Links for Sept 5 2016

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In advanced economies, real growth is running almost a full percentage point below the average of 1990-2007. Many are still plagued by crisis legacies, such as private and public sector debt overhangs, and impaired balance sheets of financial institutions. The result has been stubbornly weak demand. The longer demand weakness lasts, the more it threatens to harm long-term growth as firms reduce production capacity and unemployed workers are leaving the labor force and critical skills are eroding. Weak demand also depresses trade, which adds to disappointing productivity growth. On the supply side, slowing productivity and adverse demographic trends are weighing on potential growth—a trend that started before the global financial crisis. And with little expectation of stronger growth tomorrow, firms have even less incentive to invest, which hurts both productivity and short-term growth prospects.

We Need Forceful Policies to Avoid the Low-Growth Trap | iMFdirect - The IMF Blog

But with DNA, a whole human genome fits into a cell that is invisible to the naked eye. For sheer density of information storage, DNA could be orders of magnitude beyond silicon — perfect for long-term archiving.

How DNA could store all the world’s data : Nature News & Comment

In a decade or two, most homes and buildings will have cheap and superefficient solar panels on their roofs and high-powered batteries in their basements or garages. The batteries will store power generated when the sun shines for use when it doesn’t. Each of these buildings will be connected to a two-way power line that can allow anyone to sell excess energy or buy needed energy in an eBay-style marketplace. Most cars will be electric, and fewer people will need to own one, since an electric, connected, self-driving car will be able to work for Uber when the owner isn’t using it, which is 90 percent of the time. That way, on-demand transportation is available just about everywhere. Your home solar panels and batteries will charge your electric car, so your home will supply most of the clean power you and your family need. You might not have to buy any electricity from some far-off coal-burning electric plant or ever again fill up at a gas station.

How Elon Musk Is Using Tesla to Kill Big Oil

Ask any media hound about the best way to stream your your video files, and they'll probably direct you to Plex. Now, the streaming software is getting even more useful with a long-awaited feature: DVR support. Just plug an HDHomeRun tuner (with antenna) into your PC, set it up in Plex, and you can record any over-the-air (OTA) broadcast in your reception area. And, of course, you can view the videos on any device with the company's app and a Plex Pass membership ($5 a month, $40 a year or $150 lifetime).

Plex adds a DVR feature for over-the-air and CableCARD tuners

Wingsuit flying has been described as the world’s most exhilarating and dangerous sport. Launching themselves from cliffs wearing a nylon bodysuit, the “wing” being formed by air filling a piece of fabric stretched between the arms and legs, its practitioners glide at speeds of up to 150mph (241 km per hour), often skimming close to the ground before eventually deploying a parachute. But after the sport’s most deadly summer, during which there has been almost two dozen deaths in three months – the vast majority in the Alps, where flying is legal – participants have begun asking why wingsuit flying has suddenly turned so lethal.

Wingsuit flying's most deadly summer leads to soul searching | Sport | The Guardian

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The occupations most likely to shrink over the next decade may help explain why older, white American men are signaling greater economic anxiety: They’re most likely to hold those disappearing jobs. Economist Jed Kolko analyzed Labor Department projections andCensus Bureau demographic data and found white men, older adults and the less educated are all more likely to be employed in work that’s expected to decline over the next decade. The analysis shows these jobs have neither the highest unemployment rates, nor the lowest incomes, which may help explain why economic anxiety remains high among those who aren’t necessarily the worst off in today’s labor market. Strong support for Donald Trump among the white working class has produced a steady diet of analyses for what might fuel his rise. A Gallup survey last month suggested his supporters are more easily identified by measures of racial isolation and cultural anxiety than by their personal economic well-being. The Gallup survey and others have examined concerns over declining standards of living, including rising mortality and health issues.

