Morning Bamboo Insight: 28 Jul 2014
July 28, 2014 Leave a comment
Morning Bamboo Insight: 28 Jul 2014
Macro
1. How Krugman Fudged the Truth on U.S. Debt; By mentioning only the baseline projection from the Congressional Budget Office, he downplayed the potentially dangerous growth of U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP.
http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424053111904780504580043323337920154?mod=BOL_hp_mag
2. Texas tycoon Sam Wyly and the estate of his late brother Charles should pay damages totaling $1.41 billion for their role in a scheme that hid trades in companies they controlled using offshore trusts, the SEC said
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/26/us-sec-wyly-idUSKBN0FV0ND20140726
3. Four years later, Dodd-Frank fails to turn banks into pet shops
http://fortune.com/2014/07/25/dodd-frank-volcker-risky-trading/
4. Heeding 1994’s Bond-Market Lesson
http://online.wsj.com/articles/heard-on-the-street-heeding-1994s-bond-market-lesson-1406494856
5. (Macro) – Trillion-dollar boo-boo: Bad governments cost investors a fortune
6. BIG MAC INDEX: Kroners And Swiss Francs Are Still Overvalued
7. Market mania: a ‘how-to’ guide to hot assets; From spotting the signs to timing your exit, profiting is tricky
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/36c2fb44-0c4d-11e4-9080-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38j4SYiuh
8. Germany: A nation of tenants; Only 40 per cent of Germans own their homes, compared with 70 per cent of Britons
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/14fe8e4c-1567-11e4-ae2e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38j4SYiuh
Asia Pacific
1. (China/HK) – In Chinese shadow, HK fights for its future
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/chinese-shadow-hong-kong-fights-its-future-0
2. (China) – Retired military officials ordered to return extra homes
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-07/26/c_133512259.htm
3. (China) – State media promoting China’s leader Xi with intensity unseen since Mao era
4. (China) – What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming? In the 12 years between 1995 and 2007, China’s domestic refrigerator-ownership numbers have jumped to 95 percent from just 7 percent of urban families
5. (China) – Artful Dodge: Why Chinese Collectors Are ‘Borrowing’ Their Own Pieces
6. (China/Asia) – Winners and losers in the great Chinese rebalancing; Slowing investment and resilient consumption in China are changing Asia’s economic order
7. (China/Consumer) – Diageo to write down Chinese spirit stake
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6ad46aa0-15a1-11e4-9e18-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38j4SYiuh
8. (Japan) – Shinzo Abe faces rising disenchantment in Japan
Life
1. Where Reason Ends and Faith Begins: In the face of uncertainty, being precise about what you don’t believe in can shore up your confidence in what you do
2. Failure Is Our Muse: Writers are the professional losers. Three hundred thousand books are published in the United States every year. A few hundred could be called financial or creative successes
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/failure-is-our-muse.html?ref=opinion
3. Branding gone wrong: When bad logos strike back
http://fortune.com/2014/07/21/branding-gone-wrong-when-bad-logos-strike-back/
4. What Rock Concerts Teach Us About Creating Strong Customer Bonds; “Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people and thereby belongs to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together”
5. Innovation Emerges From Stories We Tell; Plato told us that “those who tell the stories rule society
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrydoss/2014/07/25/innovation-emerges-from-stories-we-tell/print/
6. Love 2.0: Creating Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection
http://www.amazon.com/Love-2-0-Creating-Happiness-Connection/dp/0142180475
7. Many would tell you that if you show someone your heart, especially in business – you are soft. Weak. Prey in a world of predators. In the world of artists and making a business out of artistry, sometimes all an emerging artist has is heart
8. There’s A Major Revolution In The Book Industry That’s Letting Novelists Make A Living
9. To live in anxiety is to be human; Paradoxically, bravery is often found in those with excessive fears over other things
http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/live-anxiety-be-human-20140726
10. Tailspotting: Identifying and profiting from CEO vacation trips
http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1298&context=nyu_lewp
11. C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/07/25/c-s-lewis-problem-of-pain-free-will/
12. Paula Scher on Process versus Outcome
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/07/paula-scher-on-process-versus-outcome/
13. Commonplace Books as a Source for Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/07/networked-knowledge-and-combinatorial-creativity/
14. My Favorite Heuristic for Evaluating Relationships: The Antifragile Person
http://taylorpearson.me/the-antifragile-person/
15. Daniel Kahneman Explains The Machinery of Thought: The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/07/daniel-kahneman-the-two-systems/
16. 75 Years In The Making: Harvard Just Released Its Epic Study On What Men Need To Live A Happy Life
17. Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League: The nation’s top colleges are turning our kids into zombies
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere
18. MasterCard’s Ajay Banga: Why ‘Yes, If’ Is More Powerful Than Saying No
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/mastercard-competitive-strategy/
19. Books – Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118554388/
TMT
1. Flood of Rivals Could Burst Amazon’s Cloud; Large Telecom and Startups Are Forging Into the Computing Services Business
http://online.wsj.com/articles/storm-clouds-over-amazon-business-1406328539
2. Apple attempts a return to innovation; ‘Apple’s research and development spending in the three months to June represented 4 per cent of sales – the highest ratio since 2006’
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9b615ac0-1344-11e4-8244-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38dBAEGxR
3. Advertising’s New Frontier: Talk to the Bot; Chat App Kik Unveils Feature That Lets Users Converse With Dozens of Brands
Consumer
1. The fallout after Comet crashed to earth: Claims of wrongdoing, legal short-cuts and corporate greed emerge in case over the collapse of the high street, electrical goods chain
Commodities
1. Abundant Grain Ripples Through U.S. Farm Industry
Energy
1. Sun, wind and drain: Wind and solar power are even more expensive than is commonly thought
2. UK shale licences attacked as ‘reckless race’
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fc456c0-15ab-11e4-9e18-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38j4SYiuh
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