Links for 11/23

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China, because of its relatively inflexible FX regime, imported US monetary policy perhaps more absolutely than others. As a result, its debt binge went further than most other countries. McKinsey estimated that Chinese debt has quadrupled since 2007 and its debt to GDP ratio has risen above that of the US. The question is, given the semi USD/RMB peg and China's increasing open capital account (which come at the expense of China's monetary independence), whether China can live with higher US interest rates and a higher US dollar. We are skeptical. This why we think the USD/RMB peg, a marriage of convenience that has been the anchor for the global growth model for the better part of the last 15 years, is headed for a divorce, and we think the RMB devaluation on 11 August was a first small step in this direction.

BAML on 2016 Chinese yuan devaluation - Business Insider

In their recruiting, ISIS targets the local youth, according to members of R.B.S.S. With schools closed down, kids play aimlessly in the street. ISIS members befriend them, give them gifts, sometimes candy, sometimes a mobile phone. They ask the kids to join ISIS, one R.B.S.S. member said, “But they say, ‘Don’t tell your parents.’ I know about one child who went missing for months. His parents looked and looked. Thirteen years old, a boy. Finally, the father said to an ISIS leader, ‘Where is my son, I’ll give you money.’ Turns out the child was in a training camp for ISIS. They kidnap these children. They are sent to a mosque for education, so they are brainwashed with an extremist form of Islam. After this, they are sent to army camp to teach them how to fight, how to make and carry bombs. At their graduation, they have orders to execute someone––sometimes a beheading, sometimes they just cut off the head of a sheep.”

Telling the Truth About ISIS and Raqqa - The New Yorker

Derived from a plant called Synsepalum dulcificum, it is unlike any artificial sugar I'd tried before - because it works not by making foods sweeter, but by making them taste sweeter. The so-called miracle berries contain a molecule called miraculin which binds to receptors on your tongue, changing their shape. This makes sour foods taste sweeter. One advantage of temporarily changing your taste buds, rather than the food itself, could be the effect this has on your gut bacteria.

In search of the perfect sweetener - BBC News

Reports this week suggest that a pilot scheme to provide boilers, double-glazing and insulation to patients in Sunderland has improved health for people with medical conditions exacerbated by cold, damp conditions. Although the idea of a “boiler on prescription” may seem strange, the boundaries between health and welfare have never been clear. While some people have tried to limit the role of doctors in policymaking and reform, others have fought (in some cases, literally) for a broader understanding of what it means to help people live healthy lives.

If ‘boilers on prescription’ work, what else could doctors prescribe? | Vanessa Heggie | Science | The Guardian

Liu was the winning bidder for Amedeo Modigliani's "Reclining Nude" at a Christie's auction earlier this month— offering $170.4 million — and when the sale closes he will be putting it on his American Express card.

How to fly free forever: Put $170 million on your AmEx - Business Insider

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Italy plans to launch a series of bad bank-style measures as early as the end of the year in an effort to cut its 330 billion ($350.4 billion) pile of non-performing loans (NPLs) as it seeks a "silver bullet" to boost its weak economic recovery, say senior officials.

Italy plans bad bank-style debt clean-up to aid recovery

The recent jump in stock prices has one important group of disbelievers. Corporate insiders have been dumping shares at the highest pace in 4½ years, according to market data firm TrimTabs. The selling averaged $450 million a day in November, the highest since May 2011.

Insiders sending an ominous market signal

The IPPR said that unemployed workers risked being left behind as globalisation and technological progress lead to changes in the skills that employers require. German investment The report suggested that European countries look to Germany as a good example of maintaining workplace skills and high productivity rates. Germany - Europe's largest economy - invests 50% more on average than other countries in research and development.

Europe recession 'could be permanent', think tank warns - BBC News

Americans generate about 4 and a half pounds of trash per person, per day, or 254.1 million tons total per year. In order to dispose of all that trash in a volcano, you'd need to first locate an active volcano, and lug the trash there. That's the first problem. Not many people live near active volcanoes, so transporting trash to a volcano would cost time, money, and a whole lot of fuel. Then there's the fact that an even smaller number live near the right kind of active volcano.

Why Don't We Just Throw All Our Garbage Into Volcanoes? | Popular Science

No matter which short-term outcome prevails, political instability is most likely ahead. The three left-wing parties have major policy differences, and Credit Suisse believes a coalition government would last only a few months. The Left Bloc and Communist Parties are anti-austerity Eurosceptics. The Communists campaigned on nationalizing Portuguese banks, dropping out of NATO, and restructuring foreign debt. The Socialists are more moderate.

