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A month ago the Swiss authorities were still claiming that their currency floor was crucial to prevent a deflation trap. They were right

World deflationary forces have swept away Switzerland's defences - Telegraph

Jeremy Cook, from World First, said the retreat was a “total capitulation” in the face of forces that are too big even for a central bank with plenty of firepower. “Nobody wins when you stand in the way of a freight train, except for the train.”

Switzerland 'capitulates' on franc as global currency wars take next victim - Telegraph

There is a steady stream of new research and news stories about the benefits of meditation and other mindful breathing practices. As they report, meditation boosts energy, helps with focus, reduces stress and anxiety, increases resilience and possibly, subtly, changes your life and your brain for the better.

BBC - Capital - Is this the answer to office stress?

TSF is a measure that the Chinese government invented in 2011 to figure out how much debt non-state entities (like people and private companies) have taken on. Jim Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates and on of the biggest China bears out there told Business Insider TSF  is "still the most under-appreciated number in global finance."

China Total Social Financing Surges - Business Insider

The EU top court's adviser and the Swiss National Bank have smoothed the way for quantitative easing (QE), or printing money, but fierce opposition from Germany's central bank, politicians and public may yet shackle the ECB. At issue is no longer whether the bank buys sovereign bonds, which has been widely flagged, but how the program is designed and whether it is seen as credible and sufficient.

ECB faces crucial test of 'whatever it takes'

Less than three months ago, the BOJ justified its shock expansion of "quantitative and qualitative easing" (QQE) as aimed at preventing oil price falls, and a subsequent slowdown in price rises, from weighing on inflation expectations. The move kept alive market speculation that the relentless drop in oil prices, which have nearly halved since October, will force the BOJ to ease again in coming months.

BOJ faces crunch time as oil slump threatens inflation target - Yahoo Finance

The irony is that having been bullied into worrying about its own profitability, which is not what central banks should do, the SNB ended up imposing huge losses on itself. But that’s neither here nor there for Swiss national interests. The main thing is that the credibility essential to getting traction at the zero lower bound has been dissipated for Switzerland, and damaged for everyone else.

Switzerland: QE Too NYTimes.com

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One of the most predictable consequences of the Swiss National Bank’s decision to stop suppressing the exchange rate between the franc and the euro was the whinging of Swiss exporters. That doesn’t mean the policy change was an error. If anything, it may help rebalance the Swiss economy away from its excessive dependence on exports towards greater levels of domestic consumption.

Switzerland’s problem isn’t an expensive currency but anemic consumption | FT Alphaville

Essentially, countries with current account surpluses export economic weakness to places that can absorb it by increasing their borrowing. That can work for a while but it’s always dangerous because there are limits to how much people can borrow without endangering the health of their own economy.

Switzerland’s problem isn’t an expensive currency but anemic consumption | FT Alphaville

A 2011 McKinsey & Co. analysis reported that battery prices would have to drop by about three-quarters to make electric cars cost-competitive at gas prices of $2.50 per gallon. But that was four years ago, and battery prices have continued falling. We could see cost-competitive electric cars taking over the road in as little as a decade. That’s how fast the cost trend is moving.

Get Ready For Life Without Oil - Bloomberg View

The combined wealth of the world's richest 1 percent could overtake that of the other 99 percent by 2016, according to a report by Oxfam published Monday, as billionaires, politicians and business leaders gather in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum.

Richest 1% may own half of global wealth by 2016

Such low interest rates suggest a chronic excess of saving over investment, and the likely persistence of conditions that make monetary policy ineffective in Europe and Japan, along with their possible re-emergence in the US

It can be morning again for the world’s middle class - FT.com

if it is to benefit the middle class, prosperity must be inclusive and in the current environment this is far from assured. If the US had the same income distribution it had in 1979, the bottom 80 per cent of the population would have $1tn — or $11,000 per family — more. The top 1 per cent $1tn — or $750,000 — less

It can be morning again for the world’s middle class - FT.com

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China's main share index fell by the most since 2008 after authorities cracked down on margin trading, where investors borrow cash to buy shares.