How Shrinking Occupations Could Explain Rising Economic Anxiety - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Robert Frank was playing tennis one cold Saturday morning in Ithaca, N.Y., when his heart stopped. Sudden cardiac arrest—a short-circuit in the heart’s electrical signaling—kills 98 percent of its victims and leaves most of the rest permanently impaired. Yet two weeks later, Frank was back on the tennis court. How did this happen? There was a car accident a few hundred yards away from where Frank collapsed. Two ambulances responded but the injuries were minor and only one was needed. The other ambulance, usually stationed five miles away, reached Frank in minutes.

Why Luck Plays a Big Role in Making You Rich - Bloomberg

The world is awash in paper currency, with major central banks pumping out hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth each year, mainly in very large denomination notes such as the $100 bill. The $100 bill accounts for almost 80% of the US’s stunning $4,200 (£3,152) per capita cash supply. The ¥10,000 note (£72) accounts for roughly 90% of all Japan’s currency, where per capita cash holdings are almost $7,000. And, as I have been arguing for two decades, all this cash is facilitating growth mainly in the underground economy, not the legal one... The costs of tax evasion alone are staggering, perhaps $700bn a year in the United States (including federal, state, and local taxes), and even more in high-tax Europe. Crime and corruption, though difficult to quantify, almost surely generate even greater costs. Think not just of illegal drugs and racketeering, but also of human trafficking, terrorism, and extortion.

Why cash isn't king any more | Business | The Guardian

There's no question that ISIS forces are losing ground in territories in Syria and Iraq — after making so many enemies from several countries and across numerous ethnic lines, the group might have bit off more than it could chew. Forces seem to be losing territory so fast that they resorted to tactics such as kidnapping civilians to form a "human shield" during hasty retreats. And the death of ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani this week will likely hasten problems within the group. Adnani helped spur recruitment for the group, as well as planned external operations. Images taken of abandoned ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq suggest that the trove of valuable intelligence materials left behind, such as ordnance components, could be analyzed by experts to thwart ISIS in the future

Here's what ISIS leaves behind as it loses territory on all fronts - Business Insider

Co-founded and developed by Steve Nygren, Serenbe is currently comprised of two villages, with a third one in the making. Mado, the latest hamlet to join the crew, is slated to include a cluster of more than 55 homes, all of which boast the latest tech to enable residents “to age in place.” There will be a wellness center, aimed at integrating all medical and health needs of geriatric community members, and the goal is to “eliminate the ‘retirement community.'” a Serenbe spokesperson told Digital Trends. After all, she continued, “New trends suggest baby boomers want to age in multi-generational communities,” and Serenbe attracts residents in all stages of life.

Serenbe is a Retirement Community for the 21st Century | Digital Trends

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Strategists at Societe Generale have issued a new report detailing their forecasts for the global economy and their list of so-called "black swan" events. A "black swan" event is a metaphor used by the investment community to describe an event that comes as a surprise, such as the crash of the U.S. housing market in 2008 or the Japanese earthquake of 2011. In the French bank's latest global economic outlook, SocGen said that various issues constituted downside risks to the global growth outlook, including the "drag from U.S. and European policy uncertainty" (still the highest risk according to SocGen), a hard landing in China, a sharp market repricing and consumers opting to save, rather than spend, more.

These are the 'black swans' SocGen thinks you should worry about

Some cracks could be starting to appear in the picture of an otherwise resilient U.S. economy. An abrupt drop in the Institute for Supply Management’s services gauge on Tuesday to a six-year low is the latest in a string of unexpectedly weak data for August. Other less-than-stellar figures include an ISM factory survey showing a contraction in manufacturing; a cooling of hiring; automobile sales falling short of forecasts; and an index of consumer sentiment at a four-month low.

First Factories, Now Services Signal Cracks in U.S. Economy - Bloomberg

The U.S. stock market’s P/E ratio is telling us in no uncertain terms that stocks are hugely overvalued. Given that, I would have thought the bulls would simply ignore it. I was wrong. In fact, many of the bulls have figured out how to torture the data in order to make it appear as though the stock market’s current valuation is in line with historical averages. It’s crucial that you understand what they’re doing so you don’t get seduced by their sweet-talking rationales.

