Links for 9/14

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I suppose that’s why the eurozone economy took off after 2011, while the US failed to grow.  The ECB avoided our foolish QE policies, and “showed steel” by raising interest rates twice in the spring of 2011.  If only we had done the same. Of course I’m being sarcastic, but that points to another problem with the Cohan piece. Rates are not low because of QE (as Cohan implied), indeed Europe didn’t do QE during 2009-13, and that’s why its rates are now lower than in the US, and will probably remain lower. If this stuff is published in the NYT and FT, just imagine what money analysis is like in the average media outlet, say USA Today or Fox News.

TheMoneyIllusion » Pop Monetary Economics

The top-line is that Intel hopes to apply all its expertise in computing, networking and wireless communications to make a seamless 5G solution that incorporates distributed intelligence at all levels--from the smartphone to the router to the base-station aggregator to cloudlets, clouds and our fastest supercomputers. The bottom line is that cellular, WiFi, centimeter- and millimeter wavelength bands must be seamlessly integrated from the user's point-of-view, according to Aicha Evans, vice president of platform engineering group and general manager of the communications and devices group at Intel. "5G is not about faster, but about integrating all types of connectivity," Evans told her keynote attendees at IDF. "The building blocks of 5G are already here today."

5G the free WiFi killer - Electronics Eetimes

Livall’s Bling Helmet is the Swiss Army knife of bike helmets. The $356 smart helmet packs in Bluetooth speakers, walkie-talkie functions, a cadence sensor to measure activity, and a three-axis gravity sensor that can detect falls and send out an SOS alert to a smartphone contact.  An included wireless remote clips to the handlebars and allows bikers to activate turn signals in some of the built-in 80 LED lights. This is an Indiegogo campaign that has already smashed its $20,000 funding record several times over.

Sports Tech Launches From Epson, Misfit, Livall, Bracketron, Blast Motion | Twice

The government body that regulates the medical profession, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), says more than 70% of medical students are women. Competition to get into these medical colleges is tough - at one college I was told that they receive 10,000 applications for a 100 places. In the more prestigious colleges, students must get 90% grades or more in order to be considered. I ask one male student why the women were outshining the men. He is in his fifth year, specialising in ear, nose and throat. "Boys go out, hang out with their friends," he says. "Girls can't go out as much, so they stay at home and rote-learn."

Are Pakistan’s female medical students to be doctors or wives? - BBC News

However you cut it, his newspapers hacked thousands of phones and made money out of the private lives of ordinary members of the public who only came into the limelight because they were victims of crime.... Mrs Brooks’s successful defence at trial was that she was such an incompetent executive that she was unaware of industrial-scale criminal wrongdoing in intercepting voicemails and bribing public officials, and unaware of the vast conspiracy to cover it up, despite her admitting to destroying millions of emails and putting the company’s reputation before cooperation with the police.

Return of Rebekah Brooks is 'two fingers up to British public' – shadow minister | Media | The Guardian

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Risk parity funds build portfolios around risks: They target a certain exposure to volatility, rather than, say, equities or bonds. That means that when volatility spikes, they sell automatically and indiscriminately. CTAs meanwhile are typically trend followers, meaning they buy when others are buying and sell when others are selling. JPMorgan said in a note last week that most of the selling last week was led by these systematic investors.

Leon Cooperman on the market crash - Business Insider

Everyone can be creative, but some of us need help with unlocking the creativity we all have as children. Whether it's painting a picture, baking a cake, writing a novel or finding a new way to solve a tricky work problem, being creative is enjoyable and productive. For some of us it comes naturally but others might need more help. So how can you bring out your inner creative?

BBC iWonder - How can I be more creative?

Worries about the ability of many economies to service their corporate dollar debt are increasing, and would do so further if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates later this month.

Global economy survives the China and commodity shocks – so far | Gavyn Davies

LG's new keyboard caused quite a stir at IFA 2015, and it's easy to see why. It's a far cry from the dull slabs of dusty plastic most of us are used to stabbing our digits at. The attention-grabbing keyboard, which will be available to buy for $119 (£80) later this month, is flexible. Actually, that barely does the Rolly justice.

LG Rolly Keyboard hands-on

U.S. employers aren’t yet being squeezed by workers demanding higher wages. The employment-cost index, a broad gauge of wage and benefit expenditures, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% in the fourth quarter last year, the Labor Department said Friday. That’s down from 0.7% in the two earlier quarters and jibes with other data showing only limited wage pressure across the U.S.

Why the Fed Must Banish the 1970’s Inflation Devil Before Raising Rates | The Fiscal Times

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That’s why, for example, there have been days in recent weeks when a morning decline in the market was blamed on concerns about China and the devaluation of the yuan, and then an afternoon rebound was described as an “easing” of those same concerns. Brian Frank, manager of the Frank Fund said those guesses about why the market is moving reduce “the massive long-term problem of the Chinese infrastructure overbuild, immense debt, and devaluing currency [into something that can be ] abated all in one day. Amazing!” “The market moves for millions of reasons,” he added, “gyrating wildly in the short-term. Attempting to sum this up in a neat headline is useless.”