BBC News - China stocks sink on lending curbs

On Wednesday, he accused the president of involvement in a plot to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing. The president's spokesman dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous". Mr Nisman, 51, was found dead by his mother in the bathroom of his home.

BBC News - Jewish centre bombing: Argentine prosecutor Nisman found dead

Moscow says it's planning to build a pipeline to the Turkish-Greek border and no longer ship natural gas to Western Europe through Ukraine within 3 years. The project is far more about political competition than economics.

Is Moscow bluffing on redirecting European gas supplies? - Yahoo News

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv explicitly ally themselves with the “free range” parenting movement, which believes that children have to take calculated risks in order to learn to be self-reliant. Their kids usually even carry a card that says: “I am not lost. I am a free-range kid,” although they didn’t happen to have it that day.

'Free Range' Parenting Is On The Rise - Business Insider

When you encounter a group of strangers with outstretched hands, your mind turns into a scared 9-year-old at the school talent show. You're not watching the other contestants; you're practicing your own routine. The process of both preparing to take in the others' names and to say your own, as Esther Inglis-Arkell explained at i09, is so taxing that you don't devote any brain power to actually learning the new names.

This Is Why We Forget Names So Easily - Business Insider

The government's Zen-like calm betrays a lack of strategy. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is shown on television receiving positive reports from regional governors. Yet the fall in oil prices to below $50 a barrel will cost the state budget, which was calculated on the basis of $100 a barrel, 3 trillion rubles ($45 billion), or 20% of planned revenues, according to Anton Siluanov, the finance minister.

Russia's Economic Crisis Has Officially Arrived - Business Insider

Putting an Arduino board into a dildo may sound, um, painful, but sex-toy company Comingle says it opens up a whole new range of sensations beyond "slow" and "fast." "The Mod," a crowdfunded vibrator, "makes it easy for you to create vibration patterns, connect sensors and controllers, and completely customize how your Mod behaves." On top of working like a regular vibrator via a mode toggle, the body-safe silicon device has a USB "hacker" port that connects to a computer, or a controller that the team calls the "Nunchuck" -- a kind of joystick you shake or button-mash to manipulate the Mod.

Code your own climax with this customizable vibrator

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Low tech is the new high tech. A Kickstarter project from the Department of Motivation just raised more than $22,000 for a wearable band that doesn’t have any tech inside at all. The Flip Band doesn’t have a processor, nor does it have a display or charger. It’s simply a wristband with a different color on each side. Nonetheless, its creator claims it can motivate you to get things done better than any Fitbit or reminders app. Just like with the most preposterous projects Kickstarter incubates, the Flip Band is wildly popular and shockingly successful. It’s absurdly simple. The Flip Band has two sides: black and green. The black side indicates that you’ve yet to accomplish your task, while the green side signals that you’ve done what you set out to do.

Flip Band Kickstarter Project Raises $23K For Low-Tech Band | Digital Trends

The International Monetary Fund lowered its forecast for global economic growth in 2015, and called on Tuesday for governments and central banks to pursue accommodative monetary policies and structural reforms to support growth.

IMF cuts global growth outlook, calls for accommodative policy - Yahoo Finance

IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Monday warned of "consequences" if European countries try to renegotiate their debts, ahead of Greek elections which an anti-austerity party is tipped to win.

IMF chief warns Greece: 'A debt is a debt' - Yahoo Finance

There are lots of theories as to why the central bank chose to act, but there is one that was clearly underappreciated — the role of Swiss local government in lobbying for dividend payments.

The Swiss National Bank Move May Have Been Done To Protect Its Dividend - Business Insider

And with the collapse of yields, even those who believe the BOJ is determined to demonstrate its commitment to inflation aren't sure what the central bank can buy. HSBC's Devalier reckons the BOJ will spend half of its 10 trillion yen on risk asset purchases. "Most of this will likely be Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) but the central bank also look into boosting its existing purchases of commercial paper, corporate bonds and shares in Japanese real investment trusts (J-REIT)," she said.

