Links for 2/23

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And over the last six months, the biggest driver of moves in the stock market has been, well, nothing obvious. Mischaikow writes that between August and January, "Moves in equities often had no particular driver, but rather moved with concerns over global growth or with the energy sector as oil prices fell."

Goldman Sachs stock market moves - Business Insider

In a recent influential paper, Matthias Trabandt and Harald Uhlig (2011) numerically characterise Laffer curves for the US and the EU14. They find that the peak of the labour income tax Laffer curve in both regions is located between an average tax rate of 50% and 70%, depending on the country and the parameterisations of the model. They also find that the US can increase labour income tax revenues by 30%, and the EU14 only by 8%. According to their analysis, some of the European countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, find themselves very close to the top of their respective Laffer curves, and can increase their labour income tax revenues only by 1%.

Tax progressivity and tax revenue | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal

Nowhere in the developed world is secular stagnation more visible than in the Eurozone. This column explains this phenomenon with asymmetric external balances within the Eurozone. Southern countries had accumulated current-account deficits and became debtors when the Crisis hit, whereas the northern ones became creditors. The burden of the adjustments has been borne almost exclusively by the debtor countries creating a deflationary bias. Suggested fiscal policy prescriptions are government investment programmes, to be implemented by northern countries (and in particular, Germany).

Secular stagnation in the Eurozone | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal

FOR central banks in the rich world, two is a magic number. If prices rise at 2% a year, most shoppers can more or less ignore their slow ascent. And a touch of inflation is hugely helpful: it gives bosses a way to nudge unproductive workers—a pay freeze actually means a 2% cut—and an incentive to invest their earnings. Most importantly it keeps economies away from deflation and the depressing choices—hoarding cash, delaying purchases—that falling prices can bring. Yet despite the professed adherence to the 2% mantra, a period of falling prices is on the cards.

Deflation: The high cost of falling prices | The Economist

Monica Bellucci, the 50-year-old actress who will this year become the oldest Bond Girl, initially believed she was auditioning to replace Dame Judi Dench, she has confessed.

'Oldest Bond Girl' Monica Bellucci: I thought I was replacing Judi Dench - Telegraph

In the mid-1990s, urgent messages were sent by fax. And almost exactly 20 years ago one landed in the London office of Peter Baring, the chairman of Barings Bank, from a junior colleague based in Singapore. It was sent by Nick Leeson, who said he was ill and wanted to resign. It was the last of a long string of lies he had told to his bosses. He wasn’t ill. He was on the run, holed up in a luxury hotel in Malaysia, after racking up an astonishing £832 million of losses.

Twenty years on, is Nick Leeson really sorry for breaking the bank? - Telegraph

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For anyone who acquired a tattoo in their wild days of youth and now want it gone, modern medicine could soon have a far cheaper and less painful solution than current cures. A new solution is in the works at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University, a public research college whose primary campus is located in the peninsular province's capital city of Halifax.  Alex Falkenham, a Ph.D candidate in the university's Pathology Department has developed a simple topical cream that could be applied to trigger a patient's immune system to remove tattoos.

DailyTech - Canadian Student Invents Simple Cream to Wash Away Tattoos for Pennies

It’s surprising how we spend our lives. Reach your 78th birthday and according to some back-of-the-envelope calculations, you will have spent nine of those years watching television, four years driving a car, 92 days on the toilet, and 48 days having sex.

BBC - Future - How long can we stay awake?

The most widely cited record for voluntarily staving off sleep belongs to Randy Gardner, at the time a 17-year-old high school student in San Diego, California. For a science fair project in 1964, Gardner did not hit the hay for 264 hours straight, or just over 11 days, according to scientists who monitored him towards the end of his vigil.

BBC - Future - How long can we stay awake?

it turns out that MFFS or helicopter money is all we have left to prevent large negative demand shocks leading to deep and prolonged recessions. So why is it taboo?  One reason why it is taboo among central banks is that they want an asset that they can later sell when the economy recovers. QE gives them that asset, but helicopter money does not.

mainly macro: Helicopter money and the government of central bank nightmares

US military research agency DARPA forsees a tiny implant that could restore sight loss or give you a heads-up display without a helmet or glasses.

