10-11-2016, 10:59 PM
Overseas investors increased their holdings of Chinese sovereign bonds by a record in September before the yuan entered the IMF’s reserves basket. Foreign institutions bought a net 41 billion yuan ($6.1 billion) of government securities to boost their holdings to 385.97 billion yuan, according to data from China Central Depository & Clearing Co. That’s more than three times the average monthly increase this year, and extends an unprecedented buying streak to 11 months.
Foreign Investors Boost China Government Bond Holdings by Record - Bloomberg
The public mechanical clock, which first appeared in European cities in the late 13th century, was one of the most important innovations in history. This column looks at the impact on growth of the arrival of this general purpose technology. European cities that were quick to install mechanical clocks enjoyed greater growth than late adopters. However, it takes some time for the effects from fundamental innovations of this type to be realised because the technology must be accepted both culturally and socially and then applied to related economic activities.
Time for growth | VOX, CEPR’s Policy PortalSecret Money Floods Judicial Elections
In the limbo ahead of the week's big events, traders will watch oil prices and S&P 500 price action Tuesday as signals on future gains. "We've been caught in a sideways range and we're probably going to stay here until we get more clarity on the Fed," said John Caruso, senior market strategist at RJO Futures. "I'll just be watching key resistance levels tomorrow," he said. He's watching to see if the S&P 500 can top 2,164 and then 2,174, before retesting its record close of around 2,190.
Traders watching these clues for a market breakout
HOW WOULD WE GET THERE? That’s the $64 trillion question. Even at the fastest speeds of our current technology, a quick jaunt to check out Proxima b would see us arriving in around 18,000 years, by which time there’s every chance our Earth-bound descendants would have arrived there well ahead of us and grabbed all the glory. But many smart minds – and deep pockets – are being turned to the challenge of finding a faster way to cross vast distances of space. Breakthrough Starshot – a $100 million initiative privately funded by Russian billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner – is focusing on propelling a tiny unmanned probe by hitting its extremely lightweight sail with a powerful Earth-based laser. The idea is that if the spacecraft is small enough – and we’re talking barely a gram – and the sail light enough, the impact of the laser will be enough to gradually accelerate the craft to around one-fifth of the speed of light, taking it to Alpha Centauri in around 20 years. The Milners are counting on miniaturisation technologies to enable this tiny craft to carry a camera, thrusters, a power supply, communication and navigation equipment so it can report on what it sees as it flashes past Proxima b. Hopefully the news will be good, because that will lay the foundation for the next and more difficult stage of interstellar travel: people-moving.
BBC - Future - The myths and reality about interstellar travel
“We are not that bad policemen or bad individuals. We are just a tool, we are just angels that God gave talent to, you know, to get these bad souls back to heaven and cleanse them.” The words flow unnervingly from the mouth of the policeman, a senior officer in the Philippines national police (PNP), as he explains his role in 87 killings in the past three months. It’s not about killing for pleasure, or being a “homicidal maniac”, he says. There is a higher purpose at play. “We are here as angels. Like St Michael and St Gabriel, right,” he says. Well in excess of 3,600 people have been killed in the Philippines since 1 July this year, when Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated as president and initiated his war on drugs and crime. More than half of those murders have been perpetrated by unknown vigilantes.