Bank of Japan: To bazooka or not

After watching Russia bludgeon Ukraine under the faulty auspices of protecting those who spoke Russian, and after watching Moscow outright annex territory its leadership considered lost land, Kazakhstan has begun showing signs of defiance. Concomitantly, its relations with Russia have soured more drastically than any time since the fall of the USSR.

Eurasian Economic Union: Putin's Geopolitical Project Already Failing | The New Republic

The European Central Bank's (ECB's) Bank Lending Survey has provided a big piece of good news for the eurozone as it showed European companies are once again borrowing to invest.

ECB Bank Lending Survey Shows Big Rise In Credit Demand By European Companies - Business Insider

Meanwhile, Gabriel Sterne of Oxford Economics has developed a Greek decision/scenario tree. It’s quite brilliant and clearly a work of love, culminating in no less than 18 “end games.”. Click to admire in detail.

Just in case Grexit were to happen… | FT Alphaville

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In Germany, debt restructuring would be the most controversial component. But Germans should be reminded that, along with Marshall Plan funds for Western Europe, the other big boost to Germany’s postwar economic recovery came from debt restructuring. The London Agreement of 1953 canceled 50% of Germany’s public debt and restructured the other half to give the country much longer to repay.

A “Merkel Plan” for Europe by Bill Emmott - Project Syndicate

Buiter’s main point is that this was all unnecessary anyway: “There were at least two superior alternatives.” With our emphasis: The first would have been the continuation of the exchange rate floor against the euro. The old regime, with or without the additional 50bps cut in the deposit rate, was viable and superior to the new regime (option (3)). There is no technical limit on the size of the central bank’s balance sheet, in absolute terms or relative to GDP. Central banks can live with very large balance sheets (the SNB’s balance sheet is now around 85% of annual GDP, as shown in Figure 6) without any risk that, sooner or later, this will lead to excessive inflation.

Buiter, the SNB and the effective lower bound | FT Alphaville

It’s been one of the big themes at the World Energy Future Conference here in Abu Dhabi. Solar, and other technologies such as wind power, are no longer more expensive than traditional fossil fuels in many parts of the world. Indeed, they are cheaper. The big oil and gas players recognise this. Dr Adaba Sultan Ahmed al Jabber, the minister of state of the United Arab Emirates, said at the lavish opening on Monday that the cost of solar was competing with traditional sources of energy, and would not be derailed by the plunge in the oil price. He saw that as an opportunity to call for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, which he noted outstripped those of renewables by a factor of 5:1 in 2013.

Why solar costs will fall another 40% in just two years : Renew Economy

What's often missed is the paradoxical interplay of two of his seemingly opposite qualities; maniacal focus and insatiable curiosity. These weren't just two random strengths. They may have been his most important as they helped lead to everything else.

Top Predictor Of Career Success - Business Insider

Public investment deficiency is now chronic across the OECD, and particularly in the EU. Less visible and politically sensible than current expenditure, for twenty years it has been the adjustment variable for European governments seeking to meet the Maastricht criteria, and to control their deficit. Since the crisis hit, private investment also collapsed, and it is still kept well below its long term trend by depressed demand and negative expectations.

Europe Needs a Real Industrial Policy | Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist

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The world economy is facing strong and complex cross currents.  On the one hand, major economies are benefiting from the decline in the price of oil.  On the other, in many parts of the world, lower long run prospects adversely affect demand, resulting in a strong undertow. We released the World Economic Outlook Update today in Beijing, China. The upshot for the global economy is that while we expect stronger growth in 2015 than in 2014, our forecast is slightly down from last October.

Global Economy Faces Strong and Complex Cross Currents | iMFdirect - The IMF Blog

In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students “clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century,” they would examine causes behind the rise “and fall” in global temperatures. After a national outcry from educators, West Virginia backed down. But the science curriculum standards — which come from recommendations developed and adopted by a partnership of states — have already been rejected by Wyoming. South Carolina blocked the standards before they were even finalized, and other states are gearing up for similar battles. Climate change has slipped into the same contentious curricular role that evolution once occupied, and some sort of Scopes penguin trial or a debate over “intelligent warming” seems inevitable.

