So, the investment decision, rather than being simply based on “what will maximise profits?”, is actually based on the manager’s perception of the CEO’s perception of the board’s perception of one group of fund managers’ perception of a larger group of fund managers’ perception of what the underlying owners of the shares are willing to pay for. There are six or seven levels of principal / agent problems between an already quite intractable profit-maximisation problem, and the individual decision-making agents who are meant to carry it out.

“Microfoundations” ain’t so microfounded — Bull Market — Medium

"We downgrade 2015 growth from -1.7%Y to -5.6%Y and revise our 2016 growth from a mild (0.8%Y) recovery to a 2.5%Y recession," writes Morgan Stanley's Alina Slyusarchuk. "The key new assumption that triggers the revision is the signifcantly weaker oil price, combined with a tighter policy response. At the same time, we see risks to our call as being titled to the downside, given the enhanced risk of further sanctions, and concerns over increased state control over the economy."

Morgan Stanley thinks the Russian economy is doomed - Business Insider

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has ruled out cancelling more of Greece’s debt, saying the country has already received billions of cuts from bankers and creditors. Merkel’s intervention comes after the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, refused to work with the troika of lenders – the European commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – to renegotiate the terms of the debt-ridden country’s €240bn (£180bn) bailout programme.

Angela Merkel rules out cancelling any more Greek debt | World news | The Guardian

Our internal body clock has such a dramatic impact on sporting ability that it could alter the chances of Olympic gold, say researchers.

BBC News - Bedtime 'has huge impact on sport'

The ECB does not accept Greek sovereign bonds as collateral in its refinancing operations as they are below investment grade. However, it allows central bank financing to Greek banks as the country is in a bailout program. Erkki Liikanen, a member of the ECB's policymaking Governing Council, said that funding, too, could dry up if Greece does not remain in a program. "Greece's program extension will expire in the end of February so some kind of solution must be found, otherwise we can't continue lending," Liikanen, also the governor of Finland's central bank, told public broadcaster YLE.

The ECB and Germany are playing hardball with Greece - Business Insider

The Congressional Budget Office’s recent forecast identifies the past few years as the largest period of deficit reduction since the end of World War II, with a massive $4 trillion slashed from budgets over a 10-year period, more than called for by deficit blueprints like Bowles-Simpson.

A $1 trillion spending spree is exactly what the US needs right now - Business Insider

CBO also found a $600 billion drop in federal health care spending estimates, even with the coverage expansions in Obamacare. Since everyone agrees that health care represents the biggest driver of future deficits, this dramatic slowdown throws cold water on the often-hyped fears of runaway debt. In fact, the only reason CBO sees a return to higher deficits down the road comes from higher interest payments on the current debt, a dubious projection.

A $1 trillion spending spree is exactly what the US needs right now - Business Insider

The anaemic recovery from the Global Crisis and the downward trend in real interest rates since 1980 have revived interest in the idea of secular stagnation. This column argues that if the US, UK, and Eurozone had not pursued contractionary fiscal policies from 2010 onwards, the recovery would not have been so slow and nominal interest rates would no longer be at the zero lower bound. Expanding the stock of government debt would have ameliorated, not worsened, the shortage of safe assets.

Fiscal policy explains the weak recovery | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal

The relentless fall in longer term U.S. Treasury yields doesn't signal declining U.S. inflation expectations, but instead is a side effect of funds fleeing low yields elsewhere, say analysts.

Fleeing capital clips wings on US yields

When the European Central Bank president announced a program on Jan. 22 to buy 60 billion euros ($68 billion) of assets a month for at least 19 months to avert deflation, he surprised investors with the size of the stimulus. He also provided more details than anticipated. Yet analysts poring over the ECB’s statements are finding that several critical points remain unclear.

ECB Bond-Buying Plan Has Investors Questioning How It All Works - Bloomberg Business

The Acticheck Assure is a wrist-worn band packed with sensors that monitor your wellbeing. If it detects uncharacteristic behaviour it warns you via an alarm and alerts emergency contacts by text and email. It can even drop a phone call to family, friends or work colleagues. Additonal key details, such as location and relevant medical info, will also be relayed to the contacts to make sure they have everything they need to provide the most effective help.

Acticheck Assure hands-on | TrustedReviews

The latest, most egregious example is the penthouse at ultra-luxury highrise One57, which just sold for a record $100.5 million. That apartment will receive a 95% tax cut, saving the mystery buyer an estimated $360,000 in taxes annually, according to The New York Times.

One57 has a 95% tax break - Business Insider

The premise of the show is as follows: 20 volunteers are dumped in the wilderness, liberated from all the tools and comforts of modern life, then filmed tripping towards breaking point as they forage for food, make fire and build a functioning society, all helped by a hasty bit of survival training from archaeologist and former Navy Seal Klint Janulis.

