Links for June 20 2016

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In Stoke, Merthyr, Birmingham, Manchester and even rural Shropshire, the same lines recurred: so unchanging that they threatened to turn into cliches, but all the more powerful because of their ubiquity. “I’m scared about the future” … “No one listens to us” … “If you haven’t got money, no one cares.” And of course, none of it needs much translation. Instead of the comparative security and stability of the postwar settlement and the last act of Britain’s industrial age, what’s the best we can now offer for so many people in so many places? Six-week contracts at the local retail park, lives spent pinballing in and out of the benefits system, and retirements built on thin air? Advertisement It may have been easy to miss in the London-centred haze of the “knowledge economy” and the birth of the digital future, but this is where millions of lives have been heading since the early 1980s – and to read that some Labour MPs have come back from their constituencies, amazed by the views they encounter on the doorstep, is to be struck by a political failure that sits right at the heart of the story. How did they not know?

Britain is in the midst of a working-class revolt | John Harris | Opinion | The Guardian

Recessions, as the economists argue, are really caused not by one or two factors, but by excesses. Excesses in monetary policy, financial assets, or surprise. In their view, no such excesses exist. "US recessions are generally caused by one or more of three factors: policy tightening in response to an overheating economy, investment imbalances that lead to a credit crunch/financial collapse, and external shocks," said the note.

Recession is not right around the corner - Business Insider

“Second, even if the vote is for Brexit, the UK would probably remain a member of the EU for several years,” the report said. “The result of the referendum would only be advisory.” In other words, this vote is not legally binding. Combined with most of the political leaders preferring to remain in the EU means that the leaving process will be dragged out, and may not even officially occur until 2020.  Additionally, UK leaders may end up coming out with a deal that is ultimately very similar to their current membership with the EU, while still technically leaving it.

3 reasons why the Brexit vote is just not a big deal - Yahoo Finance

The Canadian housing market just keeps getting hotter. Home prices in the Greater Vancouver area have surged 30% year-over-year in May, up from 15% at the end of 2015, according to the bank's June 2016 "Financial System Review." Meanwhile, prices in the Greater Toronto area are growing by 15% YoY, up from 10% half a year earlier.

Canadian housing bubble - Business Insider

IEX, the company founded by "Flash Boys" hero Brad Katsuyama, has won approval to run a US stock exchange. IEX, which has up until now operated as an alternative trading system (ATS), filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to become a stock exchange last year. That kick-started an ugly battle with the incumbent exchanges. Nasdaq recently said that the SEC could be sued if it approves IEX's application to become an exchange, while Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange - which owns the New York Stock Exchange - has called IEX "un-American."

IEX gets SEC approval - Business Insider

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Given impressive advances in artificial intelligence, smart robots, and driverless cars, it’s easy to become convinced that we are on the verge of a new technological age. But the troubling reality is that today’s advances are having a far from impressive impact on overall economic growth. Facebook, Twitter, and other digital technologies undoubtedly bring great value to many people, but those benefits are not translating into a substantial economic boost. If you think Silicon Valley is going to fuel growing prosperity, you are likely to be disappointed

Dear Silicon Valley: Forget Flying Cars, Give Us Economic Growth

One use case would be to offer instant replays using virtual reality to give fans relatively far from the action an up-close experience. In the long term, Jacobs says, some fans may even prefer to pay for a seat in a movie theater-like space inside a stadium with high-end VR headsets rather than a conventional seat with a poor view.

The Sacramento Kings’ New Stadium Is Wired for Virtual Reality

Started by several graduates from Imperial College London, Magic Pony uses large neural networks to process visual information, and it specializes in using partly unsupervised learning to conjure up images based on previous training. In other words, after feeding on lots of video footage, its algorithms can automatically fill in a patchy video feed, or increase the resolution of a pixelated video game image. The results aren’t always perfect, because the system has no idea what it is actually creating. But usually they are good enough to fool the human eye.

Why Twitter Just Bet Big on a Magic Pony

Despite the warning, "92 percent of people click continue on this screen," according to Sharabani. "Your phone actually has a lot of really good built in technology to warn you when you are going to make a poor security decision. And what we found through our general penetration testing practice and talking to some of our customers is people are very conditioned to just click through whatever warnings it is because they want the content," said McGeorge.