Scientists propose 'cortical modem' implant to give you Terminator vision - CNET

Moscow's financial district is a little like the Russian government's international stature: on the surface gleaming and new and perhaps even a little intimidating.  But scratch just below the surface and it's mostly empty, with a lot of money wasted.

Moscow's flagship $12 billion financial district is a half-empty disaster - Business Insider

I've rounded up 15 places in Europe I think are must-sees. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a starting point based on my personal experience.

15 places in Europe that are worth seeing - Business Insider

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Most women have probably experienced being friendly around a man, only to have it be misinterpreted as flirtatiousness. Simple signals of interest in a conversation — smiling, laughing, being interested in a conversation — are all somehow perceived as come-ons. Straight men, research has found, are a lot more likely than straight women to fool themselves into thinking someone is romantically interested in them when they aren’t.

Why Men Always Think Women Are Flirting -- Science of Us

It’s certainly easy to come up with examples of overconfidence getting us into trouble — the Iraq War, the financial meltdown, that guy who challenged a heavyweight boxing champion to a fight last week — but overconfidence may actually be beneficial, at least for the person with the big head.

It Pays to Be Overconfident -- Science of Us

I abhor waking up. Every morning, I silence the first of my iPhone’s three alarms (set for 5:30, 5:45, and 6 a.m., thanks to the fact that I work East Coast hours from the West Coast), bend myself reluctantly out of bed, pick crud out of my eyes, and try to convince myself that today is going to be the day I become a morning person. It never works, though—in part, I suspect, because I’ve never learned the proper methods.

How to become a morning person - Business Insider

Researchers developed a flexible, autonomous armband that notifies doctors when you have a fever or erratic heartbeat. The heartrate and heat sensors are built from printable, organic electronics, with solar cells for power and a beeper-style piezoelectric speaker. It's also cheap enough that it can be disposed of following patient usage.

Light-powered armband monitors your vitals without tethering you

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Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document. It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.

Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad | World news | The Guardian

When I arrived at JFK, I approached a plane so tired-looking it might as well have been a Douglas DC-3. The blue and white livery sported nothing more than the airline’s name and an unidentifiable bird—speculation on the Internet ranges between crane, stork, falcon, and “big chicken.” Once aboard, I entered a retro color scheme combining the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I half expected the Persian Gulf version of the cast of Mad Men to appear.

What I learned flying aboard the world's crappy airlines - Business Insider

Apple's latest capital return program could be worth between $150 billion and $200 billion over three years, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets said.

$200B Apple capital return possible: Analyst

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. In this video 50 people on the streets of New York City were asked to reveal their biggest secrets, and you'll be shocked by what they shared.

People share secrets in PostSecret video - Business Insider

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Robert D’Alelio has the kind of long-term record every mutual fund manager aspires to, beating 98 percent of his peers over the past 15 years with the $12.6 billion Neuberger Berman Genesis Fund and crushing his benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index.

Best Stock Pickers Say Easy Money Has Made Their Job Harder - Bloomberg Business

Many wonder why any teenager, who should be focused on education, hanging out with friends and starting relationships, would travel to join Islamic State (Isis). All the liberties they had will be stripped away from them and they will become very young wives, mothers or even martyrs. The question we find ourselves asking is short, but important: why? Why are they thought to be going to join a terrorist group in Syria when life is so much better in the UK?

Without more support, Muslim girls may well be tempted by Isis’s HR department | Humaira Patel | Comment is free | The Guardian

Suicide, long associated with the plight of the unemployed, was exacerbated by the Great Recession that put tens of millions of people out of work in the U.S. and around the world. In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, the number of suicides worldwide directly linked to unemployment spiked by 5,000 cases, according to a new University of Zurich study. Over the past decade and a half, one in five suicides were closely associated with depression stemming from joblessness worries – or 45,000 cases a year.