10,000 BC: 'They'd face disaster in their modern lives, never mind their prehistoric ones' | Television & radio | The Guardian

According to JPM, the total universe of government bonds traded with a negative yield was $3.6tr last week or 16 per cent of the JPM Global Government Bond Index. It’s an answer in itself, really. Anyway, here’s a list of those willing/ forced to buy those negative yielding government bonds

Negative govvies: why would ya? | FT Alphaville

The fear is that, as international use of the yuan grows, China will start to provide pariah states with a means to evade Western financial sanctions, thus subverting the diplomatic order as well as the financial one. In fact the evidence suggests China's goals are less sinister. It is not seeking to displace established multilateral institutions, but to gain the power befitting an economy of its size. Moreover, its activism is partly a response to America's reprehensible failure to ratify reforms to give big emerging markets greater say at the World Bank and the IMF

China and the world: Yuan for all - Business Insider

One result of this global monetary-policy activism has been a rebellion among pseudo-economists and market hacks in recent years. This assortment of “Austrian” economists, radical monetarists, gold bugs, and bitcoin fanatics has repeatedly warned that such a massive increase in global liquidity would lead to hyperinflation, the U.S. dollar’s collapse, sky-high gold prices, and the eventual demise of fiat currencies at the hands of digital cryptocurrency counterparts. None of these dire predictions has been borne out by events.

What the market doom-and-gloomers fail to grasp about anemic growth - MarketWatch

Good policies take advantage of the enormous benefits of a competitive and innovative economy, as evidenced by the industrial revolutions in Europe and the United States and, more recently, by China’s decision to embrace markets and global competition. Well-functioning markets are unmatched in their ability to encourage innovation and quickly allocate capital to the most productive uses. There are too many economies that have been left behind because regulation and corruption instead stifle growth and state-sanctioned monopolies are content to coin money while fostering inefficiency.

Harnessing the power of markets | McKinsey & Company

How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots’ owners?

Robert Reich (The Share-the-Scraps Economy)

There are plenty of pundits out there arguing that today’s record-high valuations in the stock market are validated by ultra-low interest rates (see Fed Model). The problem with this idea is it really only tells us how we got here. What investors should really care about is where we’re going and ultra-low interest rates are not at all bullish for future returns in the stock market.

Ultra low rates are bad for stocks - Business Insider

Model Núbia Óliiver on what she learned from a life dating players in the 1990s. “Every woman should sample a footballer, but they’re quite hard to like. I see them as tampons: use once, then discard. Are there exceptions? Of course there are. About one in a million.”

Said & Done: Barcelona’s brand; Dinamo Minsk; and Satan’s nun | Football | The Guardian

The bottom line: I prefer the NHS to the American private system. It's a little more inconvenient in terms of appointment times, but due to the fact that it is free, has no paperwork, and the treatment on the day is super-fast, the NHS wins. That Rolls Royce is moving at a pretty decent clip. And, of course, there is the small matter of the fact that the NHS covers everyone equally, whereas Americans get care based on their ability to pay, leaving tens of millions with only minimal access to care. (Obamacare is changing that, but it's leagues behind the NHS if you're comparing them by the standard of universal full-service coverage.) Americans think they have the best healthcare in the world. Take it from me, a fellow American: They don't.

An American Uses Britain's NHS - Business Insider

After more than 40 telephone calls and countless hours of meetings over the past six months, Angela Merkel braced herself for one last push. It was past 10pm and the German chancellor was sitting in a Hilton hotel conference room in Brisbane, Australia. Her interlocutor was the implacable Vladimir Putin.

Battle for Ukraine: How the west lost Putin - FT.com

Only eight out of China's 74 biggest cities passed the government's basic air quality standards in 2014, the environment ministry has said.

BBC News - Most China cities fail to meet air quality standards

A startup called SolidEnergy has developed a kind of lithium-ion battery that stores far more energy.

Electronic Devices Could Soon Produce Power Twice as Long | MIT Technology Review

Too much jogging may be as bad for you as not putting on your running shoes at all, a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology says.

Too much jogging may be as bad for you as not putting on your running shoes at all, a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology says.

Sanofi launched an inhalable insulin in the United States on Tuesday in a potential boost for its flagging diabetes drug sales and for patient quality of life.

Sanofi launches inhaled insulin for diabetics

The company, Elysium Health, says it will be turning chemicals that lengthen the lives of mice and worms in the laboratory into over-the-counter vitamin pills that people can take to combat aging.+ The startup is being founded by Leonard Guarente, an MIT biologist who is 62 (“unfortunately,” he says) and who’s convinced that the process of aging can be slowed by tweaking the body’s metabolism.

Is the Secret to Longevity Available from this Website? | MIT Technology Review

One in two people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, analysis suggests. Cancer Research UK said this estimate, using a new calculation method, replaced a forecast of more than one in three people developing the disease.

BBC News - 'Half of UK people' will get cancer

“They are trying to get by, manage it strategically and hope that oil prices rise, hope they can make a few adjustments and it will all go away,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University who recently attended a high-level economics conference in Moscow. “There is no appetite for fundamental reform. They are just going to wait.”

Russia Outlines Prescription to Bolster Its Ailing Economy, but Experts Scoff - NYTimes.com

Beckert actually has a larger point to make about how a “market” in a commodity is something that is created by people, sometimes explicitly and sometimes not. In that sense, this book is better at explaining how institutions shape economies than most books that are specifically about institutions.