Your smartphone could be hacked without your knowledge

Roger Federer: ‘I need the fire, the excitement, the whole rollercoaster’ He has a reputation for cool, but the athlete says tennis is pure emotion – from his moody youth to weepy grand slam finals. Can he win another Wimbledon? by Simon Hattenstone

Roger Federer: ‘I need the fire, the excitement, the whole rollercoaster’ | Sport | The Guardian

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But, according to Zamma, that is not a problem encountered by chimps, who enjoy blissful, and largely motionless, sleep even with their feet sticking out. “Just saying it is comfortable is not enough,” said Zamma, who decided to nap in a chimp’s bed in Tanzania’s Mahale mountain range during a research trip in 1999. “It removed all of the tension from my muscles in a way that ordinary beds don’t – that’s the effect of lying on something that takes into account the natural shape of the body, and it’s why chimpanzees sleep as well as they do.”

Chimpanzees hold secret to ultimate comfy bed, says expert | World news | The Guardian

The low volatility exchange-traded fund (ETF) craze has little to do with investors seeking less volatility. Instead, the billions of dollars flowing into ETFs that track stocks texhibiting the least amount of volatility, is a classic case of performance chasing. Like little kids playing soccer, many investors follow the outperformance ball, so to speak, wherever it goes. It happens with stocks, bonds, active mutual funds, hedge funds, and increasingly with ETFs. Right now, the soccer ball is in the low-volatility part of the field, where nearly all low-vol ETFs are outperforming their respective markets — be it large-caps, small-caps or international equities.

Performance Is Trumping Safety in the Low-Volatility ETF Craze - Bloomberg

"If you are Hilton, if you are Starwood, if you are Hyatt, you didn’t see Airbnb coming because Airbnb had none of the characteristics of a traditional competitor," Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz's chief economic advisor, said to journalists Monday. "What's amazing about Airbnb is that the disrupters never built a hotel," he said. "What they knew was three simple things." Uber is another prime example. Suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, entrenched taxi companies across the nation have a huge competitor they weren't prepared for. This has led to legal battles for Uber as the incumbents fight back. But it's not just Airbnb and Uber that used these three factors. Nearly every disruptive startup we're familiar with today used them, according to El-Erian.

EL-ERIAN: Airbnb and Uber used 3 factors to disrupt huge industries - Business Insider

The tax man cometh for some of the richest money managers in the U.S. They’ve had eight years to dream up a dodge. So far, no luck. The deadline they face is Dec. 31, 2017. That’s when a loophole closes, and hedge-fund managers will have to pay taxes on performance fees parked offshore. Some have brought the money home, taking the hit, but others have waited to benefit from the magic of tax-deferred compounding. And in the hope that clever advisers would come up with a workaround for a total that some estimates put at $100 billion -- at least.

Hedge Funds Still Can't Figure Out a Way to Avoid a $25 Billion Tax Bill - Bloomberg

Even if the referendum were to pass, the effects would likely be limited…First, the referendum is advisory, not legally binding. As such, any withdrawal would have to go through Parliament to actually happen. Reportedly, a large majority (around 75 percent) of members of the British legislature favor remaining in the EU, which raises the bar considerably. A bare majority for Leave might have a difficult time forcing the exit through Parliament. It would take a considerably larger margin than seems likely to make that happen. If it did go to Parliament, a break in the Conservative Party also becomes more likely, possibly leading to a general election fought around the idea of an exit. For example, if Labor campaigned on a Remain position and won, the party could certainly argue that the general election supersedes the referendum results. The notion that a Leave vote would mean an immediate exit ignores the realities of British politics.

The Final Countdown: Stocks Edge Higher as Brexit Doesn’t Look So Bad…or Does It? - Stocks to Watch - Barrons.com

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The UK used to be the sick man of Europe. Its annual growth in prosperity has improved from bottom of the league among the G7 leading economies before it joined the European Economic Community to top spot in the 43 years after 1973. This does not prove that becoming a member improved Britain’s international performance. It does, however, allow the Remain campaign to argue that membership did not prevent UK national renewal.

Brexit in seven charts — the economic impact - FT.com

The US has been warned about its high poverty rate in the International Monetary Fund's annual assessment of the economy. The fund said about one in seven people were living in poverty and that it needed to be tackled urgently. It recommended raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to work.