20 Percent of Global Suicides Linked to Unemployment - Yahoo Finance

An extremely useful Bloomberg story explains that, under the explanation given by HSBC, Gulliver did not get any tax advantage for this complicated arrangement. Mark Summers, a Geneva tax lawyer, told Bloomberg" "In this case, it doesn't look like a structure that a Hong Kong resident, or UK non-domiciled resident would have needed. There isn't an obvious tax advantage." Rather, the reason it was done, Gulliver says, was to keep his colleagues from finding out what he earned

HSBC Stuart Gulliver salary compensation and Swiss bank account - Business Insider

In today's Financial Times, Gideon Rachman discusses the flaws of the Euro and the possibility of failure. He admits that from the beginning he believed that the Euro project would eventually collapsed because "First, a currency union cannot ultimately survive unless it is backed by a political union. Second, there will be no political union in Europe because there is no common political identity to underpin it. And so, third — the euro will collapse."

Antonio Fatas on the Global Economy: Financial crisis, the Euro and the need for political union.

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According to a survey released Monday by Bankrate.com of more than 1,000 adults, 37% of Americans have credit card debt that equals or exceeds their emergency savings. “These numbers mean that three out of every eight Americans are teetering on the edge of financial disaster”

1 in 3 Americans on verge of financial ruin - MarketWatch

Veteran fund manager Mark Mobius is still upbeat about investing in Greece and is confident about the new government's ability to implement reforms.

Why I still like Greece: Mark Mobius

It may sound obvious. But when you invest in stocks, you're at risk of getting wiped out.

Most Important Risk To Equity Investors - Business Insider

To find the stocks, we screened for companies with market caps over $2 billion and ranked the stock from least shorted to most shorted.

Most shorted stocks - Business Insider

Uber is estimated to be worth some $40 billion, and has 850 employees. Uber also has over 163,000 drivers (as of December -- the number is expected to double by June), who average $17 an hour in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and $23 an hour in San Francisco and New York. But Uber doesn't count these drivers as employees. Uber says they're "independent contractors." What difference does it make?

Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors | Robert Reich

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US-based global intelligence company Stratfor has recently produced its fifth quinquennial 'Decade Forecast: 2015-2025' report, in which it makes a number of shocking predictions about changes meant to take place over the next ten years, including the collapse of Russia and the European Union, the decline of China, the fragmentation of Middle Eastern nation states, and the continuing reign of the United States as the world's sole superpower.

'Shadow CIA' Stratfor Claims EU, Russia Will Fall Apart / Sputnik International

President Obama called it last year, and now a duo of European scientists is backing it up: Marijuana is not more dangerous than alcohol. Or so says a new study, which looks into the deadliness of recreational drugs and found that booze is 114 times more lethal than weed.

Study finds that booze is 114 times more lethal than weed - Business Insider

At first glance, President Vladimir Putin's Russia may seem like a traditional rogue dictatorship whose actions are impossible to predict. In reality, it's a crony capitalist state with relatively open markets. That means you can always know what's going to happen slightly in advance by following the financial dealings of insiders.

Russia's Insider Traders Know Putin's Plans - Yahoo Finance

West Germany’s massive expenditure to support and restructure East Germany following reunification was never acknowledged as fiscal policy. In reality, that is precisely what it was, but, to the Germans this was “infrastructure” and “supply-side” and “reform”, never “Keynesian”.

Why Germany must swallow this Keynesian free lunch | Andrew Graham | Comment is free | The Guardian

On Tuesday, Barclays’s Michael Gapen waded into the hotly debated territory by offering a unique take of his own in a report entitled “The Great Destruction”. Simply put, he suggests that economists have probably been far too generous in their accounts of potential output and most likely under-estimated the scale of potential growth destruction that has taken place in the global economy as a result of the financial crisis.

The great growth destruction? | FT Alphaville

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Whatever Iran's intentions, though, the country's dedication to nuclear enrichment even at such enormous costs can seem bizarrely counterproductive. So why is Iran so set on its nuclear program? There is no one dominant answer, but rather a few plausible explanations, some of which go against the most common Western perceptions and misperceptions of how Iran works. There is probably some truth to all of them.

The real reasons Iran is so committed to its nuclear program - Vox

Instead, I try to get people to think of things in 10-year chunks at a minimum and then move on to a lifetime perspective. For example, spending $100 per week on restaurants equates to a $75,000 hit to your wealth every ten years, compared to keeping that money and just investing it in a conservative way.

This blogger retired at 30, and he wants to show you how you can do it too - Vox

Is the United Nations trying to steal The Alamo from Texas? Texas State Senator Donna Campbell ® is concerned enough about the possibility that she's proposed legislation to ban foreign ownership of the site. She was prompted by a UN cultural agency that is considering designating The Alamo a world heritage site, which she is strangely confusing with an attempted UN takeover.