Markets, Institutions, and Underpants | The Growth Economics Blog

What we found is that people's attitudes in favour of action against climate change, or attitudes to the contrary, are predicted by three inter-related dimensions. The first is a sense of identification with their own group. Secondly there is a perception that their group is likely to succeed in its collective efforts – what we call "group efficacy." And finally, they tend to have feelings of anger towards their perceived opposition.

Climate Change Is Social Issue - Business Insider

The reported appointment of well-known monetary reflationist Yasushi Harada to the Bank of Japan (BOJ) board has ignited fresh speculation of more easing from the central bank.

Is more BOJ easing on the way?

Japanese banks are riding a wave of profits as the Bank of Japan's stimulus effort boosts their capital gains, but analysts warn that wave could break as weak demand and stiff competition drive mortgage rates to record lows.

Mortgages: the next threat for Japanese banks?

DNA tests on some store-brand herbal supplements showed that nearly four of five didn’t have the ingredients listed on the labels, and a large number didn’t have a botanical substance of any kind, according to findings from the New York state attorney general’s office.

Your supplement might be a sham - MarketWatch

Waves of cheap money from central banks have shielded stocks from the volatility besetting currency and commodity markets, but increasing disparities in company earnings forecasts suggest that could soon change.

Diverging earnings equity forecasts - Business Insider

A mummified monk found preserved in Mongolia last week has been baffling and astounding those who uncovered him. Senior Buddhists say the monk, found sitting in the lotus position, is in a deep meditative trance and not dead.

BBC News - Mummified monk in Mongolia 'not dead', say Buddhists

The Dutch like mayonnaise with their chips. I've seen them do it, they drown them in that stuff. But as a budding professional, Ronald Koeman liked mayonnaise with his chips so much it became a matter of principle.

BBC Sport - Ronald Koeman: What's the secret behind his Southampton success?

Luigi Zingales, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, has been studying the public’s post-recession loss of faith in the financial sector. In a speech delivered in early January at the annual meeting of the American Finance Association, Zingales argued that academic economists' views on the financial sector are too rosy in comparison to the public's mistrust.

Does Finance Do Any Good for Society? - The Atlantic

Health officials would be wise to worry: the discussion itself, and increasingly its political contours, could well drive a further decline in vaccinations. This happened in Britain in 2002 after the idea of a link between measles and autism was first publicised. Despite plentiful scientific evidence that the MMR vaccine was safe, and that it was used in over 90 countries, what people took from the coverage was that there are two sides to the debate. Vaccination rates plummeted, but have rebounded since then.

Politics and vaccinations: Mixed messages | The Economist

When it comes to the relationship between science and public opinion, the appearance of a dispute lends credibility to a theory’s critics.

Politics and vaccinations: Mixed messages | The Economist

"My former esteemed colleagues Marchel Alexandrovich and David Owen pointed out to me that if U.S. core CPI (consumer price index) is measured in a similar way to the euro zone, then U.S. core CPI inflation is already 'pari passu' (on an equal footing) with the euro zone despite the former having enjoyed a much stronger economy," he said.

Stocks will be 'ripped to smithereens': SocGen bear

Millions of Anthem health insurance customers woke Thursday morning to an e-mail from the company telling them hackers had gained access to the company's computers and that their names, birthdays, Social Security numbers, addresses and employment data including income might have been stolen.

Millions of Anthem customers alerted to hack

But his speech also contained, perhaps inadvertently, some interesting arguments that the rounds of bond-buying after the acute phase of the financial crisis did little for the real economy. (We covered the tenuous relationship between asset purchase programmes and inflation here.)

Did the Fed’s QE actually do anything for the real economy? | FT Alphaville

In 2010, after a thorough investigation that revealed not only bad science but also financial conflicts of interest, the original Lancet paper was retracted by the journal. "Part of the costs of Dr. Wakefield’s research were paid by lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine makers for damages," Gardiner Harris wrote in the New York Times, in an article explaining the retraction. "Dr. Wakefield was also found to have patented in 1997 a measles vaccine that would succeed if the combined vaccine were withdrawn or discredited." What's more, an investigation by the journalist Brian Deer found that "not one of the 12 cases reported in the 1998 Lancet paper was free of misrepresentation or undisclosed alteration."

Who is Andrew Wakefield? - Business Insider

Putin is increasingly seen as a reckless gambler who calls bluffs and takes risks, and is inscrutable, paranoid and unpredictable. Trying to work out what he wants is guesswork. The Europeans sound scared. Ukraine is a huge problem for Europe, not least the dawning realisation that fixing it will cost tens of billions and will take a very long time. But for Europe it is becoming clear that the real nightmare is not Ukraine, but Putin’s Russia.

Fear of Vladimir Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of ‘total war’ | World news | The Guardian

At a time of historically low interest rates and nervousness about the outlook for global economic growth, why aren’t governments investing more? In this interview with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland, former US treasury secretary Larry Summers urges policy makers to invest aggressively in everything from infrastructure to education. Summers also believes that in a world of rising inequality and rapid technological advances, there is going to be a need for more progressive taxation.

A recipe for economic growth | McKinsey & Company