IMF warns the US over high poverty - BBC News

China is stepping up stimulus by stealth in its efforts to ensure hitting the leadership’s growth target this year, with moves that will enhance the role of the state even as policy makers say they want a bigger role for the market. QUICKTAKE China's Market Meddling The fiscal deficit when taking off-budget spending into account will exceed 10 percent of gross domestic product this year -- more than triple the government’s stated ratio of 3 percent, according to economists at UBS Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Stealth China Stimulus Means Fiscal Gap Over 10%, Economists Say - Bloomberg

“Gutenberg’s printing press provided the trigger,” Goldin told me by email, “by flipping knowledge production and exchange from tight scarcity to radical abundance. Before that, the Catholic Churches monopolized knowledge, with their handwritten Latin manuscripts locked up in monasteries. The Gutenberg press democratized information, and provided the incentive to be literate. Within 50 years, not only had scribes lost their jobs, but the Catholic Church’s millennia-old monopoly of power had been torn apart as the printing of Martin Luther’s sermons ignited a century of religious wars.”

Another Age of Discovery - The New York Times

THIS May Anonymous, a network of activists, briefly hacked into Greece’s central bank and warned in a YouTube message that: “Olympus will fall…This marks the start of a 30-day campaign against central-bank sites across the world.” The warning struck a raw nerve.

Joker in the pack

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Another unique aspect of the Kangaroo, though, is the possibility of impromptu mobile use. In a wholly surprising turn of events, the Kangaroo computing module can use an iPad, essentially, as an external monitor. (You connect the Kangaroo computing unit to an iPad via a Lightning cable and free software.) The iPad will run Windows 10 in a virtualized environment on the iPad within an app called OSLinx; you’d use the touch screen and onscreen keyboard to navigate Win 10. It’s not exceptionally seamless, but it works and most important, works in a pinch.

InFocus Kangaroo Mobile Desktop Review - ComputerShopper.com

India’s bid to become the ‘economic super-tiger’ of Asia is in serious doubt after an assault on the independence of the central bank and failure to deliver on promised reforms. The country has been the darling of the emerging market universe since the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi swept into power in May 2014 promising a blitz of Thatcherite reform and a bonfire of the diktats, but key changes have been blocked in the legislature. The government has turned increasingly populist.

India's rockstar central banker defeated as Modi revolution stalls

"The trends we are noting now, albeit early days, suggest that some cracks to Intel's monopoly position may be forming," Rasgon wrote. Rasgon noted that it won't be until 2020 when Intel starts to see competitive threats materialize. But he stressed that Intel's data-center business will see real challenges within the next three to four years, suggesting that it would be difficult for the company to reach its projected 15% annual growth. Rasgon narrowed down his thoughts to the following three points

Bernstein note warns of cracks in Intel's data-center business - Business Insider

Over the past five years, the U.S. stock market, using the exchange-traded fund SPY as a proxy, have gained 77 percent. The Emerging Markets Index (EEM), which includes almost 850 companies, is down 21.8 percent. That almost 100 percent spread is only the first part of our calculus. When we look at the longer-term cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio (CAPE), a broad measure of how expensive or cheap a stock is, the U.S. is the most expensive, with a CAPE of 24.6. You have to go to the emerging markets to find a CAPE of 13.7. Two inexpensive investments are DFA Emerging Markets Core Equity (DFCEX, purchased through advisers) and the Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VEMAX). The DFA fund costs 0.62 percentage point of assets invested, about half of the average emerging market fund. Vanguard's fund costs 0.15 percentage point. Over five years, the DFA fund is down 3.7 percent and the Vanguard fund is down 4.2 percent. Over 10 years, the DFA fund is up 4.5 percent and Vanguard's fund is up 3 percent.

Top Investment Advisors: Where to invest $10,000 in 2016

Annual pay raises don't work. The salary increase serves two purposes: to motivate workers and to keep employees from leaving for a better-paying job. In its current form, the traditional raise does neither of those things very well.

Say Goodbye to the Annual Pay Raise - Bloomberg

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Sprint has been making a lot of headlines lately after they showed off their 5G chops with a demo at the Copa América Centenario soccer (or football for our non-U.S. readers) tournament. Rocking out download speeds up to a whopping 2Gbps with a super low latency, it was indeed an impressive feat to say the least. They showed it off streaming 4k video as well as streaming some VR goodness courtesy of VideoStitch and as far as we can tell it all went off there without a hitch cruising along on the 73GHz spectrum. Here soon they plan on showing off their service on a 15GHz spectrum touting speeds of 4Gbps down outside the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia as part of the tournament. Sounds cool right?! Sure it does but the more appropriate question would be is 5G technology really necessary yet?

