even if the votes are translated into French. The European Union conducts ever more business in English. Interpreters sometimes feel they are speaking to themselves. Last year Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, argued for an English-speaking Europe: national languages would be cherished for spirituality and poetry alongside “a workable English for all of life’s situations and all age groups”. Read more of this post

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Thailand’s coup: The path to the throne; A sudden move by the army brings only near-term calm

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Thailand’s coup: The path to the throne; A sudden move by the army brings only near-term calm

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

WHAT had begun as the imposition of martial law on May 20th grew into a full-blown coup by the army as The Economist went to press. On television the army commander, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, announced that the armed forces would restore order and enact political reforms—though quite what that means is unclear. Read more of this post

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Computer security: Organisms stop infections spreading by being diverse. So can computer apps

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Computer security: Organisms stop infections spreading by being diverse. So can computer apps

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

ABOUT 1.3 billion people use one or other version of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, and well over a billion have downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox web browser. Minor variations aside, every copy of these products—like all other mass-market software—has exactly the same bits in it. This makes such software a honeypot for hackers, who can write attack code that will cause precisely the same damage to, say, every copy of Windows 7 it infects. Worse, the bad guys can hone their attacks by practising on their own machines, confident that what they see will be what their victims get. Read more of this post

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Virtual biology: Computer worms; A crowd-funded project aims to build the world’s first simulated organism

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Virtual biology: Computer worms; A crowd-funded project aims to build the world’s first simulated organism

May 24th 2014 | From the print edition

ANY scientist will tell you that most of the work which gets done at the conferences they attend happens not in the lecture halls but around the coffee machines outside them (not to mention in the bars that delegates repair to after the lectures are finished). That is where ideas are swapped, phone numbers exchanged and collaborations begun. Read more of this post

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Food trucks: How regulators keep cheap food out of hungry mouths

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Food trucks: How regulators keep cheap food out of hungry mouths

May 24th 2014 | ALEXANDRIA | From the print edition

FOOD is risky. You can choke on a hot dog, be poisoned by a pizza or die slowly from years of eating too much. Clearly, businesses that sell food are suspect. And what could be more suspicious than an outlet that sells food—and then drives away before its customers expire? Small wonder that so many American cities frown on food trucks. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

The Amazon of India is not Flipkart-it’s Amazon

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

The Amazon of India is not Flipkart—it’s Amazon

By Mahesh Murthy, Co-founder, Seedfund an hour ago

One of the worst-kept secrets in India’s e-commerce industry was finally outed yesterday as Flipkart, a broad-based e-commerce firm in India, said it was buying fashion e-tailer Myntra in an all-stock deal reportedly valued at about $330 million. Given that media had published nearly every detail involved for the last few weeks—the New York hedge fund manager backing the deal, the law firms involved and the price and other details—the announcement itself didn’t surprise anyone. Read more of this post

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Nazi pork and popularity: How Hitler’s roads won German hearts and minds

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Nazi pork and popularity: How Hitler’s roads won German hearts and minds

Hans-Joachim Voth, Nico Voigtländer, 22 May 2014

The Hitler government built the world’s first nationwide motorway network. We examine the impact of road-building on the popularity of the Nazi regime. Using shifts in electoral support between 1933 and 1934, we conclude that ‘pork-barrel’ spending worked in reducing opposition to the regime – wherever the new roads ran, fewer Germans voted against the government in elections and plebiscites. At least part of the regime’s popularity after 1934 can be explained by the popularity of the Autobahn. Read more of this post

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The seven habits of highly effective digital enterprises

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

The seven habits of highly effective digital enterprises

To stay competitive, companies must stop experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into full digital businesses. Here are seven habits that successful digital enterprises share.

May 2014 | by’Tunde Olanrewaju, Kate Smaje, and Paul Willmott

The age of experimentation with digital is over. In an often bleak landscape of slow economic recovery, digital continues to show healthy growth. E-commerce is growing at double-digit rates in the United States and most European countries, and it is booming across Asia. To take advantage of this momentum, companies need to move beyond experiments with digital and transform themselves into digital businesses. Yet many companies are stumbling as they try to turn their digital agendas into new business and operating models. The reason, we believe, is that digital transformation is uniquely challenging, touching every function and business unit while also demanding the rapid development of new skills and investments that are very different from business as usual. To succeed, management teams need to move beyond vague statements of intent and focus on “hard wiring” digital into their organization’s structures, processes, systems, and incentives. Read more of this post

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“What Could Go Wrong” – China’s “Worst Case Negative Loop”

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

“What Could Go Wrong” – China’s “Worst Case Negative Loop”

Tyler Durden on 05/22/2014 12:45 -0400

Yesterday, as we reported, in a surprisingly scathing report, Goldman announced that it was now positioning for an “imminent” two year real estate property downturn, which has significant probability of becoming a hard landing as many others, most notably Barclays in recent days, have pointed out. Which is perhaps why Goldman was one of the few banks this morning to trash last night’s “better than expected” HSBC manufacturing PMI report, as a softish landing is now clearly Goldman’s base case. Read more of this post

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Ruling Complicates Global Fight on Auditing of Chinese Firms; Hong Kong Says EY Must Turn Over Papers Related to Former Client, But Firm Cites Beijing Law

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Ruling Complicates Global Fight on Auditing of Chinese Firms

Hong Kong Says EY Must Turn Over Papers Related to Former Client, But Firm Cites Beijing Law

DINNY MCMAHON

Updated May 23, 2014 10:06 a.m. ET

BEIJING—A Hong Kong court threw new uncertainty into an accounting dispute involving Chinese companies traded abroad that has put global auditors at the heart of a struggle to assert control over those companies. Read more of this post

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Scale and Skill in Active Management

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Scale and Skill in Active Management

Lubos Pastor 

University of Chicago – Booth School of Business; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Robert F. Stambaugh 

University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Lucian Taylor 

University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School
January 31, 2014

Abstract:       Read more of this post

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How CIOs can lead their company’s information business

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

How CIOs can lead their company’s information business

In data-driven companies, CIOs—and new chief data officers—should think big and help accelerate bold changes throughout the enterprise.

May 2014 | byJanaki Akella, Sam Marwaha, and Johnson Sikes Read more of this post

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Challenges facing the world’s biggest funds

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Challenges facing the world’s biggest funds

Posted By   On 23/05/2014 @ 12:57 pm In OPINION | No Comments

In the coming weeks, Towers Watson will be writing a series of articles, exclusive towww.top1000funds.com, that look at key challenges facing large asset owners. These will focus on specific practicalities that many global funds are encountering such as the role of internal teams. Read more of this post

Filed under Macro Trends

Key dates in Thailand’s political history

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

Key dates in Thailand’s political history

Thursday, May 22, 2014 – 20:29

AFP

BANGKOK – The Thai army’s announcement Thursday that it is seizing power is the latest episode in decades of political turbulence which have seen at least 18 other successful or attempted coups since 1932. Read more of this post

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‘Foreigners only’ law may dent Korea’s casino plans

May 26, 2014 Leave a comment

‘Foreigners only’ law may dent Korea’s casino plans

Thursday, May 22, 2014 – 10:09

Bae Hyun-jung

The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

MACAU – The casino business is one of the very few industries that has been enjoying double digit growth over the years, especially in Asia, but whether South Korea will be able to take its share of the pie is yet to be seen. Read more of this post

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