Morning Bamboo Insight: 28 Jul 2014

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

http://www.economist.com.libproxy.smu.edu.sg/news/finance-and-economics/21608754-bad-governments-cost-investors-fortune-trillion-dollar-boo-boo

6. BIG MAC INDEX: Kroners And Swiss Francs Are Still Overvalued

http://www.businessinsider.sg/big-mac-index-kroners-and-swiss-francs-are-still-overvalued-2014-7/#.U9W2H_mSxqU

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/state-media-promoting-chinas-leader-xi-with-intensity-unseen-since-mao-era/2014/07/24/f5517d88-1247-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-do-chinese-dumplings-have-to-do-with-global-warming.html

5. (China) – Artful Dodge: Why Chinese Collectors Are ‘Borrowing’ Their Own Pieces

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/07/28/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

http://www.economist.com.libproxy.smu.edu.sg/news/finance-and-economics/21608749-slowing-investment-and-resilient-consumption-china-are-changing-asias-economic

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

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d88ec8dc-1543-11e4-85bc-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz38iqWKxc5

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/t-m-luhrmann-where-reason-ends-and-faith-begins.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

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”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthblatt/2014/07/23/what-rock-concerts-teach-us-about-creating-strong-customer-bonds/print/

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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2014/07/23/talenthouse-is-technology-connecting-the-established-and-emerging/print/

8. There’s A Major Revolution In The Book Industry That’s Letting Novelists Make A Living

http://www.businessinsider.sg/publishing-industry-revolution-is-helping-indie-writers-2014-7/#.U9RkkfmSxqU

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

http://www.feelguide.com/2013/04/29/75-years-in-th-making-harvard-just-released-its-epic-study-on-what-men-require-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

http://online.wsj.com/articles/advertisings-new-frontier-talk-to-the-bot-1406493740?mod=WSJ_LatestHeadlines

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10992858/The-fallout-after-Comet-crashed-to-earth.html

Commodities

1. Abundant Grain Ripples Through U.S. Farm Industry

http://online.wsj.com/articles/abundant-grain-ripples-through-u-s-farm-industry-1406505224?mod=WSJ_LatestHeadlines

Energy

1. Sun, wind and drain: Wind and solar power are even more expensive than is commonly thought

http://www.economist.com.libproxy.smu.edu.sg/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

2. UK shale licences attacked as ‘reckless race’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fc456c0-15ab-11e4-9e18-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38j4SYiuh