Are you worried about the UN taking over the Alamo? So is this Texas state senator. - Vox

In a 2013 paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Greenstone and his co-authors calculated that an extra 100 micrograms per cubic meter of "total suspended particulates" in the air was associated with a drop in life expectancy of about three years.

India's air pollution is so bad it's reducing life expectancy by 3.2 years - Vox

The fact that the Proud (pre-exposure option for reducing HIV in the UK: immediate or deferred) study in the UK found an 86% reduction in HIV transmission in those taking the drug Truvada makes it the most successful PrEP trial ever, and should now galvanise us into adding it to existing HIV prevention strategies.

HIV treatment finally has a game-changer, and it’s called Truvada | Michael Brady | Comment is free | The Guardian

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About 20 years ago or so, it started becoming fashionable to conclude that the Japanese government’s borrowing costs were going to go up a lot. Demographic changes were going to dramatically increase the share of retirees dependent on the state for income and healthcare at the same time as the working population — and therefore the tax base — would be shrinking. Add in alleged economic stagnation and the result would be a rapidly widening gap between inflows and outflows. The ratio of government debt to GDP would skyrocket.

Is Japan in danger of a “fiscal crisis”? | FT Alphaville

Our analysis leads us to conclude that for the balance of the decade, markets will generally continue to grapple with an environment of capital superabundance. Even with moderating financial growth in developed markets, the fundamental forces that inflated the global balance sheet since the 1980s—financial innovation, high-speed computing and reliance on leverage—are still in place.

Can monetary policy turn Argentina into Japan? | Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

By the end of 2012, Samsung's profits were up a whopping 76%, fueled by the growth of the mobile division, which suddenly became the most profitable part of Samsung. Samsung was the only company other than Apple making a profit in mobile, and it seemed to be closing in on Apple’s dominance, prompting The Wall Street Journal to publish its famous “Has Apple Lost Its Cool To Samsung?” headline in January 2013.

Samsung rise and fall - Business Insider

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, one of the most famous tech reviewers in the world, compared using the Note to holding a piece of toast against your ear.

Samsung rise and fall - Business Insider

"Fundamentals and flow of funds point to further upside," said Goldman Sachs in a note published on Wednesday, raising its year-end target to 21,700 from 20,000.

Think you’re bullish on the Nikkei? Check out Goldman

The decline in unionization in recent decades has fed the rise in incomes at the top

IMF -- Finance & Development, March 2015

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Workers should remain skeptical of any dramatic change afoot on the wage front, however. The economic recovery taking hold at least in the U.S., if not in other major developed economies, may enable workers to claw back jobs, but dramatically higher pay is a much more tenuous prospect. The availability of still more U.S. workers on the sidelines ready for hire, along with an eager supply outside the U.S., continued displacement of workers via technology, and weaker worker protections in the law will allow employers to hold the upper hand for some time to come, experts say.

The Economy Is Coming Back -- Why Wages Are Stuck in a Rut

Nearly three-quarters of financial industry professionals think companies have "too much cash" or "way too much cash" rotting in the bank, according to the Convergex Corporate Cash Survey obtained Tuesday by CNBC.com.

Wall Street to companies: Spend that cash!

Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, told the Journal: "It is fundamentally the same malaise that is also inspiring the far-left activists. A lot of young people have the same idea that the capitalism-centric Western system is not for them, and that another society is being set up."

British ISIS executioner Jihadi John's path to radicalization - Business Insider

It is hard to watch the Greek drama unfold without a sense of foreboding. If it is possible for the Greek economy partially to revive in spite of its tremendous debt burden, with a lot of hard work and even more good luck we can posit scenarios that don’t involve a painful social and political breakdown, but I am pretty convinced that the Greek balance sheet itself makes growth all but impossible for many more years.

When do we decide that Europe must restructure much of its debt? | Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

Asian families' median income already has surpassed that of whites, while Asians' median wealth soon will surpass the white median level,'' a new report out from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis finds.

Asians in U.S. on Pace to Surpass Whites In Median Wealth - Bloomberg Business