Portugal is Europe's new worry - Business Insider

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That’s KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, a seemingly bust US biotech that’s spent the past three years as a listed company failing to produce anything of use to society. Just last week the management threw in the towel; a de-listing from Nasdaq was set in train. Then Shkreli turned up with a promise of $3m of fresh cash and a new set of board members, taking 70 per cent of the equity. The share price set off for the moon, quite a few hapless shorts were smoked (short interest was at 8 per cent, according to Reuters) and everyone is now generally agog that a share price can rise almost 5000 per cent in the space of five days (before correcting 15 per cent on Tuesday).

Shkreli’s new target market: 1100 Americans-a-year | FT Alphaville

Goldman Sachs is forecasting another lackluster year for the S&P 500. Year-to-date, the benchmark index has gained about 1.3%. "We forecast the S&P 500 index will tread water for a second consecutive year in 2016," Goldman's David Kostin wrote in the firm's 2016 stock-market outlook on Tuesday.

Goldman Sachs 2016 stock market outlook - Business Insider

Goldman Sachs just released its new quarterly "Hedge Fund Trend Monitor" report, detailing the positions of the top hedge funds. Within the report, Goldman presented its "Very Important Short Position list," the collection of the S&P 500 stocks with the highest dollar value of short interest outstanding at the end of the third quarter.

GOLDMAN: 19 stocks hedge funds are shorting - Business Insider

Honig estimates that if Liu converted his Membership Rewards points into one of a number of airline frequent-flier programs, he and his family could travel anywhere, in style. He could fly 3,000 times between the US and Europe in the ultra-deluxe first-class suites offered by Singapore Airlines (estimated cost: $17,800 round-trip), if he converted points to Singapore's program.

How to fly free forever: Put $170 million on your AmEx

Even as members of Congress are slamming the Federal Reserve for being too political with its monetary policy, they are plotting to use the central bank as a government piggy bank. Congress is aiming to take billions out of the Fed's accounts to help pay for a new highway and transit bill, but the Fed is balking, registering “strong concerns about using the resources of the Federal Reserve to finance fiscal spending.”

Fed pushes back as Congress eyes its billions - POLITICO

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It's a key shift in spending habits that started during the Great Recession. And the trend continues as we head into the holiday shopping season this weekend. The savings rate in the United States rose to 5.6% in October -- its highest mark in nearly three years. In September, the savings rate was 5.3%. Put another way, Americans put aside an extra $40 billion in October rather than spend it.

Americans are saving more than spending - Nov. 25, 2015

Dr. Frank Hu just finished a 40-year study on the effects of coffee on the human body. People who drink more coffee it turns out, live longer. Specifically, Hu’s study found that coffee-drinkers have lower risks of cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as suicide.

Harvard scientist who's studied coffee for 20 years explains why it's amazing - Business Insider

The eurozone is recovering. Fiscal spending in China has surged by 36pc from a year ago and this will paper over a lot of cracks. The commodity crash is worth $1.5 trillion of net stimulus for global consumers.

George Osborne delays the fiscal pain but it will still be ferocious - Telegraph

The S&P 500's profit margin growth over the past five years has been driven largely by tech, and one name in particular: Apple. Unfortunately for the market and for Apple, the days of exceptional expansion may be over.

The days of Apple's amazing profits may be over

Until the European Union forced pro-democracy changes in 2008, Sark also was also Europe's last feudal state. It was ruled by a single hereditary figure, the Seigneur, who oversaw a parliament made up solely from descendants of 40 families who settled Sark in 1565. Queen Elizabeth I offered the island to the settlers, who came from the Channel Island of Jersey, in return for them to kick out the pirates operating from Sark's rocky coves. Until recently, Sark's old laws demanded that many landowners keep a musket handy – just in case of any battles that needed fighting.

BBC - Travel - The tiny island of shooting stars

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Keith Fons showed up for work Nov. 9 at the Subway he manages in downtown Portland, expecting a normal Monday morning rush. A day earlier, The Oregonian's front page featured a story about Fons and the everyday challenges that low-wage workers face. The 35-year-old father worked as many as 80 hours every week at two Subway shops to provide for his wife, who has multiple sclerosis, and their three young children.

Subway fires 80-hour-a-week worker from 1 job after Oregonian story | OregonLive.com

The covered combination is a stock options strategy that can be used when the investor is moderately bullish on a stock or exchange-traded fund. A covered combination consists holding shares of a stock (a long stock position) while simultaneously holding a short straddle or short strangle options position at the same time. A straddle combines an at-the-money put option and an at-the-money call option. A strangle is a combination of an out-of-the-money put and an out-of-the-money call. Short option positions are used with the covered combination.

Here's a Great Options Strategy for When You're Bullish on a Stock - TheStreet

On the one hand, that's how much the Zero costs - just $5. Here in the UK it costs just £4, or the price of a pint of beer. But it's also worth noting that the $5 bill physically dwarfs the Raspberry Pi Zero. At 65mm x 30mm, the Zero is smaller than a credit card, and it's only 5mm thick to boot. It also weighs just nine grams.