5G service sounds amazing but is it necessary? | Pocketnow

Because 13F filings from Einhorn's firm, Greenlight Capital, are delayed by months, there's a question of whether it's too late to buy by the time Greenlight's buy list gets released for public consumption. The good news is that research shows that applying a lag to institutional holdings can generate positive alpha in some cases. Translation: It's not automatically too late to buy Einhorn's favorite stocks -- as long as you use the right timing tools. In the case of these three Einhorn stocks, however, it's time to sell them.

David Einhorn Loves These 3 Stocks -- but You Should Sell Them - TheStreet

But I might start changing my tune about Chromebooks after Google’s announcement that it’s bringing Android apps and the Google Play Store to its laptops. That means Google's Chromebooks could now serve as a viable alternative to standard laptops. With Android apps like Microsoft’s Office, you’ll be able to create and edit Word documents, edit photos and listen to music you saved to your Spotify account without constantly needing to be connected to the web. And thanks to Google’s new Android N operating system, apps will work in their own resizable windows rather than in Chrome browser tabs. That might not seem like a huge upgrade, but it will go a long way toward making your Chromebook feel like a true laptop.

Why now is the time to finally buy a Chromebook - Yahoo Finance

And the major players in this real-life Brazilian telenovela—Congress, the judiciary, the federal police, and the Federal Accounting Office (TCU)—are all playing by the constitutional rules. This is testimony to strong institutions in Brazil and a victory for checks and balances. Far from being a coup, the current tumult, I believe, offers a chance for Brazil, with the right leadership, to return to the policies initiated in the mid-1990s that put the country on a virtuous trajectory of rising growth and falling inequality. The middle class expanded dramatically and the political system became more transparent. Such policies first and foremost conform to monetary and fiscal orthodoxy but also promote social inclusion through programs such as the one that pays mothers to keep their children in school. I call this economic model “fiscally sound social inclusion,” and it’s a topic my coauthors and I explore in our forthcoming book, Brazil in Transition: Beliefs, Leadership and Institutional Change. Such policies helped make Brazil one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies.

Is Dilma Rousseff’s Impeachment Good for Brazil? | New Republic

Technological diffusion can be constrained on both the demand and supply sides of the economy. Take the demand side first. In rich economies, consumers spend the bulk of their income on services such as health, education, transportation, housing, and retail goods. Technological innovation has had comparatively little impact to date in many of these sectors.

Innovation Is Not Enough by Dani Rodrik - Project Syndicate

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The saga has quickly become a case study in the capacity of social media to empower otherwise voiceless and isolated people, and simultaneously in the capacity of a few ill-judged, Ratneresque tweets, to undermine a flourishing business. At the time of writing, the company’s website is down, and online reviews of the business are pithy: “Simply inhumane – laughing at parents of disabled children.”

'Simply inhumane' – the law firm that fights parents seeking help for children's special needs | Law | The Guardian

What distinguished late life from the rest of adulthood is its unique pattern of mortality. The year-on-year rise in death rates that are a feature of adulthood don’t apply in late life. Whereas a 60-year-old has a much higher chance of imminent death than a 50-year-old, a 90-year-old has roughly the same chance of dying as a 100-year-old.

BBC - Earth - Can we predict when we will die?

A Swedish footballer was sent off for passing wind during a match - with the referee dismissing him for "deliberate provocation" and "unsportsmanlike behaviour". (Sport Bladet)

Gossip column: Rodgers, Nolito, Sane, Giggs, Morata, Bellerin, - BBC Sport

NXP Semiconductor ( NXPI) offers a great buying opportunity in the midst of the Brexit selloff, said TheStreet's Jim Cramer. He said the chip company is one of the leaders in the shift to the 'Internet of Things.' Cramer also said investors should stay away from automobile stocks which have very big business in Europe. On the whole, Cramer said the selloff is not so powerful that investors should start shopping indiscriminately because the bargains simply have not appeared yet.

Jim Cramer Says Buy NXPI, Stay Away from Auto Stocks - TheStreet

Coffee was classified as a possible cause of cancer in 1991, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of WHO, has now reconsidered the evidence. It carried out a detailed review of the many studies published on the subject and found that coffee drinkers have no reason to worry. IARC also investigated the herbal drink mate, also known as chimarrão or cimarrón, which is widely consumed in South America, where oesophageal cancer is more common than in other parts of the world. The experts found that mate was not a cause of cancer, but they believe the temperature at which it is drunk probably is – and that other very hot drinks could also be linked to oesophageal cancer.

Hot drinks may cause cancer, but coffee does not, says WHO | Science