Remarkable!

Remarkable stories from the web in a new, easier format.

Every day that goes by makes clearer the parallels between the current financial crisis and the one that led to the Great Depression. Then, as now, the core problem was one of deflation, or falling prices. But fixing it will require more than just low interest rates. This was the key insight of British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose theories finally explained how to end the Great Depression. They may be the key to solving today’s crisis as well.

What Would Keynes Do? – Forbes

Charts predict the past with stunning accuracy; the future, not so well. To those of you who are new to the game, this may come as a shocking revelation

Five trading myths… Busted

THE cosmopolitan Netherlands once stood at the heart of the cause of European integration. The country was among the founding members of the European Union and of the Schengen open-border treaty. With its economy looking to Germany, its cultural aspirations to France, and its political liberalism to Britain, and with an educated class that spoke all three of those countries’ languages as a matter of course, the Dutch saw themselves as the ideal mediators in the European project. Those days are gone..

The Dutch and the EU: A founding member’s apostasy | The Economist

Financial innovation is generally presumed to facilitate diversification and risk sharing. A new paper by Alp Simsek, “Speculation and Risk Sharing with New Financial Assets,” suggests that increased speculation may be an additional effect of financial innovation.

Quantitative Ease by Carola Binder: Financial Innovation and Speculation

I think these observations link in with a puzzle often remarked upon — why is inflation so low and declining? I think this is only a puzzle for those who believe that potential GDP has shrunk considerably so that there is little slack in the system. For the rest of us, it’s the large amount of slack that is the answer.

Econbrowser: Why Is Inflation So Low?

Movies have taken all sorts of contradictory stances on what happens to a human body in space. So: What really happens to a human body in space?

Geek Answers: What would happen to a human in the vacuum of space? | Science! | Geek.com

The collaboration will see Google deliver up to 10x faster WiFi to not just a few, but all 7,000 Starbucks-operated locations across the US. And better yet, if any of those Starbucks fall within a Google Fiber area, Google is aiming to increase speeds 100x

Google to bring 10x faster WiFi to all 7000 US Starbucks locations | Mobile | Geek.com

An analysis of labor market data suggests that there are no structural changes that can explain movements in unemployment rates over recent years. Neither industrial nor demographic shifts nor a mismatch of skills with job vacancies is behind the increased rates of unemployment

Eddy Lazear: The US Labor Market Kansas City Fed

Converting the potential into the substance of victory has proved beyond the world number one. Since the start of 2012, Woods is eight under par overall for the first two rounds of all the grand slam events put together and 25 over par in the last two.

BBC Sport – Can Tiger Woods end wait for a major at the PGA Championship?

A Chinese lending spree of the magnitude that tipped Asian nations into crisis in the late 1990s and preceded Japan’s lost decades is putting pressure on top leaders to map out a strategy to tackle the threat.

China’s Debt Surge Pressures Xi-Li to Avert Lost Decade – Bloomberg

In his new US Monthly Chartbook, Kostin offers a list of the 40 stocks with the most downside relative to Goldman analysts’ price targets. All face double-digit downsides with one stock potentially falling 40% before it’s fairly priced.

GOLDMAN: The 40 Most Overpriced Stocks – Business Insider