What is Raspberry Pi Zero? All you need to know about the $5 computer

A prominent Silicon Valley VC argues that tech startups are overvalued, profits are underrated, and a bust is coming.

Overheated Silicon Valley Is Headed for a Bust | MIT Technology Review

Human children love the tickle game, and this remarkable footage shows that young apes love it too

BBC - Earth - When this bonobo gets tickled, it starts giggling

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Kenneth Tynan of The Times described it as "a decisive moment in the history of Western civilisation".[218] Richard Poirier wrote: "listening to the Sgt. Pepper album one thinks not simply of the history of popular music but the history of this century."[240] Time magazine declared it "a historic departure in the progress of music – any music".[1] Newsweek‍‍ '​‍s Jack Kroll called it a "masterpiece", comparing the lyrics with literary works by Edith Sitwell, Harold Pinter and T. S. Eliot, particularly "A Day in the Life", which he compared to Eliot's The Waste Land.[241] The New York Times Book Review characterised Sgt. Pepper as a harbinger of a "golden Renaissance of Song" and the New Statesman‍‍ '​‍s Wilfrid Mellers praised its elevation of pop music to the level of fine art.[242]

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

While it’s tempting to blame the airlines for that, a new study from researchers at Cornell University finds it’s not entirely their fault. “The multisensory properties of the environment where we consume our food can alter our perception of the foods we eat,” Robin Dando, assistant professor of food service at Cornell and a co-author of the study, writes. More specifically, in loud environments, like those on a plane, people’s sense of taste was “comprised,” they found. (Thanks to our friends at FrequentFlier.com for flagging this study.)

The surprising reason airline food tastes like cardboard - MarketWatch

Paradoxically, at a time when the stakes are especially high for who becomes the next president, we have a free-for-all politics in which anyone can become a candidate, put together as much funding as they need, claim anything about themselves no matter how truthful, advance any proposal no matter how absurd, and get away bigotry without being held accountable. Why? Americans have stopped trusting the mediating institutions that used to filter and scrutinize potential leaders on behalf of the rest of us.

Robert Reich (The Perils of Circus Politics)

Meanwhile, Japan will raise the minimum wage by 3 percent each year from next fiscal year as part of a package of policies targeting consumer spending and stocking economic growth. The government will also strengthen policies to get more women into the workforce and ease regulations to encourage corporate investment, hopefully breathing new life into an economy that has struggled with patchy domestic demand.

BOJ minutes reveal output gap worry; Japan raises minimum wage

By mining a vast database of high-school yearbook photos, a machine-vision algorithm reveals the change in hairstyles, clothing, and even smiles over the last century.

Data Mining Reveals How Smiling Evolved During a Century of Yearbook Photos | MIT Technology Review

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Societe Generale is out with its latest quarterly chart of so-called swan risks that threaten to rock the global financial markets. For the most part, the risks remain unchanged from September. SocGen analysts reiterated that the two highest-probability risks are a British exit from the eurozone, or Brexit, (45%) and an economic hard landing in China (30%). Making these two particularly notable is the possibility of spillover effects in both cases.

Societe Generale's chart of swan risks - Business Insider

“If it’s not sanuk it’s not worth doing,” said Sumet Jumsai, one of Thailand’s best-known architects, as the glorious madness of Bangkok swirled just outside his office. “People will resign from a good-paying job because it’s not fun.” This struck me, with my Western sensibilities, as wildly impractical, and for a moment I thought he was pulling my leg. But for Thais, fun is not optional. In fact, Thais use another term, len, or “to play”, to describe activities like academic research and business meetings – ones that most Westerners don’t associate with playfulness. This seemingly contradictory dynamic can be seen in Thai offices; workers look like they’re joking around – yet, somehow, eventually, the work gets done.

BBC - Travel - Can Thailand teach us all to have more fun?

The mayor of Dallas is pushing back against politicians who say Americans should be skeptical of Syrian refugees, saying he is “more fearful” of armed white men than people fleeing civil war in the Middle East... Rawlings’ position is in line with current statistics on domestic terrorism, which show that right-wing terrorists have killed more people than “homegrown jihadists” since September 11, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Dallas Mayor Says He's More Fearful Of Armed White Men Than Syrian Refugees

The eminent scientists at the centre of allegations that athletics turned a blind eye to potential mass doping have vigorously hit back at claims by the IAAF that their work “lacks any scientific or legal basis” and have accused the sport’s governing body of “failing its athletes”... Parisotto, meanwhile, insisted that many of the blood values in the leaked database had been “jaw-dropping” and said the data revealed “that so many athletes were at real risk of suffering heart attacks, strokes and even death”.

‘Disgraced’ IAAF has failed its athletes, say embattled anti-doping scientists | Sport | The Guardian

Barclays has advised clients to jump into world stock markets with both feet, citing the fastest growth in the global money supply in over thirty years and an accelerating recovery in China.

Barclays bets on stock boom as world money growth soars - Telegraph