Dangerously in denial on climate change - The Washington Post

Such “badly behaved investment demand and savings supply functions”, as Marty Feldstein called them when he taught me this stuff the first time I saw it back in the winter of 1980, can have four causes:

Secular Stagnation Once Again: A Few Cocktail-Hour Thoughts on Shane Ferro vs. Diane Coyle: Daily Focus - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Thus, the growth of the global economy in the future is becoming less affected by population growth, and more heavily reliant on productivity growth. This raises some hard questions where the answers will only become apparent with the passage of time.

CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Global Economic Growth: All Productivity, All the Time

ECONOMIC historians have long supposed that Africa’s historically low population density shaped its development. Rulers struggled to exercise control over scattered populations, the theory goes. Malfunctioning states inhibited growth because property rights were insecure and infrastructure was worse. But why was it that land in precolonial Africa was so abundant, and people were so scarce? A new paper* by Marcella Alsan of Stanford University blames the tsetse fly.

The tsetse fly and development: In the ointment | The Economist

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In terms of new investment activity and job creation, the solar industry has posted some of the best numbers in recent years. In 2014, new domestic solar jobs were added at a pace twenty times faster than the broader economy, bringing total jobs to 173,807. And a new solar installation is now being completed every two and a half minutes in the U.S., up from one every two hours a decade before. New figures show how steadily the industry has grown since 2008, even as many other domestic industries struggled to recover from the recession. According to preliminary numbers from Shayle Kann of GTM Research, America installed twenty-two times more solar in 2014 than in 2008.

America Installed 22 Times More Solar in 2014 Than in 2008 : Greentech Media

At this point you may be wondering exactly why you should buy a portable SSD with a separate cable rather than a classic USB stick, and the short answer is: performance. This is a desktop-class SSD packaged inside a portable frame, and as such it can provided lightning-quick transfer speeds, with Samsung quoting sequential read and write speeds of up to 450MBps for the T1 range. That’s about twice what your typical ‘fast’ USB stick might provide.

Samsung Portable SSD T1 review | TrustedReviews

After wearing it during working hours every day for about two weeks, the pain in my back, shoulders and both elbows diminished significantly. After about another two weeks, the pain was pretty much gone. The shirt also claims to improve your energy level -- something I expected to be a dubious promise at best. But you know what? It really does. I don't quite know how that bit works, but I feel more focused and productive when I have the thing on and my body just seems more "awake."

I wore the same shirt for a month, and now I feel better - CNET

Rather, progress on fundamental economic reforms from the Communist Party Central Committee’s Third Plenum in late 2013 is more essential now in the country’s transition from a fast-growing, developing economy based on investment in heavy industry and low-cost, manufactured exports to a more mature economy based on domestic consumption and higher-value goods and services.

China in 2015: Gauging the New Normal

Economic growth is the casualty of a widening gap between the rich and the poor among member countries of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to a report issued last month. The richest 10% of the population in OECD countries earn 9.5 times more than the poorest 10%. In the 1980s, that ratio was 7:1, and the income gap is at its highest level in about 30 years. The report suggests that the growing income inequality has, over the past two decades, cost the U.S. between 6 and 7 percentage points in economic growth, nine points in the U.K., and 10 points in New Zealand and Mexico.

How Income Inequality May Be Hurting Economic Growth

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Hedge fund manager Owen Li sent a letter to his investors apologizing for losing all but $200,000 of the fund's capital by acting "overzealously,"

Owen Li Letter Says 'Sorry' For Lost Money - Business Insider

There are really 19 ingredients. In addition to different oils, the list includes several chemicals that perform various functions, including ones that adds flavor, an anti-foaming agent that keeps oil from splattering, another aimed at keeping "the potatoes from going gray" and preservatives, Imahara explains.

What are McDonald's fries really made of?