5 traps to avoid in today’s stock market - MarketWatch

Airbag jackets for motorcyclists typically rely on the bike to activate the safety features, which, in some cases, could be a bit tricky. Dainese remedied the issue by packing all of the requisite tech inside the jacket itself on its D-air Misano 1000. The collection of sensors, GPS and other electronics that are housed in the back protector "monitor the dynamics of the rider's body 800 times a second" and deploy the airbag when they detect impact or tumbling.

Dainese's airbag jacket doesn't rely on a motorcycle to activate

We've all spilled drinks, it's just part of life. And while most of the time the spill might only result in a mess to clean, it can often end in a stained carpet or (worse) destroyed electronics. Luckily, there's now a solution to this rather first-world problem. A small company called Mighty Mug has taken to Kickstarter with a line of barware that you simply cannot knock over... Well, at least not very easily.

Mighty Mug's Vacuum-Sealed Barware Will Never Spill - Reviewed.com Dishwashers

We compiled a list of the top 19 stocks, all with a total cash return yield of more than 10%. Below include how much of the return is from dividends or buybacks. You'll also find a comment about cash returns from company executives on the during their latest quarterly earnings call.

Goldman total cash return stocks - Business Insider

The rise of the machines in the workplace has U.S. and European experts predicting massive unemployment and tumbling wages. Not in Japan, where robots are welcomed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government as an elegant way to handle the country’s aging populace, shrinking workforce and public aversion to immigration.

In Japan, the Rise of the Machines Solves Labor and Productivity - Bloomberg Business

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“Creating an advantage to an institutional user or a particular type of trader that disadvantages the retail investor is bad for the country, bad for the markets, and bad for your business.” Grasso said that market changes should be designed with “little old grandma in tennis shoes” in mind, according to the report. Grasso added that if “you’ve taken care of her, you’ve taken care of everyone else.”

Ex-NYSE chief Dick Grasso says stock market is unfair - Business Insider

As he's been predicting for quite a while, Gundlach believes the Fed is more inclined to hike later than sooner. During a webcast on Tuesday, Gundlach shared a slew of market and economic stats and trends that would argue against a rate hike in September or any time this year.

Jeff Gundlach Sept.8 Webcast - Business Insider

So, 0.25% one way or the other is not going to make or break the markets. China might break the markets, Japan might break the markets, Brazil might break the markets - 11 other emerging markets (the GS M-11 Fund) that have dropped 20%, into bear market territory, might break the markets - but not the Fed hike.

TGIF! Thank God We're In Cash | Seeking Alpha

Debt ratios have reached extreme levels across all major regions of the global economy, leaving the financial system acutely vulnerable to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve, the world's top financial watchdog has warned.

BIS fears emerging market maelstrom as Fed tightens - Telegraph

Dollar loans to emerging markets (EM) have doubled since the Lehman crisis to $3 trillion, and much of it has been borrowed at abnormally low real interest rates of 1pc. Roughly 80pc of the dollar debt in China is on short-term maturities.

BIS fears emerging market maelstrom as Fed tightens - Telegraph

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Thousands of walruses are gathered together on one of the last places they have to rest in Alaska — the shore. As the ice they typically rely on for respite between hunts has all but disappeared, the giant animals are clambering to the coast in record numbers.

Thousands of walruses in Alaska - Business Insider

A fingerprint is difficult (but not impossible) to steal. And because verification happens right on the tablet or smartphone, your fingerprint information doesn't travel online, where it could get nicked. Passwords, on the other hand, are the weakest link in almost any security system.

The perfect password? You've put your finger on it - CNET

A technology to keep organs alive outside the body is saving lives. And provoking ethical debates.

Transmedics’ Heart-in-a-Box Could Help with Organ Transplant List | MIT Technology Review

Investors looking for quality stocks before the Fed's move should consider Goldman's "High Quality Stock Basket," the New York investment bank says. Recently rebalanced, it comprises 50 stocks from 10 sectors that have strong balance sheets, a history of stable sales and earnings growth and above-average return on equity. Since July, the basket has outperformed the S&P 500 by 4.3%. Following is a list of the stocks in each sector with the highest quality scor

10 Stocks You'll Wish You Owned When Fed Raises Rates - TheStreet

By the 2030s, at the end of the chart, population growth will have slowed in absolute numbers to the lowest increases since the 1960s, rising by less than half than what it did in 2005. Workforces in developed markets and China will shrink, and African growth will provide the lion's share of the world total.

The world's working population growth started slowing 10 years ago - Business Insider

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While Deep Blue was searching some 200 million positions per second, Kasparov was probably searching no more than five a second. And yet he played at essentially the same level. Clearly, humans have a trick up their sleeve that computers have yet to master. This trick is in evaluating chess positions and narrowing down the most profitable avenues of search. That dramatically simplifies the computational task because it prunes the tree of all possible moves to just a few branches. Computers have never been good at this, but today that changes thanks to the work of Matthew Lai at Imperial College London. Lai has created an artificial intelligence machine called Giraffe that has taught itself to play chess by evaluating positions much more like humans and in an entirely different way to conventional chess engines.

Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level | MIT Technology Review

The financial crisis occurred because banks involved in trading had become massive, concentrated and interconnected in response to the repeal of Glass-Steagall’s separation. It makes no difference that Bear Stearns and Lehman were not actually universal banks (meaning both commercial and investment). The point was that they were enormous and completely tied into the other big banks.

Owning the Consequences: Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall | Demos

Some perpetual bonds are more eternal than others. Yale University will receive 136.20 euros ($153) in interest on a perpetual bond issued in 1648 from Dutch water authority de Stichtse Rijnlanden.

Yale to Be Paid Interest on Dutch Water Authority Bond From 1648 - Bloomberg Business

The average house price for the UK was £282,000 in July according to the Office for National Statistics, which, if you live in London, sounds like nothing – the average house price there nudged £525,000 this month. But the average UK earner, who takes home £24,648 gross, including bonuses, can only afford a house worth around £110,000, if you imagine them taking out a mortgage worth 4.5 times their salary. To find a job paying that much and a house that costs that little isn’t easy – saving for a deposit while paying market rents is even harder.

Why are houses so expensive? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Dawn Foster | Comment is free | The Guardian

Cash has already been flowing out of emerging markets, with investors pulling a net $8.7 billion out of emerging market stocks in August, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the largest outflow since the mid-2013 "taper tantrum".

Emerging markets: how well buffered are they now?

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But the Credit Suisse report suggests some food groups have gotten a bad rap, particularly one that’s plentiful in butter. “We believe that we are at a turning point,” the report says, and claims that saturated fat — prevalent in dairy and meat — has not been a major driver of obesity in the U.S. Carbohydrates are the most likely culprit behind growing obesity levels in the U.S., it says. (The report did not receive any funding from the food industry.

Is this why Americans are getting fatter? - MarketWatch

London's FTSE 100 saw a sharp 2 percent decline from its opening price Friday only to quickly regain lost ground in what traders are calling a "fat finger" error.

'Fat finger' error causes FTSE 100 to plunge 2%

Has the U.S. Federal Reserve become the world's economic guardian? The central bank's decision not to lift interest rates this week because of weakening global growth and a recent surge in market volatility has sparked talk of a "third mandate."

A 'third mandate' for Fed as China worries take hold

In his lab at Stanford, Bailenson studies how virtual reality changes behavior. He’s found that if your avatar is taller than you are in real life, you become more confident. If you have a particularly attractive avatar, you become friendlier. If you’re young and you have an avatar that is a senior citizen, you save more money. These changes last even after you leave the virtual realm.

Google Cardboard, Faceshift, and the Future of Virtual Reality - The Atlantic

“If we have to apologise for showing a friendly face in an emergency, than this is no longer my country.” Thus an emotional Angela Merkel this week, as the political twists and turns of the refugee crisis began to take its toll. The country held its breath. Never had a chancellor threatened to disown the people, especially not this one.

Merkel: 10 utterly convincing years – but refugee crisis is toughest test | World news | The Guardian

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The company hadn't supported online gaming in the U.S. since 2003, as a result of increased regulation and its merger with eBay. Prior to that, however, PayPal had been processing online gaming—when it was an independent company. "At the time, it was the largest transactor for global online gambling," said one gaming insider who didn't want to be named due to PayPal's request for no PR.

PayPal quietly re-enters online gaming

The $200 version of the Asus ZenFone 2, which includes 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, already posed quite the alternative to the Moto G, which charges you $220 to get the same amount of memory capacities. Asus looks to ramp things up even more by introducing a new ZenFone 2 model with double the RAM for just $40 more.

$230 Now Gets You the Asus ZenFone 2 With 4GB of RAM | Digital Trends

The ability to get a mortgage has been one of the biggest obstacles to the housing market since the financial crisis, as only the most qualified borrowers were able to get a home loan. Now, that's changing. Outstanding home mortgage debt in the U.S. posted a 0.5 percent increase in the second quarter from the year before, the Fed's financial accounts report on Friday showed. That's the first year-over-year gain in mortgage debt since 2008, ending a streak of contraction that was unrivaled in data going back to 1949.

Here's Proof That Housing May Be Turning a Corner - Bloomberg Business

But the gastric bypass is considered the gold standard because of its impressive effects: studies show most patients lose at least two-thirds of their excess weight within a year, and keep it off: 10-year follow-up studies of the Swedish Obese Subjects Trial found an average regain of only 8%. And the health benefits are striking: patients are less likely to have heart failure, arthritis or depression, while 80% of those with type 2 diabetes are completely cured, according to a study published in the American Journal of Medicine in 2009.

30 stone at 13: meet the obese teenagers going under the knife | Society | The Guardian

The typical man with a full-time job–the one at the statistical middle of the middle–earned $50,383 last year, the Census Bureau reported this week. The typical man with a full-time job in 1973 earned $53,294, measured in 2014 dollars to adjust for inflation.

The typical male U.S. worker earned less in 2014 than in 1973 | Brookings Institution