Here’s the No. 1 lie the bulls tell about the U.S. market - MarketWatch

A new drug that “wakes up” the immune system to attack cancer has extended the lives of people with metastatic pancreatic cancer and has no side-effects, raising hopes for a new and powerful tool against the most intractable form of the disease. The drug, IMM-101, is considered groundbreaking because pancreatic cancer which has spread to other parts of the body usually kills within a few months. Unlike other immunotherapy treatments, IMM-101 is not thought to have any side-effects, which have been hugely debilitating for many patients and even led to long-term disability in some cases.

New drug 'wakes up' immune system to fight one of deadliest cancers | Science | The Guardian

Huddled around their hives, beekeepers around the south-eastern US fear a new threat to their livelihood: a fine mist beaded with neurotoxin, sprayed from the sky by officials at war with mosquitos that carry the Zika virus. Earlier this week, South Carolina beekeepers found millions of dead honey bees carpeting their apiaries, killed by an insecticide. Video posted by a beekeeper to Facebook showed thousands of dead insects heaped around hives, while a few survivors struggled to move the bodies of fellow bees. “This is what’s left of Flowertown Bees,” a despondent keeper says in the video. Company co-owner Juanita Stanley told the Associated Press her farm looked “like it’s been nuked” and estimated 2.5 million bees were killed. In another Facebook post, South Carolina hobbyist Andrew Macke wrote that he had lost “thousands upon thousands of bees” and that the spraying had devastated his business. “Have we lost our mind,” he wrote, “spraying poison from the sky?”

US beekeepers fear for livelihoods as anti-Zika toxin kills 2.5m bees | Environment | The Guardian

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Strong shareholder support predicts higher prices for stocks sitting at lower levels, offering excellent buying opportunities for observant market players. This setup generates a bullish divergence in which price is expected to play catchup in order to match positive volume readings. Predictive analysis works most reliably when a properly tuned volume indicator has broken out to a new high at the same time that price is stuck below a major resistance level.

3 Stocks With Bullish Volume Divergences (RDUS, PKG) | Investopedia

With deft timing and the magnifying power of leverage, the 37-year-old trader of Chinese commodity futures has navigated the most fevered speculative mania of 2016 to produce the kind of returns that only volatile markets can provide. Wang says his Guli Trend Aggressive Strategy fund has climbed about 750 percent this year, extending an advance since its March 2015 inception to 2,100 percent. Those gains would stand out in any market environment, but they’re even more remarkable at a time when hedge funds around the world are getting battered by weak performance and client outflows.

This Hedge Fund Made 2,100% From World's Most Extreme Market Mania - Bloomberg

But the post-crisis drop in growth is far from the only problem. (If it were, the last decade could be just an anomaly.) Longer-term factors like weak investment, decelerating labor-force growth, and a sharp slowdown in productivity growth have reduced income growth for the median household in most advanced countries relative to the 1993-2005 period.

The Great Income Stagnation by Laura Tyson and Anu Madgavkar - Project Syndicate

Air pollution has emerged as the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths worldwide. While pollution-related deaths mainly strike young children and the elderly, these deaths also result in lost labor income for working-age men and women. The loss of life is tragic. The cost to the economy is substantial. The infographic below is mainly based on findings from The Cost of Air Pollution: Strengthening the economic case for action, a joint study of the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Death in the Air: Air Pollution Costs Money and Lives

Cruyff was 68 when he died in March. “I didn’t see him in the last six months. The last time was at the Dunhill [golf tournament]. The cancer was already there. I had the feeling he knew it could be his last Dunhill because he was so eager to play. But Johan was very proud and he never wanted pity. I had the privilege and the luck of having him in my life. I am very grateful because he looked after me. We also had plenty of arguments because he acknowledged my opinion – even if Johan always wanted to be right. He was like a genius kid of 12 who had to go to university because he was cleverer than the professors. He was thinking so many steps ahead that, for many people, it was almost difficult to follow. Johan was unique.”

Ruud Gullit: ‘I had the privilege and the luck of having Johan Cruyff in my life’ | Football | The Guardian