The New Year's rally in gold stocks offers a respite for the beaten-down sector, but it masks deep-seated problems of bloated debt, weak growth prospects and overvalued assets that will emerge when miners post year-end results in coming weeks.

New Year rally in gold miners conceals troubles that run deep

“We got something like 15 to 16 million people through those two channels, and about 10 million people were previously uninsured,” said Ana Gupte, an analyst at Leerink Partners. “That’s new growth that this industry never experienced before.” The industry was one of the law’s biggest opponents. While health insurers have worked with Democrats on the law’s implementation since its 2010 signing, in 2009 they secretly funneled $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund a political campaign to oppose the law. Since then, the industry has publicly said it supports the law and wants implementation to be successful.

Obamacare Pays for Insurers Who Fought It as Stocks Rise - Bloomberg

This was the second time in two months that I felt like I was glancing into the future. The first was when I tried on the latest version of the Oculus Rift, Facebook's virtual reality headset. It reminded me of that "wow" feeling I had the first time I tried an iPhone back in 2007. HoloLens and Oculus are similar but distinct. Oculus Rift is virtual reality, which means the image seems to surround you entirely, and you don't see any part of the real world. HoloLens is augmented reality, which means it projects images on top of the real world.

Microsoft HoloLens Hands On - Business Insider

The overwhelming truth about the Greek debt crisis is that it’s a massive distraction. Greece accounts for a mere 2% of the eurozone economy and the EU population. This doesn’t mean that Greece should be pushed around, still less pushed out of the eurozone. It means the very opposite: the crisis should be resolved, and largely on Greece’s terms.

Let Greece profit from German history | Jeffrey Sachs | Comment is free | The Guardian

The U.S. Federal Reserve will struggle to raise interest rates this year amid weak economic growth abroad and slow inflation at home.

Davos Not So Sure About That Fed Rate Increase You’re Expecting - Yahoo Finance

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Makayla died not only from leukemia, but from faith—the faith of her parents, who are pastors. They not only inculcated her with Christianity, but, on religious grounds, removed her from chemotherapy to put her in a dubious institute of “alternative medicine” in Florida. At the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Makayla was treated with a combination of raw food, vitamin C injections, and “cold laser therapy,” none of which have been shown to have the slightest effect on leukemia. (The Institute is being sued by former staff for operating a “scam.&rdquo Her doctors say that if she had stayed on chemotherapy and standard treatment, she would have had a 75 percent chance of survival.

Canada Lets Makayla Sault Die of Leukemia Over Religious Sensitivity | The New Republic

I have been skeptical for a while about the market consensus that the Fed is likely to move in June. I’ve been wondering whether the labor force participation rate may begin to rise again, in which case inflationary pressures will remain subdued and the unemployment rate will not continue to fall. And that rise in the labor force participation rate could indeed happen, we simply don’t know.

Labor-force participation may hold key to Fed moves, economist says - MarketWatch

We did succeed in preventing the complete and utter collapse of the financial system like that which happened in the 1930s in the U.S. but as a result, we did less financial reform this time than we had in the 1930s.

Labor-force participation may hold key to Fed moves, economist says - MarketWatch

“Whether we like it or not, art is used for tax avoidance and evasion,” said Prof Roubini, himself an art collector. “It can be used for money laundering. You can buy something for half a million, not show a passport, and ship it. Plenty of people are using it for laundering.” Prof Roubini argued that the art market had a series of characteristics that needed regulation. “While art looks as if it is all about beauty, as a business it is full of shady stuff,” he said. “We should correct it or it will be undermined over time.”

Roubini Vs the so-called “art” industry | FT Alphaville

Barack Obama wants to convert sunlight into liquid fuel. It was a passing reference in the State of the Union address last night (he highlighted the same technology in his 2011 address). If scientists can figure out how to do this, he said, it could “unleash new jobs.” Currently there are three main ways to use solar power to propel cars and airplanes, but they all have problems

What Obama Meant by “Converting Sunlight into Liquid Fuel” in the State of the Union Address | MIT Technology Review