Last 'Weekender' post is here: Economics, Markets, Off-Topic and Finnish. - I will make some changes to my regular post format on Sunday to make things a bit lighter for myself. Hope you understand, or if not, make yourself heard.
Previously on MoreLiver’s:
ECONOMICS
Twenties Tales – Krugman /
NYT
Britain was a model of orthodoxy, returning
to the gold standard and running huge primary surpluses to pay its debts; France, with a weaker political system,
ended up inflating away much of its debt and accepting a big devaluation of the
franc. So how did the two economies fare?
Heavy technology: The process of technological
diffusion over time and space – voxeu.org
Geographical
distance is a fundamental impediment to virtually all economic transactions.
This column, using data on technology adoption in 161 countries over 140 years,
argues that it also inhibits the spatial diffusion of technology. Moreover, it
shows that technology spreads like an epidemic. As more people adopt a
technology, the importance of distance to the technological leader diminishes
until it eventually becomes irrelevant.
The coming big inequality. Was Marx just early? – Fabius
Maximus
Slowly more
people see, slowly emerging, one of the great challenge for developed nations’
societies: increased productivity creates wealth unimaginable to earlier
generations, but its benefits go to those who own the machines. Inequality of
wealth creates inequality of income.
Marx might have just been right, but early. Today we have a note from
Jeremy Grantham describing this future.
At the end see links to other posts about this engine of inequality.
Hayek, Friedman, and the Illusions of
Conservative Economics – TNR
Keynes Hayek, by Nicholas Wapshott – noahpinion
Is it a sin for the central bank to help reduce
debt? – mainly
macro
Bob Lucas on macro – noahpinion
Chart of the week: updated monthly real
effective exchange rates for 153 countries and the euro area – bruegel
Would it have paid to be in the eurozone? – National Bank
of Poland (pdf)
Consequences of the euro adoption by Central
and Eastern European (CEE) countries for their trade flows – National Bank
of Poland (pdf)
MARKETS
(audio) BizDaily: Winning - and losing – BBC
(mp3)
Today
Business Daily has an interview with most successful investor of all time -
Warren Buffett. We'll be discovering how to build a 46 billion dollar fortune -
so have your pen and paper ready. And just in case that doesn't work out for
you we speak to another leader in his field - one of the world's most
successful casino designers.
Weekend Reading for Equity Investors – CFA
Institute
Dividends,
Buybacks, and an Ill-Fated Acquisition
High-Frequency Trading and High Returns – The
Baseline Scenario
A Fresh Look at Track Records and Risk – All About
Alpha
Jack D.
Schwager, the man behind the successful “wizards” books, has given us a volume
without “wizard” anywhere in the title: Market Sense and Nonsense. The subtitle
amplifies the contrast already present in that title: How the Markets Really
Work (and How They Don’t).
Goldilocks Diversification – Above
The Market
How much
diversification is enough and how much is too much? We all want Goldilocks (“just right”)
diversification even though it can be very difficult to achieve.
Is stock-picking just another hobby for men? – Felix
Salmon / Reuters
Managing Expectations & Expected Returns – The
Capital Spectator
Equity and bond markets: Burying the "Fed
model" – Free
exchange / The Economist
If you invested
in equities in the 1990s, you were bound to hear, sooner or later, about the
"Fed model". This, I should hasten to add, was not the official
position of the Federal Reserve but the name given to a relationship found by
three economists between Treasury bond yields and stockmarket valuations.
Fed Must Watch Markets Closely, Official Says – WSJ
Head Of The Fed's Trading Desk Speaks On Role
Of Fed's "Interactions With Financial Markets" – ZH
Deutsche Bank: Universal Banks are a Benefit to
Society. Really? – The
Big Picture
Quiz time: How many of these 12 charts can you
identify? – BI
Everything You Know About Investing is Wrong .
. . – The
Big Picture
Financial Repression Update – vic
duggan
This means
that at the same time that the banks are shrinking their super-sized balance
sheets (i.e. lending less overall), they are incentivized to lend scarce funds
to the government rather than to firms and families.
An ode to the short-term trader – zenpenny
Good luck with that – The
Reformed Broker
Popular Delusions: The bull case for safe
havens – John
Mauldin / The Big Picture
SocGen’s
Dylan Grice’s note.
A Critique of Grantham and Gordon: The
Prospects for Long-term Growth – dshort
Knight Capital Sets the Record Straight on Algo
Testing – Advanced
Trading
With more attention on how trading algorithms are tested following the
August software mishap, Knight Capital's Brendan McCarthy opens up about the
firm's vetting procedures.
Irving Fisher, the First Celebrity Finance
Professor – View
/ BB
HEDGE
FUNDS
Investing in, Not Gambling Within, the Casino – All
About Alpha
Ineichen’s
effort to steer investors away from some myths. From the point of view of the
hedge fund industry, some of the myths are negative (such as the idea that
hedge fund investing is just gambling) some are positive (such as the notion
that hedge funds generate strong returns in all market conditions.)
Why have Global Macro Hedge Funds
underperformed? – Macronomics
Do confidential hedge fund portfolio holdings
generate superior performance? – Greenbackd
Impact of Size and Age on Hedge Fund
Performance: PerTrac Study – market
folly
Hedge Fund November Performance – ZH
OFF-TOPIC
OIL
The Great Oil Fallacy – National
Interest
On the
right, the need for oil is seen as justifying an expanded and assertive
military posture, as well as the removal of restrictions on domestic drilling.
On the left, U.S. foreign-policy is seen through the
prism of “War for Oil,” while the specter of Peak Oil threatens to bring the
whole system down in ruins.
BizDaily: The future of world energy – BBC
(mp3)
Is the
world about to run out of oil and natural gas? Are fears that the world is
approaching 'peak oil', the moment we begin to run out of supplies, misplaced?
PEOPLE
When Babbage and Dickens Waged a War on Noise – brain
pickings
How the
father of the computer enlisted the greatest Victorian novelist in ridding the
streets of sound.
Ayn Rand Was NOT a Libertarian – ZH
Many people
assume that Ayn Rand was a champion of libertarian thought. But Rand herself pilloried libertarians,
condemning libertarianism as being a greater threat to freedom and capitalism
than both modern liberalism and conservativism.
Human
Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase –
Wired
The Science of Your Brain on Alcohol, Animated – brain
pickings
SOCIETY
The
Truce On Drugs: What happens now that the war has failed? – The New York Magazine
The New War on Drugs: ASEAN Style – The
Diplomat
ASEAN
nations are stepping up their fight against illegal drugs as other parts of the
world are taking a much different approach.
The
Suicide of the East?: 1989 and the Fall of Communism – Foreign Affairs
Twenty years after the
revolutions of 1989 brought down communism in Eastern Europe,
a fresh crop of books attempts to unpack this epic story. The story these books
tell is more of a civil war within the elite than of a revolt from below.
Offshore secrets revealed: the shadowy side of
a booming industry –
The
Guardian
A worldwide
research effort in collaboration with BBC Panorama and the ICIJ reveals the people
behind these anonymous companies
CO2 Hits New High; World Could Warm 7°F by 2060 – Climate
Central
Enemies
at the Gates: Security Lessons from a Foiled Embassy Attack – Foreign Affairs
In 2001, Washington
and Singapore prevented a major terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Singapore. Here's how they did it.
The statisticians at Fox News use classic and
novel graphical techniques to lead with data – Simply
Statistics
The Swiss
city of Zurich is to open drive-in sex boxes in an attempt to rid the town of street
prostitution.
TECH
Moral Machines – The
New Yorker
Google’s
driverless cars – the era in which it will no longer be optional for machines
to have ethical systems.
The
Big Data Fallacy And Why We Need To Collect Even Bigger Data – Tech Crunch
How NASA might build its very first warp drive – io9
The Coldscape – Cabinet Mag
Our entire
way of life depends upon the “cold chain,” the network of artificially
refrigerated spaces that have reshaped the modern world.
BOOKS
My favorite non-fiction books of 2012 – Marginal
Revolution
100 Notable Books of 2012 – NYT
The year’s notable fiction,
poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book
Review.
Book Bits – The
Capital Spectator
IN FINNISH
(audio) Onko
taloustiede ideologiaa? – YLE
Taloustieteen ideologiasta ja eurokriisin ideologisuudesta
ja ratkaisuvaihtoehdoista väittelevät maailmanpolitiikan professori Heikki
Patomäki Helsingin yliopistosta ja tutkija Niku Määttänen ETLAsta. Sakari
Sirkkanen toimittajana. (38 min.)
EKP:lle oikeus valehdella ja maksattaa omat
virheensä veronmaksajilla – oikeuden päätös – tyhmyri
Nigerialaiskirje
– Timo Soimi
Euro ei ole tuonut
hintavakautta – euroaikana hintavakaus vähäisempää kuin aikaisemmin – tyhmyri
Pekka Lundmark
osoittaa makrotaloudellisen ymmärtämättömyytensä vaikka puhuu myös asiaa – tyhmyri
Rahoitusmarkkinavero
– Hannu
Visti